Sunday Talk

Thursday evening we got a phone call asking to speak in Sacrament, Kooper said let me talk to the wife and I’ll call ya back. Right when he told me, my response was with a serious face. NO! He can’t give us 3 days. Kooper thought I was being serious and went to call back surly I was kidding I'd never say no. It  couldn’t of been a better day to talk. We were asked to talk about General Conference. Which I thought would be extremely easy because there is so many talks I liked.  Looking back at some of the notes I took I realized that I like almost every talk, but which do I pick? I love general conference, I love hearing what the prophet, and apostles of God have to say to us. I used to always think of conference as naptime, the elder brethren have such peaceful voices that can put me to sleep so fast.  However, I have grown to truly love conference. There are so many questions that can be answered and so many lessons to learn. I thought that for Sunday I would share my talk and what I learned from preparing it.

For my talk I wanted to share points I loved from Elder Hamilton’s talk on Continually holding fast, we have many choices to make as to how we observe the Sabbath day. There will always be some “good” activity that can and should be sacrificed for the better choice of church meeting attendance. Don’t let Sunday church be “just an option” once we make that choice it will be easier to fall away and become less active. Even to add to that sometimes we get in the habit of running late or skipping out on some of our church meetings. Elder Hamilton briefly described why we have each meeting. Sacrament is for providing the opportunity to participate in the ordinance of the sacrament. Sunday School allows us to “teach one another the doctrines of the kingdom”, Priesthood meetings are a time for men and young men to learn their duty and to be instructed more perfectly, and Relief Society provides the women an opportunity to increase their faith, strengthen their families and homes, and help those in need. Each meeting is just as important as the other. Attend church, attend all three meetings, and arrive on time, you have no idea the importance your attendance will have on your posterity. If you stop going, it will affect every generation after you, or it will set the wrong examples to those surrounding you. Teach and learn from those around us, we are a ward family and have so much to share with each other.  As we take Christ’s name upon us, it is expected that we strive to emulate his attributes and change our character to become more like him.  Christ-like attributes are gifts from God, as we use our agency righteously. How do we become more like Christ? Well we can start by becoming humble. D&C 112:10 “Be thou humble; and the Lord they God shall lead thee by the hand, and give thee answer to thy prayers.

I am going to switch talks to Elder Ballard’s now about putting your trust in the Lord. There seemed to be a few themes for this conference and one of them was sharing the gospel. We want to give the world a chance to hear and accept the gospel.  We are asked to quicken our pace, working together to build up the church and kingdom of God. The Lord wants his gospel to be spread, and he is trying to do that at a quick pace, as you’ve seen from the numbers of new missionaries. Don’t be scared! Pray for opportunities to share the gospel, anyone is capable of doing it. Elder Ballard stated” It is impossible for us to fail when we do our best when we are on the Lord’s errand.” How could we possibly fail with that great promise? The key to missionary work is that you be inspired of God, ask him for direction and then go and do as the spirit prompts you to. The Lord has provided us with so many resources to spread the gospel; lets take advantage of them and use them! The greatest part about missionary work is that you don’t have to be a full time missionary to share the gospel anyone can do it. When I was 9 years old I had an activities day leader who had my name on her roll. She went out of her comfort zone and came to my house over and over to invite me to church. There were days she would come planning on me coming and I never did but she didn’t get discouraged, she kept coming! And through it all I ended up getting baptized, just because she had faith in me and never gave up. Shortly after getting baptized I moved and once again had no one to go to church with. Heavenly Father blessed me with a best friend that invited me to church when I was 10 years old. How much courage does it take for a 10 year old to ask someone to come to church with her? For the next few years I got a phone call every Sunday from a member of her family asking if I wanted to go to church with them. I was on and off and went through phases, but that didn’t matter to them. They never gave up on me either! Soon I found my testimony and what I loved so much about the church. I was lucky enough to have those people in my life; I know that missionary work is universal. Whoever thought you had to be a missionary to share the gospel was wrong.  The first step is to find someone.  

Going off missionary work, let us be the ones to comfort those that feel alone, to be there for a brother or sister in the ward, to help a struggling family member or neighbor. Just remember that others can be having a hard trial in their life.. I wanted to share a story that President Monson shared a couple weeks ago in the Relief Society Broadcast. One day this lady made her homemade bread and for some reason she was prompted to make two instead of one. After she made one loaf she still didn't know what to do with it, on her way into town she brought it with her. She had a strange feeling to take the second loaf across town to a lady she hardly knew. Acting on this prompting she listened to the spirit and dropped it off. Little did she know that was all this lady was desperately wanting. It became an obvious sign to the lady that her Heavenly Father was aware of her needs and loved her enough to send help, and respond to her cries for relief. To read the full version you can go to here. Will we rely on the spirit to guide us to them and to be a light for them? Remember that your Heavenly Father loves each of you, that love never changes, its not influenced by your appearance, your possessions, its not changed by your talents and abilities, its simply there. 

We are able to do missionary work ourselves at this time. It can be as simple as posting something on Facebook, you never know who is needed to hear those words or who is reading. My dad and both brothers in my family are not members of the church and I still love them. I know that if I continue to live as an example one day they will learn of the gospel. The other day I mentioned to one of my brothers when they have a baby if Kooper would be able to bless them, and they said what is a blessing. That was just a great experience to me and maybe it didn't mean anything to him but I was able to share a little more with him.  I know this gospel is the truth, I love it and I live it with all my heart :)

Happy Sunday I hope you enjoy this!