New Beginnings

June is a month of new beginnings for a lot of people. I have several graduation announcements from friends who children are graduating from high school, I have a couple of wedding announcements, several of my co-workers retired, many students from the student ward where I served as bishop graduated and are now beginning new chapters in their lives, and I just attended a memorial service for an aunt. It is a time of new beginnings for my wife and I as well. If you noticed in the previous sentence that I said, “served as bishop”, past tense. I was released not long ago and we are now attending our home ward for the first time in almost seven years. Changes in our lives can be a challenge and sometimes a scary thing.

It can be a stressful time for those going through the changes. For the high school graduate decisions about going on to college, serving a mission, or finding full-time work can be a stressful. College graduates now having spent their entire lives in school now need to move on and become contributing citizens and employees. Newly married couples now need to figure out how two individuals become one. This time of change can also be a challenge to the parents whose children are graduating, getting married, or for themselves if they are retiring. Uncertainty is the biggest cause of stress in our lives when we experience change. Change is part of life and tests our character and helps refine us.

One of the best things we can do when faced with change is have faith – faith in Jesus Christ. We must trust that the Lord is with us and knows what is best for us and our family. The Plan of Salvation is also called the “plan of happiness” for a reason. We are to experience joy and happiness in this life. The scriptures tell us “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy” (2 Nephi 2:25). We need to remember to find joy in all that we do, including when we experience change in our lives. Another scripture teaches: “all these things (the things we experience in our lives) shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good. The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater that he?” (Doctrine and Covenants 122:7-8)

The changes for my wife and I mean that we will never see members of our student ward that we have grown to love as much as our children. It means that we will have the opportunity to have new callings in the ward where we live. We look forward to serving where ever the Lord asks. Having been the one that was extending callings to members, I can testify that it is the Lord that is calling us to serve not the person who is extending the call. The person extending the call represents the Lord and how we respond reflects on our testimony and our willingness to sustain our leaders.

Being able to attend our home ward also gives us the opportunity to have two of our grandsons come with us. Because of our daughter’s work, she is not able to attend church on Sunday’s very often and her boys have missed out. Now, like we did when we were parents with young children, we now have a 4-year-old and a twelve-year-old sitting with us in church. We are once again learning to be patient with siblings that struggle to be reverent and quite in church while we try to feel the spirit of those speaking and teaching us. We are excited to have this opportunity again and it has reminded us to have patience for families that are experiencing the same thing with their children. We know that some Sunday’s will be better than others, but we would not want to have these precious youth anywhere else than by our sides in church. There is one other place and that would be with their mother in their own ward, but for now this is as good as it can be.

Another year and I will have one of the biggest changes in my life since graduating from college and getting married; I will be retiring. For my wife and I this will be an opportunity for us to spend more time with each other, our children and grandchildren but it will be an opportunity to serve a mission together. This has been a goal of ours for almost 42 years. We are excited about the opportunity to spend time together and look forward to strengthening our love for each other discovering new and exciting things together.

Mortality is a time of change and growth. It does not matter what you are faced with, graduation, marriage, job changes, retirement, sickness and even death; if we have faith in our Savior Jesus Christ we will get through it. For now, we look forward to the new beginnings that are ahead. We have faith that the Lord will direct our lives for good and He will use us and our talents in continuing to build his kingdom here on earth and we will serve with joy and gladness.

Your comments and questions are welcome.

The Road Trip

Recently my wife went on a trip to Canada to visit her family.  She drove from Logan, Utah to Prince Albert, Saskatchewan (Central, SK); to Red Deer (above Calgary), Alberta; to Kalowna, British Columbia (South East B.C.); to Vancouver Island on the East coast of B.C; to Olympia, Washington, then a stop in Boise, Idaho to spend the last night with my brother, and finally back to Logan, Utah. The trip was more than 3200 miles and took her three weeks. To plan for the trip we got on Google maps and plotted her course and I showed her how to use the GPS on her iPhone. She also had a stand-alone GPS system and she had even purchased an Atlas so she could use the physical maps as she went. We thought we had planned every detail so she would not have any problems getting to each of her destinations, or so we thought.

As soon as she crossed the border into Canada, her iPhone stopped working; not because of the carrier but because her iPhone was an older model and the type of phone she had did not work in Canada. She no longer had access to the technology she needed to get her from one place to the next – her GPS. When she tried to use the stand alone GPS, the maps were out of date and did not have the correct maps for Canada. She only had the Atlas to help her find her way and those maps did not have the detail she needed when she got into the towns to find her way to her family’s homes. Fortunately, she did know her way around Prince Albert her first destination because she grew up there and her family still lived on the family farm that she was raised on so all she needed to do was get to Prince Albert and she was fine.

Though inconvenient the loss of her iPhone was as big of a problem as I thought. When she got to her first stop she was able to call her family at then next stop and get directions and she was able to call me each day and let me know how the trip was going. Since cells phones are only about 30 years old and we both are older than that we know what it is like to travel without one. It was inconvenient but not impossible.

On her second leg of the trip from Prince Albert to Red Deer in Alberta, she ran into the next problem – no road signs. Even though she had the names of the streets she was supposed to turn on, the streets were not marked and she ended up on a three-hour side tour of Alberta before she found her way to Red Deer. The side tour ended up being quite the adventure because a very large Moose (as she described it) ran across the road in front of her car and then she came across a flock of Snow Canadian Geese that she thought was absolutely beautiful.

While there were several adjustments that needed to be made because of the technical difficulties she managed to make it to each destination and have a wonderful time visiting family and friends and eventually made it back home safely. It was a trip she will always remember.

This is not the first time we have experienced problems with GPS technology. A few years ago I went on a trip to Chicago for some training for work and my wife went with me. One day while I was in meetings she decided to go to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. I programed the GPS with the address to the museum which was on Lake Shore Drive. She took off and I went to my meeting. About two hours later she called me and asked how long it was supposed to take to get to the museum. I said about 45 minutes. When she told me she was still not there I asked what the last sign was that she passed. She told me Des Moines, Iowa; she was headed back to Salt Lake City! I told her to click on the return to start button and head back to the hotel. When she got back I looked at the GPS and even though I thought I had put in Lake Shore Drive, Chicago; it had defaulted to Lake Shore Drive, Utah. Needless to say I still have a distrust of GPSs and their accuracy.

We can compare my wife’s road trip to our time here in mortality. There is a purpose for our birth here at this time. We did not just pop into existence when we were born and we will not cease to exist after we die. We lived before this life as spirit children of our Heavenly Father and he provided a plan whereby we could come here and gain physical bodies, develop faith in him and His Son, Jesus Christ; learn to keep the commandments he gave us; and receive the ordinances that would enable us to return to his presence and live with him eternally. Our lives do not end at death, they will go on but the type of life we have there will depend on the roads we travel and if we follow the proper route that will get us to the final destination – back to Heavenly Father’s presence.

Many people have no idea what their destination is, they are just driving along taking whatever road they think looks interesting. Others may know the destination but have no idea which road to take; they have no functioning GPS, their GPS does not have the correct maps, their Atlas does not have the detail they need,  or there are no road signs to follow. Others may think that they are on the right road and are listening to the GPS directions but do not realize they are in reality headed to the wrong “Lake Shore Drive”, they get lost on a three-hour diversion because they think they know the directions and don’t listen to the GPS, or they are not following the maps or the directions that they were given.

All roads do not lead to Heaven and the Savior has said that the way is straight and narrow. If we do not follow the correct route we may find that when we arrive at our final destination that it was not where they wanted to go. Michael Goodman speaking to the students of BYU said: “We are here on earth to learn what we need to learn so that we can become what we are intended to become and return to the presence of our loving Heavenly Father and Mother for eternity". (“Become a Seeker: They Way, the Truth, and the Life”) In other words we need to know what roads will take us on our road trip that will lead us back to that destination to live with Heavenly Father and we must avoid the side roads that will only lead us away from that destination.

The Lord has not sent us here without the proper directions to get us back home to him. He has given us a variety of GPS instruments, maps, and other things to help us along the way. They come to us through the scriptures, living prophets, Apostles, and other church leaders, our family, friends. He has provided commandments as road signs to follow to keep us safe and provided us the Holy Ghost to help us stay on the right road or to warn us if we make the wrong turn. He has provided all of the ordinances that will qualify us to return and live with him.

Eventually like my wife we will all return home from our road trip. If we use the “technology” that the Lord has provides us we will arrive at the proper destination safely.

Your comments and questions are welcome. 

God’s Gift of Agency

There are a few things that people say that make me chuckle. “The Devil made me do it” or “I have no choice in the matter” or my favorite: “If God were real, why does he just no show himself?” Unfortunately life is not that easy, the Devil cannot and God will not make us do anything; they can’t and we always have a choice in things. That choice is called agency. Agency is a fundamental part of the Plan of Salvation and has been since the beginning. The Lord speaking to the prophet Enoch said:

The Lord said unto Enoch: Behold these thy brethren; they are the workmanship of mine own hands, and I gave unto them their knowledge, in the day I created them; and in the Garden of Eden, gave I unto man his agency; (Moses 7:32)

Agency is so critical to God’s plan for us, Satan has sought to destroy the agency that God has given us. Again in Moses we read:

Satan rebelled against me, and sought to destroy the agency of man, which I, the Lord God, had given him, and also, that I should give unto him mine own power; by the power of mine Only Begotten, I caused that he should be cast down;

And he became Satan, yea, even the devil, the father of all lies, to deceive and to blind men, and to lead them captive at his will, even as many as would not hearken unto my voice. (Moses 4:3-4)

In the Garden of Eden, Adam was given a choice he could eat of fruit of every tree in the garden except for the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. They were told that if they did partake of the fruit of that tree they would die. Not understanding God’s plan for his children, Satan thought he we thwart the plan by getting Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit, but as Adam and Eve later found out, he actually helped them make the necessary choice to partake of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil causing the Fall of Man and putting the Plan of Salvation into motion. After partaking of the fruit, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden and were forced to work for everything. Later they were taught the Gospel and they said:

 10 And in that day Adam blessed God and was filled, and began to prophesy concerning all the families of the earth, saying: Blessed be the name of God, for because of my transgression my eyes are opened, and in this life I shall have joy, and again in the flesh I shall see God.

 11 And Eve, his wife, heard all these things and was glad, saying: Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed, and never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient. (Moses 5:10-11)

Agency is so important to God’s plan for us that even God will not force us to keep his commandments or allow Satan to take our agency away. We must make the choice to obey or disobey; no one can force those decisions. The prophet Lehi in the Book of Mormon taught his sons the importance of opposition in our lives:

11 For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my firstborn in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead, having no life neither death, nor corruption nor incorruption, happiness nor misery, neither sense nor insensibility.

  15 And to bring about his eternal purposes in the end of man, after he had created our first parents, and the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and in fine, all things which are created, it must needs be that there was an opposition; even the forbidden fruit in opposition to the tree of life; the one being sweet and the other bitter.

 16 Wherefore, the Lord God gave unto man that he should act for himself. Wherefore, man could not act for himself save it should be that he was enticed by the one or the other. (2 Nephi 2:11, 15-16)

Another part of agency is that we must choose to believe in God and his Son Jesus Christ. Through our choices to obey the commandments and to believe that God exists we can come to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is true and that it has been restored to the earth again. Faith is an important part of agency and our choice to believe. There must be the possibility that God is real and just as much a possibility that he is not real. We choose by faith to follow the path that leads to God and forgiveness through His Son Jesus Christ. If God could be proven through scientific discovery, it would destroy agency. In a devotional talk at Brigham Young University Brother Dearden explained it this way:

“As much as I love science as a means for discovering truth, my life’s experience suggests that it will never be possible to arrive at full spiritual knowledge by purely scientific methods. I know this because if such a course were possible, it would destroy our agency, and the Lord does not work that way. Agency is sacred. If we could prove the gospel true and always know how to act purely through reason or logic or science, only choices in accord with the gospel would be reasonable or acceptable. Correct choices would become obvious with minimal effort on our part. That was essentially the plan all of us rejected in the premortal existence. Although sometimes our choices have consequences that limit our future choices, our Father in Heaven never compromises our agency. (“The Sacred Gift of Agency”, David V. Dearden, BYU Devotional Address, March 31, 2009).

While we have our agency to choose to believe in the reality of God or not, it does not change the absolute truth that he does exist. President Spencer W. Kimball explained this when he said:

“God, our Heavenly Father—Elohim—lives. That is an absolute truth. All four billion of the children of men on the earth might be ignorant of him and his attributes and his powers, but he still lives. All the people on the earth might deny him and disbelieve, but he lives in spite of them. They may have their own opinions, but he still lives, and his form, powers, and attributes do not change according to men’s opinions. In short, opinion alone has no power in the matter of an absolute truth. He still lives. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Almighty, the Creator, the Master of the only true way of life—the gospel of Jesus Christ. The intellectual may rationalize him out of existence and the unbeliever may scoff, but Christ still lives and guides the destinies of his people. That is an absolute truth; there is no gainsaying.” (“Absolute Truth”, Spencer W. Kimball, BYU Devotional, September 6, 1977)

One other important part of agency is that there are consequences that come with the choices we make. President Dieter F. Uchtodorf had this to say about our agency:

You have agency and you are free to choose. But there is actually no free agency. Agency has its price. You have to pay the consequences of your choices.

Like gravity or drag in aerodynamics, agency will collect its fee through accountability—just like the foolish man who chose to step out of the window of a high building had to accept the consequences of his choice. He had to learn the hard way that “it ain’t the free fall that hurts; it’s the sudden stop.”

Agency is a spiritual matter. Without awareness of alternatives, you could not choose. Agency is so important in your lives that you not only can choose obedience or rebellion but you must. During this life you cannot remain on neutral ground—you cannot abstain from either receiving or rejecting the light from God. (“The Wind Beneath Your Wings”, Dieter F. Uchtdorf, BYU Devotional, November 11, 2003)

The final principle that comes with agency is that our Heavenly Father knew that we would not live in this world and always make the right choices, nor would we always choose to be obedient to his commandments. We are not perfect and therefore would not live perfect lives. From the beginning God knew that Adam and Eve had to choose to eat the forbidden fruit for the Gospel Plan to be put in action. He also knew that only one would be able to live a perfect life and that would be His only begotten Son in the flesh, Jesus Christ. Again from the Book of Mormon we read of Lehi’s teachings of the importance of choosing to believe in the redemptive power of the atonement of Jesus Christ:

 25 Adam fell that men might be; and men ^care, that they might have ^djoy.

 26 And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon, save it be by the punishment of the law at the great and last day, according to the commandments which God hath given.

 27 Wherefore, men are ^afree according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself.

 28 And now, my sons, I would that ye should look to the great Mediator, and hearken unto his great commandments; and be faithful unto his words, and choose eternal life, according to the will of his Holy Spirit; (2 Nephi 2:25-28)

Agency is God’s gift to us his children. We show our love for him by using that agency to choose to believe in him and in His Son Jesus Christ. We also use that agency to accept our weaknesses and give our sins away and rely on the atonement of Jesus Christ to help us overcome our sins and the times we make choices that take us off the gospel path. I know that these principles are true and are wonderful when we understand them. I also know that we are blessed when we choose to follow the path that brings us closer to Jesus Christ and back to the presence of our Eternal Father with our families.

Your comments and questions are welcome.