My Talk

A couple of weeks ago I got the shock of my life.  I got an email asking me to speak on High Council Sunday.  I had to keep checking the email to make sure that it really was me that was asked to speak instead of Dan.
I like to speak.  I don't remember if it ever has bothered me, but this time was different.  The subject was Joseph Smith.  He wasn't the problem.  I felt completely overwhelmed to tackle the subject.  An idea came to me and for two weeks I let it percolate in my mind.  I decided I'd better read the whole Teachings of the Prophets:  Joseph Smith manual.  I only got to chapter 6.  Dan found a bunch of stuff on LDS radio.  I started writing everything down last Friday and finished Saturday morning.  It said what I wanted it to, but it wasn't right.  I fiddled with it all Saturday until I felt better about it.  I wanted the talk to be the one that Heavenly Father wanted and the Lake Lucerne ward needed.  I wanted to convey, to remind, that Joseph Smith is more than a man that lived 200 years ago.
Well, here it is:

Have you ever made a friendship bracelet?  And in case all the men and boys just tuned me out, I ask, have you ever made a boondoggle keychain or a para-cord wrist band?

For my purposes, I’ll use the friendship bracelet.  This particular kind of bracelet is made by knotting or weaving strands of embroidery floss together to make a pattern.  To begin, you take your lengths of floss and knot them together near an end.  Then you begin the process of making individual knots—each thread tying to another, over and over, back and forth, until it is complete.  One of the most important things about making a friendship bracelet is having a good anchor.  It’s nearly impossible to make a bracelet without one.  My 9 year old daughter uses her teeth, which has several issues.  It’s gross, yes.  But the problem lies in that she cannot see what she is doing.  Her bracelets lose their patterns and the strands get tangled.  You can ask a friend to hold the end, but this process is longer than ordinary human patience.  The best thing to do is to attach it to something stationary and stable. 

I find that my life is like a friendship bracelet.  Each day, each event is a series of knots that hold together the strands of my existence.  For an example, I’ll give you a week.   On Monday, I got our weekly email from my parents serving a mission in Arkansas and I wrote them back.  We fed the missionaries—we love the spirit they bring in to our home and the example the elders are to our son and daughters—and had Family Home Evening.  Tuesday was an online Primary presidency meeting to make sure everything was taken care of for our Teacher Inservice the next Sunday.  That evening it was my turn to pick up the budding thespians from play practice at the middle school.  I had to get dinner done before I left, so that my husband could eat before leaving for his church meetings.  Wednesday was Institute in the morning and Mutual  at 7.  It was our daughter’s first New Beginnings and she got to speak about Individual Worth.  We are proud of her.  She is focused on her Personal Progress and watching her testimony grow is a blessing.  Thursday  piano and voice lessons, quickly followed by a rushed dinner and a school concert for the 9 year old and getting the 12 year old to camp kick off, followed by more meetings for my husband.  Friday was more piano lessons and our baby’s 7^th birthday.   On Saturday I drove the Beehives to AFY in Renton and got lost using GPS taking myself back ten steps in my battle to join this century.   After I got home, Dan and I left for ward temple night, bringing family names with us.  I have felt joy by proxy before, but I have never felt the presence of another soul so distinctly prepared to be making the covenants I was standing in for.  It was humbling and breathtaking.  Sunday was another busy Sabbath.  I taught the Sharing Time lesson to the kids on the Atonement.  Sometimes Jr. Primary is hard for me to connect with, but this time was golden. 

This is the big stuff—the calendar items.  It doesn’t include the nightly scripture study and family prayer, the discussions, the meals, the laundry, the putting kids back together after a bad day at school, the hours of family history, and the running prayer in my heart that gets me through each day.  Over and over, back and forth, the knots are tied. 

There is a definite pattern to my life.  It’s not a particularly unique or new pattern and I did not invent it, though I have added my own flair.  It is anchored in an event that happened 205 years ago in a grove of trees when a young boy went to pray.    

 Everything in the world changed that day. 

In one of the rare occasions that God, Himself, interacted with mortal men, He introduced Joseph Smith to His Son, Jesus Christ, thus dispelling hundreds of years of misconception regarding His character, His form, His relationship with His Son, and His relationship to each one of us.  Throughout all earthly time, the first thing that Satan attacks is our relationship with Heavenly Father.  Our natural longing is to our Father-- He placed it in us, so that we would have desires to seek Him out and return to Him.  If Satan can step in during our blindness and convince us that another entity is worthy of worship, then what could be our salvation is lost to us.  If Satan can deceive us into thinking that God is unkind, unmerciful, or unknowable, then, in our sins we will shrink from Him.  If we lose the concept of whom God is and feel that He is without body, parts, or passion, then we lose the concept of ourselves, we who are created in His image.  
When the apostasy happened, this knowledge of God was lost.  History forgot, and sometimes purposely, that He is our Father and the creator of our souls.  The knowledge that we lived with Him before this mortality was lost.  The knowledge that we could become like Him became blasphemy.  When Joseph Smith prayed in a grove of trees, one of the greatest gifts to humanity was given.  The knowledge of God as He is was restored.  He is an exalted man.  He is literally our Father.  He loves and cares for each of His children deeply.  He knows them by name and seeks their salvation and exaltation.  We can love Him and understand Him.  When we pray in our homes, we are teaching our children who to pray to and who to trust.  Prayer by prayer, knot by knot, a pattern of God is woven into our lives.

Seven years after the heavenly visit, Joseph received a record of the ancient peoples of this continent written on plates of gold.  During four of those seven years he was taught and prepared by the angel Moroni, who was the last to write on it and had hidden it up until the time was right for it to be published to the world.  Making a long and highly interesting story short, the record was translated into what we now have as the Book of Mormon.

Mankind needed the Book of Mormon to stand as an anchoring witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Unfettered by the disparities of time and countless translations, this record contained the pure gospel of Christ.  From its pages we learn of the Atonement, resurrection, repentance, and the Plan of Salvation.  We come to understand that the peoples of the Old Testament knew and understood Christ’s mission and life and that the gospel and the ordinances of salvation were present then.  Joseph Smith said, “[Our modern scriptures] are calculated to make men wise unto salvation, and sweep away the cobwebs of superstition of ages, throw a light on the proceedings of Jehovah which have already been accomplished, and mark out the future in all its dreadful and glorious realities.”

When I was about 14 years old, my parents quickly heeded the prophetic counsel from President Ezra Taft Benson to start reading the Book of Mormon in our home.   That was also my first year of early morning seminary (you’ll laugh because it was at 7) and I was taught to love the Book of Mormon by Sister VanTassell, famous for her amazing wig and her homemade caramels for every scripture mastery memorized.  At Ricks College I took Book of Mormon classes to fulfill the religion requirement.  From Brother Hayes, I learned to know where the stories and points of doctrine were.  He insisted we not only know our scripture masteries, but we had to know their location in the book.  When I was twenty, I participated in the Hill Cumorah Pageant.  Whole chunks of our time were dedicated to personal study time.  There, on the side of Hill Cumorah, I read the Book of Mormon.  I received a new understanding and appreciation for the words of the scriptures I was suddenly feasting on.  The next year found me serving a mission to Massachusetts where the Book of Mormon and my testimony became my constant companions and the only constant in my life.  Seldom has the day gone by since I was 14 where I have not had some kind of immersion into the Book of Mormon and its teachings.   Joseph Smith also said, “He who reads it oftenest will like it best, and he who is acquainted with it, will know the hand wherever he can see it; and when once discovered, it will not only receive an acknowledgment, but an obedience to all of its heavenly precepts.”   The Book of Mormon is a source of joy to me.  It is the foundation of what I teach my children.  It is as important to me as the air I breathe that my children come to an understanding and love of this book of scripture and that their obedience to God is based on the principles they will find therein.  One of the things which brings me the most happiness is when my beautiful children confide that they are on chapter such and such in their personal study.    They have started their own friendship bracelets.

What ties my daily life to the moment when the heavens opened in this dispensation of time?   Why do I bother to repent and try to be better than I was yesterday when the world around me tells me I’m fine just the way I am?  It is because I have a knowledge of the Atonement and have grown to know my Savior.  While I don’t understand it fully, I know enough to want to “choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men” instead of choosing “captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil…”.  I learned this doctrine from 2 Nephi chapter 2 in the Book of Mormon. 

 Why do we do all of the Church work?  Why do we spend time on our callings for the benefit of others?  Why do we cart our children here and there to all of their church activities?  The first reason is that we are asked to and so we do it.  The second, and not less important, is that we know we are building up the kingdom of God, a kingdom that was restored on this earth by the power of God and through the prophet Joseph Smith.   We want to be a part of that work.  Said Joseph Smith, “The building up of Zion is a cause that has interested the people of God in every age; it is a theme upon which prophets, priests and kings have dwelt with particular delight….we are the favored people that God has made choice of to bring about the Latter-day glory; it is left for us to see, participate in and help to roll forward the Latter-day glory.”

Why after years of being in a different season of life, have I found Family History work to be so engaging to the extent that it is all I would do if given the opportunity?  The Spirit of Elijah, which returned to the earth on April 6, 1836 in the Kirtland temple to give the keys of sealing to Joseph Smith, has found its way into my heart.  I know it.  I also know that my path to this point was paved by One who knows me better than I know myself.

How do all of the mundane things about my life tie back to that moment in the grove of trees?  That day the heavens opened.  No longer was human progress and revelation from God meted out drop by precious drop as it had since the apostasy.  It came as a cloudburst and as the time for hastening the work has neared, the progress and revelation have grown exponentially.  So, that dishwasher I load, and the washer and dryer that keep seven people dressed and not smelly, the electricity I use, the car I drive, the computer I wrote this talk on and also use to keep in contact with those I love, our lovely home with its energy efficient windows, the heat in the winter and AC in the summer, every thing, all of it, I enjoy because I live in this dispensation when the fullness of the gospel has been restored.   To make matters even better, when the law of tithing recommenced among the church, blessings began being poured out, enough that we do not have literal room in our homes and lives for all of the abundance that surrounds us.   

This.  This is my testimony of Joseph Smith.  I know that he was a prophet of God and that through him the gospel was restored.  I know it.  I feel it in everything I do and in who I am.  I know that when I take my life, my friendship bracelet if you will, and present it to Heavenly Father and show Him where I anchored it, He will be pleased.  I know that God lives and that He is my Father.  I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior and the Redeemer of my soul and that He is the only way back to my Father.  I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God and my road map for life.  I know that Joseph Smith was the prophet chosen of God to restore His gospel to the earth in this time.  I know that President Thomas S Monson is our prophet today.  These things are so tightly woven into my life that they are my life.    I bear you my humble testimony of these things, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.