So What?

I am in the "so what?" phase of my learning and studying of the gospel.  I always want the question "so what does this mean to me and my life?"  Or if I'm feeling especially flip, "who cares, what does this have to do with me?"

I have been in a love affair with Sunday School for several years now.  It started out slowly many years ago when I received some of the best advice ever from a talk that I don't even remember anymore, but it was this:  what you get out of class is up to you, the crappiest teacher is capable of helping you to learn something if you are willing.  It also talked about being ready to receive revelation.  So I started keeping my red pencil out (this was before the days of my beloved iPad) ready for action.  If it was in my hand I was much more likely to hear something that I needed to highlight or lead me to look something else up or take notes.  It worked really well.  Unfortunately that can be hard to keep up when you really do have not so great teachers.  I also kept having kids and darn it, they never liked going to class.  So I was constantly pulled out or roaming the halls with them or trying to pay attention while trying to entertain them.  I had a whole lot of years barely getting anything out of sunday school.

As the kids got older I slowly started paying attention more and more and the lights started coming on in my brain and my soul.  But, In 2009 I decided to make some serious changed to my spirituality.  Every year we rotate through the standard works.  So in 2009, it was the Old Testament....at least I think it was.....lets see next is New Testament....then Book of Mormon....and right now we're in Doctrine and Covenants.... so yes, I believe the math works and it was 2009.  I put back into practice everything that I knew would work to help be grow spiritually.   I couldn't believe how much I learned and subsequently didn't know.

This excitement lead me to take on a personal study myself a couple years later because that was the book that started to open my eyes.  Also thinking back and trying to piece together why I made decisions that I made and when I made them, I'm pretty sure when I had to substitute 2 days in seminary in 2010-11 year (I believe) I had to teach from the Old Testament and it was Isaiah.  As hard as it was, I had a great time and I remembered how much I had learned in Sunday School.  This made me make the goal in 2011 to study the Old Testament - which took me 1 year and 7 months.

We still have remarkable teachers.  We were on lesson 36 "The Desert Shall Rejoice, and Blossom as the Rose."  Basically it is the history of the first few years of the saints arriving in Salt Lake, their hardships, them trying to build the temple, having to evacuate the state because of the president of the United States.  This evacuation caused the saints to fill in the hole they had dug out for the foundation of the temple and cover the sandstone cornerstones of the temple so the soldiers wouldn't destroy them.  When they returned and uncovered them they were cracked which meant they had to start all over again.  They decided to use granite because they wanted the temple to last through the millennium -which it would not have if they had not been forced out - they would have proceeded with the sandstone and the temple would have crumbled.

We did get to spend some time at the end of the lesson on that very important point.  Which you can easily answer the question "so what does this mean to me?"  The rest was going over other things that I'm sure some people got stuff out of, I did not.  It was all history without application.  I love this teacher though.  He is from South Africa so I love listening to him talk and has been around for a long time, so he knows everything about everything.  He always has an agenda though so I didn't want to highjack his lesson.  So, that's why I have this blog.  

For what it's worth, here's what I was thinking about during the lesson.  In the "our heritage" manual you find this story:

The Saints worked with energy and faith despite their difficult circumstances, and soon they had made great progress. A traveler on his way to California passed through Salt Lake City in September 1849 and paid tribute to them in this way: “A more orderly, earnest, industrious and civil people, I have never been among than these, and it is incredible how much they have done here in the wilderness in so short a time. In this city which contains about from four to five thousand inhabitants, I have not met in a citizen a single idler, or any person who looks like a loafer. Their prospects for crops are fair, and there is a spirit and energy in all that you see that cannot be equaled in any city of any size that I have ever been in.”⁴

And then later we learn about all these hardships the saints are facing and they start getting called on missions and to colonize.  This is what would happen:

At general conference meetings, President Young read the names of those brethren and their families who were being called to move to outlying areas. These colonizers considered that they were being called on missions and knew that they would remain in their assigned locales until they were released. They traveled to their new areas at their own expense and with their own supplies. Their success depended on how well they used the resources at hand. They surveyed and cleared fields, built gristmills, dug irrigation ditches to bring water to the land, fenced pastures for their stock, and built roads. They planted crops and gardens, built churches and schools, and tried to maintain friendly relations with the Indians. They helped each other in sickness, as well as in births, deaths, and weddings.

After reading these two paragraphs my mind went back to a general conference talk that I had just read that morning.  "Called to serve to declare his word" by Randy D Funk.  Now, this talk was given in the Priesthood session and NO I didn't watch it even though it was broadcast!  I do enjoy reading them once they're in the Ensign though.

He was talking about a missionary from Nepal who was called to serve in India.  He had never met a missionary before and didn't read english so he had no idea what to bring with him for his mission.  Needless to say, it was all the wrong stuff, but he was determined to be amazing through his tiredness, being homesick and struggling with the language, struggling with the mission and needing all the appropriate clothing items for his mission.

Though missionary work was new and challenging for Elder Pokhrel, he served with great faith and faithfulness, seeking to understand and follow what he was learning from the scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and his mission leaders. He became a powerful teacher of the gospel—in English—and an excellent leader. After his mission and some time in Nepal, he returned to India to continue his education. Since January he has served as a branch president in New Delhi. Because of the real growth he experienced as a missionary, he continues to contribute to the real growth of the Church in India.

How did a young man who had never seen a missionary become one with such spiritual strength? How will you receive spiritual power as a missionary to open the doors, in-boxes, and hearts of those in the mission where you will serve? As usual, the answers are found in the scriptures and the words of living prophets and apostles.

So, the lesson was designed to have the class gain appreciation and gratitude for the early saints who struggled and sacrificed all.  My question is how do we show gratitude?  So what of their sacrifice, what does it mean to me today?  Well, when putting it together with the story about the missionary and the 2 paragraphs from the lesson,  what are you exactly doing that is showing such great faith and sacrifice?  Do you take what you have in the gospel for granted?  Do we work as hard?  Are we industrious and civil?  Are we idlers and loafers?  What about our spirit and energy?

If the prophet called your name over the pulpit would you go?  If the answer is yes, then why the "no's" when the bishop extends a calling?  Do you sit around and wait for someone to tell you every move to make or do you figure it out and make it happen? Do you often say, "that's not my job." Are you made up of the same character of  the saints who were sent to colonize with their own recourses and little instruction.  Or like the missionary that just showed up on his mission but then worked so hard to be effective.  When the prophet speaks over the pulpit or a member of the 12 or the general authorities, do you make the necessary course corrections, do you heed the council?  The legacy those saints left behind has been dulled by time.  I look around and find that we are not those people anymore, we've lost our way.  We keep having these lessons to kick ourselves in the rear and realize we need to wake up and get to work!  There is much to do in the kingdom of God.  If we haven't got it all figured out yet, that's ok as Elder Holland said in the last conference, "fix what you can."(which is my new motto btw)

One more quote from the talk by Elder Funk;

The Lord instructs His servants to be humble because the process of being made whole spiritually begins with a broken heart. Think of the good that comes from broken things: Soil is broken to plant wheat. Wheat is broken to make bread. Bread is broken to become the emblems of the sacrament. When one who is repentant partakes of the sacrament with a broken heart and a contrite spirit, he or she becomes whole.⁸ As we repent and become whole through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, we have much more to offer the Savior as we serve Him. “Yea, come unto him, and offer your whole souls as an offering unto him.”⁹

Like those early saints, are we willing to offer our whole souls so that all they sacrificed for is not lost?  Something to ponder.