Our Virtual Stake Conference will be 17 Jan. 2021, this Sunday. If you serve in a leadership position please log in at 8:00 am. Everyone is invited to our General Session at 10:00 am. Elder Eric J. Schmutz will be our visiting authority and will preside at the conference. The link(below) for the conference is found at the same site that you have been using to view your Sunday worship service. http://mywebcast.churchofjesuschrist.org/Events/mesquitenevadastake In 1994 Elder Neal A. Maxwell made a statement that could have been made yesterday. “For some years, brothers and sisters, there has been an increasing and profound sense of existential despair in the world. This mortal hopelessness both reflects and affects much of mankind. Whether tribal or national, wars constitute “the continued experience of twentieth-century man”. A grumpy cynicism pervades politics in so many places on this planet. Holocausts, famine, pestilence, and tides of refugees have taken a terrible toll on human hope, with much of that toll coming from man-made, avoidable disasters.” Faith, Hope and Charity is what I would like to visit with you about in this short message. Once it was explained to me that a pile of firewood and a match teach the principle of Faith, Hope and Charity. · Hope is the wood and its potential · Faith is the match, the action of confidence that with action hope can be engaged or ignited. · Charity is the warmth of the glowing fire. These principles make up a three-legged stool. As Elder Uchtdorf said: “These three stabilize our lives regardless of the rough or uneven surfaces we might encounter at the time.” Now – I confess that I could be accused of a degree of “grumpy cynicism” over the past months. Waiting semi-patiently for the medical community, or the political community to solve the problem so I could get back to a “normal” life. You have heard me say that someday we are going to have to understand and live the two great commandments. Love God and Love our neighbor. I believe that these commandments are essential to exaltation. As we seek to become more, I believe that faith, hope and charity can help in our quest. These divine attributes should become fixed in our hearts and minds to guide us in all of our actions. The HOPE, power and potential of the Atonement of the Savior should give us the FAITH to act in in a Christlike manner and the warmth of that fire can provide CHARITY and shelter from the storms of life, for those around us. Back to Elder Maxwell: Just as doubt, despair, and desensitization go together, so do faith, hope, charity, and patience. The latter qualities must be carefully and constantly nurtured, however, whereas doubt and despair, like dandelions, need little encouragement in order to sprout and spread. Alas, despair comes so naturally to the natural man! Mosiah 3:19 For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. Of this I bear my witness
President David J. Anderson
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