Portions of my Talk Today

In honor of the Sabbath, here are portions of my talk today. It would take too long to give the fuller portion of it. Afterwards I was asked to give it in the prison next week.



http://www.turnbacktogod.com/story-god-and-the-geese/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Story of why Jesus needed to come to earth.



http://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/11/spiritual-bonfires-of-testimony?lang=eng" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I had not heard or read the "lost geese" story before. A good message. I like it. I think I vaguely remember the piece by Elder Wirthlin. I enjoyed reading it too.



Thx for posting.

I had not heard the geese story before either until last week. It is a born again story, not a LDS source. The word choice is off in a couple of places due to different perspectives but is the right message.



My daughter got a DUI a few weeks ago at college. I went down to take her to church and to meet her Bishop of the student ward. The first speaker was a convert who was living my daughter's livestyle and was suffering the same feelings of depression and being lost until she went to this ward and got baptised. The second speaker shared this Geese story and she was just like my daughter's personality. The third speaker shared the bonfire talk. When she was 14 she went inactive, did not follow her mother's advice got married young to a man that turned out to be abusive. Livinged in hell for 11 years then got divourced, returned to church and now married to a man in the Bishopbric. This was an example of what my daughter's life could be if she stays on this road.



This is just a small piece of the story but it made for a great 20-25 minute talk yeterday on faith and wayward children.



I'll share part 1 of her story another day.

Seriously - thx for sharing. Almost everyone that has teenage to young adult children has experiences and stories difficult times, and challenges.



A good friend (very successful guy) of mine has a son that got off the "path" in high school. His choices were bad - real bad (drugs, etc.). Finally, he was arrested and convicted of robbery, sentenced to a number of years in the state prison. We were talking last year, and I was expressing my empathy for him. His comment? "At least I know where he is at night now." Wow - that's pretty heavy. Our kids can bring a lot of heartache through their choices.



Good luck with your daughter. I hope she chooses wisely.

I think she went to church yesterday. The ward has been great towards her and there were like 5 pairs of missionaries when I attended. I am hopeful that this was a Mos 27:14 type experience (that part I will share later).

That is a great talk by Elder Wirthlin. There is much to learn and apply there. I wish I would have read it before our last Bishop's Youth Discussion where the topic was testimonies. The symbology of the bonfires and the wolves being kept at bay is very effective.

scott715 wrote:
I think she went to church yesterday. The ward has been great towards her and there were like 5 pairs of missionaries when I attended. I am hopeful that this was a Mos 27:14 type experience (that part I will share later).

It can be hard to have a wayward child, especially when others get up and talk about their eight children who all served missions and were married in the temple. While we all hope our children will choose to do likewise, a child's agency is the ultimate factor, even in a loving home where children have been taught the gospel.



I was thinking about this the other day--about how terrible it would be if one or more of my five young children go astray (though I know that there are promises that the sealing power will reach after them and there is always a chance they come back). But then I also thought, it is a virtual certainty that we will at some point lose children--epecially when you look at the eternal perspective of an exalted life and what that means. What a difficult decision that must have been--to give agency to your children, when you know it means that some will not come home. How grateful I am to a have a Father in Heaven who has made some terribly difficult decisions so that some will experience the joy he has.

The good news is that her older sister married in the temple and is faithful. Yes painful to lose a child but there is joy when one is saved. Heavenly Father focuses on those that return. They could not have this joy unless they received their agency. You mine not lose a child but you will lose a grandchild or a great grandchild or you get the idea.



My father was a Patriarch 19 grandchildren (10 great grandchildren). My Emmy is the first to get arrested. Dad had 10 sibilings, all were faithful but one.



Let me throw out a question, why do they go wayward? What do you think?

scott715 wrote:
The good news is that her older sister married in the temple and is faithful. Yes painful to lose a child but there is joy when one is saved. Heavenly Father focuses on those that return. They could not have this joy unless they received their agency. You mine not lose a child but you will lose a grandchild or a great grandchild or you get the idea.



My father was a Patriarch 19 grandchildren (10 great grandchildren). My Emmy is the first to get arrested. Dad had 10 sibilings, all were faithful but one.



Let me throw out a question, why do they go wayward? What do you think?

For me it all boils down to agency. There are people that will not learn from others experiences and have to try things on their own, hit rock bottom, and only then realize that there is a much better way to live life. It isn't necessarily a deficiency in parenting (though that certainly can be the case, but even then we see great kids come from terrible homes). It all comes back to agency. Some of it can be attributed to lack of testimony--but even those who have great testimonies can choose to ignore it in search of pleasure. That is the scary thing about being a parent. You can do everything right, and a child can still choose to do wrong. We can't use that as an excuse not to make our best efforts, because I believe that those efforts do make a difference on children that could go either way. But there will always be those that are going to choose to do wrong no matter what--not necessarily because they are bad/evil, but because they only learn from their own experience and they are too immature at the moment to realize there is a better way of life.



My heart goes out to the parents of wayward children. I have seen how much it wears on my Mother, but she is full of faith that in the end, all will be made right. I might just come around some day. ;)