Prepare our Meeting for Investigators

“In an effort to keep our work closely linked to the Savior’s ministry, let me suggest some things all of us might do to keep Christ and His Atonement in the forefront of members’ and investigators’ consciousness. Encourage in every way possible more spiritual Church meetings, especially sacrament meetings. One of the great fears missionaries have at least in some locations is taking their investigators to church. And indeed the investigators deserve to feel essentially the same spirit in sacrament meeting that they feel when being taught by the missionaries.” (Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Ensign, March 2001)

By Small Means Great Things are Brought to Pass

Daniel Chester French's statue, Minute Man, adjacent to the North Bridge, the historical site in the Battle of Concord, the first day of battle in the American War of Independence.

"The thunderbolt falls on an inch of ground, but the light of it fills the horizon." 

From Ralph Waldo Emerson's address at the 1875 dedication of French's Minuteman statue alluding to how the local resistance to the King's troops had far-reaching effects. How far has the First Vision, or the actions in our own lives reached?

It's What's Inside that Counts

"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."

By Henry Stanley Haskins (1875-1957) from his anonymously published Meditations in Wall Street (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1940) p. 131.

Its a Good Thing There Wasnt Anybody Around to Help the Pilgrims

"They landed in a forbidding wilderness. No Federal Housing, so they went to work and built their own. No Free Stamp Program, so they raised what food they ate, and when they didn't raise enough, went without. No Free Schools, so mothers taught their children. No Recreational Programs, they were too busy working. No anti-draft riots, everyone was expected to share in the protection of his country. No Social Security, no security at all, except what each provided for himself. But there were compensations. No rioters demanding something for nothing. No unwashed students telling their mothers what to teach. No wasteful bureaucrats paying themselves out of the workers production. Nothing, really, for the Pilgrims but hard work and a lot of it. Did it pay off? Our standard of living proves it" (Christian Economics, Nov. 1972, p. 25).

Gullible Gulls

“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. … The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets. Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout. A lot of people are like that, too. They see nothing wrong in picking delectable scraps from the tax nets of the U.S. Government’s ‘shrimp fleet.’ But what will happen when the Government runs out of goods? What about our children of generations to come? Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.” (“Fable of the Gullible Gull,” Reader’s Digest, Oct. 1950, p. 32 as told by President Marion G. Romney, The Celestial Nature of Self-reliance, Ensign, November 1982, p.91)

Follow Now!

Finding Safety in Counsel

"Another fallacy is to believe that the choice to accept or not accept the counsel of prophets is no more than deciding whether to accept good advice and gain its benefits or to stay where we are. But the choice not to take prophetic counsel changes the very ground upon which we stand. It becomes more dangerous. The failure to take prophetic counsel lessens our power to take inspired counsel in the future. The best time to have decided to help Noah build the ark was the first time he asked. Each time he asked after that, each failure to respond would have lessened sensitivity to the Spirit. And so each time his request would have seemed more foolish, until the rain came. And then it was too late. Every time in my life when I have chosen to delay following inspired counsel or decided that I was an exception, I came to know that I had put myself in harm’s way. Every time that I have listened to the counsel of prophets, felt it confirmed in prayer, and then followed it, I have found that I moved toward safety. Along the path, I have found that the way had been prepared for me and the rough places made smooth. God led me to safety along a path which was prepared with loving care, sometimes prepared long before... An example from Church history is that of Reddick Newton Allred. He was one of the rescue party sent out by Brigham Young to bring in the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies. When a terrible storm hit, Captain Grant, captain of the rescue party, decided to leave some of the wagons by the Sweetwater River as he pressed ahead to find the handcart companies. With the blizzards howling and the weather becoming life-threatening, two of the men left behind at the Sweetwater decided that it was foolish to stay. They thought that either the handcart companies had wintered over somewhere or had perished. They decided to return to the Salt Lake Valley and tried to persuade everyone else to do the same. Reddick Allred refused to budge. Brigham had sent them out and his priesthood leader had told him to wait there. The others took several wagons, all filled with needed supplies, and started back. Even more tragic, each wagon they met coming out from Salt Lake they turned back as well. They turned back 77 wagons, returning all the way to Little Mountain, where President Young learned what was happening and turned them around again. When the Willie Company was finally found, and had made that heartrending pull up and over Rocky Ridge, it was Reddick Allred and his wagons that waited for them. (See Rebecca Bartholomew and Leonard J. Arrington, Rescue of the 1856 Handcart Companies [1992], 29, 33–34.)" (then Elder Henry B. Eyring, CR., April, 1997).

“A resistance to anything that limits one’s conduct has almost taken over society. Our whole social order could self-destruct over the obsession with freedom disconnected from responsibility, where choice is imagined to be somehow independent of consequences” [President Boyd K. Packer, Ensign, May 1996.]

To Live Well

Elder Richard G. Scott, To Live Well, April 21, 2011, BYU Spring 2011 Commencement

Sixth, smile. I don’t need to teach you that. Just being on this campus teaches the importance of knowing how to smile and enjoy life. I don’t mean by that that you need to be cracking jokes every day. But a good joke now and then is an escape valve. It is not all that bad. You will soon learn that everybody has problems and nobody wants to hear about yours. Put those things aside and smile. Have a good sense of humor as the prophets do. I wish I could tell you some of the things that we talk about. Not flippant things, not things that are inappropriate—just a good sense of humor. Today we are a little more serious than usual, but I will tell you a secret of how to wake up in the morning with a smile on your face no matter how you feel. Now I’ll have to whisper, because this is a secret. If you want to wake up in the morning guaranteed to have a smile on your face, go to bed with a coat hanger in your mouth. Remember, a good sense of humor helps you greatly.

Seventh, don’t complain. Life isn’t always fair. That’s a fact. But it’s always charged with marvelous opportunities if you know how to find them. I remember once when I was working as hard as I knew how. I happened to be working for a man who took all of the ideas and suggestions and work that I did and passed them on to his superior as though they were his own suggestions. For a while I was really upset about that. As I pondered it, a thought came to me, and I decided from then on I would write reports to him of everything that I was doing or trying to do, and I sent a copy to his boss. He didn’t like that, but it worked beautifully.

Gain Mastery and then Enslave Them

"We again warn our people in America of the constantly increasing threat against our inspired Constitution and our free institutions set up under it.  The same political tenets and philosophies that have brought war and terror in other parts of the world are at work amongst us in America.  The proponents thereof are seeking to undermine our own form of government and to set up instead one of the forms of dictatorships now flourishing in other lands.  These revolutionists are using a technique that is as old as the human race - - a fervid but false solicitude for the unfortunate over whom they thus gain mastery and then enslave them." [Elder J. Reuben Clark, Conference Report, Apr. 1942, 88-97]

Great Transfer Board in the Sky

“We do not control what I call ‘the great transfer board in the sky.’ The inconveniences that are sometimes associated with release from our labors here are necessary in order to accelerate the work there. Heavenly Father can’t do His work there, with 10 times more people than we have on this planet, without on occasion taking some of the very best sisters and brothers from among us. The conditions of termination here, painful though they are, are a part of the conditions of acceleration there. Thus we are back to faith in the timing of God, and to our need to be able to say ‘Thy timing be done,’ even when we do not fully understand it” (Neal A. Maxwell, Ensign, July 2002).

God is in the Details

"Recall the new star that announced the birth at Bethlehem? It was in its precise orbit long before it so shone. We are likewise placed in human orbits to illuminate. Divine correlation functions not only in the cosmos but on this planet, too. After all, the Book of Mormon plates were not buried in Belgium, only to have Joseph Smith born centuries later in distant Bombay....God, who oversees the interlacings of galaxies, stars, and worlds, asks us to confess His hand in our personal lives, too. Have we not been reassured about the fall of one sparrow and that the very hairs of our heads are numbered?. God is in the details! Just as the Lord knows all of His vast creations, He also knows and loves each in any crowd—indeed, He knows and loves each and all of mankind!...Of course we cannot fully comprehend all this right now! Of course we cannot know the meaning of all things right now. But we can know, right now, that God knows us and loves us individually!" (Elder Neal A. Maxwell, Encircled in the Arms of His Love, Ensign, November 2002, p.16)

Get it First Hand

"There is an increase in the attendance of the people at meetings. There is nothing that causes the people to grow more in the Gospel than attending their meetings. There is nothing that is more calculated to cause the spirit of the Gospel to dry up, figuratively speaking, than to stay away from our meetings. When we are in a meeting we partake of the spirit of that meeting. When we are absent from it and somebody tells us of the wonderful spirit that was present and what was accomplished by being there to partake of it, we cannot appreciate those things. It is very much like the man who was hungry and someone told him of a fine dinner, but he did not appreciate that dinner. We have to eat for ourselves, we have to live for ourselves, we have to be in the line of our duty in order to partake of the Spirit of the Lord, if the Spirit of the Lord is manifest.

I call to mind that a brother who lost his standing as an apostle was a very, very poor attendant at the meetings of the Council of the Twelve, other matters occupied his attention. Francis M. Lyman had to come from Tooele the night before our meeting and spend one night here and all day in order to be at the meetings of the Presidency and Apostles which lasted two or three hours, but he never missed one of them. I said to him one day: 'It is remarkable to me that you are so prompt and always present at our meetings.' He said: 'I do not want to miss any inspiration from the Lord; I do not want the Spirit of the Lord to come to me second hand. I want to partake of it, and to feel it, and to realize it, and to know it for myself'" (President Heber J. Grant, CR, October 1934, p.122-123).

Do Your Homework

Years ago I was asked to chair a committee of faculty from Brigham Young University and other schools with this question to study: What should be the future of higher education in the Church? Elder Neal A. Maxwell was then the commissioner of education. I told him I didn't think I could fulfill the assignment without the help of heaven. He asked if I would like a blessing. I've forgotten how it was arranged that I would see Elder Alvin R. Dyer, but that was especially pleasant for me, since I had been a priest once in a ward where he was the bishop, the president of my quorum. He listened sympathetically to my story, put his hands on my head, and gave me a blessing that included words like this as a promise: "In this assignment, and in many others which will come to you, your mind will be guided in channels toward the truth." That blessing gave me confidence, maybe too much confidence. The committee began its work. And after months of what seemed to me futile effort, I felt some desperation, much as you do when heaven seems to withhold its help in a task you know matters and is beyond you. I somehow managed to arrange another interview. This one was with President Harold B. Lee. He received me in a kindly way. In my anxiety, I soon blurted out my question: "President Lee, how do I get revelation?" He smiled. I am glad he didn't laugh, since it was an odd question to ask. But he answered my question with a story. It was essentially this. He said that during World War II he had been part of a group studying the question "What should the Church be doing for its members in the military service?" He said they conducted interviews at bases up and down the country. They had data gathered. They had the data analyzed. They went back for more interviews. But still, no plan emerged. Then he gave me the lesson, which I now give to you, in about these words: "Hal, when we had done all we knew how to do, when we had our backs to the wall, then God gave us the revelation. Hal, if you want to get revelation, do your homework." (see D&C 9:3-10) [From Elder Henry B. Eyring, To Draw Closer to God: A Collection of Discourses, p.91-103,105]

You never know the consequences of your actions...

“Never let a problem to be solved, become more important than a person to be loved.” (President Thomas S. Monson, CR. October 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxW2cqgGhd4

Will it be Enough?

"A few years ago, Bishop Stanley Smoot was interviewed by President Spencer W. Kimball. President Kimball asked, 'How often do you have family prayer?' Bishop Smoot answered, 'We try to have family prayer twice a day, but we average about once.' President Kimball answered, 'In the past, having family prayer once a day may have been all right. But in the future it will not be enough if we are going to save our families.'
I wonder if having casual and infrequent family home evening will be enough in the future to fortify our children with sufficient moral strength. In the future, infrequent family scripture study may be inadequate to arm our children with the virtue necessary to withstand the moral decay of the environment in which they will live. Where in the world will the children learn chastity, integrity, honesty, and basic human decency if not at home? These values will, of course, be reinforced at church, but parental teaching is more constant." (Elder James E. Faust, The Greatest Challenge in the World, Good Parenting, Ensign, November 1990, p.32)

One by One

“Just go get one, who will go get one, who will go get one, who will go get one. That’s how you establish the kingdom.” Elder David A. Bednar, England 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8hMhVE36M0

The Family

"The ultimate end of all activity in the Church is that a man and his wife and their children might be happy at home, protected by the principles and laws of the gospel, sealed safely in the covenants of the everlasting priesthood. Every law and principle and power, every belief, every ordinance and ordination, every covenant, every sermon and every sacrament, every counsel and correction, the sealing, the calls, the releases, the service—all these have as their ultimate purpose the perfection of the individual and the family, for the Lord has said, 'This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.'...You have the power of the priesthood directly from the Lord to protect your home. There will be times when all that stands as a shield between your family and the adversary’s mischief will be that power. You will receive direction from the Lord by way of the gift of the Holy Ghost." (Elder Boyd K. Packer, The Power of the Priesthood, Ensign, May 2010"

Never Stop Asking THinking, Pondering

"The proper 'why' questions will lead us to the proper 'who,' 'what,' 'when,' 'where,' and 'how' decisions… Unfortunately, we sometimes don’t seek revelation or answers from the scriptures or the handbooks because we think we know the answers already. Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?" [President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Acting on the Truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”, WWLeadership, February 2012]

The Best Way to Learn

"Teaching is the best way to learn, I'm still convinced of that; by passing on our knowledge we continue to discover and learn. Moreover, this activity forces us each time to a new formulation of what we want to express, forces us to new [attempts], [a] constant search of new methods. The constant links with youth helps us to always have a youthful outlook, make us able to surprise ourselves constantly.."

(Erno Rubik, inventor of Rubik's Cube, London speech,1/31/81)

Making Ordinary People Winners

“The task of the excellent teacher is to stimulate ‘apparently ordinary’ people to unusual effort. The tough problem is not in identifying winners: it is in making winners out of ordinary people. That, after all, is the overwhelming purpose of education. Yet historically, in most of the periods emphasizing excellence education has reverted to selecting winners rather than creating them."

(K. Patricia Cross, scholar of educational research)