May 13 - May 19

Hi Sisters,
I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day. It can sometimes be a painful holiday for those who have lost their mothers or are longing for children of their own. I know there were many years when I dreaded this day. But no matter what our cirumstances, we need to remember the love our Heavenly Father has for us and the blessings he has in store for us when we stay close to him, even in difficult times.

Dates to Remember:
Kids making you crazy? Need to get out of the house? Remember park day each Thurday at 12:00 p.m. at Altisma park. Even if you don't have kids, come by and enjoy chatting with lots of women from the ward.

Book of Mormon Challenge:
Our annual summer Book of Mormon reading will start soon, so get ready! This is a great opportunity to encourage your children to read the entire book when they don't have homework or other school activities to distract them. It's also a great time to read it yourself! Reading it in a short amount of time gives you a whole new perspective on scriptures that may already be familiar.

Monthly Demo Class:
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 22- Food Dehydration with Elaine Gold- 10 a.m.

May 25 - 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:

The May issue of the Ensign is the conference report, so please choose a message from conference to share with the sisters you visit. You can find all of the talks here.

Missionary News:

If you would like to feed the missionaries, please contact 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.

Lesson Schedule:

May 20: George Albert Smith chapter 10 The Scriptures
May 27: TFOT The Laborers in the Vineyard Elder Holland

Lesson Recap:  Open Your Soul to the Lord in Prayer

Annetter Flint taught our lesson today from the George Albert Smith manual. She began by sharing the following quote with us:

I was trained at the knee of a Latter-day Saint mother. One of the first things I remember was when she took me by the hand and led me upstairs. In the room there were two beds, the bed in which my parents slept, and a little trundle bed over on the other side. I can remember it as if it were yesterday. When we got upstairs, she sat down by my little trundle bed. She had me kneel in front of her. She folded my hands and took them in hers, and taught me my first prayer. I will never forget it. I do not want to forget it. It is one of the loveliest memories that I have in life, an angelic mother sitting down by my bedside and teaching me to pray.

“It was such a simple prayer, but … that prayer opened for me the windows of heaven. That prayer extended to me the hand of my Father in heaven, for she had explained to me what it all meant as far as a little child could understand. From that day until now, while I have covered approximately a million miles in the world among our Father’s other children, every day and every night, wherever I have been, when I have gone to my bed or arisen from it, I have felt I was close to my Heavenly Father. He is not far away.

What a great reminder on Mother's Day about the important lessons mothers teach their children. Prayer allows us to talk to Heavenly Father as though he were present and is fundamental to our spiritual growth.

Sister Flint shared the  following story from the manual with us which illustrates the far-reaching effects a child who knows how to pray can have.

A number of years ago … I heard of [a] nine-year-old boy, an orphan, who was hurried off to the hospital, where examination indicated that he had to be operated upon without delay. He had been living with friends who had given him a home. His father and mother, (when they were alive) had taught him to pray; thus, when he came to the hospital, the thing he wanted was to have the Lord help him.

The doctors had decided to hold a consultation. When he was wheeled into the operating room, he looked around and saw the nurses and the doctors who had consulted on his case. He knew that it was serious, and he said to one of them, as they were preparing to give him the anesthetic: “Doctor, before you begin to operate, won’t you please pray for me?”

The doctor, with seeming embarrassment, offered his excuses and said, “I can’t pray for you.” Then the boy asked the other doctors, with the same result.

Finally, something very remarkable happened; this little fellow said, “If you can’t pray for me, will you please wait while I pray for myself?”

They removed the sheet, and he knelt on the operating table, bowed his head and said, “Heavenly Father, I am only an orphan boy. I am awful sick. Won’t you please make me well? Bless these men who are going to operate that they will do it right. If you will make me well, I will try to grow up to be a good man. Thank you, Heavenly Father, for making me well.”

When he got through praying, he lay down. The doctors’ and the nurses’ eyes were filled with tears. Then he said, “I am ready.”

The operation was performed. The little fellow was taken back to his room, and in a few days they took him from the hospital, well on the way to complete recovery.

Some days after that, a man who had heard of the incident went to the office of one of the surgeons and said, “Tell me about the operation you performed a few days ago—the operation on a little boy.”

The surgeon said, “I have operated on several little boys.”

The man added, “This little boy wanted someone to pray for him.”

The doctor said very seriously, “There was such a case, but I don’t know but that it is too sacred a thing for me to talk about.”

The man said, “Doctor, if you will tell me, I will treat it with respect; I would like to hear it.”

Then the doctor told the story about as I have retold it here, and added: “I have operated on hundreds of people, men and women who thought they had faith to be healed; but never until I stood over that little boy have I felt the presence of God as I felt it then. That boy opened the windows of heaven and talked to his Heavenly Father as one would talk to another face to face. I want to say to you that I am a better man for having had this experience of standing and hearing a little boy talk to his Father in heaven as if he were present

Cloak children with the power of prayer and show them they can have a personal relationship with our Heavely Father.

Prayer brings us comfort, answers and peace. President Smith said the following of prayer:

I would like to emphasize this: I hope that the Latter-day Saints will not fail to hold their prayers, their secret prayers and their family prayers. Children who are reared in homes where they do not have family prayers and secret prayers lose a lot, and I fear that in the midst of the world’s confusion, of hurry and bustle, many times homes are left without prayer and without the blessings of the Lord; these homes cannot continue to be happy. We live in an age when we need our Heavenly Father as much as they ever needed Him in any age

Sister Flint encouraged us to make prayer a priority, especially family prayer. The connections we make through family prayer can carry us through when we need it most. Prayer is the passport to spiritual power.

President Smith said, I noticed … on a billboard: “The family that prays together stays together.” I do not know who placed it there, but I want to say that if you will think about it for a moment you will know that it is true. I admonish you to pray together to the Lord, and I do not mean by that to just say prayers, I do not mean to … repeat something over and over again, but open your souls to the Lord as husbands and fathers in your home, and have your wives and your children join you. Have them participate. There then comes into the home an influence that you can feel when you go there.
He also shared the following story that illustrates the importance of listening to promptings: 

My father as a young man came [near to] losing his life in the Provo River. … His father, who was at Salt Lake City, felt impressed to go into a room that had been set apart for prayer. He … knelt down … and said, “Heavenly Father, I feel that there is something seriously wrong with my family in Provo. Thou knowest I can not be with them there and be here. Heavenly Father, wilt thou preserve and safeguard them. …”

At the time when he was praying, just as near as it was possible to indicate by checking the time, my father had fallen into the river. It was at flood time. Timbers and rocks were pouring down from the canyon, and he was helpless. Those who were near saw his predicament, but they couldn’t reach him. The turbulence of the water was such that nobody could live in it. They just stood there in horror. Father was doing everything he could to keep his head above water, but he was being thrown up and down and banged against the rocks and logs. All at once a wave lifted him bodily from the water and threw him upon the shore. It was a direct answer to … prayer.

We need to be ready to listen to promptings of the spirit and prayer for guidance that we may recognize when  we receive promptings. Sometimes we get answers that don't make sense but we need to be patient. And when we receive the answers, remember to say thank you.

 The last quote from the manual that Sister Flint shared with us was the following:

We should attend to our secret prayers. We should live so near to our Heavenly Father that when we bow before him we may know that the thing we are asking will be pleasing unto him, and if it isn’t granted in the way that we ask it we may know that the blessing will come to us that we are entitled to and that will really be a blessing

We should develop a relationship with our Heavenly Father where we rely on him for answers to our prayers, but this should be accompanied by our ability to make personal choices. The Lord will not always give us answers when we can make a decision by ourselves or if all of our choices are good.

And the last message Sister Flint left with us was to remember those in need in our prayers. Pray for the sisters you visit teach, even if you think they don't need it. Pray for those in leadership positions and pray for whomever you feel prompted needs your prayers.

Thank you for a beautiful lesson, Annette. I hope everyone learned as much as I did about one of most basic principles of the gospel.
 

Have a great week!

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