Church at Home/Church - August

David has been writing most of our Covid-related stuff, including our Church-at-Home meetings. But I wanted to jump in and add a few thoughts. 

I have missed in-person church. I just have. But there has been something so incredibly special about participating in the sacrament service at home with our immediate family. Watching David prepare and pass the sacrament to our family, having my kids help clean the family room and get the table ready, having the spirit fill our home... it's all been uniquely special. 

I have been thinking about the connection between the Jewish Shabbat and the Sabbath Day. 

I watched a tv episode about the life and ministry of Jesus (The Chosen). It's a fictional story based around the scriptures in the bible to create a "How it could have been" look at the life of Christ. It's been amazing to see the characters of the New Testament come to life. I have particularly loved seeing an up-close look at the Jewish Shabbat traditions and after one particularly poignant episode, I asked our neighbors who are from Israel and who are Jewish if we could attend one of their Friday Shabbat dinners and learn more about their culture. Only Lydia and I were able to attend (Covid has us nervous and their dinner doesn't start until sundown when our kids are usually in bed). Afterward I realized it might have been culturally rude to have only two of us attend because the Shabbat is to be celebrated with the whole family - but the Avrahamis are incredibly gracious and kind people and accepted us anyway. The evening was one of the most wonderful evenings I've ever attended. Not only did they prepare a multiple-course meal but the family sat at the table the whole evening (we didn't get home until almost 11 that night). We just talked, and talked and talked. We laughed. We ate. They explained and allowed us to participate in their cultural traditions and it was just... beautiful. 

It deepened my desire to make more effort into my own traditions to connect to my Savior during my Sabbath day. As I said above, it's been so special to have David blessing and passing the sacrament to our family each week. I have realized that I can help in the preparing of the sacrament each week, too. I have started making a special mini version of the Jewish Challah bread, not as a cultural appropriation thing, but as a respectful way to connect me to the Savior. Making the effort to use this bread instead of a slice from a loaf in the fridge has helped connect me and it has made the sacrament, if not more meaningful, maybe more ... emphasized? I also am planning to get some electric candles to light each Saturday night and have glow all through the Sunday Sabbath. I want to welcome the light of the Savior into our home and that is one physical way that I can demonstrate that.

Traditions create connection - and although traditions without meaning become worthless, traditions with effort, love, and meaning can be impactful in the best ways. I hope that by cultivating these small actions in my own heart it will continue to strengthen my connection with God as well as strengthening my family as well. I hope that our children see their mother and father working together to prepare for and welcome the sabbath day - both now during this Covid pandemic where we are participating in church at our home but also after things return to normal. May we always bring the spirit into our home as we worship on Savior on the Sabbath. 

And on that note: here are some pictures of us attending church in person again for the very first time since March! Right now our ward is assigned one week per month and our congregation is split into three assigned times on that specific day. I will be honest when I say that I have been feeling a little worried about going back and having it feel different. But it was a lovely sacrament meeting and felt so good to be back in our chapel with our ward family again - masks and all. 

Sunday School

After being released from primary I was called to teach the Sunday School, Gospel Doctrine class. I enjoy teaching and speaking and feel like this calling is a blessing directly from Heavenly Father. I have struggled this year to stay up with the Come Follow Me program, and I am so grateful for the opportunity that I've had to have the excuse of my calling to study and partake of the blessings of Sunday School. I don't feel like I am particularly eloquent, I'm awkward more often than not, but I'm trying - and I truly enjoy it. 

In October 2015, President Nelson gave a talk titled "A Plea to My Sisters" and in it he made a... well, a plea for the women of the church to rise up and speak, serve, teach, and love. 

"We, your brethren, need your strength, your conversion, your conviction, your ability to lead, your wisdom, and your voices. The kingdom of God is not and cannot be complete without women who make sacred covenants and then keep them, women who can speak with the power and authority of God! 

President Packer declared: “We need women who are organized and women who can organize. We need women with executive ability who can plan and direct and administer; women who can teach, women who can speak out. …We need women with the gift of discernment who can view the trends in the world and detect those that, however popular, are shallow or dangerous.”

Today, let me add that we need women who know how to make important things happen by their faith and who are courageous defenders of morality and families in a sin-sick world. We need women who are devoted to shepherding God’s children along the covenant path toward exaltation; women who know how to receive personal revelation, who understand the power and peace of the temple endowment; women who know how to call upon the powers of heaven to protect and strengthen children and families; women who teach fearlessly.

Attacks against the Church, its doctrine, and our way of life are going to increase. Because of this, we need women who have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and who will use that understanding to teach and help raise a sin-resistant generation. We need women who can detect deception in all of its forms. We need women who know how to access the power that God makes available to covenant keepers and who express their beliefs with confidence and charity. We need women who have the courage and vision of our Mother Eve. 

My dear sisters, nothing is more crucial to your eternal life than your own conversion. It is converted, covenant-keeping women—women like my dear wife Wendy—whose righteous lives will increasingly stand out in a deteriorating world and who will thus be seen as different and distinct in the happiest of ways.

So today I plead with my sisters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to step forward! Take your rightful and needful place in your home, in your community, and in the kingdom of God—more than you ever have before. I plead with you to fulfill President Kimball’s prophecy. And I promise you in the name of Jesus Christ that as you do so, the Holy Ghost will magnify your influence in an unprecedented way!

I am doing my best to rise to this call. To understand and then teach fearlessly. To have a bedrock understanding of the doctrine of Christ and then speak with the power and authority of God. 

I'll be honest. I have a FAR way to go. And I've struggled with things this year that I never have before. I feel like I thought that I had built a fortress of faith and then one day Satan started attacking me from a different direction and I realized my fortress was really only a wall and I had been expecting Satan to stay on the other side, but as soon as he sidestepped it, I was right in his range. But I have held to the promise that I gave to Him: That I had given him my faith and trust and that I would rise to stand with Him with everything that I had. Over and over, faith and trust - faith and trust - faith and trust. I even started a tag in my scriptures, marking all of the places that speak of faith and trust. Little by little, I have gotten braver and stronger. I have been patient in waiting for the further light and information I was seeking and held fast to what I knew while I waited. 

 On Sunday, I taught the Sunday School lesson. It was on James, 1 Peter, and 2 Peter. There were SO many things that we could have talked about. SO many good things to discuss. But I've been trying to keep my lessons guided by student participation and the spirit and after asking the class to write small phrases that stood out to them in the reading, the rest of the lesson was spent talking about Faith - about asking in faith and trusting in the answer. About the actions that go with faith. About WHY we have faith and HOW we trust in God. One of the final comments had me in tears because her comment was exactly the answer to my personal prayers. I wrote Faith and Trust on the board and realized in that moment - that the entire lesson was a gift to me from loving Heavenly Parents. 

I love the verses in 1 Peter 5: 8-11

8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:
9 Whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.
10 But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.
11 To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.

I sometimes feel like the roaring lion is breathing down my back - but I add my testimony to Peter's. We CAN stand fast in our faith. We are not alone. He will use our trials and struggles to refine us.

He will strengthen me and settle me.

I will have faith and I will trust.

Today I'm just so grateful for the tender mercy that this lesson was to my heart.