lessons & directions

as i have mentioned previously, i teach once a month in relief society at my church. women 18 and older belong to the relief society and on sundays we meet for one hour where we gather for lessons and discuss gospel topics, needs of families in our church or neighborhood, humanitarian efforts and other issues. every time i have to stand before these wonderful women, i wonder why it is, that this young mother has been chosen to "teach" these seasoned minds, and every time i remember that it is not me that teaches them, but instead the spirit.

as i prepared my lesson this week, i was struggling to come up with a lesson plan. as i read the lesson, i had a distinct impression to make a video to share with these sisters in the relief society, but unfortunately, that wasn't until the end of the week and i was left with only a few days to prepare it. and the impression i got was very specific when it came to the music that would go along with the video, the problem was that the way i heard the music in my head didn't exist anywhere, (or at least anywhere i had looked). and so with only a couple days to prepare, i scrambled to put together this video of images of the prophet joseph smith, not knowing what i was going to do for the music. when the slideshow was complete, i decided to ask my husband if he would record and sing the song in the style that i wanted it. it would be ten times more work, but i felt very strongly that the music was what was supposed to bring the spirit into our meeting. during work, he thought up in his head how he would arrange it (i can't get over how incredibly talented my husband bryce is), and within a couple hours that evening, the song was complete. bryce had no idea how long it needed to be, but we figured that we could tweak either the song or the video to make it fit... you can imagine the amazing feeling we felt when the song was complete, and it fit exactly with the slideshow that i had made. as we put the song to the video, my eyes filled with tears knowing that i had been allowed to be so guided.

this past sunday, i taught my lesson and ended it with the video. many women were so touched by it that they came up to me afterwards and embraced me with tears in their eyes, thanking me for taking the time to make this. i felt so grateful for the opportunity to do so, and to experience being aided by the spirit and ultimately, how quickly and easily it all came together within a short amount of time.

i've decided to share this video with you all. for those of you not of the lds faith, joseph smith was our first prophet. we believe he was chosen to restore the gospel of christ. one of our past prophets, gordon b. hinckley, once stated,

“We do not worship the Prophet. We worship God our Eternal Father, and the risen Lord Jesus Christ. But we acknowledge him, we proclaim him, we respect him, we reverence him as an instrument in the hands of the Almighty in restoring to the earth the ancient truths of the divine gospel, together with the priesthood through which the authority of God is exercised in the affairs of his church and for the blessing of his people.”