Breakfast with a View - to our grandkids and kids

We have a nice, big, dining room table we eat breakfast on every day we are in the apartment.  It is dark wood, which I like.  It can comfortably seat six people and we have had friends over for dinner.  It sits in front of the big picture window looking out over into the property across the street.  It is like a garden over there.  We do like to see the birds each morning.  There are several varieties that rest in the branches, hide in the branches, chase each other around the branches.  It is especially fun to see them sit on the topmost branch like they are surveying their domain.  We have a set of binoculars we use to get a close up look at them.  There are small ones with the brightest red you can imagine on their wings.

It's a great place to have breakfast.  Breakfast with a view.

Besides looking out across the street, Elaine put pictures of you grandkids on the window sill.  You can see them, can't you?  You can probably pick out who is who.  We enjoy seeing you.  We wonder how you are doing and what you are doing and what you are learning.  It makes us feel good, and sometimes anxious too.  We are a family.  An eternal family.  All good people cherish each family member and receive strength from that association.  We latter-day saints take family and our relationships to a much higher level.  Family relationships have always been intended to last forever.  It will last forever because family is essential to our Father's "work and glory".  How can you have eternal life without family?  It wouldn't mean much.  You mean so much to us, and always will.

Okay, back to my original thought; you grandkids, the kids of our kids.  We were being taught the other night by a member of the Area presidency, Elder Klebingat, on how he memorizes scriptures.   A great method I want to share with you sometime.  During the evening, he also mentioned something that has been on my mind since.  He has had hundreds of interviews with  members of the church, including those whose testimonies have waivered. Two things are common with those who waiver in the faith: 1) they have stopped having personal prayers, and 2) they have stopped reading and studying the scriptures.  Every case.  No exceptions. Please don't ever do that.  

Staying close to Heavenly Father through prayer and scripture study helps develop faith.  It's personal.  It's valuable time invested (not spent) in the present and the future.  Faith is essential to our mortal lives and even vital after mortality is over.  We exercised faith to come to earth in the first place. The faith we can develop here is unique and so valuable because we couldn't develop it while in the presence of our heavenly parents.  We existed before we were born into mortality and we will exist after we leave it.  It's simple.  It's true.  Don't forget it.  Faith in Jesus Christ is the first principle of the gospel.  Faith in Him is powerful.  The Book of Mormon is full of evidence of that. Living without prayer and scriptures is like a boat on the ocean without a rudder, sails or a purpose.  The boat moves about with every wave, without an intended course.  Prayer and scripture study is like a big sail that when raised high, catches the wind and, with the rudder, takes the boat where it is intended to go.  The sail is faith and the wind is the Spirit, the rudder is our agency, our choices.  Prayer and scripture knowledge fills the sail with power and strength.  It is sometimes calm and sometimes strong.  It is always there.  Connect with it.  Learn to feel it.  It takes effort.  Do it. 

Besides the pictures in the window sill, you can see three bowls on a stand.  These bowls are full of things we will bring home next year and share with you.  The table runner is colorful, isn't it?  Elaine is a great home decorator.  

Time to go to work.  I am glad to invest a little time this morning thinking of you.  It will help my day be a great one.  By the way, there is a difference between "spending" time and "investing" time.  You get the difference, right?  You spend something and it is gone, you invest something and it benefits the future.  That's a discussion for another day.  Have a nice one!