Baptism...following the counsel of Church Leaders

Amazing day!

I saw/felt/experienced when we follow the words/counsel of our church leaders, we are blessed.

Earlier this year, at Stake Conference, our Stake President counseled us that if we have children that are almost to the age of baptism, to teach baptism, teach of Christ, teach of repentance, baptism, covenants. Teach them about making this covenant.

So, we did and more so than we did with our older two. We made a more concerted effort to teach her and prepare her for baptism. In our studies together and with our children, we tried to follow the Spirit about the subject of study. We would suggest to each other several subjects and several times, our studies were directed to answer specific questions she had relating to baptism. How would we had known had we not listened?

So, today, as our third daughter was baptized, I felt a confirmation of the Spirit. 
We, our whole family, were emotionally, spiritually, and mentally ready for this event.

Because we followed the counsel of our stake president, we have been RICHLY blessed.

Just a few of the blessings:

Testimony strengthened.

Faith in Christ increased.

Happy family.

Love at home.

Peace of the Spirit.

Hope to move forward.

Spirit testifies Truth

I love feeling the spirit.

I love having the spirit work through me to touch others.

Today, I spoke in church, and I felt both.

Something I learned today, I need a lot of repentance. And to think I thought I was repenting enough...is there really such a thing?

This was a subject that I needed to give because I have been forgetting to Come to Him.

The Lord is very kind to remind me this way.

These are the sources I used for the talk.

Elder Neil A Anderson gave a wonderful discourse on this repentance (click here).

Elder Jeffrey R Holland talked about coming to Christ through Faith in Christ, repentance, baptism and temple covenants, and then living our covenants (click here).

The people of King Benjamin are a great example of Coming to Christ. They followed the same pattern that Elder Holland outlines (click here...see chapters 1-6).

Anyway, I felt the the spirit witness as I shared thoughts from these lovely scriptures. I felt the spirit witness as I shared my own testimony that Jesus Christ is our Savior and Redeemer. His church is restored on the earth TODAY and is led by LIVING PROPHETS. And these truths can be known by everyone...as stated in the introduction of the Book of Mormon:

"We invite all men everywhere to read the Book of Mormon, to ponder in their hearts the message it contains, and then to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true. Those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost. (See Moroni 10: 3-5.)



Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is his revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the second coming of the Messiah."

The spirit is wonderful!


I know Jesus wants us all to come to Him.

               Today!

His atonement can make me/us clean, and happy.

And that is worth living for!

Book of Mormon Game

Before reading to our children tonight, we played a game that was introduced to us by the Sister Missionaries in our area.

They call it "The Scripture Search Game".

So the object of the game is to see how a randomly picked scripture applies to the subject chosen.

The first subject our 9 year-old daughter chose was baptism.

I opened the book and let the pages fan through my fingers until one of the other children shouted, "STOP!"

I asked, "Left or right"(referring to which side of the page we would read from).

Another daugher answered, "Right".

I asked, "Left or right" again (now picking the column from which we would be reading).

"Right."

Then I had them pick one of the verses (31-34 in this particular column)from that column.

So, think baptism.

And this is the verse that was randomly picked.

Moroni 10: 32
"Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God."

Our 11 year-old described it this way...
When we come to Christ, we have faith in Him. And when we deny ourselves of all ungodliness and love God with all our might mind and strength, we repent. And that leads to Baptism.

She talked about the steps that lead to baptism.

I thought about how having faith in Christ leads us to repentance...wanting a change of heart. Which leads us to making covenants with Him. Because we trust that His grace is sufficient for us and we can nowise deny the power of God.

The second topic was prayer.
And the scripture was 3 Nephi 11:7

"Behold my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, in whom I have glorified my name—hear ye him."

So, the answer from our daughters, "The people of Nephi were praying a lot and because they had been praying, they could hear Heavenly Father speak."

Finally, the last topic was missionary work.
We landed on Alma 11:23

Amulek is preaching to the people of Ammonihah.

"Now Amulek said: O thou child of hell, why tempt ye me? Knowest thou that the righteous yieldeth to no such temptations?"

And with this verse, there was a laugh and giggle because Amulek is preaching repentance and faith on Christ.

So, thank you, Sister Missionaries for introducing this game.

Caused for some pondering and really nice gospel discussion.