The post “God…knows me and loves me” appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

I read a blog post by a friend recently in which the author talked about the different books that have changed her life. My first thought was that I should do a post like that. I am, after all, a big reader. I love to read. I spend time reading everyday without fail. Certainly my list of life-changing books would be long.

So, I sat down and started making a list. Much to my surprise, all I could come up with was:

One.

The Book of Mormon.

The Book of Mormon has been a spiritual guide for me.  It is a companion to the Holy Bible and has deepened my understanding of all scripture.  It is a testament of Jesus Christ, and I have gained a true testimony of Him in the pages of this book. I’ve learned about His prophets and His life. I’ve found answers to questions in its pages.  I’ve gained peace and comfort from it’s pages. When I’m reading it regularly, I am a better wife and mother.

And that for me is life-changing.

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My parents divorced when I was very young, but throughout my childhood I remained very close with my father. When I was young, high-school aged, we talked on the telephone almost every day. He lived in Canada and I in Utah, so the means in which we were able to nurture a close relationship was during our short summer visits and to share our lives via phone. I remember discussing with him experiences from my day, daily jibber-jabber that most teenagers are fascinated with and most certainly the kind of talk parents get easily bored with. Nonetheless, my dad was always interested and eager to hear about my life and also my feelings about life. He offered great counsel and validation for a young girl struggling to find her place in this world. He was a blessing to me in a huge way as he always made me feel important even though deep down, I didn’t.

On August 23rd 1993 my father passed away after struggling with a long series of illnesses. I missed him, I loved him and I needed him. Years later I ran across a cassette tape with old answering machine recordings on it. In those days the answering machines were not built into your phone like voice mail is today, they were external pieces of equipment that actually recorded the messages onto a cassette tape. So I popped the cassette into my tape deck (again, a piece of equipment from the past) and began listening. After a few minutes of listen to rather meaningless messages from friends and boyfriends I heard the expected in between messages ‘BEEP’ followed with heavy breathing and a pause… I knew it was my beloved father…. my heart paused in excitement to hear his voice again,  then… a loud gregarious belch and ‘HANGUP.’ I immediately began laughing as I knew exactly who that was. My father was a jokester, the best prankster known to man. He was always up for a laugh even at the expense of being ill mannered. That was my dad, my loving, caring, affectionate and larger than life dad.  I was brought back to that moment in time when that sweet phone belch use to make me feel so special. I stopped the tape and sat on my floor utterly enjoying the moment with tears in my eyes, absorbing the flood of feelings as I remembered the warmth and affection of my loving father.

WHAT I LEARNED from this experience is that sometimes it is the little, simple things that mean the most. Sometimes the way in which we show love and affection is passionate and sincere but other times a simple belch on the recorder will do the trick. Though my father was a passionate loving man and easily expressed his affection to me and others. He was also great at showing it in other ways as well. That phone belch will rest in my memory as a very simple yet effective way of my father expressing to me, in his own way that he was thinking about me, loved me and cared for me deeply.

One of my favorite quotes about parenting is from Alvin Prince that said “Parents need to fill a child’s bucket of self-esteem so high that the rest of the world can’t poke enough holes to drain it dry.” That was my father, always filling others’ buckets.

Interestingly the lessons I learned from my father about loving others has made an abiding impression upon me about the importance of fathers (and mothers) and their expression of love towards their children.  In many ways as a mother I have been influenced by my late father who showed me in vibrant colors the importance of loving others and showing it. Sometimes it is by small and simple means (Alma 37:6) that we share affection to those we love and other times overflowing and consuming, the important thing is that we do it. I love my father and miss him greatly. I am so very grateful for the many lessons he taught me, especially for the lessons about relationships and paramount ways that I am worth loving, for he loved me abundantly and I knew it.

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Hi—I am Valerie.  I am thirty-two and am married with four children, ages 10, 5, 3 and 7 months.  I love photography, crafts, blogging, teaching, cooking, spending time with family, hiking, playing basketball and discovering new places.

I would like to share an experience I had that tells me that God answers prayers.  I had just graduated with my Associates degree in Elementary Education.  I was accepted to Brigham Young University but had not scored high enough on the PPST, therefore, I wasn’t accepted into the teaching program.  I was not a good test taker, but was a hard worker.  I had a 3.8 GPA.  The worse part was that one point separated me from everything falling into place.  BYU had just raised the test score requirements.  If I had been able to apply for the program months earlier, everything would have worked out just fine.

But here I was, stuck . . .

I prayed to my Heavenly Father and asked that he would help me know what to do.  I was confused and distraught.  I didn’t know where else I would go.  I wrote a letter of appeal to the Dean of Education at Brigham Young University in hopes something would come of it.  In the meantime, I had an impression to return to the two-year school that I had just graduated in.  “Why would I want to do that?”  It would be kind of embarrassing to return, but I felt a strong urge to do so.

I returned and took the classes as if I were going to Brigham Young University.  I decided to not worry about my situation and exercise my faith and put my trust in the Lord.  I also decided that I wasn’t going to stress about school and grades and that I was going to just have fun and enjoy life.  It turned out to be the best semester of my life and on top of it, I ended up with a 4.0 that semester.  I also heard back from Brigham Young University that they had accepted my appeal and that I would be able to start next semester.

Everything worked out and I got my degree in 4 years, despite the minor setback.

I have always been grateful for the power of prayer, for a loving Heavenly Father who is mindful of our needs and hears and answers our prayers.  Sometimes it’s not in a way that we understand at that moment, but in a way that works out in the end.

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Come at the dawn to the silent garden
Brightly beams the morning sun
Come at the dawn to the silent garden
See what wonder the Lord hath done!

Come to the tomb in the silent garden
Lo! the stone is rolled away
Linger in awe, for the tomb lies empty
See the place where his body lay

He is risen! He is risen! risen unto endless life
Weep no more in the silent garden
Death is swallowed up in Christ

Seek him no more in the silent garden
Seek him not among the dead
Find him in glory among the living
Risen even as he said

Victory is wrought in the silent garden
Joy is born of an empty tomb
Sing for the morning of our salvation
Christ hath brought us life anew

He is risen! He is risen! risen unto endless life
Weep no more in the silent garden
Death is swallowed up in Christ.

-Sally DeFord (for free downloadable sheet music to this song, click here)

– – – – – – –

Mosiah 16: 7-8:  And if Christ had not risen from the dead, or have broken the bands of death that the grave should have no victory, and that death should have no ^asting, there could have been no resurrection. But there is a ^aresurrection, therefore the grave hath no victory, and the sting of ^bdeath is swallowed up in Christ.

1 Cor. 15: 55: O ^adeath, where is thy sting? O ^bgrave, where is thy victory?

– – – – – – –

He Lives! How grateful we are for prophets and apostles today who testify of the Savior, Jesus Christ, just as ancient prophets and apostles did.

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This video shares some recent words from Elder Robert D. Hales on the subject. Videos below are in English and in Spanish.

The post We Believe: Becoming Provident Providers (Seamos proveedores providentes) appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

We have a family tradition that started because I needed one day of the week to be a no-brainer when I was planning menus.  One day a couple years ago, I decided that Fridays would be pizza nights at our house.  We like to make pizza together, and since not all of our kids have adventurous taste buds yet, we usually make more than one kind each time.

This night, we each made our own mini-pizzas.  I gave the kids a ball of dough and they helped roll it out and loaded up their own pizza with toppings.

After dinner, clean up is quick (one of the bonuses of pizza night!) and then we either play games or hunker down in the family room to watch a movie together.  This tradition started just because I was trying to simply our life and has become something everyone looks forward to each week.

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I was recently making a loaf of simple sandwich bread for our lunches. Often, I mix the bread in a bread maker, and then shape and bake the loaf in the oven. I just like it better that way.  As I put the pan into the bread maker, I went over all the ingredients in my head to make sure I had everything: water, honey, brown sugar, salt, flour, and…yeast! I had forgotten the yeast!

Without yeast, a loaf of bread bakes up into a hard brick and is unedible.  It never rises, it doesn’t get soft and tender, and it belongs nowhere but the trash. I’ve forgotten to add yeast a few times to my bread, and was always frustrated and disappointed that I wasted my time and the good ingredients on something that no one would enjoy.

As I rushed to the fridge to pull out and measure the yeast, I realized a parallel. It’s the same with prayer.  Prayer is the yeast of my day.  It is good to pray over meals, it is wonderful to pray in the evening to take time and express thanks to God for the blessings of that day.  But it is essential to start my day with prayer.  Without it, I feel off.  I wonder how many opportunities I might be missing because I didn’t take a few minutes to ask for guidance through prayer in the morning.  I wonder how many of my good ingredients — my willingness to serve, my talents, my hope to be better — might go unused or less used because I didn’t tell the Lord in the morning how willing I was to help Him that specific day.  I know that when I begin my day taking some time to have a good conversation with my Heavenly Father, my day has the ability to rise in a way it doesn’t when I don’t pray.

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The temple, to me, is the pinnacle of our experience in the gospel and in this life. We talk about the Atonement. Serving in the temple is the Atonement in action. I once heard someone explain this point: Every time we attend the temple, we need to forgive someone of something. Even if it is forgiving ourselves, we need to partake of the Atonement in this way.

When I think about that, I usually equate the Atonement with repentance and being saved from our sinful, mortal lives. What better way to show our gratitude than by serving in the temple and doing for others what the Saviour has done for us. We are providing ordinances of salvation to those who have gone on before us and doing for them what they cannot do for themselves.

We talk of service. We know from the scriptures that if we don’t have charity, we have nothing. I believe one of the greatest forms of service we can render is to serve in the temple.

We talk of finding peace and being in the world but not of the world. When we enter the temple, we leave the world behind us. We enter the REAL world. If we could draw back the veil, we would see that we are not alone in the temples. Not only do I believe those people for whom we are acting as proxy in receiving the ordinances are there, but I believe there are countless people and prophets from ages past also very aware of what we are doing.

The temple is like an open conduit to heaven. In temples, we can receive revelation and inspiration we are searching for.

I know and have experienced the sweet peace the temple brings. I know that as we serve in the temple on a regular basis, every facet of our lives can be better, and we can find more time in our day to do those things that will make the biggest difference in our eternal salvation. I have seen this blessings of temple service in action too many times to doubt. I believe there is nothing in life that cannot be made better by attending the temple on a regular basis.

I know people who went through the temple once [receiving the ordinances for themselves] and then never came back. It saddens me to know they have missed that the temple is about service — service to the Lord, to others and to ourselves. It is about the Atonement. It is becoming something greater than ourselves and the only way that can happen is if we unselfishly lift others with us.

I am grateful for the conviction and testimony I have of the temple. I am grateful for the peace, serenity, and comfort being within its walls offers in such an unsettling world. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve the Lord and others, showing my love and gratitude for the many blessings given to me. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve my family and my ancestors. Mostly, I am grateful for a safe haven in which to commune with my Saviour.

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