Weekend Activities

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Month 1 Results

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"And I Say to Myself, What a Wonderful World"

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Week Three Results

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Halloween Cruise

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Week 2 Results

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General Relief Society Meeting - Sister Burton (full post)

To go to my private blog, click here.  If you know me and you need an invite, just let me know.  However, this particular post can be seen in it's entirety on this public blog.

When we got engaged, I had already picked a date.  In fact, I had called the temple and scheduled our wedding.  (You can read about that here.) Imagine my disappointment when we realized that we were planning our wedding reception smack in the middle of the General Relief Society Meeting. We were faced with the question of whether or not we should change our date. It just didn't seem appropriate to have an evening where we would prevent others from attending such a special night. In the end, I couldn't give up my date. I really wanted to marry in September and there was just something about the number 29 that I loved. We realized that it meant a lifetime of difficulty celebrating our anniversary - that the weekends surrounding it would always be the General Relief Society Meeting and General Conference. We tried to stagger the time of our reception so that the bulk of it would fall after the meeting was over. We included a note in our invitations encouraging the women to first attend the meeting and then join us at our reception afterwards. The plan was that myself and the family members who were missing the meeting would be able to watch it later online. (I don't know about the others, but I am pretty sure that never happened for me.)

I still love our wedding date, and really the difficulty of it has been fairly minimal. With modest finances, we've always had modest celebrations. Last year we were able to get away for a couple of days, but we actually made that work during the week, so it was fine as well. This is the first year that our anniversary once again fell on the exact same day as the meeting. And without hesitation my husband sacrificed our time together and encouraged me to attend. I often attend with the women in my family. My sister's stake always puts on a really nice dinner and then we watch the broadcast together in their chapel. This year, however, both her stake and my stake were given tickets to attend the broadcast live. I had mixed feelings about this. It is nice to attend general conference and other such meetings live, but I've been blessed to be able to do that a lot and sometimes it is just more of a hassle to go downtown and fight through the crowds. My sister had some scheduling conflicts and decided she couldn't make it work. My sister-in-law, having just had a new baby, also decided she couldn't take that much time away either. I honestly didn't want to go downtown except for one silly reason. This was the first General Relief Society Meeting with the new presidency and I was excited to actually be there at the beginning of this new era in Relief Society. My mom, knowing how much I love Relief Society and understanding the importance of this to me, came with me.

We were sitting down on the main level over on the far right. That means we were able to see all of the general authorities and other people coming out onto the stand. Elder Anderson was the first one I spotted, busily going back and forth. After a while I noticed that President Monson's daughter was on the stand sitting next to an elderly woman who I quickly realized was the wife of our prophet. As the meeting came closer to a start, we stood as President Monson came out with both President Eyring and President Uchtdorf.

The meeting began with Sister Burton conducting. Once she told us the order of the meeting she began with these modest words, firm with understanding, "My beloved sisters, you have been on my mind and in my heart for months as I have pondered this challenging responsibility. Though I don’t feel equal to the responsibility placed upon me, I know that the call has come from the Lord through His chosen prophet, and for now, that is enough. The scriptures teach that “whether by [the Lord’s] voice or by the voice of [His] servants, it is the same.”

I love belonging to The Church of Jesus Christ and knowing that he has called women to lead with the inherent compassion, love and understanding that comes from the feminine heart. I love Relief Society and I love womanhood. It is something that took me a while to grow into, but I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who has instructed us that gender is not accidental and that it is an inherent part of who we are - worthy of celebration and wrought with responsibility.

Before completely introducing her talk, Sister Burton said, "As a new Relief Society presidency, we have sought the Lord earnestly to know what essential things He would have us put in our Relief Society handcart to continue moving His work forward. We have felt that Heavenly Father would first have us help His beloved daughters understand the doctrine of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. As we do so, we know our faith will increase, as will our desire to live righteously. Second, as we have considered the critical need to strengthen families and homes, we have felt that the Lord would have us encourage His beloved daughters to cheerfully cleave to their covenants. When covenants are kept, families are strengthened. Finally, we feel He would have us work in unity with the other auxiliaries and with our priesthood leaders, striving to seek out and help those in need to progress along the path. It is our fervent prayer that each of us will open our hearts and let the Lord engrave in them the doctrines of the Atonement, covenants, and unity."

In these words I expect we see the theme that will likely flow from these leaders mouths for the next five years. I have really only been aware of the last two presidencies in terms of their teachings and how they evolved, the second building on the first. The messages from our General Relief Society presidencies is like the messages from the prophets. We find that each has their own theme, but if you look back and consider what the messages being taught are, you find that Heavenly Father called certain people, inspired certain messages, and had it come together in a specific order, teaching us "line upon line". I was excited to have this new message revealed and consider how it has come to be built upon the foundation of the previous presidency.

In her talk, Sister Burton highlighted three main points about the Atonement. They are:

1. All that is unfair about life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

2. There is power in the Atonement to enable us to overcome the natural man or woman and become true disciples of Jesus Christ.

3. The Atonement is the greatest evidence we have of the Father’s love for His children.

I hope that I can live up to my responsibilities in deepening my personal understanding of these principles and then in teaching them to my children. What a blessing to have such great leadership to follow. There is so much power in the message that was shared, and this is just the beginning. Three more beautiful testimonies and teachings were shared. Thoughts on those will come in another post.

Big thanks to my husband for giving up our anniversary celebration so that I could attend this meeting.  Another big thanks to my mom who took the time to go with me simply because she knew it mattered to me.  I know that the spirit would have been just as strong had I been watching a broadcast somewhere else.  The messages would have been just as poignant and impactful.  But I now have a precious memory of sitting in the conference center next to my mom while these instructions were given.  Similar to being able to sustain President Monson in person, I feel fortunate to live in a place where I can have these sorts of memorable experiences.