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 Force is Strong in Our Family

Ray and Constance Strong

In one of the Star Wars movies, Yoda tells Luke Skywalker that the Force is strong in his family. I recently had the blessing of attending a family reunion for my mother’s family (The Strong Family). So, I can say that in our family the Force IS Strong. Ray & Constance Strong are my mother’s parents, and it was their decedents that were there to celebrate the legacy that they built. Ray and Constance had seven children and four of the siblings were there. The oldest brother passed away a few years ago and two could not attend. My mother, Allis, is the one on the far left.

Ray and Constance Strong's Children

One of the forces that was strong at that reunion was the love that all the family members had for Ray and Constance and for everyone that was there. It had been many years since the last time I had been with this side of our family. We had a wonderful time. Many times, family reunions are filled with drama but in this family, while there was a lot of drama it was in the telling of stories about our parents growing up and sharing memories of when we were young, the family visits, and time spent with aunts, uncles and cousins will never be forgotten. There was a joy that is difficult to explain but remains in my heart today. There were cousins that I had not seen for a long time and others that I had never met. I had so much fun getting to know these second cousins (the children of my cousins) and hope that I had the same impact that they had on me.

Third generation Strong's

They are all beautiful young women and full of life. I am sure that they will remember me as one of the craziest of uncles because of the experience that I shared with them one morning at breakfast. I woke that morning and went to take a shower and found a little blue dot with the number 806 printed on it on my chest. I had no idea where it came from (I was not wearing any new clothes that would have had a tag on it). I told them that I thought that maybe the angle of death had visited me during the night and marked me but never got around to number 806 so I was still alive. Whenever any of them saw me they would always ask how 806 was doing and I would respond that I was still alive and well. I told them that I had my invisibility cloak and was still avoiding the angel of death.

Waiter with the Deathly Hallows Tatoo

Another fun fact that I learned at the reunion was the circumstances about how my father and mother met in Washington D.C. My aunt Jo had come to visit her sister (my mother) there and they met my father and his friend one night. The story they told was my dad was initially interested in Jo but when he found out she was only 16 he turned his interest to my mother and the rest is history. I was joking with Aunt Jo that it sure would have been a different Potter family if she had married my father not her sister, Allis. You could see the shudder and frightful thought that ran through her mind as she pondered that thought. Not sure if what frightened her most was the thought of being married to my father or the thought of having all the potter children as hers. It was probably both! I think she probably slept well that night counting her blessing for being so young at the time.

We at lunch at a pizza place just off the Indiana University campus, where we were staying, and our waiter had a deathly hallows tattoo on his arm. When he found out my name, he had to have a picture with the “real” Harry Potter.

Uncle Ray and family

Another force that was strong with this family was the spirit of Elijah. In Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi prophesied that before the second coming of Jesus Christ would happen, the Prophet Elijah would be sent to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children and the heart of the children to their fathers” (Malachi 4:5-6). During one of our evenings together we had a laptop connected to a large TV and we had our family tree showing. Several of the family members were very interested in looking at the Strong ancestors and who their relatives were. 

Our Strong family is descended from Elder John Strong who immigrated from England in the 1600s. We also have ancestors that came to America on the Mayflower. We even have royal blood coursing our veins. We have John, King of England (who signed the Magna Carta), Charlemagne, and William the Conqueror as our ancestors. We followed one of the lines all the way back to Adam and Eve. There are 140 generations from my children to Adam. One of my cousins found out her grandparents (or great grandparents, I don’t remember which) were from Russia. The power of Elijah was strong and the excitement evident as we looked up our ancestors and discovered new things and our hearts were indeed turned to our “fathers”.

One of the most evident forces that the Strong family have is the love that they have for God. There were many different faiths represented in the family, but the love for God that Constance and Ray instilled in their children is strong and continues with their grandchildren, great grandchildren and will continue for generations yet to come.

Ray and Constance not only taught their children to love God but to love their country and the importance of being involved in activities that promote the values we have as families.

Here are more pictures of those that were at the Strong family Reunion.

My cousin Narissa (Uncle Doug's Daughter) and family

Aunt Abbie and her husband Dick

My Mother, Allis and family

I want to express my appreciation to all those who worked hard and long preparing for the Strong family reunion and especially to my mother, Allis Potter, who made it possible for all her children to be there. I am grateful for the kindness and love that we all felt as we met together and for the bond that ties us together as a family. Not only is the force strong in our family but the Strong family is the force that binds us together now and forever.

Your comments are welcome.