April 22- 28

Hi Sisters,
It's the last full week of the month and here's what we've got going on.

Dates to Remember:
April 28: Mormon Helping Hands 8 a.m. - 12 p.m.
May 10: Stake Women's Conference Plan Your Life Around the Temple. 6:30 p.m. at the stake center. Light dinner will be served

Monthly Demo Class:

* NOTE: A couple of our April demos have been cancelled. The schedule below is our latest update.

We will be offering demos monthly that can help strengthen our families and homes. Here is the schedule for the next few months. The times and dates change depending on the teacher, so take note of when demos are offered.

May 3- California Rolls- with Jane Boihem- 11am at Geralene Beckett’s home

May- Food Dehydration with Elaine Gold- date and time TBD

May 18 - Ebelskiver (Danish pancakes) with Brittany Larsen - 10 a.m.

June - Making wheat bread with Eileen Stidham - time and date TBD

If you have a skill you would like to learn or a skill you would be willing to offer, please contact Katie Anderson or Geralene Beckett and we will get it on the schedule for the second half of the year.

Visiting Teaching:

Here is a link for this month's visiting teaching message. Remember to get it done early and to prayerfully consider the message your sisters need to hear. Also, here is a link to a cute handouts to take with you if you like.

Missionary News:
If you would like to feed the missionaries, please contace Lauri Rex at laurirex@yahoo.com or 589-2929.

Don't forget to keep not only the elders serving in our ward in your prayers, but also the elders serving from our ward. Patrick Carlisle is in the Berlin, Germany mission and Landon Gold is serving in Durban, South Africa.

Preparedness:

Our ward still is in need of ham radio operators. If you are interested in learning, or have a son who'd like to earn a merit badge, classes are being offered at the Mission Viejo Stake Center at 7 p.m. on these dates: April 26, May 3, and May 10. The class is free, but you should try to attend all three in order to pass the exam. There is a $15 fee for the exam. To register contact Ken Campbell at KE6AVE@ocpreparedness.com.

Mormon Helping Hands:

April 28 8 a.m. - 12 p.m. - Come participate in a day of service by helping to clean up our community. This is a great way for people to see what we are all about. Contact Elaine Gold for more info: gearedforgold@gmail.com.

Lesson Schedule:

April 22: Teachings for our Times, Elder Hales Waiting Upon the Lord, Oct. 2011 conference

April 29: Combined w/ priesthood, TBA

May 6: Presidency Message

May 13: George Albert Smith chapter 9 Prayer

Lesson Recap:  Waiting Upon the Lord

I was out of town this week and missed Sister Griffith's lesson, but here are some highlights from Elder Hales's October conference talk.

The core of his talk centers around this question:

I have often pondered, Why is it that the Son of God and His holy prophets and all the faithful Saints have trials and tribulations, even when they are trying to do Heavenly Father’s will? Why is it so hard, especially for them?

He answers in these paragraphs:

As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of our life on earth is to grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? The scriptures give us an answer in one simple phrase: we “wait upon the Lord.”¹² Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His Son. He already knows, and we have the opportunity to learn, that no matter how difficult our circumstances, “all these things shall [be for our] experience, and … [our] good.”¹³

Does this mean we will always understand our challenges? Won’t all of us, sometime, have reason to ask, “O God, where art thou?”¹⁴ Yes! When a spouse dies, a companion will wonder. When financial hardship befalls a family, a father will ask. When children wander from the path, a mother and father will cry out in sorrow. Yes, “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”¹⁵ Then, in the dawn of our increased faith and understanding, we arise and choose to wait upon the Lord, saying, “Thy will be done.”¹⁶

Then Elder Hales asks what it means to "wait upon the Lord" and then answers,

 In the scriptures, the word wait means to hope, to anticipate, and to trust. To hope and trust in the Lord requires faith, patience, humility, meekness, long-suffering, keeping the commandments, and enduring to the end...

We may not know when or how the Lord’s answers will be given, but in His time and His way, I testify, His answers will come. For some answers we may have to wait until the hereafter. This may be true for some promises in our patriarchal blessings and for some blessings for family members. Let us not give up on the Lord. His blessings are eternal, not temporary.

Waiting upon the Lord gives us a priceless opportunity to discover that there are many who wait upon us. Our children wait upon us to show patience, love, and understanding toward them. Our parents wait upon us to show gratitude and compassion. Our brothers and sisters wait upon us to be tolerant, merciful, and forgiving. Our spouses wait upon us to love them as the Savior has loved each one of us.

Then Elder Hales closes with this reminder to us:

Every one of us is more beloved to the Lord than we can possibly understand or imagine. Let us therefore be kinder to one another and kinder toward ourselves. Let us remember that as we wait upon the Lord, we are becoming “saint[s] through [His] atonement, … submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon [us], even as a child doth submit to his father.”

What a great talk! And I'm sure Sister Griffith did a fantastic job of teaching it.

See you next Sunday! 

Brittany Larsen

brittanylarsen73@hotmail.com



Presidency members:

Geralene Beckett - Presidentbeckettbunch@cox.net

Diane Smith - 1st Counselordianebsmith.smith5@gmail.com

Katie Anderson - 2nd Counselorkatiewoodanderson@gmail.com

Shannon Lo - Secretaryfoxymomsml@cox.net