Sep 24

September 24, 2006

Many Sunday meetings! We skipped Fast Meeting because I had to get off my leg for a while.

We had mission conference from 10-12, Auxiliary Training from 1-3, and Fireside from 7-8. I have 7 pages of notes from today. A veritable feast! Here are a few of my favorite thoughts.

Sister Gillette, wife of a counselor in the MTC presidency, told a story about her friend whose parents bought her a thoroughbred horse when she was young. The horse was a little wild so every day she would walk out to the shed and fill a bucket with oats, then just walk around the pasture shaking the bucket until the horse came up and ate the oats. She did this many times then one day decided she didn’t want to walk clear out to the shed so she put some sand and pebbles in the bucket, shook it and the horse came. But after a few days the horse wouldn’t come any more. She had lost the trust she had worked so hard to build. Then Sis. Gillette said Preach My Gospel tells us how to build trust. We must Obey, Act, Trust and Serve (oats). Pretty clever. She started her talk by saying there was a little 5-year-old girl looking at a picture book one day. Her big brother asked what she was doing and she said, “reading the pictures.” Brother said, “Silly! You don’t read the pictures, you read the words.” Little girl said, “You’re the silly one. Don’t you know the words are only there for the ones who don’t get the pictures?”

Howard W. Hunter: The spirit of the Lord always edifies.

Steven B. Allen, producer of the home front ads for the church showed clips from them. These are the messages from those ads (each one is a potential talk, I think):
1. It’s not who you aren’t, it’s who you are. Being yourself is great.
2. Sometimes the most important ting you can share is yourself.
3. What does it take to get you back into the lives of your children? Give them everything. Give them your time.
4. It’s often the small moments that make the greatest memories. Don’t let them pass you by.
5. The people in your heart can’t hear what’s in your heart. They need to hear that you love them.
6. What children think about themselves is often determined by the labels you put on them.
7. The message that can change the world hasn’t changed.

It was a great day. Among all these things we learned, we also asked as we fasted that my knee would feel better and it did. I actually slept last night without taking a pain pill. The gospel is true and God blesses us.