Two weeks ago our mission president encouraged us to prepare spiritually for the Exodus Memmorial we were all taking part in on February 7th. We searched our family history to find ancestors who were in Nauvoo at the time when the government allowed mobs to drive the Saints out of the United States in the middle of winter. This is why they ended up in Utah which at the time they left Nauvoo was Mexico! We hold this special memorial to remember what the Saints/ancestors sacrificed for their belief in Jesus Christ and honor their perserverance and faith.
On Tuesday night we had a special meeting in the sacred assembly hall in the Nauvoo Temple. Elder Cullen and I sat in the high podium seats across from the speakers and those who were presiding. It was awe inspiring to sit in those box seats and think about the skills the early saints had as they built this beautiful building with HAND tools! The moon was large and glowed through the window behind the speakers. Everything was so beautiful.
In that meeting we were told that we were friends in the pre-mortal life and had been foreordained to be on this mission together at this time. President Mehr had asked to use this sacred room, people don't ever get to go into it, but he asked the General Authorities and they gave us permission.
All the temple workers were astounded, and I think a little envious if not just in wonder. They kept asking president Mehr, "WHY did you get permission to hold your meeting here?" or "HOW did you do it?" His pat answer was, "I asked and they said yes" He didn't want to surmise or second guess why the Lord's servants had allowed it.
Then a Temple Sealer pulled him aside and looked him in the eye and said, "It's more than that. You need to find out why." So president Mehr was surprised by this and began to pray and ponder and study scriptures he felt lead to.
After a few weeks he received a clear answer. Heavenly Father adored us and wanted us to have this experience because of the efforts we were making here. Notice the process of receiving revelation: Pray, Ponder, and Deep dive into the scriptures. We talk to God by praying, He talks to us through the scriptures.
We were encouraged to seek revelation daily and to live by revelation through the Spirit daily. Often I have received impressions, ideas, a download of "inspiration" and I ignore it or discount it only to later regret it.
I feel terrible when I refuse to receive the revelations God is sending me. There's all kinds of reasons we do this: afraid of what others will think (i.e. I can't call them now, it's too late or too early, they'll think I'm being dramatic/weird), I'm too lazy (I.E. I'll do it later, I'll do it when the timing is better, I'll ask someone else to do it), or I'm not feeling good(my feet hurt, my back hurts, etc etc ) or I say, "That's a GREAT idea, I'm going to do it right after I do ........"
I came out of that meeting SO uplifted and really recommitting to receive the messages God was sending me and act upon them. I was committed to seeking for daily revelations and acting on them.
In addition to other special temple sessions that week, we had a chocolate dipping class by sister Copeland.
Before her mission she ran a candy shop and bakery. SHE is wonderful and a good teacher!
On Friday Elder Cullen and I were trying to decide if we should go down to the Family Living Center where we would be serving breakfast to 400 people in the morning. Should we go that night and set up or just do it in the morning before hand as we had planned with our committee. We decided we had a great crew, we were totally organized, we didn't need to take an extra trip (30 min each way) that night. We felt good about that and began to settle down for a winter evening inside.
Suddenly I began to feel a strong "feeling" that we should go down and at least set up the tables. I pushed it aside saying to myself, "We just decided this. It's going to be OK". The feeling came again. I verbalized to Elder Cullen, "Do you feel good about not going down tonight?" "YES" was his emphatic reply. It's going to be fine.
The feeling came a third time and suddenly I thought, "WHAT AM I DOING? I'm as dumb as dirt!" I laughed at myself as I said outloud, "Elder Cullen, We need to go down there. We need to go now and not dismiss this feeling." Gratefully, he got up out of his cozy chair and came.
I am SO glad we went down. ESPECIALLY because back in December I had purchased a set of four chaffing dishes but hadn't opened the box because I didn't need them until Feb 7th. We opened the box when we got there and they needed to be assembled. As we unpacked and started assembling we found one of the water trays had a 4 inch crack in the metal,
three of the lids had NO handles, and only ONE set of screws were included...no hardward for the other three. Elder Cullen dashed off to get hardware.
Randomly three couples showed up because they felt they should come help. One had wire in his truck that we could jimmy handles for the lids and it didn't look too LAME. We were there for three hours setting up and decorating tables, setting up benches, and staging the kitchen for everything the next morning. IFFFF we had put off coming Friday night we would NOT have had the lovely smooth calm we experienced Saturday morning.
I was SO grateful I allowed myself to receive the prompting and act upon it. We were TRULY BLESSED! I invite you to notice God talking to you daily. He will talk to you more if you talk to Him and if you read the scriptures more often. I promise this is true. I love you!
