Monday, November 5, 2012

Spiritual Edification


Hey :)

Quotes:
My religion is to know the will of God and do it. -Brigham Young
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing. -Ben Franklin
When I hear, I forget.  When I see, I remember.  When I do, I know. -Chinese Proverb

A wonderful talk by Elder Maxwell:

Here are some of my favorite parts of Elder Maxwell's talk:

President Marion G. Romney said, many years ago, that he had "never hesitated to follow the counsel of the Authorities of the Church even though it crossed my social, professional, or political life" (CR, April 1941, p. 123). This is a hard doctrine, but it is a particularly vital doctrine in a society which is becoming more wicked. In short, brothers and sisters, not being ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ includes not being ashamed of the prophets of Jesus Christ.

M.J. Sobran wrote:

The Framers of the Constitution . . . forbade the Congress to make any law "respecting" the establishment of religion, thus leaving the states free to do so (as several of them did); and they explicitly forbade the Congress to abridge "the free exercise" of religion, thus giving actual religious observance a rhetorical emphasis that fully accords with the special concern we know they had for religion. It takes a special ingenuity to wring out of this a governmental indifference to religion, let alone an aggressive secularism. Yet there are those who insist that the First Amendment actually proscribes governmental partiality not only to any single religion, but to religion as such; so that tax exemption for churches is now thought to be unconstitutional. It is startling [she continues] to consider that a clause clearly protecting religion can be construed as requiring that it be denied a status routinely granted to educational and charitable enterprises, which have no overt constitutional protection. Far from equalizing unbelief, secularism has succeeded in virtually establishing it.
[She continues:] What the secularists are increasingly demanding, in their disingenuous way, is that religious people, when they act politically, act only on secularist grounds. They are trying to equateacting on religion with establishing religion. And—I repeat—the consequence of such logic is really to establish secularism. It is in fact, to force the religious to internalize the major premise of secularism: that religion has no proper bearing on public affairs. [Human Life Review,Summer 1978, pp. 51–52, 60–61]

Properly humbled and instructed concerning the great privileges that are ours, we can cope with what seem to be very dark days and difficult developments, because we will have a true perspective about "things as they really are," and we can see in them a great chance to contribute. Churchill, in trying to rally his countrymen in an address at Harrow School in October of 1941, said to them:

Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days—the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race. [Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, p. 923]

Other Great Talks

Small note about these talks: I hope you`re truly taking the time to read through them.  I`ve read millions of words of scripture and talks in the mission and when I send a link home it is in the hope that one might set apart time for something edifying.  

About the lesson with the Muslim last week - he made a comment about why do we only worship one day of the week and how Allah requires more devotion than that.  I, with inspiration, explained how a true believer will participate only once a week in the Church Services, true, but he will pray several times a day, read the scriptures, and meditate on his relation with God constantly.  And the unmentioned temple visits as well. The catch, are we truly devoted Christians and Saints?

We are prone to become complacent by thinking that we have enough of the word of God. What is sufficient? Going to church on Sundays? Listening to General Conference?  Or doing whatever possible to search out their inspired words in books, talks, etc.?

The two baptisms that we had planned for this week had to be moved back two weeks so they could be better prepared and their families could come.

I`m getting along great with Elder Licea.  Oh, and the sector change to pure Centro has made us have to be creative in the work.  We`re asking for a lot of references and putting up posters about church themes, like, "Are Mormons Christians?  or "Do you want to know where your ancestors come from?"  All the signs have links to mormon.org and our phone number.  We`re just starting this week to put them up, so we`ll see how much success we have....

Mucho Amor
Elder Parry Harrison

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