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
