Lesson for August 16, 2015

Today our lesson was given by Maggie Kopp on “The Elderly in the Church.” Maggie said she works in Special collections at BYU and she has a colleague who works with the older people who want to donate their books or journals to the library. If you have older relatives or friends, there are certain joys, such as grandchildren, more wisdom from experiences, more time, better perspective on what is good or bad, patience, experience. Some challenges include health issues, loneliness, dependency, loss of independence, loss of context, loss of memory, finances, lack of respect. Many of those with great responsibilities in the Church are elderly or more experienced. Maggie asked how others we know have served. Megan Miller said her Young Women’s leader was older were great. Often older people have wonderful things to offer. One sister said she makes the effort to have lunch with her grandfather on Fridays. Another sister said an older man in her ward terrified her until he directed a choir she was in and he helped her grow and because a grandfather to her. Heidi said her first job out of high school was to take care of an older woman who taught her a great deal, especially patience and budgeting money. Linda Campbell ‘s mother became incapacitated and so family members had to help take care of her. Her son, Spencer, especially learned from his grandmother. How do we honor those older family members. We can listen to their stories. Jessica Lewis’s daughter Ashton interviewed people who lived through World War II. Lana Horrocks said that helping her mother with her family history gave them a bond together. Megan Curran said her aunt passed away, but her father kept the stories and her cousins are coming to him for the stories. Megan’s sister is posting some of them on Facebook so many people can learn more about her father’s family. Another sister said that she helped some of the older people in their family keep up on their hobbies that they loved doing before. She also read to her great-grandmother as well. Sister Gibbons said her children have helped her mother, including reading the entire Work and the Glory series on tape for her. Sometimes they really need transportation help, because their independence is gone when they stop driving. If they don’t have family nearby, they’re stuck. So we need to take care of the people in the ward who have needs like that. Maggie asked what about spiritual needs? What about transportation to the temple? Service could be wonderful, to help people. Taking the sacrament to someone’s home is important. Those who don’t have the Church also need our help. Letting them share their experiences and advice helps them to feel validated. Suzie Sullivan said she visited her grandmother and heard her conversion story and testimony and it was a blessing to Suzie. President Benson said our later years can be our best years. He gave eight reasons and so Maggie asked how we can apply each of these areas to our lives? Collecting family histories, missionary service and letting them share their experiences with us, keep busy and keep active physically, helping them cook, planning for the future and finding out about government services. President Benson said there are many wonderful things about this time of life to share with each other.

Lesson for August 9, 2015

Today our lesson was given by Megan Miller on Chapter 15 “The Sacred Callings of Fathers and Mothers.” She started with “A Father’s Calling is Eternal.” Our pattern for fatherhood is our Heavenly Father. We watched the video from Mormon Message, “Heavenly Father, Earthly Father.” The video tells one father’s perspective of what he works for to provide for his family and how they trust him to provide for them. Even though he’s not there all the time, everything they have comes because of his efforts. Comments from the sisters equated what an earthly father does with what Heavenly Father provided us, his children, with. Heavenly Father provides us with this earth and all that is on it, but he also provides us with opportunities and he provides us with unconditional love. Heavenly Father does not expect us to fail. He always wants us to succeed. So as we watch our children we need to expect us to succeed even though it takes a long time. Megan said that as a teacher she sees parents who do not expect their children to succeed and she feels like that is wrong. How can we support our husbands and the men in the ward? We need to be the women who do not hold back our men. They need to know that everything at home is taken care of. We need to give our husbands the opportunity to exercise their priesthood. Lisa Anderson said that as a single sister, she tries to work with her home teachers to make their jobs work. Megan said that right after her bishop was called when she was a teenager, her bishop’s wife had triplets in addition to their other three children. She said the whole ward rallied around and helped take care of the children. Lisa says that she sees co-workers who get tons of phone calls about mundane stuff from home that interferes with their work. Jill Judd said the positive things we say are like little raindrops that water and nourish. It is important to value them and tell the men in our lives how much we value them. President Benson said his home was a refuge for their family with mother and father who protected and nurtured them. What can we do to provide a refuge for children? We can God will never leave us alone. God has promised he will take care of us.

Ward Humanitarian Project August 18

Come and help our humanitarian effort to put together food and pillowcases and other projects to help out. We will come to the stake center at 6:00 on August 18, Tuesday. Collecting things, too. Call Emily Campbell if you want to participate. It is for the whole family and there will be activities for everyone. Emily says, Jesus wants you to.

Lesson for August 2, 2015

Lesson for August 2, 2015 Today our lesson was given by Lana Horrocks gave the lesson on family history. She works for Ancestry.com and is a life history coach. She and her father were genealogy buddies. She would do the research and he would put it into the computer. She got started doing the Generations project at BYU and download stories. In 2011 and she saw a girl on the project named Emily who felt like she had to find her ancestors. The show people found her ancestors in the strangest of circumstances. She is involved in a project called Ancestor echoes. She has some advice for things to do. 1. Seek with diligence. The Lord will help you find a way and you will feel wonderful. Seek two things: the Lord and your ancestors. Lana said it is the same frequency. Revelation. Ancestors are seeking to have their work done. Temple work for our kindred dead is what they are yearning for. They are praying for us, so they have a vested interest in our success in finding them. Lana told about her dear friend Elaine who had some of her ancestors come to her and ask her to do their work, including an aunt who had made her life miserable. We do not need to wait for the Millennium to do it because we can get revelation. 2. Pray with faith. The Lord wants to know your intent and our faith is with action. Continuous revelation comes through dreams, words, and the help of others. If you don’t use your ancestors to help you, you are unprepared. One woman was confined to a wheelchair and her husband was very much into family history. She was contacted by Alexander McRae, her husband’s ancestor, who had been Joseph Smith’s bodyguard and was the only member of his family to be baptized into the Church. His sisters had burned his journals. Lana said to write the answers to your prayers in your journal so you can remember that we did get answers. Write down the inspiration to find our ancestors. Lana keeps a prayer journal and the Lord has given her over 50 pages of personal revelation. She said it does not go through your brain, but through your heart. She types what she gets because she can go faster. She said to ask the Lord what He has for us and he will give us the answers. She had people read scriptures about seeking and the Lord helping us find. She said the scriptures help you find things but lds.org can help you find things faster. She belongs to Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and Daughters of the American Revolution. She was contacted by one of her ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War and he gave his reasons for fighting, including fighting for religious freedom. He gave her two pages of information and asked her to do his work. 3. Sacrifice with love. We can search for records. We can search for stories. We can record and go to the temple. Heidi said she had researched her family history and someone had put in the dates all wrong. She had to fix these things. One of her ancestors had three or four babies who died and the person who had entered things wrong had at least taken pictures of grave markers, so she did get that right. Rhonda read a quote about going back a hundred generations to get what they have to impart to us. All we need to do is practice and we will get better at family history.

Lesson for July 12, 2015

Lesson for July 12, 2015 Today our lesson from Chapter 13 in the manual was given by Maggie Kopp on “Priceless Blessings of the House of the Lord.” Maggie asked us what the temple symbolizes. Some of the answers included heaven on earth, eternal families, personal covenants, increased knowledge and teachings, the gateway to heaven for us and our ancestors, comfort, clarity of thought, personal revelation, place of peace, a place of service, and dwelling in the house of the Lord. President Benson said the temple is a visible symbol that God has not abandoned us. It is a holy place set aside and consecrated. D&C 109:12-13 says temples have the purpose of a place where the glory of the Lord and the presence of the Lord can be with us. Maggie said many religions have sacred spaces where people can worship and the temple is a sacred space where we can experience the presence of the Lord. We also do work in the temple. Preparing to go to the temple allows us to experience the clarity and revelation. It doesn’t matter what is going on in our lives, we can experience the presence of the Spirit when we go to the temple. We can make our homes sacred places. Lisa Anderson mentioned that inside the temple, the temple workers go to great efforts to make each visit to the temple worthwhile through cleanliness and decorations and personnel. To prepare for the temple, we need to have the proper ordinances and worthiness to qualify for the recommend. The covenants we make in the temple have their own power. We make them to show our devotion and partake of the blessings, such as protection and family relationships. Our covenants help us become who we should be. They help us recognize that the things that are valued by the world are the froth of the world and will not last. Temple blessings give us the greatest blessings of the atonement. President Benson said the temple helps us be more Christlike. If you have the temple as a goal, you live your life better and in consequence you become more Christlike and therefore worthy to enter the temple. Vira Bahr said that she goes to the temple to listen to the words of the ordinances. The words give her many things she can do for her personal relations and her relationship with God. He gives us constant messages on how we should handle our lives. Heather Cantrell reminded us that we need to wear our garments with respect as symbols of our temple covenants. Amy Young said that after she goes to the temple she feels more loving and patient and knows she’s a better person. That by going over and over again, we become better. Linda Campbell said that before her granddaughter died, she went to the temple to do confirmations for the dead. The thought at Tori’s death is that she could meet the people she did the work for. What a blessing to have that knowledge. Personal revelation comes with answers to our personal problems with clear and unmistakable ways. We need to make the time to go to the temple and do our scripture study and writing down our impressions and we’ll find the answers to our questions and know what we have already learned. The other side is that if we don’t pay attention to our temple covenants, we lose the memory of what we can have. We live far below the blessings the Lord is waiting to give to us. The temple symbolizes many things to many people and we should seek out the sacred in our lives and keep our covenants.

July 21 Canyon Barbecue

Our traditional canyon BBQ will be on July 21. We will meet at the church at 6:00 p.m. to carpool up. Yummy food. Good companionship.

Lesson for July 5, 2015

Lesson for July 5, 2015 Today our lesson was given by one of our new Relief Society presidency, Suzy Sullivan, on faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is a principle that causes us to do, rather than just believe. True faith must be centered in Jesus Christ. Faith is a spiritual gift from God. It requires a correct understanding of Jesus Christ. Obedience to the principles of the Gospel develops faith. Joseph Smith said the most important thing we can do is learn who Jesus Christ is. How do we develop a correct understanding of Jesus Christ. By reading his scripture, conference talks about Him, doing what He would do and live how He would live, loving ourselves and others, being unselfish and compassionate, following the prophet who also tries to be like Jesus Christ. Once we know who He is then we have the capacity to be like Him. Suzy said when she was in the MTC, she struggled with the concept of faith and wondered was concrete in her life that embodied faith. A speaker came and said that true faith was in the Savior, so she decided to just trust in the Savior. The Savior is really the only guarantee in our life. Joan Jensen said she likes the scripture that says cursed is he that trusts in the arm of flesh, so only trust in the Savior is paramount. Even trusting in our selves isn’t enough. We need to trust in Christ. Elder Bednar said that even when the Israelites carrying the ark were promised they would pass through the river Jordan on dry land, it wasn’t until their feet were wet that the river parted. It is wise to pray about family members’ opinions diverge from our own. We need reassurance that our source is the Lord. No matter what we hear or see, we need to set them against the pattern the Lord has given us. If we have faith, we are moved to action. We act because we have faith in Jesus Christ and his promises to us. It’s a huge blessing to repent and acknowledge it and feel His love. Even if you have a tiny little bit of faith and do a little bit, that little bit can grow until greater faith is gifted to us and we get the desire to do more. Elder McConkie taught that faith is a gift of God fueled by righteousness and the more we keep the commandments of God, the more righteous we are. Suzy said she was struck by the need to be more righteous so her faith could be increased. Heidi said we’re all going to come to points in our lives when hardship comes and we can either turn to the Lord or we can turn away. They point to their trials as reasons why the Church isn’t true when they should turn to the Lord at these times. The Savior said if you believe then all things are possible, but some in the scriptures said help thou my unbelief. Sometimes if our attitude is not quite right, we need to focus on the little things, such as prayers and scripture study so God will help us develop more faith. Vira Bahr said if we choose to believe in Christ, then faith becomes a spiritual gift. As we are obedient to the commandments and understand them better we have to recognize that because of the trials in our lives we will not always be what we want to be, but we can cling to our faith and trust that Christ will guide us how it is supposed to be fixed. The Lord knows us personally and what we need. Heather Cantrell said we must not talk against the Lord’s anointed, but must do what He wants us to do. The Spirit can help us to feel the Savior’s love and want to be obedient. Desire, hope, and belief are levels of faith, but one possessed of the power of faith through the pattern of obedience can do amazing things. By dedicating our lives to the Savior, we can have His power in our lives. Vira said that on her mission they set a goal to be obedient and work really hard so everything would work out and it happened in amazing ways. She found she was empowered. Suzy said that if you want your faith strengthened, we should evaluate our lives and see what we can do better.