Venturing vision

I taught Venturing Leader Specific Training last night in the Spanish Fork East Stake Little Philmont program to 12 men who have callings with Priests quorums (Advisers, Bishops). This is our old stake and Emilie's and Scott’s current stake. I had a special incentive to do this well, having five grandsons growing up in this stake who deserve the very best in Young Mens programs and training.

I presented some things differently from the first time I presented this course. I spent a part of the time early in the presentation on trying to help these men deepen their “Vision” of why we use the Venturing program with our Priests Quorums. I gave examples of organizations who have well-crafted mission statements that drive, energize, and focus the efforts of persons in the organization, that state in simple and powerful terms the difference the organization is trying to make in the world:
--To give people the freedom to fly (Southwest Airlines)
--A relentless ally for the individual investor (Charles Schwab)
--To defend America by dominating air, space, and cyberspace (U S Air Force)
--To save people money so they can live better (Wal-Mart)
--To be the flag bearer of Brigham Young University through football excellence, and to embrace truth, virtue, and honor as a beacon to the world. (BYU football team)

I then divided the participants into three groups and had them take a stab at writing a mission statement for the Venturing/Priests Quorum program. The resulting statements were a little wordy but all seemed to emphasize the preparation of leaders. While the groups were working on this project, this is a statement I composed, which I rather like:
–To prepare the next generation of incredible leaders in the Church
(Thanks to Greg for sharing some of the ideas above and also a book by Roy Spence, Jr., IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SELL, IT’S WHAT YOU STAND FOR)

Michael's birthday temple and pie

We had a wonderful family gathering on President’s Day, February 20th. A little of what made it wonderful was that it happened without my prompting or pushing. I have a pleasant feeling when members of our family seem committed and motivated to continue traditions that we have tried to establish. This event was our traditional February celebration of Michael’s birthday, with temple session and then gathering for pizza and cherry pie, his favorites.

We met this time at the Salt Lake temple at 9 am, and did sealings of family names. Besides Wendy and me, in attendance were Alison and Quin, Bruce and Angela, Matthew and Kim, Emilie (Scott was with the kids), Nathan and Gloria, and Andrew and Britain. Kim had made the arrangements and had also sorted the cards into families. I was surprised when the sealer performed the sealing of all the children to their parents in each family at the same time. The first family we did was for Robert Poor and Martha Barnes and involved eight children. Wendy and I were proxy for the parents, and we had enough family members present to enable the sealing of all of their eight children, three boys and five girls, as a single ordinance. As the ten of us knelt together at the alter, I felt such a spiritual rush, that I was impressed to conclude that this family welcomed our work to seal them togther as an eternal family, and I was also proud and happy regarding of our own family group.

I had never been a part of a sealing session before in which sealings of children to parents were performed in family groups rather than individually, and it was quite satisfying. We did sealings for a number of family groups in this manner. The sealer, Brother Richards, said that performing sealings in the way was an option given to temple presidents.

After the temple, we drove to South Weber to Angela’s for the pizza and pie. It was nice to see the grandchildren. Before we ate, Alison gave a nice tribute to Michael. A special treat was seeing Katrina and her fiancé, Troy. He seems like a fine young man. I am impressed that he seems motivated to be at our family gatherings. Other news: Alyssa reported that she has been accepted for college at BYU.
(Birthday pictures at ages 1,3,4,7,7,8,9,11)

We believe in Christ....

When I was a young LDS missionary beginning my service in Minnesota, I was puzzled by a response that the more experienced elders gave to a question sometimes asked by contacts: “Do you believe in being saved?” They had a ready answer: “ Yes, we are all saved from physical death through the resurrection of Christ. All mankind will be resurrected.”

Usually the questioner had a background from Calvinist or Augustinian doctrine (Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian), with teachings that all mankind are totally depraved, that God elects whom he will or will not save, that salvation comes as a gift from God and cannot be earned, and that once a person is committed to Christ (“saved” in their parlance), he or she cannot fall. Their question was not about the resurrection, but about being saved from sin and qualifying to live with God in heaven. The missionary answer begged the question.

The missionary then might continue, if pushed, to explain that we believe that we qualify for eternal salvation in heaven, by “obedience to the laws and ordinance of the gospel.” In my mind I had the thought, “Doesn’t the atonement and grace of Christ also play a part in our salvation?”

Retrospectively, I have come to the conclusion that our missionaries of earlier times might have arrived at a way of describing our doctrines that emphasized differences between our beliefs and those of other churches, a sort of layman’s “street doctrine” that developed more as a reaction to other churches than what our standard works actually taught.

Givens, in his wonderful BY THE HAND OF MORMON: THE AMERICAN SCRIPTURE THAT LAUNCHED A NEW WORLD RELIGION, (Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 62-88) cites evidence that for many years the Book of Mormon was largely viewed by the Church as a sign or evidence of the Restoration and not utilized as a primary source of doctrine. Missionaries, early conference speakers (see Journal of Discourses), and even Joseph Smith, taught primarily from the Bible.

In my opinion, recent developments (President Benson’s challenge to us to immerse ourselves in the Book of Mormon, the use of the Book of Mormon as standard curriculum in seminary classes and Sunday School, publication of the missionary manual PREACH MY GOSPEL) that thrust the study of doctrines of the Book of Mormon upon Church members in a major way, has caused us to greatly deepen our understanding of doctrines of salvation, including:
– The central importance of Christ in our religion.
– The role of his atonement and of the grace of God in overcoming the effects of sin in our lives and in qualifying us for eternal life, including how Christ’s suffering meets the demands of justice and pays the price of our sins.
– The presence of the Spirit in our lives as a witness to us that we have been forgiven for our sins and are on the path to eternal life.

Journal, February 11, 2012

It was a pleasure to have David with us this week. It was a working trip, in which he spent time ever day with a testing person in the Provo Novell office, setting up a testing process on the software product that his is currently working on. He arrived late Sunday evening, and stayed nights with us until leaving for MA mid-Friday. He took the occasion to have a visit with each of his Utah County siblings and also with Rebecca’s family. (One of her brothers was entering the MTC on Wednesday,)

We appreciated having the chance to learn more about what is going on in their family and how the boys are developing. David and Rebecca are serving responsibly in their ward as counselors in the Elders Quorum and Primary. They are about fully occupied, like many in our family, in trying to meet and balance needs and expectations of parenting, work (in David’s case), and church. We are grateful to see evidence of what a fine, thoughtful, responsible, caring, and capable young man David has become.

We had another cabin week the week before last week. We had hoped to have family with us but delayed asking because of a predicted snowstorm that didn’t materialize. We spent an enjoyable afternoon on the Tuesday (1/31) with the Smedley’s, a Heber City couple that work in the temple with us. He is a (nearly) retired lawyer and patriarch of his stake. She preceded Wendy as the women’s coordinator for our Thursday pm shift. They raised a large and successful family. One of their family hobbies was backpacking in So Utah canyons, so we had a lot to reminisce about.

I was recently called as 11 year old scout leader. There is some kind of second calling possibly in the works also with the stake Young Men. I am waiting for more specifics about the latter.

I have been gradually picking up more duties in our scouting district in the Venturing area. I have been assisting with Venturing Round table. The RT Commissioner is Tracy Frandson, who is a local MD. He is a very effective Venturer Advisor and does a great job with the Round Table. He also is very busy. I help him organize each RT by arranging with Stake YM presidency member to help with parts of the RT and also have been leading a brief game or activity each month. I also taught Venturing Leader Specific training for our District a couple of Saturdays ago, and have a couple more appointments to repeat this training in two of our local stakes in the next few weeks.

The weather is still mild and dry. We had hoped to get an ice fishing day in, but the close-by reservoirs do not yet have good ice on them. We saw a handful of ice fishermen out on the very edge of Deer Creek near the inlet, but there was open water out beyond them. I would not feel very good about getting on that ice. Heber Valley had about 4-6 inches of snow on the ground. Here in Spanish Fork, the little snow that we had is all melted. Yesterday, the sun was out and the thermometer read 60 degrees mid-afternoon. Wendy and I have gotten into a better walking routine, and have gotten a 30 minute walk in almost every day for the last couple of weeks.
[Pictured: snow scenes from the cabin, including a couple of sunsets and the first morning sun shining on a snowman that someone built on the front deck.]

Rich, rewarding marriage relationship, #2

Wendy introduced me to the book THE FIVE LOVE LANGUAGE, by Gary Chapman, and this author has some useful things to say about how to communicate love to a spouse. First, he suggests there might be five different ways (“languages”) in which love can be expressed. These are:
1) Words of affirmation (Complements, words of appreciation, encouragement, asking forgiveness, humble requests)
2) Quality time (Doing things together, empathetic listening, conversing on areas of interest)
3) Receiving gifts (Visual symbols of love)
4) Acts of services (Doing things that please your spouse)
5) Physical touch (Physical contact, holding hands, kissing, hugging, sexual intimacy)
(Note that each language also may “dialects”.)

Somehow, in our own developmental processes, from models we have or other experiences, we each develop individual patterns (languages) for expressing and identifying love. Typically persons learn to rely on one or two of the languages as primary. This may lead us to assume that when we are doing what we understand to be loving things (our language of love), that our partner is getting the message of our love for them. Likewise, it is possible that we may only credit our partner with expressing his/her love for us if they are doing these specific things that fit our way for identifying expressions of love (again, our language of love).

What if our partner has a different language of love and cannot recognize our efforts to express love? Or, what if we are unable to recognize his/her efforts to express love for us? Chapman suggests in these cases that each of us has a “love bucket” that remains unfilled. We are not experiencing the full rewards and fulfillment that marriage could have.

The solution: Each partner identify and share their particular language(s) of love (and dialects). Then each use those insights to improve their expressions of love by learning to speak (using) the other’s language.

How might one discover their own primary love language?
1) What does your spouse do or fail to do that hurts most deeply? The opposite probably is your love language.
2) What have you most often requested of your spouse? That thing is likely what would make you feel most loved.
3) In what way do you regularly express your love to your spouse? Your method may be an indication of that which would also make you feel loved.

“I want present salvation”

In our Gospel vocabulary, there are many words that communicate the ultimate blessings for an individual son or daughter of God which are provided in the Father’s Great Plan of Happiness, the eternal rewards that are available through the atonement and gift of Christ for those who obey his will on earth. Interestingly, almost of these blessings also have conditional meanings, in which an aspect of the blessing is also available to persons in the here-and-now. And most of these conditional blessings are evidenced by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul called this the “holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance...” (Eph. 1:14; 2 Cor. 1:22, 5:5), in other words a sort of “down payment” from God on the ultimate blessing of eternal life.

President Brigham Young taught this principle very clearly in regard to the term “salvation/saved”:
“If a person with an honest heart, a broken, contrite, and pure spirit, in all fervency and honesty of soul, presents himself and says that he wishes to be baptized for the remission of sins, and the ordinance is administered by one having authority, is that man saved? Yes, to that period of time. Should the Lord see proper to take him then from the earth, the man has believed and been baptized, and is a fit subject for heaven–a candidate for the kingdom of God in the celestial world, because he has repented and done all was required of him at that time....

“It is present salvation and the present influence of the Holy Ghost that we need every day to keep us on saving ground....

“I want present salvation. I preach, comparatively, but little about the eternities and Gods, and their wonderful works in eternity, and do not tell who first made them, not how they were made; for I know nothing about that. Life is for us, and it is for us to receive it today, and not wait for the Millennium. Let us take a course to be saved today, and, when evening comes, review the acts of the day, repent of our sins, if we have any to repent of, and say our prayers, then we can lie down and sleep in peace until the morning, arise with gratitude to God, commence the labors of another day, and strive to live the whole day to God and nobody else.

[Our work] is the work of the present. The salvation we are seeking is for the present, and sought correctly, it can be obtained and continually enjoyed. If it continues today, it is upon the principles that it will continue tomorrow, the next day, the next week, or the next year, and we might say, the next eternity.

“If we are saved, we are happy, we are filled with light, glory, intelligence, and we pursue a course to enjoy the blessings that the Lord has in store for us. If we continue to pursue that course, it produces just the thing we want, that is, to be saved forever and forever, which will amount to eternal salvation. (Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 8:124-125; 6:278; 1:131, quoted in Robert Millet, “Joseph Smith and Calvinism”, BYU Studies, Vol. 50, No. 4, 2011, pp. 26-27)

Some scriptures which seem to refer to a person being “saved” or having “salvation” in the present include: 1 Cor. 1:18; 2 Cor. 6:2; Titus 3:4-7.

Here are some other examples of similar terms that have two meanings, both 1) eternal and absolute and also 2) able to be experienced conditionally in mortality, with a sampling of some scriptural references that may indicate the latter:

1) Enter into the rest of the Lord (Alma 12:37; Alma 13:3, 6; Moroni 7:3). In the conditional sense, this may be synonymous with receiving the companionship and peace of the Spirit or being born again.

2) Redeemed/Redemption (called “preparatory” in Alma 13:3). This refers to being bought by Christ (he paid the price of one’s sins), or having been forgiven.

3) Justified (blameless, or having forgiveness or a remission of sins through Christ and his Gospel, Mosiah 4:3; Moroni 10:32-33)

4) Sanctified (being holy, without spot, through the grace of Christ, beginning with the reception of the Holy Ghost, Moroni 10:32-33; called saints, meaning sanctified ones, 1 Cor 1:2)

5) Perfected (Moroni (chapter 10:32-33) speaks of being perfected in Christ through his grace and atonement by being joined with him).

6) Life (Salvation, having the Gospel, John 8:12; Acts 11:18; 1 John 3:14, 5:16; Alma 5:34)

Implications: For Church members, recognizing the present receipt of these heavenly blessings may increase our sense of appreciation for the gifts of God and may give us increased comfort and hope and sustain us as we try to continue on the path to eternal life.

Rich, rewarding marriage relationship, #1

Here are some thoughts about things I have learned that seem to help to maintain a rich, rewarding relationship in marriage:

1) Be extremely appreciative
Be quick to identify and gives thanks to your partner for specific things that he/she does for you and your family. Try not to miss anything, big or little. Try to credit every attempt at service to you or action toward you involving a good intention, even if it may have missed the mark in some way.

2) Give service constantly
Look for little ways (and big–but lots of little are better than occasional big) to serve your partner, to provide comfort, to make life easier or better for them. Surprises are good.

3) Fix problems fast
If you even have a hint that you may have given offense to your partner in some way, initiate an apology. Your relationship is generally more important than who is right and wrong. On the other hand, be slow to take offense. If you feel you must raise an issue needing to be resolved, try to present it in private, in a non-threatening way (as a specific action, not a trait), and bracketed with praise and appreciation. At the same time, be willing to hear criticism of your own actions.

Regarding all three of the above, try not to worry about how your partner performs. Concentrate on your own actions.

Also be patient. Recognize that there are stages in the life of a family or situations that arise in which parents may not have much energy and time to work on their relationship.