- It is important that your families assist you in learning about the gospel of our Lord and Savior. Then, all of us must rely on the gift of the Holy Ghost to guide us in discerning right from wrong.
- Listen to the still, small voice when you are faced with a time of decision. It will surely be a strong warning voice to tell you to turn off the wrong kind of music, to flee from the degrading television programs, or to get out of a Web page that will only bring evil thoughts into your mind. The Holy Spirit will let you know when you are in forbidden territory.
- We have great confidence in you. You are choice spirits who have come forth in this day when the responsibilities and opportunities, as well as the temptations, are the greatest.
- If you are in the habit of using foul language, the longer you use it, the harder it is to change and stop using it. Better now to choose a different road, one that leads to cleanliness in thought and word and action so that you can enjoy the companionship of the Holy Ghost. Imagine the difficulty of serving a mission and having bad language pop into your mind when you need to have the Spirit with you as your constant companion. If using bad language is a problem for you, now is the time to change.
- Always remember the true source of your blessings.
- Even though we may have some uphill struggles in our lives, our attitude will determine how we face them.
- My young friends, please know the importance of being wise by following the counsel of our prophets, and happiness will be yours throughout life's journey.
- Our friends and neighbors are children of a loving Father in Heaven who desires that all of us return to Him. Can we be content when not all the members of our quorum are in attendance Sunday morning? Surely we can extend ourselves to the less active and those of other faiths and warmly invite them to our Young Men and Young Women Mutual activities, seminary, Sunday School classes, and sacrament meetings.
- Satan would diminish your faith and dilute your priesthood power to work mighty miracles, but a loving Heavenly Father has provided you with providential protection--the gift of the Holy Ghost.
- "The Holy Ghost is the Testifier of Truth, who can teach men things they cannot teach one another."
- "It does not make any difference whether a man is Priest or an Apostle, if he magnifies his calling. A Priest holds the keys of the ministering of angels. Never in my life, as an Apostle, as a Seventy, or as an Elder, have I ever had more of the protection of the Lord than while holding the office of a Priest.
- "We are all like the turkey who wakes up [Thanksgiving] morning expecting lunch as usual. Things can go wrong at any time. Brethren, it can happen to any of us at any time. So much of our course in life is influenced by forces we only partly perceive.
- I once heard a man tell his sons, "I can drive closer to the edge than you because I have had more experience than you." He thought he was in control, but he was really in denial. "The trouble with using experience as a guide is that the final exam often comes first and then the lesson." Some people think their age and experience make them better able to withstand temptation. This is a falsehood.
- "Develop discipline of self so that, more and more, you do not have to decide and redecide what you will do when you are confronted with the same temptation time and time again. You need only to decide some things once. How great a blessing it is to be free of agonizing over and over again regarding a temptation. To do such is time-consuming and very risky."
- There is no controlling drugs. It controls you. The first time, you usually feel nothing. That's when it grabs you."
- "Just one cigarette--just to see how it feels." But beware of the danger lurking here. Nicotine is highly addictive. As few as four cigarettes may be enough to set someone on a path to becoming a regular smoker.
- We do not know our potential for alcohol addiction, but one drink usually leads to another, It is much better never to take the first drink. Then you know you won't be led to more.
- You may not think gambling is an addiction because it is not a substance taken into the body, but as someone recently wrote, "Those who gamble risk more than just money. Their lives and families are at stake too."
- What we see is so much harder to get rid of than what we take into our bodies.
- If you are willing to pay the price for success, good things, even great things, can happen to you, even beyond your fondest dreams and expectations! Often we do not have even a glimpse of our potential for happiness and accomplishment in this life and in the eternity because, as the Apostle Paul said, "Now we see through a glass, darkly." But the lens can be lightened and become crystal clear through the influence of the Holy Ghost. The Savior promised us that the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, will "teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance," and "guide you into all truth."
- Testimony may not come until your faith has been tried.
- Many of us do not have a full awareness of what we really know. Even though we have been taught the gospel, we may not be fully aware of what the Lord has put in our "inward parts" and written in our hearts.
- Seeing an angel would be a great experience, but it is far greater to come to a knowledge of the divinity of the Savior through faith and witness of the Spirit.
- We need to pray, and then we need to act.
- "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."
- "Fear not; go and do."
- "I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded, for I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them."
- "If we don't try, we don't do; and if we don't do, then why are we here?"
- Brethren, whatever our calling, regardless of our fears or anxieties, let us pray and then go and do, remembering the words of the Master, even the Lord Jesus Christ, who promised, "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
- "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only."
- "The rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and ... the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.
- "That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or authority of that man."
- We who hold the priesthood of God must stand above the ways of the world. We must discipline ourselves. We cannot be self-righteous, but we can and must be decent honorable men.
- Our behavior in public must be above reproach. Our behavior in private is even more important. It must clear the standard set by the Lord.
- The manner of our living, the words we speak, and our everyday behavior have a bearing upon our effectiveness as men and boys holding the priesthood.
- You cannot afford to do anything that would place a curtain between you and the ministering of angels in your behalf.
- You cannot be immoral in any sense. You cannot be dishonest. You cannot cheat or lie. You cannot take the name of God in vain or use filthy language and still have the right to the ministering of angels.
- The wife you choose will be your equal.
- "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord."
- In the marriage companionship there is neither inferiority nor superiority. The woman does not walk ahead of the man; neither does the man walk ahead of the woman. They walk side by side as son and daughter of God on an eternal journey.
- What a tragedy when a man demeans the mother of his children.
- "The Church's position is that abuse cannot be tolerated in any form. Those who abuse ... are subject to Church discipline. They should not be given Church callings and may not have a temple recommend. Even if a person who abused a child sexually or physically receives Church discipline and is later restored to full fellowship or readmitted by baptism, leaders should not call the person to any position working with children or youth unless the First Presidency authorizes removal of the annotation of the person's membership record.
- "In instances of abuse, the first responsibility of the Church is to help those who have been abused and to protect those who may be vulnerable to future abuse."
- Now the work of the Church is a work of salvation. I want to emphasize that. It is a work of saving souls. We desire to help both the victim and the offender. Our hearts reach out to the victim, and we must act to assist him or her. Our hearts reach out to the offender, but we cannot tolerate the sin of which he may be guilty. Where there has been offense, there is a penalty. The process of the civil law will work its way. And the ecclesiastical process will work its way, often resulting in excommunication. This is both a delicate and a serious matter.
- Nevertheless, we recognize, and must always recognize, that when the penalty has been paid and the demands of justice have been met, there will be a helpful and kindly hand reaching out to assist. There may be continuing restrictions, but there will also be kindness.
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
The Dream
There was this boy in an odds and ends shop. Kinda like a craft shop, but also like a mechanic's den, with touches of computer lab and library thrown in. He looked a lot like Hiro from Big Hero Six. He didn't actually work at this shop, but spent so much time there looking for things to help with his own inventions that he might as well have. He was energetic, and a bit goofy, not willing to take things seriously. Even when Kaiba walked in. He looked a lot like a younger version of Seto Kaiba from Yugioh. And they were...sort of enemies in that Kaiba made life difficult Hiro. Hiro took their meeting unseriously. Snapping a photo of them and posting it to his web forum, tagging a girl he liked in the picture (even though she wasn't there) so that she could see what he was up to. He hadn't yet talked to her in person, this girl he was crushing on -she had braces and red pigtails from a photo of her briefly glimpsed. In any case, Kaiba was looking for Baymax, the squishy robot to help with his experiment. Hiro wasn't sure what he was looking for, but knew where something like that had been placed -in a garden/metal sign section. But when they got to the spot, there was only an old faded tapestry and a button with wires coming out of it. But the button wasn't really a button it was like a robotic mouse that once it was spun up could track down whoever had stolen from the shop.
Then there was a shift, and there were these four babies in an incubator, being tested by doctors, not regular doctors but more of a scientist type of doctor, to see how each of the quads reacted to things. One thing they modified was that the babes were able to speak like adult humans, letting the doctors know exactly how they were feeling, and Hiro was the most vocal of the lot, not liking it when they stimulated him to do things he didn't want to do. Each babe had gone through a rating system on different skills, and it was decided that Hiro...wasn't going to be good for much, his scores were all middling or bad, nothing that would make him stand out anywhere. And it would be a surprise to the doctors if he amounted to anything, even with drawing...
Cut back to Hiro, drawing, able to create computer models and little mini space games based off of himself and to his surprise at the connection a Baymax like figure. Though he was easily distracted when his favorite dog Hercules, dropped by to visit the shop. Cue the doctors dropping by to find Hiro and see how he's progressed since they last saw him, they were worried that he would be going down a dark path, but didn't immediately see Hiro since he was behind a bookshelf petting Hercules, when another dog approached...the situation setting itself up so that it would either reveal Hiro as a good soul or mislead the doctors into believing he had turned dark....
Then the unholy tones of daylight pulled me away....
and I became myself again. :)
-S.N.D
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