Happy Birthday Dad! Reasons why you're the best Dad: You taught me how to sing "Can't By Me Love." You always had the best hiding spots in hide and seek. You taught us how to dance to the Beatles. You are really good at making Indian Corn and No Bake Cookies. You brought us donuts from work when we were little. You took us sledding on the big hill by Brother Glick's house on snow days. You taught us how to play Rook and Ching-Chang-Chung. When I thought you would be mad about me getting a flat tire in the Riviera, you weren't. When I was upset and arguing with Mom about working during high school, you hugged me and gave me good advice. You let me come golfing even though I always miss the ball. You took us to Disneyland and we went on Splash Mountain over and over at 11pm before the park closed. You let me drive the Malibu and help me with all the car stuff. You taught me about money and responsibility. You love Mom. You love us. You love the gospel. Thank goodness you were born! Happy Birthday.
I walked through the Family History computer lab in the library, looking for the familiar sight of my grandparents. They often sit close to each other looking at the same computer, learning how to use the new genealogy software. Not spotting them like usual on Thursday mornings, I started walking toward the door, slightly disappointed. With one look back as I opened the door to go, I glimpsed my Grandmother’s short gray hair and blue-gray sweater. Turning around and letting the door close behind me, I walked over to my Grandmother and reached down to hug her, interrupting her conversation with a man helping her with the computer. She introduced me to Brother Wallace and said how good it was to see me. We hugged again and I knelt down next to her. Brother Wallace fiddled on the computer as we talked, and we figured out plans for going home on Trevor’s birthday.
I could see my sweet, generous grandma’s eyes twinkling as we spoke, laughing and smiling the whole time. I felt instinctively that she loved me and had great confidence in my ability to succeed in life. She expressed surprise that midterms had come so soon. She and I have always understood each other well – we laughed together over the transience of college relationships, and inquired about other family members. She asked how my Dad was doing, I asked about Sam’s family. Our conversation, as it often did, turned from family to our mutual love for family history: I told of my learning about the Great Depression and her father, Earl Hollingsworth’s, diligence in seeking work at the time. She told me of her plans to make Christmas gifts of the slides of Grandpa as a missionary in Uruguay for everyone in our family. I told her of my recent thoughts about serving a mission. She smiled and told me of a beloved sister missionary she and Grandpa met while in Ecuador on their temple mission – the Sister was impressed that their apartment inside the temple grounds had warm water and a shower! Grandma’s smile never stopped, but the wrinkles around her eyes sparkled with tears. Startled that she was crying, I felt that she was happy to hear of my desire to serve the Lord.
We said our goodbyes for the day and hugged again. Touched at her gentle and sensitive reaction to these memories and thoughts, I realized that her love for this Ecuadorian Sister was equaled in her love for me, both of which were manifest in her tears. As I walked away, I was moved deeply by the exquisite experience of talking with my grandmother, feeling her joy in seeing me and her confidence in me. As we had talked, a fleeting memory of our friendship before this life crossed my mind, and I realized that the grave would not mark its end. Grandma is a spirit after my own heart. I know that as we laugh together now, we laughed together before this life, and will laugh together after this life – walking arm in arm, tied by bonds of family, faith and friendship.
I found this journal entry from November 2006. My Grandparents were serving a Family History mission at BYU at the time. Happy early Mother's Day Grandma, I love you.
A few weeks ago, a dear friend asked me about what my temple worship means to me. I wrote this in response, and she thought I should share it.
Ever since I was little, I was taught that someday, if I kept myself clean and worthy, I could go to the temple and make sacred covenants with God, and even be married to my husband. My parents went to the temple often, but the things that happen there are sacred so they are not to be talked about outside the temple. I grew up knowing that covenants are made there, that special temple clothing is worn, that I would make solemn covenants to serve the Lord.
However, I didn't know exactly what the ordinances and ceremonies would be like before I went for my first time last year. Usually we go to the temple for our first time when something very important in our life happens when we will need extra strength from the covenants that we make - for me and most women it is marriage, and for men it is usually their mission at age 19. We simply do not talk about temple ordinances outside of the temple - because of the sacred nature of the covenants and ceremonies performed.
I took a temple preparation class before I went to the temple for the first time. I learned about the history of temples and about the sacred nature of the covenants I would make. My first time going inside the temple beyond the baptismal font was very spiritual and sacred and emotional. I learned a lot. I did not know what exactly to expect, except that I would make covenants with the Lord. It was a beautiful, personal and intensely sacred experience!
In the scriptures, God often tells his people that we learn spiritual truths line upon line - little by little. I think that is why temple ordinances are not given to everyone in the world, only those who are prepared. Even when a new member joins our church, they are asked to wait at least one year before they go inside the temple to receive these ordinances. The temple is a place of learning and instruction for those who are ready. We believe that if this knowledge was given to those who are not prepared, it would actually be hurtful to them. Along this line, I think that we are comfortable being in the company of people who are like us. Someone who is not living like Christ - going about doing good, extending mercy and love, etc. - would not be comfortable being in his presence. We believe that we can truly feel God's presence in his temples - we believe that a temple is the Lord's house.
With the whole Big Love controversy, I realized that if people really want to know what goes on in our temples, they can find it out. Plenty of ex-members have published information and pictures of temple clothing on the internet and in anti-mormon books. That literature makes me feel a little sick. I think it is a tool of Satan to trivialize the most sacred things that God has given His children.
Going to the Draper Temple Dedication yesterday was a beautiful experience. Singing "The Spirit of God" at the dedication's close touched me deeply and I felt very close to heaven. I realized that nothing can hurt our sacred experiences at the temple if we choose to leave the world behind when we go there.
Our ideas about how to solve the world's problems are very different from God's ideas.
"For myathoughts are not byour thoughts, neither are your cwaysmydways, saith the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are myawaysbhigher than your ways, and mycthoughts than your thoughts"(Isaiah 55:8-9)
Yunus with entrepreneur and her business project
When Muhammad Yunus began giving what are now termed "micro loans," it seemed that there was no way they could work. Elder Ballard on Microfinance (from this month's Ensign):
"Can we effectively appraise the needs of others by the prompting of the Spirit? It impressed me that Muhammad Yunus must have been prompted by the Spirit when he organized a very unusual bank in Bangladesh, which some have said was the beginning of microfinance. When Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his efforts to help the poor, was asked what his initial strategy would be, he responded:
“I didn’t really have one at the time. I simply began trying to help with my own funds, then went to the banks and asked them to get involved. They refused for several stated reasons, and thus my strategy began to evolve into: ‘Whatever the bankers did, I simply did the opposite.’ The bankers would only lend to the rich. I would only lend to the poor. The bankers would only make large loans. I would only make very small loans. The bankers would only lend to men. I would only lend to women. The bankers would only lend if there was collateral. I would only lend without collateral. The bankers required extensive paperwork. I only made loans that even an illiterate could understand. The bankers required their clients to come to the bank. I took my bank to the village.”
It should be noted that the banks expected a high rate of loan defaults. Yunus expected and experienced almost none. I understand that Mr. Yunus’s bank has provided more than $4 billion in loans and is entirely self-sustaining. Surely the Spirit of the Lord guided this noble effort."(Ensign March 2009, Becoming Self-Reliant)
The Spirit inspires everyone who is trying to help each other. Muhammad Yunus was trying to help the poor people of the world, and he was given an idea that no one had ever thought of before. And it works.
I read in Doctrine and Covenants 21:6 yesterday that God will disperse "the powers of darkness" if we listen to the prophet's words. This reminds me of Joseph Smith's account of Satan seizing him before the First Vision: " Thick darkness gathered around me, and it seemed to me for a time as if I were doomed to sudden destruction." For him, the darkness only dispersed when he called upon God for deliverance.
Joseph recounted: "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun which descended gradually until it fell upon me. It no sooner appeared than I found myself delivered from the enemy which held me bound." (Joseph Smith History)
The First Vision "the Lord God will disperse the powersof darkness from before you"
When Joseph was translating the Book of Mormon, he would stop for meals, come back, and start right up again without even asking his scribe at the time (Emma) where they had left off. What an amazing experience that must have been - to see revelation pouring from heaven into the mind of Joseph Smith and onto the pages of the "most correct of any book on earth" (Introduction, Book of Mormon).
Oliver Cowdrey, another of Joseph's scribes, said as much: "These were days never to be forgotten--to sit under the sound of a voice dictated by the inspiration of heaven, awakened the utmost gratitude of this bosom! Day after day I continued, uninterrupted, to write from his mouth, as he translated, with the Urim and Thummim, or, as the Nephites would have said, "Interpreters," the history, or record, called "The Book of Mormon" (Messenger and Advocate, October 1834, p. 14).
