Announcements:
We have our Ward Conference on 23rd February which will be followed by a Munch and Mingle. More details will follow shortly.
Our first Stake Temple Week for 2014 is 18th - 22nd February. If you wish for accommodation to be booked for you by the stake an email was sent out by Kurt Green to sisters last night. This needs to be completed and returned to Kurt TODAY. Otherwise you may of course book accommodation directly with the temple.
During Temple Week on 20th February our youth will be doing baptisms at the temple. They are looking for ward members to provide enough names for the youth to do baptisms for. If you can assist please see the email sent to sisters today from Sara which will give more information. Kurt Green is co-ordinating this and will need all the papers by next Sunday.
Missionary Moment - we will be having a minute or two each Sunday in RS where a sister can share a missionary experience she has had in the preceding week. Today Gloria Watson shared how simply from talking about the church with her friend Maggie while swimming she asked to come to church and how much she felt the spirit and wishes to come again. If you have an experience you would like to share please email a member of the presidency.
Lesson:
Today Graca taught our lesson on chapter 3 of The Teachings of Joseph Fielding Smith which was a review of the plan of salvation.
We talked about how wonderful this plan truly is, what it might have felt like to have lived with our Heavenly Father in the pre-existence and to hear His plan presented to us. About how due to the fall of Adam we became so very dependant on a Saviour, Jesus Christ to make it possible for us to return back home.
We specifically talked about the role of Christ - and how the atonement took place:
"The driving of the nails into his hands and into the Saviour's feet was the least part of his suffering. We get into the habit, I think, of feeling or thinking that his great suffering was being nailed to the cross and left to hang there. Well, that was a period in the world's history when thousands of men suffered that way. So his suffering, so far as that is concerned, was not any more than the suffering of other men who have been so crucified. What then was his great suffering? I wish we could impress this fact upon the minds of every member of this church. His great suffering occurred before he ever went to the cross. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane, so the scriptures tell us, that blood oozed from every pore of his body and in the extreme agony of his soul, he cried to his father. it was not the nails driven into his hands and feet. Now do not ask me how that was done because I do not know. Nobody knows. All we know is that in some way he took upon himself that extreme penalty. He took upon him our transgressions, and paid a price, a price of torment.
" Think of the Saviour carrying the united burden of every individual - torment - in some way which I say I cannot understand: I just accept."
The same goes for each of us - we cannot understand but we CAN accept. We can live by the first principles and ordinances of the gospel, faith in Jesus Christ, repentance as often as needed, baptism and receiving the Holy Ghost and then always enduring so that one day we can be received into the celestial kingdom - to once again live with our Father in Heaven.
As Elder Smith said:
"I am sure that we all love the Lord. I know that He lives and I look forward to that day when I shall see His face and I hope to hear his voice say unto me, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
"And I pray that this may be the happy lot of all of us, in our own due time."
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