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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Gordon B. Hinkley is the best. He'll always be the prophet of my childhood.
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Obedience
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May 18 (6 days ago)
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Hi Guys,
Can't remember if I sent you a copy of this talk already:) The quote President Livingston shared with us. "Obedience brings success, exact obedience brings miracles."
On Thanksgiving Day, elders and sisters at missionary training centers around the world feasted spiritually on words of counsel from an Apostle and his wife. Later that day, at the Provo MTC, missionaries helped nourish others physically as they packed ingredients for 350,000 meals to be distributed to the needy through the Utah Food Bank.
“Teaching and baptizing lead to thanksgiving that never ends,” declared Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the live broadcast emanating from the missionary training center in Provo. His talk followed one given by his wife, Sister Wendy Nelson, who counseled the missionaries to put away childish things.
The morning devotional was carried to missionary training centers in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, and the Philippines and was translated into Spanish, Portuguese, and French.
“Including the Provo MTC, a total of approximately 3,000 missionaries will view this morning’s devotional,” announced President Lon Nally of the Provo facility as he conducted meeting.
Elder Nelson began his remarks by posing questions to volunteers among the congregation who stood at microphones positioned on the floor of the meeting hall. Among other questions, he asked the missionaries what would be among their first objectives on the first Sunday they attend the first ward or branch to which they are assigned in their fields of labor.
“The first person I would like to meet, after the bishop or the branch president, is the ward mission leader,” Elder Nelson said in response to his own question.
“That person will become your very best friend. … You’re going to work very closely with this person.”
He said he and Sister Nelson had just returned from Peru, where they had visited a ward in which the mission leader had assembled a list of prospective elders in the ward and asked the full-time missionaries to invite each person to the stake conference over which Elder Nelson was to preside.
“Hundreds of them came to the stake conference,” he said. “We had dozens of referrals.”
The mayor of the city was among the attendees.
Another person whom the missionaries should befriend in the ward is the family history consultant, Elder Nelson said. “Can you see how strong you will be when you can say to your investigator, who, you’ve learned, doesn’t know the names of all eight of his or her great-grandparents, ‘If you will come to Church with us, … we’ll find out what the names of all your great-grandparents are’?
“Who will turn down a request like that?”
Elder Nelson commended the courage of those who volunteered to answer his questions.
“You trusted me; now I trust you, each of you,” he said. “You will all be fabulous missionaries. Your families will be blessed for your service.”
He said a mission is an exercise in obedience training.
“Obedience brings success; exact obedience brings miracles,” he said.
Posing the question “Why are you going on a mission?” he surmised that each has a good and correct answer.
Thousands of LDS missionaries assemble 350,000 meals Thursday, November 28, 2013, in the missionary training center in Provo, Utah. Photo by Scott G Winterton.
“But there is one concept in the scriptures that embraces all the others. You’re called to help establish the Lord’s Church. How do you do that? By preaching and practicing faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, repentance, baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.
“All steps are essential. If any is omitted, or if that sequence is not observed, you will not establish the Church in the Lord’s way.”
Elder Nelson said the sacred ordinance of baptism should not be administered without adequate preparation on the part of the convert.
“You must never trivialize that sacred ordinance,” he admonished. “We must never speak of it, even among ourselves, in terms that are casual or crude. We must never administer it inappropriately.”
Regarding enduring to the end, Elder Nelson said the end to which the new convert should endure includes the “endowment of the temple.”
“There, the highest blessings of the Church are received. Temple blessings lead to the exaltation of families.”
He added, “Thus, you are sent forth not only to establish the Church, but to do so with multigenerational families of faith.
“You have a continuing responsibility for each convert you bring into the Church. They become your dear friends. They become people who will always remember your name and call you blessed.”
He told of a married couple to whom he had introduced the Church while they all were serving as medical personnel in the army in 1953. The man was killed in a wartime tragedy, but the wife remarried. Many hundreds of posterity faithful in the Church resulted from the marriage. Extended family members came to Elder Nelson’s office in May to thank him for teaching the gospel to their mother and grandmother.
“Remember your converts,” he counseled. “Keep track of them. In a very real way, they’re your children in the Church.”
He told the missionaries their purpose is to teach the doctrine of Christ. He pointed out that the Topical Guide in the LDS edition of the Bible has 18 pages of references to Christ with 57 subtitles such as Advocate, Anointed, Atonement, and Creator.
“Let the content of these pages become your personal core curriculum,” he said.
“When you leave the missionary training center, your spiritual batteries will be fully charged,” he said. “Once you’ve reached your field of labor, your challenge will be to keep those batteries fully charged.”
He said they should take a lesson from the automobile, which has a generator that recharges batteries while the car is running.
“Exciting electricity will come to you when you are in action teaching, testifying, seeking out, and serving the people.”
In her talk, Sister Nelson quoted 1 Corinthians 13:11, then said, “Your mission is an opportunity to put away childish things: childish ways of thinking, childish ways of responding to difficult situations, childish ways of understanding the gospel, childish ways of behaving.
“Your mission is your time to grow from being a child of God to becoming a man or a woman of God, a time to grow up in the Lord, a time to grow up unto the Lord.”
She gave three suggestions for that pursuit:
“If there is anything from your past that could prevent you from moving forward, anything that could prevent you from living your mission and the rest of your life in crescendo, I urge you to clean it up now.”
Her second suggestion was to do everything they can to increase their understanding of the Atonement of Christ.
Her third suggestion: “Pray to be led to those whose ancestors are ready to receive their essential ordinances. … Their ancestors have already taken the discussions from missionaries on the other side of the veil. They have already repented. They have already chosen Jesus Christ and His gospel, and they are ready to be baptized and receive other ordinances.”
The missionaries at the Provo MTC spent the afternoon packing lentils, rice, and other components into the meal packets.
President Nally said that other than responses to natural disasters, the service project represented the largest humanitarian effort ever undertaken by the Church.
The food will be distributed by the Utah Food Bank’s BackPack Program, in which packages of nonperishable food are provided to Utah schools to be sent home on the weekend to feed disadvantaged families.
“On Thanksgiving, when we might be a little homesick, that has been really nice to just forget about ourselves and get into the work and start helping other people,” said Sister Jennifer Bement, one of the missionaries who was at work assembling the food bags.
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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What a great talk. Got to keep those spiritual batteries charged up.
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| DEANNE VICKERS | May 23 (1 day ago) | ||
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Doing much better. I still get occasional headaches but feeling pretty well overall. I'm going to be seeing a family practice Dr. Probably sometime this coming week.
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| May 23 (1 day ago) | | ||
Pretty messy still moving and cleaning:)
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Yeah I'm sure it'll take s bit to get adjusted but looking good so
far. :) how do ya'll like the apartment? Did I already ask you if it's
on the first floor?
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> On May 23, 2016, at 1:23 PM, DEANNE VICKERS <deannevick@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Pretty messy still moving and cleaning:)> <IMG_0497.JPG>
far. :) how do ya'll like the apartment? Did I already ask you if it's
on the first floor?
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> On May 23, 2016, at 1:23 PM, DEANNE VICKERS <deannevick@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Pretty messy still moving and cleaning:)> <IMG_0497.JPG>
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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We are on the second floor:) 17 cement stairs!!! But amazingly dad makes it up them every time:) It is nice. We are not far from where you worked for Visa. There's a pool and gym here so we can get dad ready for his transplants!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Oh nice! Be safe. :) Very cool. It's nice to have a gym and pool. Alright well gotta go for now. Love you all so much!
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Should bring some smiles :)
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Hi,
We haven't heard from Spence yet. Hopefully it's because he's teaching someone:)!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Nice! Won't spread the word ;) pretty darn smart.
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Yeah, probably so. I bet he's a teaching machine. It'll be interesting to see how he teaches compared to me when we return. I think style depends on culture, your trainer, and mission president.
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Pretty cool huh. They got a beautiful entertainment center for $50.00. And Bryan bought Lance a brand new pair of slightly used Nike's for $5.00:)
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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hat makes sense. Dad and I got the chills when you were talking about
"L" Confirmation that you were foreordained to be where you are!!!
"L" Confirmation that you were foreordained to be where you are!!!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Those are some good deals! I'm not sure how bout used shoes but Lance probably didn't mind haha.
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Yea his feet are a wee bit smelly!!!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Yeah she is a great girl. Super dedicated and has already defended the church on a number of occasions. She actually broke up with her boyfriend of 2 years because he didn't want her to continue learning.
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Oh man I forgot. Him and Kirk love their stinky feet. Speaking of Kirk, what's he up to? Did they get back from their honeymoon alright?
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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Wow!!! So neat!!! How old is she? We will be adding her to our family prayers for sure!!!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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She is a junior in high school. 17 I think, that would be so great. Thank you!
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May 23 (1 day ago)
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So cool!
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