Sacrament Meeting Talks Worth Rereading

My testimony of Christ is built on lots of little but real experiences I have had. Sometimes I forget all of those experiences, but when I look at my testimony of Christ, it is this lovely chunk of lots of little moments. Sometimes it is easy for me to believe in Christ and the Church; it just feels natural and simple. But other times my brain gets in the way and I have a hard time emotionally until I opt back in to believing Christ, choosing to believe Christ. When I do that, I feel a beautiful, loving feeling and an openness toward the world and other people, which I believe is me feeling the fruits of the Spirit. One of those building blocks of my testimony of Christ happened a couple weeks ago. Matt went on a trip with his brother to California and Disneyland as my Christmas present to him. He had an incredibly stressful fall semester, with a new baby and supporting me and trying to work on his thesis, so I wanted to make sure that he got a real break, some real sleep, and some ti...

I recently learned a bit about an old Japanese art form known as Kintsugi - the repairing and mending of broken and damaged pottery. It’s kind of like putting the broken pieces back together like a puzzle — fitting the pieces together and then putting a protective coat over them to seal them together. Only in Kintsugi, this sealing is done with lacquer mixed with gold - and the results are amazing. The name itself means “golden joinery." Pieces repaired by Kintsugi will stay in families, or even museums for generations. As an art form, Kintsugi values the history of something that has been broken and then restored or made whole again, not to hide the breakage, but to emphasis it. The repaired piece contains both the remembrance of what has been before and what is now. What results from piecing together broken pottery with gold are objects that are not only more valuable, but more beautiful than they were before. Every break is covered, and the surface is highlighted with veins o...

I have been asked to speak today about an obscure topic. The topic given to me was “Women in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament.” On face value, it doesn’t sound that obscure, but once I started researching I realized just how obscure it is. Let’s take the Book of Mormon, for example. There's only six women mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon and three of those are referencing the Bible (Eve, Sarah, Mary). Out of the three remaining women, one is a prostitute, so probably not appropriate to talk about on Mother’s Day [ Editor's Note: This talk was given on Mother's Day.] , and then I am left with Sariah and Abish - Great women, but my pickings are fairly small as far as stories to tell. (source: http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Women_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ) When women are mentioned generally in the Book of Mormon, there are a few cool references ("we do not doubt our mothers knew it”), but there's also quite a few times where women are mentioned as sex sy...

Editor's Note: Not all sacrament meeting speakers write out their talks verbatim. I did not want to overlook the value of the talks given by speakers who want to speak somewhat from the heart, so I will occasionally post really substantial outlines of talks worth re-reading, like this one. This talk is presented with its speaker's original formatting. I grew up outside Seattle, raised by a prof of English Accounts for love of Victorian poetry, obsession w/ grammar, lumps on head (“dude”) Father had (and taught) appreciation for power of words used well Theme of sacrament meeting is Christ-like communication Doctrinal principle – Joseph Smith’s Lectures on Faith : “It is by words … [that] every being works when he works by faith. God said, ‘Let there be light: and there was light.’ Joshua spake, and the great lights which God had created stood still. Elijah commanded, and the heavens were stayed… All this was done by faith. … Faith, then, works by words;...