Living Angels

Dear family:

This morning, as I walked along the canal bank after a night of sporadic and fitful sleep, struggling with my personal weaknesses, I was inspired by the words of two wonderful apostles, literal messengers from God, who spoke peace to my troubled heart.

I encourage each of you to re-read or listen again to the talks Elders Joseph Wirthlin and Jeffrey Holland gave in October general conference.

Using tender and often humorous accounts from his own life, Elder Wirthlin encouraged us to love the challenges we face in life:

"Although my mother has long since passed to her eternal reward, her words are always with me. I still remember her advice to me given on that day long ago when my team lost a football game: 'Come what may, and love it.'"

He recommended four specific ways we can learn to love our circumstances, however difficult they may be:

As we look for humor, seek for the eternal perspective, understand the principle of compensation, and draw near to our Heavenly Father, we can endure hardship and trial. We can say, as did my mother, “Come what may, and love it.”

Elder Holland began his talk by saying, with great emotion,

"Within the ranks of the general authorities of the church, there is no man more beloved than Joseph Bitner Wirthlin. We praise him for living the sermons that he preaches."

(note: this was included in the audio recording, but not in the text manuscript)

Elder Holland then went on to eloquently speak of angels, messengers from God, who have comforted, taught and warned people on earth throughout the history of the world.

"My beloved brothers and sisters, I testify of angels, both the heavenly and the mortal kind. In doing so I am testifying that God never leaves us alone, never leaves us unaided in the challenges that we face. ...

"On occasions, global or personal, we may feel we are distanced from God, shut out from heaven, lost, alone in dark and dreary places. Often enough that distress can be of our own making, but even then the Father of us all is watching and assisting. And always there are those angels who come and go all around us, seen and unseen, known and unknown, mortal and immortal."

Then, Elder Holland challenged each of us:

"In the process of praying for those angels to attend us, may we all try to be a little more angelic ourselves—with a kind word, a strong arm, a declaration of faith and 'the covenant wherewith [we] have covenanted.^' Perhaps then we can be emissaries sent from God when someone, perhaps a Primary child, is crying, "Darkness . . . afraid . . . river . . . alone.'"

This morning, I again felt the Comforter come and bring peace, because I was privileged to walk with two angelic messengers from God. Thank you, angels Joseph and Jeffrey, for your inspired counsel.

Love,

Dad/Mark

Set a Gospel Example

Hello Family!

This week's quotation comes from Elder Holland's conference talk in April, 2003:

"Live the gospel as conspicuously as you can. Keep the covenants your children know you have made. Give priesthood blessings. And bear your testimony! Don’t just assume your children will somehow get the drift of your beliefs on their own. The prophet Nephi said near the end of his life that they had written their record of Christ and preserved their convictions regarding His gospel in order “to persuade our children … that our children may know … [and believe] the right way.”

"Nephi-like, might we ask ourselves what our children know? From us? Personally? Do our children know that we love the scriptures? Do they see us reading them and marking them and clinging to them in daily life? Have our children ever unexpectedly opened a closed door and found us on our knees in prayer? Have they heard us not only pray with them but also pray for them out of nothing more than sheer parental love? Do our children know we believe in fasting as something more than an obligatory first-Sunday-of-the-month hardship? Do they know that we have fasted for them and for their future on days about which they knew nothing? Do they know we love being in the temple, not least because it provides a bond to them that neither death nor the legions of hell can break? Do they know we love and sustain local and general leaders, imperfect as they are, for their willingness to accept callings they did not seek in order to preserve a standard of righteousness they did not create? Do those children know that we love God with all our heart and that we long to see the face—and fall at the feet—of His Only Begotten Son? I pray that they know this."

Jeffrey R. Holland, “A Prayer for the Children,” Liahona, May 2003, 85–87

Please know that I have a testimony of the restored gospel. I know that it is true! Jesus does live and love us! We are so grateful for living apostles and prophets that teach us these divine truths.

Love,

Dad/Mark