Repentance

As promised in the previous post about the talk we gave in sacrament meeting on Sunday, here is the talk I did. I spoke for 20-25 minutes and have filled out the talk below instead of just putting bullet points when I spoke. So, if any of you dare to make it through all of it below, here it is. I put a lot of thought and effort and prayer into it and wanted to keep it for myself. It was a great experience to work on these talks with Jeremy. It brought a lot of rich discussion and brought us a little closer together as we worked on it together.

Jeremy recapped the following talk (since I didn't leave much time for him to speak after I was done). You can read it at LDS.org:

The Divine Gift of Repentance

Elder D. Todd Christofferson, Quoram of the Twelve Apostles

General Conference – October 2011

Good Afternoon Brothers and Sisters,

I would like to start off by introducing me and my family as we are fairly new to this ward. We moved into Dunlop from Kingston moving us into the Belconnen Ward from the Ginnindera ward a couple of months ago. We moved here in the middle of January from the United States, more specifically from Orem, Utah.

My husband Jeremy and I met through our singles ward through our Family Home Evening (FHE) group.

We met only a short 4 ½ years ago and have many things happen to us in that short amount of time.

• ·         We have had 3 children
• ·         I had been laid off of a job during my pregnancy with my first child
• ·         I started a new job when I was pregnant with my second child
• ·         I was working from home while I was pregnant with our third child when we found out we were moving to Australia
• ·         During this time, Jeremy and I were both working full time
• ·          Jeremy was also going to school full time
• ·         We sold a home in a bad market (which took us about 2 ½ years)
• ·         We bought a home and moved our family across town to be closer to the rest of our families
• ·         And then we decided we hadn’t done enough and thought it would be a good idea to move away from being around about 40 of our close friends and family to a new country

We have three amazing little boys, who I of course “KNOW” (being a ‘mother’) that each one is so special.

• ·         Teagan is 3 ½ and is our little leader. He makes paths for others to follow. He doesn’t do anything just to be a people pleaser.
• ·         Tate will be 2 in a couple of weeks. He is our fun, carefree, happy go lucky kid.
• ·         Steffan is almost 7 months old and has an amazing little sparkle in his eye that always draw people in to him.

So, we FINALLY started getting settled into our place here in Dunlop and it was so nice. We had really been looking forward to not having any large events and have a good routine for our family. It had been about 5-6 months of moving around to different temporary homes here in Canberra, including living with my parents’ right before we moved here from Utah. Then a couple weeks ago when we were saying our nightly family prayers, Teagan, our oldest said in his prayer, “..and bless the baby mommy is going to have.” Ahhhh... Not yet please! J (And No, this is not an announcement!)

So that gives you a brief synopsis of our lives so far.

• ·         We have packed in as many things as we can into the shortest amount of time possible. It has tested us in ways we never imagined.
• ·         Packing in 3 kids so close in age and so young has been hard, especially among all of the other events going on.
• ·         We have been pulled in so many directions. And as a result of that, we have prayed for many answers and fixes to our problems. Little did we know that so many of those answers would be answered in an amazing journey in this process of moving our family here to Australia.
• ·          It has tested our marriage. It has tested our parenting skills. It has tested our distant family and friend relationships. It has tested our ability to prioritize in a short time crunch. But most importantly it has brought to surface many of the problems we could no longer easily sweep under the rug before with our busy life. Our life has now been so simplified that we now have to deal with them. AND there hasn’t been family or friends around to help us... no one to help us out but “us”.
• ·         It has pushed us to be better and stronger and to refine our attempts to be better as a family, and as a couple, and as parents.

I never felt that I was living my life badly before… when we were preparing to make this large move to Australia, I asked Jeremy to give me a blessing for guidance.  In this blessing it asked me to read and study the words of Nephi in the Book of Mormon to understand his words of repentance. I remember being kind of taken back by this counsel and often pondered why I needed to learn about repentance. I hadn’t done anything wrong that I felt needed to repent for.

However, I took this counsel seriously and have been actively studying and praying for a soft heart that I might know of the things that I needed to repent of. Over the course of the last few months, it has been opened to my mind how this applies so much to my life (that and the fact that I’ve been asked to speak two times EVER in sacrament meeting– this being one of the times- and both times it’s been on repentance… so if that doesn’t say something, than I don’t know what does).  J

Looking back at my life before coming here, it was very full of “Stuff”…. Having get togethers’, going to movies, hanging out at our parents/friends, etc. We were busy with work and school. We went to church, but always seemed to have other things going on to be “too” involved. It all sounds pretty regular.

                                                                                                                                                                           

• ·         The part that I missed the whole time is that we weren’t growing. Our life was easy… we had babysitters whenever we wanted between grandparents and siblings.
• ·         It never really caused us to work together as a family. Our kids were confused who their parents were because of how much time we were spending with our parents.
• ·         We weren’t setting a good foundation for our family. When we arrived here with no friends and no family, we only had each other.

o   A good example of this: My mom came to help our family on the plane with our children and stayed to help out with the new baby for the first two months we were here and while we established our new life with bank accounts, cars, etc. Nothing too hard happened while she was here and she even mentioned, "Well, I don't feel like you even need me here." BUT... the day after she left, Tate fell off the bed and split his lip open. I was frantic because of not knowing where the hospital was or how insurance worked. I called Jeremy and he came home to go with us to the doctor. Unbeknownst to us, we all went over to the ER together not knowing that we would be there for 6 hours. (Everyone laughed because they all knew that this was normal here.) I left and made dinner with the other two kids while Jeremy stayed with Tate to be seen in the ER. At 9:00 that night we had tired boys and a long day of waiting. Normally we would have dropped our kids off at grandparents while we attended to the hurt child... but found that although this was more of a hastle, this small experience brought our family closer together. Even Teagan, our 3 yr old was more connected to our family because he was a part of everything we were doing. This is something we missed out on before.

• ·         It forced us to rely a lot more on the Lord for direction and guidance. It reminded us how much we have been given and how much the Lord cares about us and wanting us to grow to be the best we can be. We realized that we were not living up to our full potential.

At one point I asked, “Jeremy, is there things you’ve prayed for that you didn’t tell me about?” and Jeremy said, “No, why do you ask?” And I said, “Ohh… just because I see a lot of the things I asked for being answered now and it’s giving us a lot more trials and I just wanted to make sure that I don’t have any more surprises.”

When we were asked to prepare for this talk we were asked to read and study Elder D. Todd Christofferson’s (Quoram of the Twelve Apostles) talk from last General Conference (October 2011) called, The Divine Gift of Repentance. He made five points of repentance and I wanted to focus on two points in his talk. The first being his second point: “Striving to Change”.

When you think of “repentance”, usually people think of all the large things they’ve done wrong or the things that tarry with you until it has been taken care of.

But today, I want to focus on repentance of the smaller things. I wasn’t doing anything wrong as I mentioned… but I also wasn’t “Striving” to be better. When I prayed for guidance to know what I needed to repent of, the answer I received was that I was not being a wife and mother to my full potential and that I had much more to offer. I have been given talents and gifts and because of those talents and gifts, I’ve been entrusted with wonderful children, specific for ME and Jeremy to raise… and those talents and gifts are to be used to better MY family.

Repentance is a way of life. We are allowed to make mistakes, but we are supposed to learn from them. If we continue to make mistakes, we just need to keep “falling forward, keep improving”. It’s not always the big things that hold us back.

“Without repentance, there is no real progression or improvement in life.” (Elder Christofferson) We need to change our thinking, set some goals and start making changes in our daily lives to be a better person each day.

The fifth point of Elder Christofferson’s talk that I wanted to focus on is:

·         Whatever the cost of repentance, {no matter how hard your trial, how long your endurance…} It is swallowed up in the joy of forgiveness.

Let me share a story that Elder Christofferson quoted from a general conference previously with a talk by Boyd K Packer:

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 “In April of 1847, Brigham Young led the first company of pioneers out of Winter Quarters. At that same time, 1,600 miles [2,575 km] to the west the pathetic survivors of the Donner Party straggled down the slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains into the Sacramento Valley.

“They had spent the ferocious winter trapped in the snowdrifts below the summit. That any survived the days and weeks and months of starvation and indescribable suffering is almost beyond belief.

“Among them was fifteen-year-old John Breen. On the night of April 24 he walked into Johnson’s Ranch. Years later John wrote:

“‘It was long after dark when we got to Johnson’s Ranch, so the first time I saw it was early in the morning. The weather was fine, the ground was covered with green grass, the birds were singing from the tops of the trees, and the journey was over. I could scarcely believe that I was alive.

“‘The scene that I saw that morning seems to be photographed on my mind. Most of the incidents are gone from memory, but I can always see the camp near Johnson’s Ranch.’”

Said President Packer: “At first I was very puzzled by his statement that ‘most of the incidents are gone from memory.’ How could long months of incredible suffering and sorrow ever be gone from his mind? How could that brutal dark winter be replaced with one brilliant morning?

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My family had been so busy head on with the trials since we started this moving process that we have been constantly evolving our lives to reincorporate Family Home Evening, prayer, scripture study, time to serve others, etc. Sticking to the fundamentals keeps your progression happening naturally.

And just as the story above states... Before you know it, you are in a new place in your life. And you’re so proud of your accomplishments that it doesn’t matter how you got there.

I relate it to myself with hiking. I LOVE hiking! In Utah, next to BYU, there is a big mountain that has a big "Y" painted on it. My family loves to go hiking up to the "Y". It is not a very long hike, but it is rough. It is pretty "straight up the mountain" right when you start. You can't really see the "Y" when you are on the trail and it seems like you're never going to get there. I used to go hiking up to the Y once a week. I remember that every single time I went, I HATED it! I wondered why I was doing this hike again. I fell a lot (because I'm not graceful at all) and I always thought I was going to die. But when you think you're about to give up, that's when you can see the "Y"... and that's when you know you don't have much more to go. Sitting up at the top you have a feeling of accomplishment as you look to see how far you've come in such a short time, even if it feels like it took forever.

·         So, again, it's like the story references --- It’s like climbing a mountain and hating it but seeing the beautiful view and looking down at how far you hiked and knowing that you made it one small step at a time. You may have taken some breaks and maybe even fallen a couple of times, but you don’t remember that when you get to the top.

It is like Celestial Glory. Celestial Glory includes eternal progression… You can’t live a celestial law (eternal progression/ Eternal Life) if you are not always striving to be better. *Reference D&C 88:22

"God knows ALL things- past, present and future. Without that knowledge he’d be unable to save us. Without that knowledge, he could not assuredly lead us in the right directions."-Lectures on Faith

• ·         Remember... He is higher than the mountains we are climbing.

The words of Christ will tell you all things which ye should do. If ye know not what to do, it’s because ye ask not. –Boyd K. Packer.

We cannot afford to be complacent. We are in perilous times. –Thomas S.Monson

This brings me to another example in my life. The Lord gives you direction many times --- whether it’s church leaders, conference talks, through the scriptures, etc. We have had many of the same counsel for years (i.e. food storage, getting out of debt…)

Well, I have “heard” it many times, but haven’t always listened to it. I have built a testimony of heeding that counsel. This move has taught us that the Lord has a path for each one of us. He gives us counsel so that we may bypass trial when he needs us for something else. We were called here to Australia and hadn’t done our best in some of the general counsel that we “KNEW” we needed to be better in. The Lord could no longer wait on us to figure that aspect of our lives out as we had asked for many things in prayers - and he now needed us for his own work. Again, it has been a testimony to me that we need to have our life in order so that we can bypass trial when the Lord needs us for something else if that makes sense. The only way we can repent is by “striving” to be better.

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Some of you may be asking... What do all of your stories have to do with repentance?

It’s about my experiences of living my life to “less than full potential”. My life was easier, but less fulfilling and less gratifying.

I want to be at the top of the mountain looking back at the beauty all around and not stuck on the trail on the way up.

That is what repentance is. It’s the act of bettering yourself all the time and we could in no wise do this were it not the “Gift” of repentance.

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If you get nothing else out of this talk... know that the most important point that I’m trying to make is that “Repentance is a way of life”.

• ·         There will be trials and indifference, but the Lord knows the beginning and the end.
• ·         If you move through those trials “Striving to do your best”, then the Lord will grant you “Tender Mercies” along the way. As Elder Bednar said in a talk in General Conference...

o   “These mercies do not occur randomly or by coincidence. Faithfulness and obedience allow us to receive these. Our hearts and countenance determine if we are chose to receive them.”

o   We have also been humbled by all of you as a ward and also from the Ginninderra ward as well as many from Jeremy’s work. We thank you for your kindness and effort in meeting our needs. I have actually felt really terrible how “busy” I’ve always been previously and how “inattentive” I’ve been to others in the ward or in my neighborhood. Thank you for showing us your wonderful spirits and fulfilling a promise from the Lord in many blessings given to me by Jeremy telling me our family would be provided for. This was a “tender mercy” as well as a testament that we are on the right path and are being taken care of.

o   Through this process, this is one of the ways I’ve been “awakened” to things I need to “strive” to do better. One of which is serving others.

• ·         As you “strive” to be better, you will look back and see that you have already naturally taken all of the steps that Elder Christofferson has talked about (and that Jeremy will go over in more detail). And you will do it all the way through those steps naturally and without a check list.
• ·         And last know that “Whatever the cost of repentance no matter how hard your trial, your endurance... It is swallowed up in the joy of forgiveness.” You will all of a sudden see your progress and it won’t matter what you went through to get there. 

·         You will feel the blessing of repentance of “Freedom, Confidence and Peace”.

I testify that these words are true, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and in his name, Jesus Christ, Amen.