Sunday, April 25, 2010

Thinking

So, I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about where I'm going with my life. I feel so lazy and that I don't do much for others. I do a lot of things for myself but not a lot for other people. I feel like i should be doing more. This next week and these past few days have been kinda hard ones for me. It's just barely hitting me that I'm moving on into a different phase of my life. I wont be at Cedar anymore and i'm pretty much hitting that "oh crap i'm a real adult" part of my life. Its strange to think that I wont be coming back to Cedar in the fall....I thought I was all happy about it, which I am but I have had a good three fun filled years here and its strange to think that its done. Today sitting in church it really hit me. I have LOVED my ward down here this year. NEVER in my college experience (3 years) have I ever had a bishop that knew my name and that made it a point to get to know me. This bishop did. I can honestly say I love my bishop down here. He has been so fun and a really good friend! I have loved my ward this year and I loved my roomate(s). It has been my best year yet at school. I started in september with really having a crappy crappy time. I was sad, upset and really confused. I don't feel sad or upset anymore. I am a little confused though. On Saturday I had the awesome opportunity of hearing Sheri Dew speak. She was AMAZING!! I hope I can be like her someday. But it really hit me like a stone when she talked about how we need personal revelation in our lives. It made me think...Do I use it? Do i pray before I make a decision? I don't think I do as much as I should. Actually I KNOW I don't. I'll be moving to Richfield this summer to do the block and then to St. George in the Fall for my student teaching. Who knows what will happen this summer and i'm really pretty nervous about it. I'm really excited to move to St. George and get to be in warm and I think it will be a little more social but at the same point I'm nervous. I'm moving on, i'm growing up and this year who knows what will happen. I have a few ideas of what I want to do after I graduate but who knows. I guess I should pray about that ;) But to my whole moral of this long huge paragraph of really bad grammar and spelling errors and nonsense. In relief society today a girl gave her lesson on a talk. It was such a good lesson and this talk hit home. I feel so blessed and i want to share my blessings with others and do more service. I'm going to work on that from now on.

here is the talk. It's long but please read it you will be enlightened i promise!



Safety for the Soul
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles


I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world … that the Book of Mormon is true.


..............May I refer to a modern “last days” testimony? When Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum started for Carthage to face what they knew would be an imminent martyrdom, Hyrum read these words to comfort the heart of his brother:
“Thou hast been faithful; wherefore … thou shalt be made strong, even unto the sitting down in the place which I have prepared in the mansions of my Father.
“And now I, Moroni, bid farewell … until we shall meet before the judgment-seat of Christ.”7
A few short verses from the 12th chapter of Ether in the Book of Mormon. Before closing the book, Hyrum turned down the corner of the page from which he had read, marking it as part of the everlasting testimony for which these two brothers were about to die. I hold in my hand that book, the very copy from which Hyrum read, the same corner of the page turned down, still visible. Later, when actually incarcerated in the jail, Joseph the Prophet turned to the guards who held him captive and bore a powerful testimony of the divine authenticity of the Book of Mormon.8 Shortly thereafter pistol and ball would take the lives of these two testators.
As one of a thousand elements of my own testimony of the divinity of the Book of Mormon, I submit this as yet one more evidence of its truthfulness. In this their greatest—and last—hour of need, I ask you: would these men blaspheme before God by continuing to fix their lives, their honor, and their own search for eternal salvation on a book (and by implication a church and a ministry) they had fictitiously created out of whole cloth?
Never mind that their wives are about to be widows and their children fatherless. Never mind that their little band of followers will yet be “houseless, friendless and homeless” and that their children will leave footprints of blood across frozen rivers and an untamed prairie floor.9 Never mind that legions will die and other legions live declaring in the four quarters of this earth that they know the Book of Mormon and the Church which espouses it to be true. Disregard all of that, and tell me whether in this hour of death these two men would enter the presence of their Eternal Judge quoting from and finding solace in a book which, if not the very word of God, would brand them as imposters and charlatans until the end of time? They would not do that! They were willing to die rather than deny the divine origin and the eternal truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.
For 179 years this book has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other book in modern religious history—perhaps like no other book in any religious history. And still it stands. Failed theories about its origins have been born and parroted and have died—from Ethan Smith to Solomon Spaulding to deranged paranoid to cunning genius. None of these frankly pathetic answers for this book has ever withstood examination because there is no other answer than the one Joseph gave as its young unlearned translator. In this I stand with my own great-grandfather, who said simply enough, “No wicked man could write such a book as this; and no good man would write it, unless it were true and he were commanded of God to do so.”10
I testify that one cannot come to full faith in this latter-day work—and thereby find the fullest measure of peace and comfort in these, our times—until he or she embraces the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the Lord Jesus Christ, of whom it testifies. If anyone is foolish enough or misled enough to reject 531 pages of a heretofore unknown text teeming with literary and Semitic complexity without honestly attempting to account for the origin of those pages—especially without accounting for their powerful witness of Jesus Christ and the profound spiritual impact that witness has had on what is now tens of millions of readers—if that is the case, then such a person, elect or otherwise, has been deceived; and if he or she leaves this Church, it must be done by crawling over or under or around the Book of Mormon to make that exit. In that sense the book is what Christ Himself was said to be: “a stone of stumbling, … a rock of offence,”11 a barrier in the path of one who wishes not to believe in this work. Witnesses, even witnesses who were for a time hostile to Joseph, testified to their death that they had seen an angel and had handled the plates. “They have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man,” they declared. “Wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true.”12
Now, I did not sail with the brother of Jared in crossing an ocean, settling in a new world. I did not hear King Benjamin speak his angelically delivered sermon. I did not proselyte with Alma and Amulek nor witness the fiery death of innocent believers. I was not among the Nephite crowd who touched the wounds of the resurrected Lord, nor did I weep with Mormon and Moroni over the destruction of an entire civilization. But my testimony of this record and the peace it brings to the human heart is as binding and unequivocal as was theirs. Like them, “[I] give [my name] unto the world, to witness unto the world that which [I] have seen.” And like them, “[I] lie not, God bearing witness of it.”13
I ask that my testimony of the Book of Mormon and all that it implies, given today under my own oath and office, be recorded by men on earth and angels in heaven. I hope I have a few years left in my “last days,” but whether I do or do not, I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days.
My witness echoes that of Nephi, who wrote part of the book in his “last days”:
“Hearken unto these words and believe in Christ; and if ye believe not in these words believe in Christ. And if ye shall believe in Christ ye will believe in these words, for they are the words of Christ, … and they teach all men that they should do good.
“And if they are not the words of Christ, judge ye—for Christ will show unto you, with power and great glory, that they are his words, at the last day.”14
Brothers and sisters, God always provides safety for the soul, and with the Book of Mormon, He has again done that in our time. Remember this declaration by Jesus Himself: “Whoso treasureth up my word, shall not be deceived”15—and in the last days neither your heart nor your faith will fail you. Of this I earnestly testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Love ya all,
Kaylie

1 comment:

Mrs Buchanan said...

I think that you should start a gratitude journal. They are the most amazing things. I haven't written in mine for a long time, but they definitely make me feel much better about my life, especially when I am having a difficult time seeing any good in my life. That really is an amazing talk.