GC April 2015 -General Women's Session

Filling Our Homes with Light and Truth
By Cheryl A. Esplin

Summary in a sentence:

If --> our families are to withstand the pressures of the world

Then --> we must be filled with light and gospel truth.

Encouragement/ Blessings:

1. We can feel the Spirit whisper to us, filling us with light and truth.
2. She didn’t bend or collapse —because she was filled.
3. When filled with the Spirit and gospel truth, we have the power to withstand the outside forces of the world that surround and push against us. 
4. “He (God) will speak to them in dreams, visions, thoughts, and feelings.”

To Do or Be:

1. Be filled with light and gospel truth.
2. Be filled with light and gospel truth.
3. Seek truth, to live the truth we know, and to share and defend the truth.
4. Seek to be filled with light and truth is in our own homes. 
5. Help strengthen each other spiritually (in a family).
6. Increase our spiritual knowledge through prayer and through studying and pondering the scriptures and the words of the living prophets. 
7. Do not bury your testimony in the ground.
8. Do our best to hold on to whatever light and truth we currently have, especially in difficult circumstances. 
9. Find quiet moments to seek greater light and truth. And when we receive it, it is our responsibility to live it, to share it, and to defend it.

Truth ; Act and Receive:

1. “God cares about you. He will listen, and He will answer your personal questions. The answers to your prayers will come in His own way and in His own time, and therefore, you need to learn to listen to His voice.”
2. “The Everlasting and Almighty God … will speak to those who approach Him with a sincere heart and real intent.
3. I know as we fill our hearts and homes with the Savior’s light and truth, we will have the inner strength to withstand in every circumstance.
4.  Every home is different, but every home where even one individual seeks for truth can make a difference.

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The Family Is of God By Carole M. Stephens

Encouragement/ Blessings:

1. We each belong to and are needed in the family of God.
2. “a beloved … daughter of heavenly parents.”
3. Membership in the family of God is not contingent upon any kind of status—marital status, parental status, financial status, social status, or even the kind of status we post on social media.
4. We belong. 
5. “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us
6. God gave us families to help us become what He wants us to be
7. Sacred ordinances and covenants available in holy temples make it possible for [us] to return to the presence of God and for families to be united eternally.”
8.  We can overcome mortal challenges, be healed, and return back to our heavenly home.
9. Sisters, we belong. We are loved. We are needed. We have a divine purpose, work, place, and role in the Church and kingdom of God and in His eternal family. Do you know deep in your heart that your Heavenly Father loves you and desires you and those you love to be with Him? Just as “Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ are perfect … , Their hopes for us are perfect.” Their plan for us is perfect, and Their promises are sure.

To Do or Be:

1. learns from her own challenges
2. acts according to those sympathies which God has planted in her heart.
3. doesn’t limit her love and influence to her biological family. 
4. expands her sphere of influence as she goes about doing good, blessing, nurturing, and defending the family of God.
5. strengthens the faith of a child
6. contributes to the strength of a family
7. Be one 
8.  share the love that Heavenly Father has for His family by reaching out and sharing His plan with others.
9. stand with and for the Brethren in stemming the tide of evil that surrounds us and in moving forward the work of our Savior
10. minister with your powerful influence for good in strengthening our families, our church, and our communities

Truth; Act, and Receive:

1. I don’t completely understand your challenges. But through my personal tests and trials—the ones that have brought me to my knees—I have become well acquainted with the One who does understand, He who was “acquainted with grief,” who experienced all and understands all.
2. unite in empathy and compassion as we support other members of the family of God in their struggles, as we have covenanted to do.When we do so, we also come to understand and trust that the Savior knows the difficulties of the way and can guide us through whatever sorrows and disappointments may come. He is true charity, and His love “endureth forever”—in part through us as we follow Him.
3. As beloved spirit daughters of heavenly parents, we have a divine nature, eternal identity, and purpose. God wants us to be one. God needs us to be one—covenant-keeping daughters, united in the diversities of our individual lives, who desire to learn all that is needed to be back in His presence, sealed to Him as part of His eternal family.
4. As we use our time in mortality to study and apply the Savior’s teachings, we become more like Him.
5. If we are to be successful in our sacred responsibilities as daughters of God, we must understand the eternal significance of and our individual responsibility to teach truths about our Heavenly Father’s plan for His family. 

Stories- GC April 2015

Filling Our Homes with Light and Truth- Cheryl A. Esplin

 I attended a meeting where members of the Young Women general board taught about creating spiritually strong families and homes. To visually demonstrate this, a Young Women leader held up two soda cans. In one hand she held a can that was empty and in the other hand a can that was unopened and full of soda. First, she squeezed the empty can; it began to bend and then collapsed under the pressure. Next, with her other hand, she squeezed the unopened can. It held firm. It didn’t bend or collapse like the empty can—because it was filled.

We likened this demonstration to our individual lives and to our homes and families. When filled with the Spirit and with gospel truth, we have the power to withstand the outside forces of the world that surround and push against us. However, if we are not filled spiritually, we don’t have the inner strength to resist the outside pressures and can collapse when forces push against us.

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Several months ago I read the testimony of my great-grandfather’s sister Elizabeth Staheli Walker. As a child, Elizabeth immigrated to America from Switzerland with her family.

After Elizabeth married, she and her husband and children lived in Utah near the Nevada border, where they ran a mail station. Their home was a stopping place for travelers. All day and all night they had to be ready to cook and serve meals for travelers. It was hard, exhausting work, and they had little rest. But the greatest thing that concerned Elizabeth was the conversation of the people they associated with.

Elizabeth said that up to this time she had always taken for granted that the Book of Mormon was true, that the Prophet Joseph Smith had been authorized of God to do what he did, and that his message was the plan of life and salvation. But the life she was experiencing was anything but what would strengthen such a belief.

Some of the travelers who stopped were well-read, educated, smart men, and always the talk around her table was that Joseph Smith was “a sly fraud” who had written the Book of Mormon himself and then distributed it to make money. They acted as if to think anything else was absurd, claiming “that Mormonism was bunk.”

All this talk made Elizabeth feel isolated and alone. There was no one to talk to, no time to even say her prayers—although she did pray as she worked. She was too frightened to say anything to those who ridiculed her religion. She said she didn’t know but what they were telling the truth, and she felt she could not have defended her belief if she had tried.

Later, Elizabeth and her family moved. Elizabeth said she had more time to think and was not so distracted all the time. She often went down in the cellar and prayed to Heavenly Father about what was troubling her—about the stories those seemingly smart men had told about the gospel being bunk and about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.

One night Elizabeth had a dream. She said: “It seemed I was standing by a narrow wagon road, which led around by the foot of a low rolling hill; halfway up the hill I saw a man looking down and speaking, or seemed to be speaking, to a young man who was kneeling and leaning over a hole in the earth. His arms were stretched out, and it looked as if he was reaching for something from in the hole. I could see the lid of stone that seemed to have been taken off from the hole over which the boy was bending. On the road were many people, but none of them seemed to be at all interested in the two men on the hillside. There was something that came along with the dream that impressed me so strangely that I woke right up; … I could not tell my dream to anyone, but I seemed to be satisfied that it meant the angel Moroni [instructed] the boy Joseph at the time he got the plates.”

In the spring of 1893, Elizabeth went to Salt Lake City to the dedication of the temple. She described her experience: “In there I saw the same picture [that] I had seen in my dream; I think it was [a] colored-glass window. I feel satisfied that if I saw the Hill Cumorah itself, it would not look more real. I feel satisfied that I was shown in a dream a picture of the angel Moroni giving Joseph Smith the [gold] plates.”

Many years after having this dream and several months before she died at nearly age 88, Elizabeth received a powerful impression. She said, “The thought came to me as plain … as if someone had said to me, … ‘Do not bury your testimony in the ground.’”5
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The Family Is of God- Carole M. Stephens

I recently had the opportunity to visit with Sister Yazzie of the Chinle Arizona Stake in her hogan. When she welcomed me into her home, the first thing I noticed was the variety of framed family and missionary photos on her walls and tables. So I asked, “Sister Yazzie, how many grandchildren do you have?”

Surprised by my question, she shrugged her shoulders. Confused by her response, I looked at her daughter, Sister Yellowhair, who answered, “She doesn’t know how many grandchildren she has. We don’t count. All children call her Grandmother—she is Grandmother to everyone.”

Sister Yazzie doesn’t limit her love and influence to her biological family. She understands what it means to expand her sphere of influence as she goes about doing good, blessing, nurturing, and defending the family of God. She understands that “whenever a woman strengthens the faith of a child, she contributes to the strength of a family—now and in the future.

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