Young Woman of Faith

Thank you all for your suggestions for improving the content of this blog. I didn't get to email everyone back directly, but I really appreciate your efforts. :)

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In a general sense, there is so much that I want to say on this site. If I spent a few hours a day I could probably keep up on all the thoughts I have when reading scriptures, hearing talks in Sunday services, trying my best to have and follow the Spirit and watching the testimonies of my family members grow. Today I'd like to share my impressions of a powerful testimony borne by a young woman of faith last week in sacrament meeting. She is 14 years old.

I don't know her very well since I don't work with the youth. Her mother is a very faithful latter-day saint who tries to do her best to love and serve all those around her. This young woman seems like her testimony has grown almost over night. I say that because I don't see her as very outspoken. She gave the youth talk and I was shocked to see her on the stand before the meeting started. I was pretty curious to see what she was going to say and I was a little nervous for her. I've never seen her speak before (that I can remember) and I hoped she didn't feel too pressured into giving a talk. Nobody likes to be pressured into giving talks.

While she was giving her talk I felt such a strong witness that she knows that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. She spoke of struggling on a group assignment because one particular boy in the group obviously didn't want to help out with the work. When it came time to grade the other group members, this young woman wanted to give him the lowest grade possible. However, she gave some thought to it and even talked to her wonderful mother about what to do. They agreed that there may be some things going on in this boy's life that weren't obvious on the surface. Maybe he was having a hard time at home or something else kept him from working harder on the assignment. She wanted to give a grade slightly higher than the lowest just to help him out in some way, but then she said something that touched me even more. She didn't feel honest about doing that either! In the end, she gave him the lowest grade available because the teacher would know that he deserved it. Then her testimony of Jesus Christ and of being His follower touched me even deeper when she said that she would help him out in the future whenever she could instead of watching him do nothing and letting him fail.

I was so touched by her talk and her testimony. This youth speaker bore a powerful testimony of doing what is right. And through her willingness to share her feelings, many people at church were blessed. I am grateful for the friends that she hangs out with because together they are helping each other walk the path that will lead them one day to meet God and be found worthy to stand in His presence.

May we all stand and do what is right.

Trust in the Lord with All Thine Heart

Proverbs 3:5-6 just took on a deeper meaning for me this morning. I've been thinking tons about getting a job after graduation and have been applying to lots of jobs that sound interesting and that would use my skills I learned doing astronomy research. If you've read some of my other posts about how I stress out about things, it should come as no surprise that I have been stressing out about where to move and what job to take.

A few areas in the private sector where I'd do well are image processing, quantitative data analysis, physics modeling, problem solving, algorithm design and technical writing. From that list alone there are many different directions I could go as I take my first step into what academics call "the real world".

I'm an idea man. I'm also a perfectionist and a completion-ist (I got that word from my friend Rebecca. Thanks, Rebecca!). This spells trouble in times like this where I am free to explore ideas. There are several different avenues that any one of those skills could take me. I've spent tons of time looking up companies and job descriptions. I'm not sure that I'd call it a waste of time, but "overkill" is pretty accurate. When I see that I've spent too much time on job hunting, do I sit back and relax? No. By the time I begin any sort of relaxing technique to clear my mind, more ideas flood in and the stress level stays just the same. Nice try, self.

This morning I took a break from my Book of Mormon reading and flipped through some pages that I have bookmarked with those little tassels. I've had a tassel in Proverbs 3:5-6 for a very, very long time and I have read it at least once in the last week. Today it meant a whole lot more to me. Here's what it says.

  5 Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
  6 In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

I felt the Spirit tell me that I have been putting in too much effort on my own and have not used my faith in the Lord to ask Him for direction. My patriarchal blessing gave me wise counsel specifically about my career and I really do feel His direction in this important decision. However, I realize that I am trusting in my own power to fulfill the blessings promised to me. I'm overdoing what needs to be done and drowning out the Lord's will for me because I'm doing so much busy work. Instead of studying more companies and finding more job openings, I need to pause more often, pray and ponder. I need to take each day and week one at a time. I need to be actively patient and act in faith.

Then I cannot go wrong.

"Balance," I keep telling myself. Now I need to figure out how to do that.

My Son's Happy Tears

If you are new to my blog I must begin this post by saying that we recently had our third boy. Now you're pretty much caught up. We heard it was a good idea to give presents from the newborn to the older kids. This worked out way better than we thought it would when our second child was born and we hoped for at least a neutral welcome into the family this time around. It seems that most siblings are jealous and we wanted to minimize those hard feelings. Now you new viewers are all caught up.

Our newest boy gave presents to his older brothers that they would like. Our intent was to soften the blow a little (in their minds, at least) that we spend a little less time with them than before. The first time we did this, our oldest fell in love with our second and they have been the best of buds ever since. I think he remembers what toy he got, though I don't know which of the gazillion things laying around our house it actually is.

Fast forward five years and imagine how much fun it was for our older boys to get cool presents from baby and from Mom and Dad. The scenery of the hospital with Mom laying in bed with tubes in her arms was probably pretty weird for them so my wife included games and stuff for them to pass the time. They loved opening the presents and all that, but now I realize that something even greater was going on that neither my wife nor I fully understood.

Our older boy was so excited to see his baby brother right from the beginning! He wanted to hold him and play with him.

All. The. Time.

He has shown so much love toward his baby brother that we are continually amazed that a child (and a boy, nonetheless) has this much affection and awareness to give it. He picks him up all the time and tries to walk around the house with him (that makes us really nervous!), loves to give huge smiles to him and even plays games and activities with him (and helps the baby write down scores).

Angie and I have loved watching all of this unfold. And this leads me to the point of this post. The other night we were gathered around the baby, watching him laugh and coo at us. It was the best, from our perspective as parents.

And then I looked at my oldest boy and noticed something totally amazing. He had tears in his eyes. They were those kind of tears that one sheds out of pure love. He noticed that something was different too. He wasn't laughing hard so I knew it wasn't laughing tears. He looked at me and said, "My eyes are watering." He is very aware of himself and is also capable to describing things like this to us. That is amazing all by itself. We had a tender moment telling him that those tears come from the deep love he feels for his family (and especially for his baby brother).

It was a very sweet moment. I'm glad I got to see it.

Men's Choir: Rise Up, O Men of God

This song is from the priesthood session of the most recent general conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Oct 2, 2011). I was very touched by the Spirit when I heard this song and focused on the words. The message is powerful and the following talk by Elder Jeffrey R.Holland stirred me to action. That's what lead me to start this blog and you can read all about it in my first post. I like listening to this song once in a while because it inspires me to do great things!

The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ

This post is a continuation of my thoughts about President Ezra Taft Benson's talk on The Book of Mormon.

President Benson reminded me that the coming forth of The Book of Mormon was preceded only by the First Vision of Joseph Smith, which was the visitation by God the Father and Jesus Christ to the boy prophet. The Book of Mormon preceded the restoration of the priesthood from the hands of John the Baptist and from Peter, James and John. It was published a few days before the restoration of Christ's church in the latter-days. It was given to us before the revelations of the degrees of glory, celestial marriage and work for the dead, which were given in the Doctrine and Covenants.

It surprised me to read this order of events. I don't normally think of the exact order in which these important events occurred, but have been surprised each time I remember that this is how it happened.

The Holy Bible (the "holy" was for Emily :) ) contains the Old Testament and the New Testament. Another word for testament could have been translated as covenant from the Greek text. A covenant of what? The promises that God has made with His children in different ages for their salvation, based upon their obedience. The Book of Mormon's title was extended to include Another Testament of Jesus Christ. It contains the fulness of the gospel or all we need to know about God's commandments for our eternal salvation.

Awesome.

Actually, "awesome" doesn't exactly cover it. There are times when my favorite word comes short of capturing the magnitude of my feelings. This is one of them. I guess I should say "eternal awesome" and that might do it. You be the judge. :)

President Benson summed up the gift of The Book of Mormon in a way that really hit home to me. He said that it is a gift from God to us that is greater than the industrial and technological advances of our time (and remember, he said this 25 years ago), medicine, flight and space travel. I marvel and wonder at how far technology has come and what we as a human race have achieved with it. And this book of scriptures is much greater than all of that. Why? Because it will bring us to God when none of these other things can or will.

For 1000 years, Book of Mormon prophets poured their hearts and souls into writing their testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ onto golden plates for our use. They lived a long time ago - from 600 BC to 400 AD. The truths they wrote are for us today, not for their descendants back then. In fact, Nephi knew that the civilization of his posterity would come to an end and be destroyed by the Lamanites (we talked about that in Sunday School today). These ancient prophets wrote to us, the gentiles and the members of the house of Israel. Wow, what faith that these children of our Heavenly Father had!

I have committed myself to reading through The Book of Mormon again this year. There are 239 chapters and 531 pages so I plan to read about one chapter per day in my personal study. Our family has been reading one column per day for a while now and we're on page 189. The other day we talked about finishing for our first time as a family. We can do this by increasing what we read to two columns and we'll finish by the end of the year.

We talked about the blessings we have received from reading and how many more blessing we'll enjoy from the Lord's hand. Our kids are excited about it and that makes us (Angie and me) very happy!

Awesome!

I love The Book of Mormon. It has changed my life and it strengthens me every single day that I read it. The more effort I put in, the greater the reward. I know it is a true book of scripture and contains the true gospel of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for this talk from President Benson. It has strengthened my testimony.

Setting Goals, the S.M.A.R.T. Way

For the past few years my family has had awesome home teachers. (Home teachers are the way the members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints check up on each other and help out when and where they can through monthly visits and regular contact.) The past two New Years brought a really good lesson on making goals. It wasn't a lesson to put on any pressure of, "Hey, you can do more!" but was a clear message about what makes a good goal.

If you know me well then you know that I'm all for starting something important at any time of the year. New Year's Day is the time when lots of people decide to make resolutions and change their life in dramatic ways. These are usually really great ideas to lose weight, exercise, spend more time with family, etc. The problem that I see here is that people (and I've been guilty of this) make spur-of-the-moment goals and haven't really figured out what it's going to take to accomplish them. Long term success is what we're really shooting for so why not make it count? Short term effort shows itself in busy gyms and weight rooms in January that drop to typical levels in February. Diets don't work one month at a time. Neither does learning a new job skill or quitting a bad habit. (Ok, well, in some cases it might!)

Here's what I learned from my home teachers. It's pretty clever!

S.M.A.R.T.

The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound.

Specific means to be clear in what you want. Being unclear in your direction probably means you will be unclear in evaluating success or failure.

Measurable. Make it so you know if you accomplished the goal or not. "Eat less ice cream" sounds like a good idea for a healthier lifestyle, but if you don't put something quantitative on it you won't know if you ate less. And my guess is that you'll eat more just because you are thinking "ice cream" all the time. Maybe that's just me.

Attainable. Set a goal for something that you can reach. Some people say stretch for something difficult so you really work at it. That's fine. For myself, I recommend stretching a little at a time since I have my hand in so many things at once. If I set out to do something too lofty in lots of areas I'll just burn out. Just like the weight lifters who abandon the gym before February. I've done that a bunch of times.

Relevant. Do something that's important to you. Maybe you want to learn a new skill or improve one that you already know. Do you have a good reason for setting the goal? Good. Then go for it.

Time-bound. This the one that I forget. Have a time frame so that you can set a pace to sew all those quilts, finish that chain mail armor or write the last chapter in your novel. Does the end date have to be Dec 31? Nope. It can be Dec 25, July 15, April 6 or Jan 31. It could also be on your birthday, your anniversary or  the summer solstice. I have a hard time working on a short term goal because there's a part of me that thinks I should keep working on important things. However, if I am S.M.A.R.T. then I'll have created an goal with an outline that improves me in some way and I should feel happy with the end result. It doesn't have to take 365 days to do that (or 366 days this year).

Another trap I get into is hanging onto old, outdated notions. The completion-ist part of me things I have to complete everything I think of starting. If I don't cut out the old, it only bogs me down. My to do list stagnates, gets lost under a pile of more recent to do lists and then gets tossed into the recycling bag once I clean off my desk and realize I don't have time for the old list.

That's no good.

I'm learning to cut my ties to those old things that actually hold me back from doing bigger and better (relevant) things. Life changes and so do priorities. Let go of old ideas and don't look back.

The Book of Mormon: Keystone of Our Religion

The October 2011 Ensign magazine reprinted President Benson's 1986 talk titled The Book of Mormon: Keystone of Our Religion. It was a great talk! President Benson was the 13th President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He loved The Book of Mormon. In the Introduction in The Book of Mormon, we read the following paragraph:

Concerning this record the Prophet Joseph Smith said: “I told the brethren that the Book of Mormon was the most correct of any book on earth, and the keystone of our religion, and a man would get nearer to God by abiding by its precepts, than by any other book.”

What is a keystone? It's the main (key) stone in the center of an arch and keeps the arch from falling. The Book of Mormon is the keystone to our religion because it is a true book of scripture and is a sign of the true church of Jesus Christ on the earth. The truthfulness of the church and of the book of modern-day scriptures go hand in hand. They are either both true or neither are true.

I have found for myself that both are true and so many other things in the gospel and the church. Through reading and pondering the scriptures as well as living the teachings of Christ bring me such a spirit of peace. I feel the same peace when I read His teachings in the New Testament. I feel so blessed to be on the earth in a time when the true gospel is preached. (I'm also amazed that technology in today's world is more and more available around the world and that so many people can learn what is true for him/herself.

There are a few more points that President Benson gave about The Book of Mormon and I'll write more soon.

2012 Goal: Write 3 Blog Posts Every Week

After Briggie was born, Angie and I went weeks without realizing that our companionship study was totally forgotten. We usually read before bedtime (our bedtime) and that time was now one of the busiest times of the day. So we dug out the Ensign magazine (October edition) that we had been reading and continued where we left off.

The October 2011 Ensign has a lot to do with The Book of Mormon because of a talk that President Ezra Taft Benson (1899-1994) gave in General Conference. October marks the 25th anniversary of his great talk and it was pretty awesome to read it. It's powerful. It's so important that it is was reprinted in its entirety.

There are several things that I want to blog about from his talk, but way too much for a single post. In an effort to say what I want to say, I'll split it up among a few posts this week. They might not be the only topic I write about this week because of some other things I want to say about New Year's and goals. And that brings up my other point, which is my goal to write 150 blog posts this year. That's about 3 per week. I think I can do it if I spread out my thoughts on one topic over a few posts.

I'm excited to talk about The Book of Mormon. Hopefully you'll come back during the week to read more. I plan to put a reminder post on Facebook and Google+ just once per week (Sunday nights) and that you will remember to come back during the week to see more posts. Click around for posts you haven't read yet. Comment, Share and Like whatever you want to pass on. This blog is reaching more people than I expected. :)

We Can Live with God Again

What a touching video. This short video shows families who have lost loved ones and how the gospel of Jesus Christ has strengthened them here and now. Life goes on beyond our mortal death. Through the atonement of our Redeemer all mankind has been given the gift of the resurrection and immortality after this life. That makes me so happy!

Life has been busy for the last 6-8 months with family life, a new baby, job hunting, etc. Even though I've been consistent in scripture study, I can tell that spiritual matters have been squeezed out by the mundane. My mind wanders to what I'll do after I'm done studying or what I have to do at work that day. Watching this video has brought such a sweet, peaceful feeling and the reminder that life really does go on. We have been born on earth to see what choices we will make and to see if we can live by faith and follow our Heavenly Father's plan for us. It makes me really think about what I spend my time doing and how I can change to have this feeling with me more often. The happiest times I've ever had in my life were accompanied by this Spirit.

There is nothing better. It makes good men better and I want to be a better man.

Family Home Evening: New Year's Resolutions

We have family night every Monday evening. Last night we taught our boys about working on goals and personal improvement. We talked about what talents we are each good at and what we might want to work on this year. Angie felt that we should focus on improving something that we are already good at and really excel at it. Many other years we work on things we are weak at, trying to become better at something important. Both seem like good ideas to make a well-rounded person. I was actually pretty surprised at the suggestion, but it was a very great lesson and we set some really great goals.

Part of our lesson focused on saying what talents other family members have. It's great to praise others for what they bring to the family and to the world. Everyone feels special and important. It's also easy to see that we are all different. We are all created in the image of God who gave us these talents.

Then we taught the parable of the 10 talents to our boys. Jesus gave this parable to teach that we are all given different talents, or skills, and that we are responsible how we use them. We believe that we'll one day report to the Lord on how we used our talents. Here's the parable as we told it to our boys.

A rich man went on a trip for a long time. Before he left, he gave his servants some money. One servant was given five talents, the next two talents and the other one talent. The servants knew the master would come back and ask what they did with the money. The first servant worked really hard and earned another five talents. The second worked really hard and earned two more talents. The last guy was really nervous about losing his single talent and getting in trouble. He hid his talent so he could give it back when the master returned.

When the rich man returned from his trip, he asked his servants to report. Two men doubled what they had been given and were each blessed by their master. "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23). The fearful servant gave the talent back to the master. He got quite the rude awakening. He thought he would be praised for not losing the money, but heard this reply. "Thou wicked and slothful servant" (Matthew 25:26).

Ouch.

The lesson we should learn from this parable is that we have all been born with different talents (and a different number of them). We will be blessed for using our talents and we should work at improving ourselves and earning/learning more talents. Imagine how amazing it will feel to hear these words from the Master, "Well done, good and faithful servant; thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things" (Matthew 25:23).

Welcome to the New Address

Welcome to the new Rise Up! O Men of God. I've updated the image of the Salt Lake temple and changed the address. This new image is a lot crisper and I'm a lot happier with it. Nobody complained about the old image, but it was pretty blurry and it bothered me a lot. I've looked for a new image almost since I uploaded the first one. With some fancy editing I can probably make the text in the image look better. If someone has advice for how to do that it would be a great help.

When I started this blog during the October 2011 General Conference weekend I tried to think up some awesome web site names and addresses that would convey uplifting messages. I thought that "shake off the chains" (2 Ne 1:23) was really cool as well as "Rise Up! O Men of God" (LDS Hymn 324). Both are inspiring messages so I used the first for my address and the second as the title.

After further reflection I have decided that it would be better in the long run if the address is the same as the title. I made sure this address was available on blogspot and then read how to make the move. Angie told me I could export my posts and import them here so that saved a lot of time! I thought I'd have to manually recreate each one and I didn't want to do that for a large number of posts.

The visits that got tracked on shake-off-the-chains.blogspot.com aren't going to get converted here so the counter has started over at zero. I was really, really happy with the success and the positive comments I got from family and friends in the first three months of blogging! I'd say there were several times as many hits per post as I imagined there would be. Probably close to ten times as many. Really, thank you all for visiting and leaving comments. Some of you have emailed me personally and I appreciate that too.

I have some goals to increase the number of posts I write and hope to attract a lot more attention in the coming months. With your help Sharing, Liking and commenting, these messages can reach more and more people. If you like a conference talk that I write about or a personal story that I share, feel free to pass it along to others. In this information age, the gospel of Jesus Christ can truly reach the four corners of the earth.