Dear Olivia

   

       Your Mama told me about some really great questions you asked. She wondered how to answer you. I am far away but I would like to give you my answers to your questions.
     Where do dinosaurs come from?

      I think Dinosaurs are cool and you must have read books about them. I know they lived a loooooong time ago. Longer than a whole day. That's long isn't it? It is longer than a grown-up day, or year; it is as long as Heavenly Father's year. Oh, and remember, Heavenly Father  is real and we can talk to him when we pray. He seems far away from us and that is why Jesus opened the door so we could find him. Jesus created the dinosaurs because Heavenly Father said he could. It is hard for us to know when they first made those huge creatures. The Bible says that the earth was made 6,000 years ago. But those are grown-up years and I think Heavenly Father's years are way longer than that. One year for Heavenly Father might be a million grown-up years.
    Jesus said, "My ways are not your ways, and my thoughts are not your thoughts," so maybe we can't figure out exactly when they those dinosaurs lived on the earth. But we can become good observers of our world. An observer is someone who looks very carefully at everything. Scientists are carefully observing the ground and they dig really deep to find bones and other signs of how old the earth is. Heavenly Father wants us to look at our earth and see all the things he made for us. He makes amazing things for us to see. Like the way a butterfly comes out of a cocoon.
    Where do cocoons come from?

     Heavenly Father is teaching us a wonderful lesson when we look at a cocoon. He made the cocoon as a hide-out for the caterpillar while he slowly turned into something else. A gorgeous, amazing butterfly comes out of the cocoon and doesn't crawl anymore but flies. You will change as you get older and your amazing body will be like a cocoon to let you change from a little girl into a beautiful lady. Good observers will see things in the world to help them understand how Heavenly Father works. He and Jesus are artists, designers, and organizers and they want us to be that too.
   You are a good observer, I know, because when I was visiting with you we saw many interesting things , like the lichen growing on the wooden bench. Each day, on our walk, you came back to your job of ridding the bench of the lichen.

   So keep looking at all the wonders of the world. Jesus and Heavenly Father want you to praise them for their work and they will bless you with many insights.
                        Love, Oma

Three views of how old the earth is:
1)The earth was made in 6 days through catastrophic events which God has divine power to perform.
2)Each day of creation was really 1000 years so the earth is 6,000 years years old from Adam and 
     Eve being placed here.
3)The creation of the earth extended over immensely long periods of time.
   a)The Lord works in his own time and in his own way
   b)The true translation of the word day is an undefined period of time
   c)Scripture uses the word "time" to distinguish periods; "this was the first, or the beginning of
         that which they called Day and Night. Abraham 4-5
   d)Genesis opens with 'In the beginning" and it is not agreed upon what the beginning was. Alma
         40:8, "All is as one day with God, and time only is measured by man."
   e)Nature shows us how slow it moves. All human experience points to the need of periods of time
          for beyond 6,000 years, to fashion the earth as it appears today.
   Clearly it does not matter to one's daily welfare or ultimate salvation which view you adopt, except that every Latter-Day Saint must seek and cherish truth above all else.
  From Evidences and Reconciliations by John A. Widtsoe