Great meeting

Last night I had a great opportunity to hear Virginia Hinkley Pearce speak for our ward's enrichment meeting. It was so wonderful. I don't know if any of you have had a chance to hear her speak, but she is so funny. Very irreverent, totally cracked me up. I wanted to record some of my thoughts about her talk so I could remember. So bear with me here, I hope that this will make sense.

She began by asking why do we have so many meetings as LDS people. You know we have Sacrament, Relief Society, General Conf and Stake Conf, and then we do it all again. I thought this was a great question, because it does seem we just go from meeting to meeting. She said the purpose of this is so we can change and grow and we can be more like Heavenly Father. We are supposed to become something different than what we are. Hmmm good point. I guess that is the purpose of life too.

Sis Pearce then switched gears to speak about desire. Our desire to do something begins with a choice. My favorite question was this "Why are there things that we know we should do and desire to do, but we don't do them?" The answer is "we have to be responsible for our desires. We must wet our appetite for good things. And then we must show up and do the work."

She made a great comparison between living the gospel and exercising our bodies. We don't really want to exercise, but we also don't want to become weak. So we have to do something or our bodies will fail us. So we show up at the gym and do the work. So if we don't want our spiritual bodies to become weak we must show up to our prayers, scripture study, Gen Conf, and Temple and then do what we are told to do. I know that we have heard all this before, but for some reason it really spoke to me last night. We all know that we are supposed to pray, read our scriptures, go to the Temple, and listen to our leaders. And the desire to do these things will increase as we jump in and actually do those things. Hmmmm. Makes you think.

So my goal is to actually do these things. I have always been terrible about reading my scriptures and going to the temple. So I am going to start.

One reason I decided to share this goal with all or you is that she also said that as women we are social people. We like to do things in groups and that by sharing what we learn when we study the scriptures, or finding someone to attend the Temple with our desire will increase even more. So now I am accountable to all of you.

The last thing she said is that discouragement is an occupational hazard of being us. When we have a huge spiritual burst, you have fatigue set in. We must as women buoy each other up, don't compare ourselves to each other, and accept encouragement from others. So my challenge to you is to offer encouragement and accept it from others. Because we are all doing the best we can.

Love you all