Micah's Backpack

In an effort to achieve our donation goals each month, we will be accepting food donations all month long. We drop of our donation around the 12th of every month.These meals provide food to needy kids on the weekends. Breakfasts, lunches dinners and snacks for two days equals 10 food items for one child. This service effort is our only large scale on going service activity for our ward RS. It is an assignment from the Stake. Items that you can donate are oatmeal packets, small cereal boxes, fruit cups, mac n cheese, soup cups, granola bars. 

If you would like to read more info about the Micah's backpack program, you can visit this link: http://micahsbackpack.org/

Thank your for your service and your donations!

Daughters in my Kingdom

Today we are excited to talk about a goal the RS Presidency has for each sister in our RS: to read "Daughters in my Kingdom". Sister Ericson will be speaking about this important goal today, and we have provided  a reading schedule for you. The purpose of reading this book together is to learn more about the purposes of RS, foster unity in our own RS, and inspire us to love one another and serve one another. Copies will be passed out today and emailed, and you can reference back here, save this image to your computer and print it at home. We hope you will enjoy reading this wonderful book, share your thoughts with your fellow sisters, and find joy in serving one another.

RS Lesson Summary Feb 1st

Last Sunday Sister Call gave an excellent lesson on the topic of ministering. Dawn asked a lot of thoughtful questions to the group, and the first was this: Where does visiting teaching fit into the ward? 

Next we discussed the importance of ward councils. There are many sisters who don't know about the function of the ward council, or it's importance. All the leaders from every auxiliary get together with the Bishopric and discuss the needs of the wards. The human, real needs of families. Each auxiliary has it's stewardship, and each auxiliary comes together to help in whatever way they can. If the family has children in the ward that are primary age, assignments are given to the primary presidency, if the issues involve single sisters, either the Elder's quorum or the High Priests are asked to help. One of the big questions that is asked at these councils is: 'who is so and so's home teachers and visiting teachers'. The home teachers and the visiting teachers are the first real contact the ward council has with the membership of the ward. The leadership of the ward can't be everywhere all the time, so luckily we have great structures in place to take care of one another. The structure for us sisters is the relief society and visiting teaching.

Moroni 7: 47 " But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him."

How do we become unified? How do we obtain charity in our hearts? Both are really important to help in the Lord's work. Perhaps one of the first steps is that we pray for these things. If we realize a deficiency in ourselves, and we want to change, we pray to gain the thing that we are lacking. Ether talks about praying for charity. 

 Ether 12:34 "And now I know that this love which thou hast had for the children of men is charity; wherefore, except men shall have charity they cannot inherit that place which thou hast prepared in the mansions of thy Father."

Elder Eyring said: "The great day of unity is coming, the Lord Jehovah will return to live with those who have become his people and will find them united, of one heart, unified with Him and with our Heavenly Father." 

For those of us who have gone to the temple, we have made covenants to give our time and talents to the building up of the church on the earth. Every opportunity we see to lift another, help someone, provide a service, is our opportunity to fulfill that covenant. 

So perhaps you say, I don't know what I can do for that sister, or that person. I am struggling with my own burdens. I have my own life to live, my own problems. One of the best ways to help with another's burden is to simply relate to it. To empathize or sympathize. We may or may not be in a position to fix a problem, or relieve a burden but we can offer a shoulder, an ear, a tender heart. Sometimes the burdens we take help alleviate our own burdens. Our own hearts become lighter, our burdens seem easier to bear, when we lift another. Our capacity to help is highlighted by our strengths and our experiences. 

Sister Call mentioned that sometimes our loads and burdens overlap with others. Maybe you know someone who is lonely, maybe she's a widow, divorced, or single. Perhaps you are the widow or the single sister and you know a new mother who is struggling with her new baby and toddler. How do your burdens overlap? The lonely sister can offer to help the other by bringing some relief by simply coming over to hold the new baby for the mother for a couple of hours, or maybe the overwhelmed mother comes over to the single sister's home and chat for an hour while the little children play. There are lots of ways the scenario could play out. 

From the Church News an article entitled: "Visiting Teaching is a way of Life" by Sarah Jane Weaver Jan. 2010

"Visiting teachers have two major responsibilities: to teach and to minister. Most women in the church understand the visiting teaching part. Visiting a sister with a lesson each month is the teaching part, but it is 'not always ministering'.

After we visit our sisters, it is important to report back to our visiting teaching coordinator. She takes the reports back to the RS Presidency, and then the RS Presidency sees an overall picture of the needs of the sisters of the ward. Without our input, it would be hard to know what is happening all over the ward. When something is urgent and confidential, it is important to tell the RS immediately. She will involve the compassionate service coordinator or other leadership of the ward. 

Our wards are unique! We each have a wonderful opportunity to help and uplift the sisters in our ward. We are not islands floating around alone, we are in a sisterhood and we have something to contribute that is worthwhile and needed. 

It is also important to have our lives organized in order to help others. Having some back up groceries in your pantry to make a meal for someone in need was a suggestion. The question Sister Call posed at the end of the meeting was: what is standing in our way? Why are we not sometimes the servants the Lord needs us to be? What is our stumbling block? Our circumstances are different, our issues may be varied, but the needs of the ward are present and will always need the hands of the sisters. We do a work that no one else can do, in a way no one else can do it. If we look inside ourselves and see something that needs changing, we can ask the Lord to help us improve. We can rely on the Lord to help change our hearts, and help charity to take root. 

No matter what, this is the Savior's work, we are what the Savior has. 

"In the end, the number of prayers we say may contribute to our happiness, but the number of prayers we answer may be of even greater importance. Let us open our eyes and see the heavy hearts, notice the loneliness ad despair, let us feel the silent prayers of others around us, and let us be a instrument in the hands of the Lord to answer those prayers."- Excerpt from Daughters in my Kingdom

RS Lesson Summary Dec. 7th

Last Sunday Sister DeFreitas gave an excellent talk from Elder Holland's conference talk "Are We Not All Beggars"?. 

In what would be the most startling moment of His early ministry, Jesus stood up in His home synagogue in Nazareth and read these words prophesied by Isaiah and recorded in the Gospel of Luke: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and … set at liberty them that are bruised.”¹

"From the beginning of His ministry, Jesus loved the impoverished and the disadvantaged in an extraordinary way. He was born into the home of two of them and grew up among many more of them. We don’t know all the details of His temporal life, but He once said, “Foxes have holes, and … birds … have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head."Apparently the Creator of heaven and earth “and all things that in them are” was, at least in His adult life, homeless."

The Savior of the world loved everyone regardless of circumstance. He saw everyone as a unique child of our Heavenly Father. By watching our Lord's example we are here to help carry burdens that we cannot carry alone. We take turns being the weak and the strong. Each of us has something to offer- we all have gifts and talents. We are all sent here with tools to help lift each other and be the Savior's hands. Don't worry if you think what you are doing isn't enough. We are not asked to run faster than we have strength, we are enough in the acts of service that we provide.

“Why trouble ye her? she hath wrought a good work. …

“She hath done what she could.”

“She hath done what she could”! What a succinct formula! A journalist once questioned Mother Teresa of Calcutta about her hopeless task of rescuing the destitute in that city. He said that, statistically speaking, she was accomplishing absolutely nothing. This remarkable little woman shot back that her work was about love, not statistics. Notwithstanding the staggering number beyond her reach, she said she could keep the commandment to love God and her neighbor by serving those within her reach with whatever resources she had. “What we do is nothing but a drop in the ocean,” she would say on another occasion. “But if we didn't do it, the ocean would be one drop less [than it is].”Soberly, the journalist concluded that Christianity is obviously not a statistical endeavor. He reasoned that if there would be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over the ninety and nine who need no repentance, then apparently God is not overly preoccupied with percentages.

Find your strength, cultivate it and offer your strengths to another. How do we do 'what we can'?

"For one thing, we can, as King Benjamin taught, cease withholding our means because we see the poor as having brought their misery upon themselves. Perhaps some have created their own difficulties, but don’t the rest of us do exactly the same thing? Isn’t that why this compassionate ruler asks, “Are we not all beggars?”  Don’t we all cry out for help and hope and answers to prayers? Don’t we all beg for forgiveness for mistakes we have made and troubles we have caused? Don’t we all implore that grace will compensate for our weaknesses, that mercy will triumph over justice at least in our case? Little wonder that King Benjamin says we obtain a remission of our sins by pleading to God, who compassionately responds, but we retain a remission of our sins by compassionately responding to the poor who plead to us."

"You will recognize that I speak here of difficult societal needs that go well beyond members of the Church. Fortunately the Lord’s way of assisting our own is easier: all who are physically able are to observe the law of the fast. Isaiah wrote:

“Is not this the fast that I have chosen? …

“Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him … ? [that thou] undo the heavy burdens, and … let the oppressed go free … ?”¹⁶

"I bear witness of the miracles, both spiritual and temporal, that come to those who live the law of the fast. I bear witness of the miracles that have come to me. Truly, as Isaiah recorded, I have cried out in the fast more than once, and truly God has responded, “Here I am.” Cherish that sacred privilege at least monthly, and be as generous as circumstances permit in your fast offering and other humanitarian, educational, and missionary contributions. I promise that God will be generous to you, and those who find relief at your hand will call your name blessed forever. More than three-quarters of a million members of the Church were helped last year through fast offerings administered by devoted bishops and Relief Society presidents. That is a lot of grateful Latter-day Saints."