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.
