Monday, October 28, 2013

October 1996 General Conference Sunday Afternoon Session

Joseph B. Writhlin -Christians in Belief and Action
  • Our beliefs and actions may differ from those of others, but we, as good Christians, do not criticize other religions or their adherents. "We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may."
  • The fragmentary nature of the biblical record and the errors in it, resulting from multiple transcriptions, translations, and interpretations, do not diminish our belief in it as the word of God "as far as it is translated correctly." We read and study the Bible, we teach and preach from it, and we strive to live according to the eternal truths it contains. We love this collection of holy writ.
  • "We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." It is another testament of Jesus Christ, written "by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation ... to the convincing of [all people] that JESUS is the CHRIST, the ETERNAL GOD, manifesting himself unto all nations." God brought forth the Book of Mormon as a second witness that corroborates and strengthens the Bible's testimony of the Savior. The Book of Mormon does not supplant the Bible. It expands, extends, clarifies, and amplifies our knowledge of the Savior. Surely, this second witness should be cause for great rejoicing by all Christians.
Richard G. Scott -The Joy of Living the Great Plan of Happiness
  • In the Lord's plan, it takes two--a man and a woman--to form a whole. Indeed, a husband and wife are not two identical halves, but a wondrous, divinely determined combination of complimentary capacities and characteristics.
  • Marriage allows these different characteristics to come together in oneness--in unity--to bless a husband and wife, their children and grandchildren. For the greatest happiness and productivity in life, both husband and wife are needed. Their efforts interlock and are complementary. Each has individual traits that best fir the role the Lord has defined for happiness as a man or woman. When used as the Lord intends, those capacities allow a married couple to think, act, and rejoice as one--to face challenges together and overcome them as one, to grow in love and understanding, and through temple ordinances to be bound together as one whole, eternally. That is the plan.
  • Beware of the subtle ways Stan employs to take you from the plan of God and true happiness. One of Satan's most effective approaches is to demean the role of wife and mother in the home. This is an attack at the very heart of God's plan to foster love between husband and wife and to nurture children in an atmosphere of understanding, peace, appreciation, and support.
  • Your desire to be a wife and mother may not have its total fulfillment here, but it will in His time as you live in faith and obedience to merit it. Don't be lured away from the plan of our God to the ways of the world, where motherhood is belittled, femininity is decried, and the divinely established role of wife and mother is mocked. Let the world go its way. You follow the plan of the Lord for the greatest measure of true, eternal achievement and the fullest happiness.
  • As a woman, please don't judge how worthwhile, needed, and loved you are by our inept ability to express our true feelings. Your divinely conferred trait of giving of self without counting the cost leads you to underestimate your own worth.
  • I humbly thank our Father in Heaven for His daughters, you who were willing to come to earth to live under such uncertain circumstances. Most men could not handle the uncertainties you are asked to live with. Social customs require that you wait to be asked for marriage. You are expected to go with your husband wherever his employment or call takes him. Your environment and neighborhood are determined by his ability to provide, meager or not. You place your life in the Lord's hands each time you bear a child. He makes no such sacrifice. The blessing of nurturing children and caring for a husband often is intermingled with many routine tasks. But you do all of these things willingly because you are a woman. Generally you have no idea of how truly wonderful and capable you are, how very much appreciated and loved, or how desperately needed, for most men don't tell you as completely and as often as needed.
Elaine L. Jack -"Partakers of Glories"
  • Father, we want thee to know that under any conditions, we will be true, strong and faithful to the covenants we made to thee when we were baptized.
  • "Priesthood is given us for two purposes, first, that we may ourselves receive exaltation, and, second, that we may be the means of helping others to obtain like blessings."
Francisco J. Vinas -Listening to the Voice of the Lord
  • We learn that frequently the words of the prophets do not agree with our expectations or with our way of seeing things. Sometimes it seems that we need someone else, in addition to the prophets, to persuade us to listen to the voice of the Lord.
WM. Rolfe Kerr -"Behold Your Little Ones"
  • While the Savior taught us the importance of the one, He also taught us of the power of one. He showed us the power and influence He alone possessed as our Savior, Redeemer, and Judge. He was alone in Gethsemane when He offered Himself as the sacred offering in the great atoning sacrifice--a sacrifice which He sealed at Golgotha with His freely given life. Feeling alone there, His painful utterance "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" teaches us that, while the Father was never far from His Beloved Son, the infinite Atonement was, of necessity, wrought by the power of one--one person standing alone--even the Only Begotten Son of God.
Jeffrey R. Holland -"The Peaceable Things of the Kingdom"
  • The search for peace is one of the ultimate quests of the human soul. We all have highs and lows, but such times come and they usually always go.
  • "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
  • In seeking true peace some of us need to improve what has to be improved, confess what needs to be confessed, forgive what has to be forgiven, and forget what should be forgotten in order that serenity can come to us.
  • Life is too short to be spent nursing animosities or keeping a box score of offenses against us--you know, no runs, no hits, all errors. We don't want God to remember our sins, so there is something fundamentally wrong in our relentlessly trying to remember those of others.
  • Those who feel no need for mercy usually never seek it and almost never bestow it.
Gordon B. Hinckley "Reach with A Rescuing Hand"
  • All of us need to be reminded of the past. It is from history that we gain knowledge which can save us from repeating mistakes and on which we can build for the future.
General Relief Society Meeting

Aileen H. Clyde -Confirmed in Faith
  • As women in the Church, we have knowledge many others lack; consequently we remind ourselves our work is not dedicated to triviality or entertainment.
Chieko N. Okazaki -Raised in Hope
  • I think of hope as a modest but very tough everyday virtue, an ordinary but resilient virtue that is both gentle and beautiful. It is an unassuming but powerful force for good that will greatly increase our ability to do good and to be good.
  • Hope is a virtue for all seasons and all adversities, whether the problem is a storm or too much pleasant weather.
  • What is the opposite of hope? Despair, of course, but despair comes when we feel powerless to influence events and when the sources of meaning in our life disappear. Despair is a kind of disorientation so profound that we lose contact with the sources of life itself.
  • Hope doe snot calculate odds. It is a double sided virtue.
  • It is prepared for either sunny or stormy weather. To chose hope is to choose life. To choose hope is to choose love.
  • hope is one of the three great Christan virtues because Christ Himself is the master of life and therefore the master of hope. We are free to choose because we were made free from the beginning, and He honors our agency and our right and ability to choose. The choice He offers is life, and life offers hope. Any other choice is a choice of spiritual death that will bring us into the power of the devil.
  • Jesus Christ, our Savior, has always been the master of life, but through His atoning sacrifice, He also became the master over death. Physical death has no dominion over Him; and ultimately, it has no dominion over us because of Christ.
  • Think what this means! Because of our Savior's victory, we too can be victorious. in the face of this good news, this triumphant shout from the battlefield of ultimate victory, then we can see why our everyday sacrifices, our ordinary hope, is so tough, so versatile, so difficult to turn into meaninglessness and despair.
  • In fact, it cannot happen--we literally cannot despair--unless we choose to.
  • The forces of life are always stronger than the forces of death. If we choose, if we even desire to choose, if we even hope for the desire to choose, we set in motion powerful forces for life that are led by Jesus Christ himself.
  • Oh sisters, dearest sisters, choose life even though the forces of death seem strong! Choose hope  even though despair seems close! choose to grow even though circumstances oppress you! choose to learn even thou you must struggle against your own ignorance and that of others! Choose to love, even though ours are days of violence and vengeance. Choose to forgive, to pray, to bless another's life with simple kindness. Choose to build the sisterhood of the Relief Society by lifting and strengthening one another with love, testimony, faith, and service. I promise that you will feel the abundant love of the Savior.
Elaine L. Jack -Strengthened in Charity
  • The heart is the key to our influence, for it counts and measures each kindness, each effort, each time we lift, praise, teach, or cheer one another.
  • Charity is work of the heart.
  • Charity, though often quantified as the action, is actually the state of the heart that prompts us to love on another.
  • Kindness should be right at the top of everyone's list of things to do.
  • Be patient in a crowd.
  • It isn't what we do; it is the heart with which we do it.
  • I earnestly pray that we may share our gifts from God whether they be our minds, our music, our athletic ability, our leadership, our compassion, our sense of humor, our peaceful countenance, or our resilience and rejoicing. With charitable hearts may we do remarkable work in these last days.
James E. Faust -The Grand Key-Words for the Relief Society
  • According to your natures; it is natural for females to have feelings of charity and benevolence. "Let the weight of your innocence, kindness and affection be felt ... ; not war, not jangle not contradiction, or dispute, but meekness, love, purity--these are the things that should magnify you in the eyes of all good men."
  • To meet the challenges of the eternal every day, every sister will be strengthened by daily communion with our Heavenly Father through prayer. scriptural study will be beneficial in bringing spiritual reassurances. Attending sacrament meetings, partaking of the sacred emblems, and the renewal of our covenants will be a weekly source of strength.
  • "WE must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction, that we may all sit down in heaven together."
Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi

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