Time… seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years ….. Time ticks on. It’s the thing that life is made of. Most of the time there is never enough of it! Yet sometimes we wish it away. Once it is gone, we can never get it back.
Have you ever thought about what fills your time? How you use it? President Ochtdorf posed this question. What are the non-essential things that clutter your days and steal your time?
As Latter-day Saint Women, we have many, many, responsibilities that fill our time and it seems like we never feel we have enough time to do everything that our hearts and our minds want to.
We recognize the many demands for your time and after taking that into consideration along with your commitments and responsibilities, we have discussed and prayed as a presidency, along with the Bishop as to the direction our ward should go with the changes that President Beck presented at the General RS Meeting.
Because we are a worldwide church, there are vast differences in each ward. Each ward has its own unique set of characteristics which can be compared to the DNA that identifies each of us as unique. Therefore the Lord has left it to each Bishop and RS Presidency to seek inspiration and direction for their ward, as to how often these meetings should be held. These meetings will no longer be called Enrichment but simply what they are, for example “Service Opportunity”. As we have prayed, we have felt directed to hold 4 meetings on a ward level with the stake adding 2 others. A total of 6 for 2010. Our focus will be to strengthen each other in Faith, Family, Service, Provident Living and Self Reliance. We have planned these meetings for January, March, June, and November. We hope this will give you more time to be with your families and serve the Lord. In an effort to involve more sisters and their individual talents and strengths, we will no longer have an Enrichment Leader or committee, but will be calling upon you to share your knowledge, skills and talents, as coordinators and participants for these meetings to help strengthen us in these areas and increase sisterhood and unity.
We feel a need to have more service opportunities available throughout the year. These are great places to invite our non-member and less active friends. We know that when we serve others we feel true joy and that our own problems seem lighter. “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.” President Monson said this, “I believe the Savior is telling us that unless we lose ourselves in service to others, there is little purpose to our own lives.” “ Service is a great antidote to grief and despair.” Gordon B Hinckley “Man’s greatest happiness comes from losing himself for the good of others.” David O McKay
We look forward to these RS Meetings and hope you will plan to attend, for we know that we are strengthened when we meet together as sisters.
What a blessing it has been to meet with most of you in our VT interviews last week. As we discussed the rewards and challenges of Visiting Teaching, the most common challenge for most of you was Time. Finding the Time for Visiting Teaching. Most of you agreed that you know it is important and always feel good after you got it done.
Our dear prophet said: “I am confident it is the intention of each member to serve and help those in need. How many times has your heart been touched as you have witnessed the need of another? How often have you intended to be the one to help? And yet how often has day to day living interfered and you’ve left it for others to help? We become so caught up in the busyness of our lives. Were we to step back, and take a good look at what we’re doing, we may find that we’ve spent too much time taking care of the things which do not really matter much, while neglecting those more important causes.” Because Visiting Teaching can do so much good, the adversary does not want it to happen, so he works hard to put things and busyness in our way to distract us from the Lord’s work.
President Beck teaches, “A sister in this Church has no other responsibility outside of her family that has the potential to do as much good as does Visiting Teaching. Visiting Teaching is one duty we have in the Church where we are certain to have the help of the Lord if we ask for it.” Sisters, when you feel overwhelmed with too much to do, go to your knees and ask for His help! “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Matt. 6:33
When we make time and effort to do the Lord’s work, He will assist us in getting it done. Just as the loaves and the fishes were multiplied, I believe the Lord can also multiply our time. Give us more time? Is it possible for the Lord to help me take care of the laundry, the homework, the fussy baby, to help me do my Visiting Teaching & church work? Yes, it is true, He can help. “Trust in the Lord with all thy heart and lean not to thine own understanding.“ The Lord will be with you and send angels to help you. DC84:88
When the Savior was on the earth, he was a very busy man, he had a lot of work to do!! When the multitudes gathered and wanted blessings, he could have pronounced a blessing on the whole multitude and been done-- but rather He made the time to individually bless each one. The same is true with VT. President Beck states,” If our responsibility were primarily about reporting that every sister in the ward received the VT message, it would be much more efficient to read it aloud in sacrament meeting& be done. Because we follow the example and teachings of the Savior Jesus Christ, we value the sacred assignment of Visiting Teaching, to individually love, know, serve, understand, teach, and minister in His behalf. Ideally every sister should watch over and strengthen at least one other sister in her ward. It is our blessing to pray for another sister and receive inspiration as to how the Lord would have us care for her. Visiting Teaching becomes the Lord’s work when our hearts focus on People. It is more a way of life than a task, it is never finished. “
I testify that when you give your time and heart to this work, the Lord will help you accomplish it. If you do not yet have a testimony of Visiting Teaching, please pray for experiences to give you that testimony. This responsibility will strengthen your homes and families as you become partners with the Lord. Thank you for your dedication to this divinely inspired work. It helps us keep track of each sister in our ward and her needs and challenges. The Bishop and I couldn’t do it without you. Thank you for being the eyes and the ears and hands. You are the angels in the lives of the sisters of this ward that help bear them up. You have ministered to those in need as the Savior would. We thank you for your work. There is still much to be done. We are surrounded by those in need of our encouragement, friendship, kindness, comfort and the gospel of Jesus Christ. May we use our time wisely when it comes to efforts in doing the Lord’s work. Make Visiting Teaching one of the more important things to be done. Begin early in the month, give them your time and your heart and you will feel the joy and peace that follow service. I testify that He lives and loves each of us individually and feel privileged to be a part of this great work.
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