Church Services This Week at Sullivan Hollow Second Ward Weber Heights Stake Ogden Utah 21 April 2013

Elders Quorum
Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow chapter 7

The trials each of us are given are the ones that prepare us personally for eternal life.  Additionally, our first trials prepare us for other trials or other opportunities yet to come in our life.  If we didn't have our early trials and didn't overcome them, we wouldn't have been prepared to be able to receive what was to come.

There have been people that have come to the Lord in different ways through different preparations and different trials.

Some trials are designed for us, some are from our own choices, some are simply the result of life and some are the result of the choices of others.  The Lord never allows trials to come upon us that are more than we can handle.  What we can handle grows as we pass through trials.  What we can handle also grows each time we reach for God's help while we toil.

We have a hard time as humans to recognize trials as opportunity.  There are many that would be offended or angry if we said that the bombings in Boston is an opportunity for growth and strength or is a trial that someone or even many someones needed to be stronger people.

Some also find it hard to accept that God would be involved in trials since trials are considered evil and God does no evil.  Perhaps we roll our own trials and the world gives us enough that he just blocks for us that we only get the trials we need and that we get no more than we can handle, but I think since he gives us what we need in life that sometimes he gives us trials.

We can't expect perfection without trials.  Just like we can’t get a degree with classes and studying and exams.

“You and I cannot be made perfect except through suffering: Jesus could not [see Hebrews 2:10].” (From the manual)

Hebrews 2:10

10 For it became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.

Sunday School
The Law of Consecration - Lesson 14
Doctrine and Covenants 42, 51, 78,82,104

Moses 7 - The Ministrations of Enoch

The Bible gives us a few verses on Enoch.  The Book of Mormon gives us a couple of chapters.

Moses 7:18

18 And the Lord called his people Zion, because they were of one heart and one mind, and dwelt in righteousness; and there was no poor among them.

Consecrate means to make holy.  If we consecrate our time or our property, we make it holy.

Edward Partridge gets called as the first bishop of the Church.  He has only been a member of the church for seven months.  He has no former bishop to council with.  He has no stake president to council with.  He has only the prophet.  Now that is cool to get council straight from the prophet, but the prophet has never dealt with a bishop before and has not had any examples of how to do it or how not to do it.

The law of consecration has not been repealed.  It is just administered differently.

Sacrament Service
A missionary that is getting ready to go to San Diego on his mission spoke to us.  He talked about how to prepare for a mission.  He talked of how he didn't put 100 percent into seminary and how he needed to scramble and read the Book of Mormon before he left, since he didn’t want to teach people about a book he hadn’t read cover to cover.

A stake high councilman spoke to us about faith.

Alma 32:21

21 And now as I said concerning faith—faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true.

All commandments are equal and all bring about sin.  But not all commandments are the same.  Equal not same.

All broken commandments = sin.

Men and women are equal.

X may = 8, but x is made from two line segments and 8 has curves.  X is a placeholder and 8 is a fixed value.

Thus, some commandments broken bring more sorrow.  Some bring more difficult repentance.

Doctrine and Covenants 58:2

 2 For verily I say unto you, blessed is he that keepeth my commandments, whether in life or in death; and he that is faithful in tribulation, the reward of the same is greater in the kingdom of heaven.