Robert W. Cantwell -Church Auditing Department Report, 2012
Brook P. Hales -Statistical Report, 2012
- Total Membership: 14,782,473
- Full-Time Missionaries: 58,990
- Church-Service Missionaries: 22,961
Richard G. Scott -For Peace at Home
- Many voices from the world in which we live tell us we should live at a frantic pace. There is always more to do and more to accomplish. Yet deep inside each of us is a need to have a place of refuge where peace and serenity prevail, a place where we can reset, regroup, and re energize to prepare for future pressures.
- Regardless of your circumstances, you can center your home and your life on the Lord Jesus Christ, for He is the source of true peace in this life.
- When He is the center of your home, there is peace an serenity. There is a spirit of assurance that pervades the home, and it is felt by all who dwell there.
- Children who are made to feel accountable for their actions, whether righteous or otherwise, grow to become trustworthy citizens in the kingdom of God.
- Don't rationalize away future happiness by taking shortcuts instead of applying sound gospel principles. Remember: little things lead to big things.
- Simple, consistent, good habits lead to a life full of bountiful blessings.
- Not long ago you came to mortality with all of those magnificent capacities and endless possibilities. Yet there is real danger in the environment surrounding you. Your great potential and ability could be limited or destroyed if you yield to the devil-inspired contamination around you. However, Satan is no match for the Savior. Satan's fate is decided. He knows he has lost, but he wants to take as many with him as he can. He will try to ruin your goodness and abilities by exploiting your weaknesses. Stay on the Lord's side, and you will win every time.
- Technology, when understood and used for righteous purposes, need not be a threat nut rather an enhancement to spiritual communication.
- Who could have imagined not very many years ago that the full standard works and years of general conference messages would fit into your pocket? Just having them in your pocket will not protect you, but studying, pondering, and listening to them during quiet moments of each day will enhance communication through the Spirit.
- If you young people would review a verse of scripture as often as some of you send text messages, you could soon have hundreds of passages of scripture memorized.
- Greater peace will come as you couple your efforts to be obedient with serving those around you. So many individuals who have what they perceive to be meager talents humbly and generously use those talents to bless the lives of those around them. Selfishness is the root of great evil. The antidote for that evil is exemplified in the life of the Savior. He shows us how to focus our lives outward in unselfish service to others.
- Become friends with your children's friends. Be a worth example to them.
- Reach out to those living in adverse circumstances. Be a true friend. This kind of enduring friendship is like asphalt that fills the potholes of life and makes the journey smoother and more pleasant. It should not be a resource used to gain personal advantage but a treasure to be appreciated and shared. Welcome into your home others who need to be strengthened by such an experience.
Quentin L. Cook -Personal Peace: The Reward of Righteousness
- Events often occur that rob us of peace and heighten our sense of vulnerability.
- The stakes of Zion are a defense and "a refuge from the storm, and from wrath when it shall be poured out without mixture upon the whole earth."
- Agency is essential to the plan of happiness. It allows for the love, sacrifice, personal growth, and experience necessary for our eternal progression. This agency also allows for all the pain and suffering we experience in mortality, even when caused by things we do not understand and the devastating evil choices of others.
- "There never can come to the world that spirit of peace and love ... until mankind will receive God's truth and God's message ..., and acknowledge his power and authority which is divine."
- The Savior's peace can "blot out our hates." Judgment is the Lord's.
- We all long for peace. Peace is not just safety or lack of war, violence, conflict, and contention. Peace comes from knowing that the Savior knows who we are and knows that we have faith in Him, love Him, and keep His commandments, even and especially amid life's devastating trials and tragedies.
- Remember, "God is not the author of confusion, but [the author] of peace."
- "To believe in God is to know that all the rules will be fair, and that there will be wonderful surprises."
- Peace is not found by attaining great wealth, power, or prominence. Peace is not found in the pursuit of pleasure, entertainment, or leisure. None of these can, even when attained in abundance, create any lasting happiness or peace.
- "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you."
Stanley G. Ellis -The Lord's Way
- In our efforts to help, we may actually hurt them.
- The apostles and prophets have often taught that what happens inside the home is far more important than what our children encounter outside. How we raise our children is more important than where we raise them.
John B. Dickson -The Gospel to All the World
- From the time of the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, the Church has moved steadily across the world from nation to nation, culture to culture, people to people, on the Lord's calendar and in His time.
David A. Bednar -We Believe in Being Chaste
- The unique combination of spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional capacities of both males and females was needed to enact the plan of happiness. "Neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord." The man and the woman are intended to learn from, strengthen, bless, and complete each other.
- "Outside the bonds of marriage, all uses of the procreative power are to one degree or another a sinful degrading and perversion of the most divine attribute of men and women."
- The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a single, undeviating standard of sexual morality: intimate relations are proper only between a man and a woman in the marriage relationship prescribed in God's plan. Such relations are not merely a curiosity to be explored, an appetite to be satisfied, or a type of recreation or entertainment to be pursued selfishly. They are not a conquest to be achieved or simply an act to be performed. Rather, they are in mortality one of the ultimate expressions of our divine nature and potential and a way of strengthening emotional and spiritual bonds between husband and wife. We are agents blessed with moral agency and are defined by our divine heritage as children of God--and not by sexual behaviors, contemporary attitudes, or secular philosophies.
- "The 'natural man' is the 'earthy man' who has allowed rude animal passions to overshadow his spiritual inclinations."
- In contrast, the "man [or woman] of Christ" is spiritual and bridles all passions, is temperate and restrained, and is benevolent and selfless. Men and women of Christ lay hold upon the word of God, deny themselves and take up His cross, and press forward along a strait and narrow course of faithfulness, obedience, and devotion to the Savior and His gospel.
- Heavenly Father desires us to be together in the light and filled with hope. In contrast, Lucifer labors to make the sons and daughters of God confused and unhappy and to hinder their eternal progression.
- Love increases through righteous restraint and decreases through impulsive indulgence.
- Our innate longing to belong is fulfilled in righteousness as we walk in the light with hope.
- The extent and intensity of your repentance must match the nature and severity of your sins--especially for Latter-day Saints who are under sacred covenant. Serious spiritual wounds require sustained treatment and time to heal completely and fully.
- The Lord's truth is not altered by fads, popularity, or public opinion polls.
Russell M. Nelson -Catch the Wave
- Your role is crucial, truly critical to the success of this work, If you catch the wave with faith and enthusiasm, others will also.
- "I never told you I was perfect; but there is no error in the revelations which I have taught."
Until you next read these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!
-Sarnic Dirchi
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