Family Home Evening - Portavoz

Some time ago I wrote HERE about prophets being a portavoz.  Tonight for Family Home Evening our lesson/activity helped us better understand how hearing the prophet's voice has meaning and application.

We identified different prophets: Noah, Nephi, Paul, Isaiah, Alma.  (You could put the names of different prophets in a bowl and have family members pick them out one by one and share what the prophet taught during his ministry).

We discussed what each prophet's message was to their people.

My husband asked, "When you read the words of Moses or Nephi or Mormon, can you hear their voices or do you just hear your own?" (I confess, I only hear my own voice when I read, but some of my children have said they have, on occasion, been able to hear those teachings in the voice of the prophet's).

With General Conference literally at our fingertips, my husband took the liberty to see how well we knew the voices of our prophets, seers, and revelators.  We each had a paper and pencil, numbered our papers 1 - 10 and we were given a 2-3 second sound bite from this weekend's General Conference.

I was pretty amazed at how well my children did - particularly the younger ones!

We then were able to testify that when we listen to, study and ponder the words of living prophets, we will hear their voice testify to us those things we need to know in these last days as we prepare for the Lord's coming!

Don't you LOVE General Conference?!

Roaming Charges

Today I attended the temple.

And there wasn't one. other. place. on earth I would have learned what I learned and felt what I felt.

So imagine my surprise when I walked out of the temple and read this warning message on my phone:

Roaming network: 

Accessing data during trips 

outside the U.S. may result in significantly higher charges. . .

To sign up for a global data plan call global support. . .

All I can say is that after being in the temple I already have access to the best global data plan with unlimited global support!

Tidbit Tuesday - Women and the Priesthood

"The emancipation of women in this mortal sphere does not yet involve priesthood. Women in our great nation enjoy civil rights and liberties like men: they can vote and run for public offices like men: they can own property and drive cars like men; they can frequent public places like men, they can work when, where, and if they please like men; they can smoke, curse, and blaspheme the name of God like men; they can eat, drink, and be merry like men; they can cut their hair like men and wear men's clothes. One thing they cannot do as men—they cannot violate the oath and covenant of the priesthood as some men who bear the priesthood do. Maybe you should thank God for that. If that, dear Sister, gives comfort to your soul, then let me disturb your comfort by reminding you that by reason of your temple experience, you do have certain priesthood covenants to keep and uphold. Had you forgotten them?" 

-William J. Critchlow Jr.

General Conference October 1965

Family Home Evening - The Worth of A Soul

We took our lesson from HERE.

Here's what we did:

Place the same number of the same fruit or vegetable in a bowl as you have members in your family. (We used potatoes.  You can use apples or oranges or zucchini, for example).

Give everyone a blindfold and have them put it on.

Pass the bowl around and have everyone choose a potato.  Since I was giving the lesson, I placed an initial using a watercolor marker on each potato after it was chosen.

We gave 2-3 minutes for everyone to examine and get to know their potato with their hands. (30 seconds into it I had to tell everyone that this activity was going to be a silent one because everyone had a silly comment to make).

I gathered the potatoes and then randomly passed them out.  The goal was for each person to find "their" potato.  I was AMAZED that everyone found 'their' potato!  Even the one person who didn't know for sure, ended up with the right one because everyone else knew FOR SURE they had their potato!

We read THIS scripture and invited family members to share experiences of how we have known that God knows us and values us.

Books I read while on vacation . . .

A few weeks ago we took a much needed family vacation!!

And I pretty much did everything I normally do at home: fix breakfast, do laundry, watch the 2 year old, make lunch, do laundry, make sure the two year old wasn't putting gadgets down in the toilet, cook dinner, do laundry, make sure the two year old wasn't escaping out the front doors or eating Play-doh.

However, I did get to read THREE books,  . . . something I don't normally get to do in such a short amount of time, if at all!"

Under a Leafless Tree by Helga Meyer and Lark Evans Galli

The Evolution of Thomas Hall by Kieth Merrill

When Hearts Conjoin by Erin M. Herrin, with Lu Ann Probst Staheli

The Seed of the Evildoers Shall Never be Renowned

Through modern day revelation we learn that before we came to earth we lived with our Father in Heaven as one of His spirit children.  During our premortal existence, we were part of a Great Council in which Father presented to us His great plan of happiness.  This plan enabled us to become like our Heavenly Father.  We would be able to go to earth to attain physical bodies and to use our gift agency to make choices, particularly while facing adversity, as a test to see if we would return back to Father's presence.

Knowing that using our agency would inevitably cause us to make choices contrary to Father's commandments, Jesus Christ, the Firstborn Spirit son of our Father in Heaven, covenanted to be our Savior.  He wanted us to use our agency, and would suffer for our sins so that we could repent so we could return back to our heavenly home. Jesus Christ sustained the Father's Plan, giving the glory to God to whom it properly belonged.

Lucifer, another spirit son of God, rebelled against the plan and 'sought to destroy the agency of man.' Lucifer's modification of God's Plan (in that no one would be lost because everyone would choose the right), not only took away our agency, it also gave him all of God's power and honor and glory.

Lucifer's plan was rejected.  He rebelled against God.  Lucifer became Satan and he and his followers were cast out of heaven.  Those who had faith in Jesus Christ have come or will come to earth to receive a physical body and have their agency to choose how they may, hopefully finding faith in Jesus Christ and returning to live with Him again.

I have been thinking a lot about Lucifer's twisted plan and here are some of my thoughts.

1. Lucifer was unable to come up with an original plan of his own. Instead, he took Father's great plan of happiness and twisted it. He does that same thing today! Lucifer is unable to come up with an original plan of his own.  Instead, he waits and takes the good and great things God gives to man  and then twists them just enough to drag God's children speedily down to hell.  Television. Internet. Families.  Just to name a few.

2. Lucifer loves himself.  He loves himself more than he loves his neighbor and exponentially more than he loves God. If that doesn't destroy the law and the prophets.  Furthermore, when God declares 'wo unto the inhabitants of the whole earth except they shall repent,' the 'the devil laugheth, and his angels rejoice, . . .  because of iniquity and abominations.'  He laughs because he attributes all that suffering, all that sorrowing, all that iniquity and abomination to him!

3. The most chilling of all is this: Perhaps Lucifer wanted to destroy our agency because he didn't want to experience pain!  He wanted a body without the pain.  After all, sickness is hard enough.  And then, then there is dying.  Dying for oneself was one thing, but to die for all of Father's children? He wanted no pain and yet, ALL the gain.

Interestingly, Isaiah saw the devil like he was and is and will be:

How art thou fallen from heaven. O Lucifer, son of the morning! how are thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations.

For thou thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms;

That made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof; that opened not the house of his prisoners?

All the kings of the nations, even all of them, lie in glory, everyone on in his own house.

But thou are cast out of thy grave like and abominable branch, as as the raiment of those what are slain, thrust through with a sword, that go down to the stones of the pit; as a carcass trodden under feet.

Thou shalt not be joined with them in burial, because those hast destroyed thy land, and slain thy people: the seed of the evildoers shall never be renowned.

The Spirit of God = The Spirit of Freedom

This month found our family scripture study smack dab in the Book of Mormon War Chapters - which has been so fitting as we celebrate the independence of our country.

I have been amazed that even before our Constitution was formed, righteous men - Moroni, Teancum, Helaman, Pahoran - also fought for those same things our Founding Fathers held most sacred and dear: God, religion, freedom, peace, family, liberty.

One phrase caught my attention.  If it were a mathematical formula it would look like this:

The Spirit of God = The Spirit of Freedom

And that's when I realized that when I make choices that limit my freedom, I lose the privilege of having God's Spirit with me.

Furthermore, when we as a nation give up our freedoms for social justice, for the greater good, or even for absolute security, we are undoubtedly giving up the very power and Spirit of God.

And when that happens, where does that place us?