When we encounter challenges and problems in our lives, it is often difficult for us to focus on our blessings. However, if we reach deep enough and look hard enough, we will be able to feel and recognize just how much we have been given.
I add my personal witness: Our missionaries are not salesmen with wares to peddle; rather, they are servants of the Most High God, with testimonies to bear, truths to teach, and souls to save. Each missionary who goes forth in response to a sacred call becomes a servant of the Lord whose work this truly is. Do not fear, young men, for He will be with you. He never fails. He has promised: "I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up"
Sometimes we can take offense so easily. On other occasions we are too stubborn to accept a sincere apology. Who will subordinate ego, pride, and hurt-then step forward with 'I am truly sorry! Let's be as we once were: friends. Let's not pass to future generations the grievances, the anger of our time'? Let's remove any hidden wedges that can do nothing but destroy.
Make room for the Lord in your homes and in your hearts, and He will be your companion. He will be by your side.
Because sexual intimacy is so sacred, the Lord requires self-control and purity before marriage, as well as full fidelity after marriage... Tears inevitably follow transgression. Men, take care not to make women weep, for God counts their tears.
One, two, three...let's go shopping!
Let us not demeanor or belittle. Rather, let us be compassionate and encouraging,. We must be careful that we do not destroy another person's confidence through careless words. or actions.
Let us make of our homes sanctuaries of righteousness, places of prayer, and abodes of love, that we might merit the blessings that can come only from our Heavenly Father.
If ingratitude be numbered among the serious sins, then gratitude takes its place among the noblest of virtues.
I would hope that we would not lose the real objective of our cherished opportunities to serve. That objective, that eternal goal, is the same spoken of by the Lord and found in the Pearl of Great Price: "For behold, this is my work and my glory-to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man." May we ever remember that the mantle of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not a cloak of comfort but rather a robe of responsibility. Our duty, in addition to saving ourselves, is to guide others to the celestial kingdom of God.
One cannot remember mother and forget God.
May we all make the journey to Bethlehem in spirit, taking with us a tender caring heart as our gift to the Savior.
Your patriarchal blessing is your passport to peace in this life. It is a Liahona of light to guide you unerringly to your heavenly home.
Avoid the philosophy and excuse that yesterday's luxuries have become today's necessities. They aren't necessities unless we ourselves make them such. . . . It is essential for us to live within our means.
There is no better time than now, this very Christmas season, for all of us to rededicate ourselves to the principles taught by Jesus Christ. It is the time to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart – and our neighbors as ourselves. It is well to remember that he who gives money gives much; he who gives time gives more; but he who gives of himself gives all.
Gracias, danke, merci - whatever language is spoken, "thank you" frequently expressed will cheer your spirit, broaden your friendships, and lift your lives to a higher pathway as you journey toward perfection. There is a simplicity - even a sincerity - when "thank you" is spoken.
No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty, the fulfillment of which brings true joy.
Our lives will depend upon the decisions which we make, for decisions determine destiny.
Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting. It is happiness because we see joy in people. It is forgetting self and finding time for others. It is discarding the meaningless and stressing the true values
In the search for our best selves, several questions will guide our thinking: Am I what I want to be? Am I closer to the Savior today than I was yesterday? Will I be closer yet tomorrow? Do I have the courage to change for the better?
Christmas is the spirit of giving without a thought of getting.
I forbid you, agnostic, doubting thoughts, to destroy the house of my faith.
We are a temple-building and a temple-attending people.
The future will present insurmountable problems- only when we consider them insurmountable.
I ask you to make INSTITUTE a PRIORITY.
