Work and Self Reliance

How many of you are familiar with this booklet?  (For the Strength of Youth) How many of you have read it?  This year we are going to focus on the standards in the Strength of Youth.  We would like you to think about it as for the Strength of YOUth.

The first presidency has this to say about the study of this book:

We promise that as you keep the covenants you have made and these standards, you will be blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, your faith and testimony will grow stronger, and you will enjoy increasing happiness.

Our Father in Heaven has placed great trust in you. He has a work for you to do. Seek His guidance in prayer, and counsel with your parents and leaders. The decisions you make now will set the course for much of what will follow during your mortal life and throughout eternity.

Today we are going to discuss Work and Self Reliance.

Thou shalt not idle away thy time, neither shalt thou bury thy talent.

Doctrine and Covenants 60:13

Work is honorable. Developing a good work ethic will help you contribute to the world and bring increased sense of self-worth.

What are some ways we can help our children and families develop a good work ethic?

Goals are a good way to develop work.  It’s the first of the year.  What are some of the goals you have set for yourself?  We need to set goals and be willing to work hard to achieve them. Develop self-discipline, be dependable and doing your best in all of your worthwhile pursuits.  Heavenly Father has given gifts and talents to each of us and knows what we are capable of achieving. Seeking His help and guidance will us achieve our goals.

The Lord has commanded us not to be idle. Idleness can lead to inappropriate behavior, damaged relationships, and sin.  What are some things, as sisters, we could be caught up in that would be considered idleness?

One of the blessings of work is developing self-reliance. When you are self-reliant, you use the blessings and abilities God has given you to care for yourself and your family and to find solutions for your own problems.

Lehi and his family, after wandering in the wilderness for eight years, came to a land they called Bountiful because it was a place of much fruit and wild honey. They came to a great sea, and they rejoiced unto the Lord because He had preserved them. After they had been in the land Bountiful for a space of many days, the Lord spoke to Nephi and said, “Arise, and get thee into the mountain.” (1 Ne. 17:7.)

Nephi obeyed the Lord; he went into the mountain and prayed. And the Lord commanded Nephi, “Thou shalt construct a ship, after the manner which I shall show thee, that I may carry thy people across these waters.” (1 Ne. 17:8.)

What did Nephi then do?  Did he say, “What?! I don’t even have the first idea of how to build ship.” “And, oh yeah, I left any tools I had back in Jerusalem.”

Then Nephi asked the Lord, “Whither shall I go that I may find ore to molten, that I may make tools to construct the ship after the manner which thou hast shown unto me?” (1 Ne. 17:9).

The Lord instructed Nephi where he could find ore, but then Nephi was on his own. In 1 Nephi, chapter 17, we read:

“And it came to pass that I, Nephi, did make a bellows wherewith to blow the fire, of the skins of beasts; and after I had made a bellows, that I might have wherewith to blow the fire, I did smite two stones together that I might make fire. …

“And it came to pass that I did make tools of the ore which I did molten out of the rock.”

Why is this story so interesting?  Tells of an instance in which the Lord provided help but then stepped aside to allow one of His sons to exercise his own initiative.

Are there other stories that shows individuals using the blessings and abilities God has given them to care for themselves and their family and to find solutions for your own problems?

Nephi and the brass plates

Nephi and the broken arrow

Self-reliance does not mean that you must do all things on your own. To be truly self-reliant, you must learn how to work with others and turn to the Lord for His help and strength.  The Lord will help us in times of need, especially when we are committed to His work and respond to His will. But the Lord only helps those who are willing to help themselves. He expects His children to be self-reliant to the degree they can be.

Brigham Young instructed the Saints, “Instead of searching after what the Lord is going to do for us, let us inquire what we can do for ourselves.” (Discourses of Brigham Young, sel. John A. Widtsoe, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1978, p. 293.)

Independence and self-reliance are important to our spiritual and temporal growth. Whenever we find ourselves in situations which threaten our self-reliance, what happens?  We feel our freedoms threatened. If we increase our dependence on anything or anyone except the Lord, we will find an immediate decrease in our freedom to act. As President Heber J. Grant declared, “Nothing destroys the individuality of a man, a woman, or a child as much as the failure to be self-reliant.” (Relief Society Magazine, Oct. 1937, p. 627.)

ELDER PERRY’S Family tradition:

My parents established a family tradition in our home which was fun for me in my early years and has become even more meaningful as I reflect back on it as the years have passed. On the first birthday of each child the family would gather in the living room. In the center of the living room floor, our parents would place articles for the one-year-old child to select. The selection to be made might indicate an interest the child would pursue in life. The articles were the Bible, a child’s bottle filled with milk, a toy, and a savings bank, filled with coins. The child was placed on one side of the room and the family on the other side. Family members would encourage the child to crawl toward the objects and make a selection. This was all in fun, of course.

Scriptures represent our need for spiritual nourishment.

In the scriptures, the Lord reveals His will to us. He has instructed His prophets to record His communications with them for our benefit. The scriptures have eternal values and are the foundation we can build a successful life on. We become more self-reliant when we study the scriptures, which teach the principles that provide a divine center to our lives.

We have the best text which has ever been written, or ever will be written, as our guide.

We can turn to 2 Kings, the fifth chapter, and learn about obedience.

We can study the life of Job and learn integrity.

King Benjamin’s address in Mosiah teaches industry

The life of Joseph, as told in Genesis 39, tells us what we should do when our standard of morality is being tested.

These are just a few examples of the lessons, can you think of others?

The bottle filled with milk symbolizes the physical body’s need for nourishment.

Our Welfare Services program has taught us to define the essential elements of temporal self-reliance. The elements are education; physical health; employment; home storage; resource management; and social, emotional, and spiritual strength.

FEBRUARY ACTIVITY

STRAWBERRY STORY

The toy represents the acquisition of things of the world.

We are bombarded with “acquire now and pay later”, no payments no interest until 2015. We live in an impatient world where everyone wants everything now, instant gratification over any kind of lasting satisfaction.

Using what we have wisely and extending their life will help us become more self-reliant. I’m sure there are many mothers in here that held or are holding on to clothes for a younger sibling.  Trevor is currently wearing a shirt that has been worn by both his brothers.

We live in a world blessed with so much abundance. Let us be certain that the resources with which we are blessed are never wasted.

The fourth item, the bank is a symbol of our financial well-being.

Who can give me a definition of interest?    Elder Perry’s boss gave this definition: Thems that understands it, earns it; and thems that don’t, pays it.”

Now it doesn’t take a genius to understand that before you can collect interest, you must first have some savings. Having savings while continuing to increase one’s standard of living requires understanding of one simple practice and then religiously applying it. After paying your tithing of 10 percent to the Lord, you pay yourself a predetermined amount directly into savings. That leaves you a balance of your income to budget for taxes, food, clothing, shelter, transportation, etc. It is amazing to me that so many people work all of their lives for the grocer, the landlord, the power company, the automobile salesman, and the bank, and yet think so little of their own efforts that they pay themselves nothing.

It is by consistently and regularly adding to your investments that you will build your emergency and retirement savings. This will add to your progress in becoming self-reliant.

The principle of self-reliance is spiritual as well as temporal. It is not a doomsday program; it is something to be practiced each and every day of our lives.