From November 1998 to October 2000 I served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Ohio Cleveland Mission, fondly referred to in the Doctrine & Covenants as “the Ohio.” My mission was a roller coaster of an experience. There were good times and bad times, success and failure, obedience and slothfulness. I developed a love for some of the areas I served in, made a lot of memories and had a lot of faith-building experiences.?

In looking back on the time I spent in northern Ohio I will openly admit that I could have done better; but, more often than not we did the work, the Spirit converted individuals, people were baptized (in a fairly difficult mission), and the field was harvested.

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Eternal Family

This is the talk I was asked to give on the family – there might be some mistakes because I was editing it right before I gave it…lol. Also not long before church was to being, I was informed that one of the speakers wasn’t going to be there so I needed to speak for about 20 minutes – I’ve never spoken for that long before and had to bulk up my talk quickly…

I want to tell you a story about my parents.

I t takes place some years ago when they met each other and fell in love. They decided to start a family, but were later devastated when their first born daughter died only hours after being born. Out of her death grew a desire to find answers to why their baby had been taken from their lives and would they ever see her again.

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Are You Still Learning?

Sometime ago, and yes I’ve forgotten what the name of the talk was – but I know who it was by. It was given by Cleon Skousen. It mentioned that David O. McKay wanted to have current events discussed in Priesthood meeting, but ultimately was afraid of the backlash it would cause. Then more recently, like yesterday I started reading (listening) to Jack Monnett’s book “Awakening To Our Awful Situation” that again made mention of being commanded in studying current events along with histories.

I really wanted to put some validation to this. While I have been unable to find much with what I heard from Cleon Skousen, I was able after a little while digging around the internets to put some validation to being commanded in continual learning.

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