That is the Test

“The precise nature of the test of mortality, then, can be summarized in the following questions: Will my body rule over my spirit, or will my spirit rule over my body? Will I yield to the enticings of the natural man or to the eternal man? That, brothers and sisters, is the test.” (Elder David A. Bednar, “Ye are the Temple of God” Ricks College Devotional, January 11, 2000)

At the pearly gates

I don't want to be drive up to the pearly gates in a shiny sports car, wearing beautifully tailored clothes, my hair perfectly coiffed, and with long perfectly manicured fingernails!

I want to drive up in a station wagon that has mud on the wheels from taking kids to scout camp. I want to be there with grass stains on my shoes from mowing sister Schneck's lawn. I want to be there with a smudge of peanut butter on my shirt from making sandwiches for a sick neighbors children. I want to be there with a little dirt under my finger nails from helping to weed someone's garden. I want to be there with children's sticky kisses on my checks and the tears of a friend on my shoulder. I want the Lord to know I was really here and that I really lived.

Majorie Pay Hinckley

Build up righteousness or Fail in everything!

"Daughter, use all your gifts to build up righteousness in the earth. Never use them to acquire name or fame. Never rob your home, nor your children. If you were to become the greatest woman in this world, and your name should be known in every land and clime, and you would fail in your duty as wife and mother, you would wake up on the morning of the first resurrection and find you had failed in everything; but anything you can do after you have satisfied the claims of husband and family will redound to your own honor and to the glory of God."

Brigham Young

Let us as latter-day Saints reach out to others not of our faith. Let us never act in a spirit of arrogance or with a holier-than-thou attitude. Rather, may we show love and respect and helpfulness toward them. We are greatly misunderstood, and I fear that much of it is of our own making. We can mbe more tolerant, more neighborly, more friendly, more of an expample than we have been in the past. Let us teach our children to treat others with friendship, respect, love and admiration. That will yeild a far better result than will an at titude of egotism and arrogance.
April 2000 President Gordon B. Hinckley

Do Not Betray....

O ye Twelve! and all Saints! profit by this important Key—that in all your trials, troubles, temptations, afflictions, bonds, imprisonments and death, see to it, that you do not betray heaven; that you do not betray Jesus Christ; that you do not betray the brethren; that you do not betray the revelations of God, whether in the Bible, Book of Mormon, or Doctrine and Covenants, or any other that ever was or ever will be given and revealed unto man in this world or that which is to come.

History of the Church, 3:385.

Judah and Joseph

"Before Joseph Smith was killed, he dispatched a Jewish apostle by the name of Orson Hyde to dedicate the land of Palestine for the return of the Jews. This concern for a homeless people and the sending of this apostle was done at a time when the Mormons themselves were virtually homeless, having been dispossessed of their lands and possessions in Missouri. "Orson Hyde left on his assignment in the fall of 1840. He arrived in Palestine in October 1841. On October 24, 1841, he ascended the Mount of Olives all alone, built an altar to the Lord, and offered a dedicatory prayer."

Ezra Taft Benson, "A Message to Judah from Joseph," Ensign, Dec. 1976, 68