Paisley: Hi everybody, Paisley imperfect here with another
message last time, or the time before last or last message was
our makeup plan Monday yesterday. Thursday's message we
talked about President Nelson's talk a pledge my sister's, as an
all of the all of the different things in that talk that we can
work on to become the the women that we the the best version of
ourselves. I shared a slide deck that I had created, that showed
seven different things for us to work on. And then all of these
little subcategories within those seven things, right.
As I was preparing for today, I started trying to figure out
which one of those things I wanted to tackle first, there
are quite a few of the things on that list. I want to work on. I
want to improve myself. And so I was having trouble trying to
decide which one of these seven things I want to work on. And
then within those seven things, like what's the one thing that I
want to that I want to get started with? And so I had the
thought, just start looking. Okay. All right. So I went back
to the slide deck, and I was looking at the slides again. And
it was like, well, I could talk about love, I could talk about
happiness, we could talk about being articulate, we could talk
about all of these things and make an episode or two about
every single one of these things. And so that wasn't
working, it wasn't narrowing it down for me. And so then I had
the thought, again, keep poking, like start poking around.
Okay, so I went to the church's website, and I just typed in a
little search bar, a plea to my sisters, because I was like,
well, I'll go back to the original talk and see, see if
anything just jumps out at me, right. So I typed in the search
bar appear to my sisters and hit enter. And then there was this
sub one that came up that that said, the vital role of women.
And I was like, Oh, what's that? And so I clicked on it. And it's
a whole landing page, about the role of women, what our role is
and how important we are in this. They call it the winding
up scene. They President Nelson calls it the winding up scene
where you know, we're getting close to the Second Coming and
this is the time this is the time to be sharing the gospel
and, and gathering the house of Israel. Right.
And so I just stumbled on this landing page. There are six
talks on here. Two of them are President Nelson. And then
there's elder Ballard, Elder Christofferson, and then there
are two in here from two sisters sister Jean be bringing him
united in accomplishing God's work. And then there's another
one sister Sharon Eubank turn on your light. And I vaguely
remember the one from SR ubank. And so I was like, I think I've
read that one. And so I clicked on it. And I had some notes in
there. But as I read it again, I was like, Yes, this is what I
want to talk about.
To be fair, to be clear, I don't know to be fair, to be clear, to
be clearly fair. There's more stuff in here. I ended up adding
another thing to the slide deck. There are cuz she gives us some
things that we can work on too. So let's just talk about it. She
starts talking she quote she she she uses the same quote that
from President Kimball that President Nelson uses in his
talk a pleading my sisters, talking about how in the last
days the women will be responsible for a lot of the
growth that comes to the church. He ends the quote by saying that
this will happen to the degree that women of the church are
seen as distinct and different and happy ways from women for
the world. And that's where President Nelson stopped quoting
President Kimball sister Eubank takes it a little bit further
and she says, among the real heroines in the world, sorry,
she didn't say this. She's quoting President Kimball.
He said, among the real heroines in the world who will come into
the church are women who are more concerned with being
righteous than with being selfish. These real heroines
have true humility, which places a higher value on integrity than
visibility. It will be female exemplars of the church who will
be a significant force in both the numerical and the spiritual
growth of the church in the last days. I love the rest of that
quote. And as I'm reading it now, I'm like, Why didn't I just
go to President Kimball's original talk? That has so turns
out his wife actually delivered it for him that night because he
was in the hospital. But why don't I just go back to his
original talk and look at the whole thing. So I'm going to put
that on my list. And we're going to do that soon.
Anyway, so she summarizes it, she summarizes it in three
bullets. The first one she talks about is that the this is all
going to be triggered by the relationships that we build with
other women of other faiths. And she doesn't just limit it to
grownups. This in the second bullet point, she says, the
friendships that Relief Society women, young women and primary
girls build with sincere, faithful, godly women and girls
of other faiths and beliefs will be a significant force and how
the church grows in the last days.
So number one, is the triggering of this growth of the church or
is the relationships that we build with women, not of our
faith. And then what will continue that is how we
strengthen those relationships. And then the last one is these
women that are going to come into the church because we've
built the relationships with them, and we've invited and
they've accepted and they've come those women, many of them
will be the hair, the true heroines, because they will come
in, and they will teach us that it's more important that
integrity is more valuable than visibility. And they will be
more concerned with being righteous than with being
selfish. And those are things that we need to learn. I thought
that was interesting.
So then she talks about these five things, that President
Kimball refers to five things that we can work on, in order to
help us grow these relationships, begin these
relationships and grow these relationships. The first thing
she says is, so number one is the first is to be righteous. I
like that she qualifies this, she says being righteous doesn't
mean being perfect, or never making mistakes. I've never
actually looked up the definition of righteous it. In
today's world, I think it's more associated with being self
righteous. And so it has kind of a negative connotation, at least
for me, has a little bit of a, an arrogant connotation attached
to it. And so I've always just kind of been like, like
righteous, okay. But I love what she says being righteous doesn't
mean being perfect or never making mistakes. It means
developing an inner connection with God, repenting of our sins
and mistakes, and freely helping others. That sounds doable,
right? Developing an inner connection with God, repenting
of our sins and mistakes, and freely helping others. And you
may remember from that slide deck that we looked at
selflessly serving others is one of those things that one of the
points that we want to talk about, at some point.
And then she talks about women who have repented, and how
they've changed the course of history. She has a friend that
she talks about here. It's a great story, you should go look
that up. The second point, so that's the first point that she
talks about, that President Kimball gives to us, right,
number one is to be righteous.
Number two is to be articulate. So there's that word again,
articulate. And I, I know that this is something that I need to
work on, and I'm kind of excited. I'm not going to share
a whole bunch of what she shares about being articulate right now
because I want to use it later. I think I've got at least an
episode, if not two, about being articulate what that means and
how we can work on that. But I will say that she summarizes it
by saying being being articulate means to clearly express how you
feel about something and why. clearly express how you feel
about something and why. And she gives them questions. And if you
want to go look them up you can. I will use the questions on
another episode when we when we talk about being articulate.
The third thing that she talks about is to be different. And
she gives a story in this one about something that happened on
the beach in Panama City, Florida in 2017, July 2017.
There was a mom on the beach with her two sons, and she
noticed that they were about 100 yards out and they had gotten
caught in a rip current and they were struggling and screaming
for help.
A couple nearby tried to jump in and rescue them. them and they
got caught in the rip current. Some other family members jumped
in and tried to help them all out and they got caught in the
rip currents. So now there are nine people who are caught in
the rip current. And the police have like sent for a rescue
boat. There's no ropes, there's no lifeguards, just a whole
bunch of people on the beach. People jumping in and getting
caught in the rip current, we're up to nine people. And then this
woman, her name was Jessica May Simmons. And her husband had
this idea. They started gathering all of these people on
the beach and made a human chain out into the water. And this
human chain ended up being 80 people long, there's a picture,
if you want to go look at it, there's a picture of this chain.
I don't know how it looks like somebody might have been on top
of a pier. I've never been to Panama City Beach. I don't know
if there's a pier. I don't know how somebody got this picture.
But there's a picture of this 80 person chain going out into the
water to try and save these nine people who are exhausted, it's
been 20 minutes. And I don't know how many of you have ever
been in the ocean, but to be just in the ocean, not cotton
rip current for 20 minutes can be exhausting. There is a lot of
back and forth and in and out and waves in movement and just a
lot. And to be caught in a rip current can make it so much more
exhausting. So they've been out there for 20 minutes. Now
there's this 80 person chain. And then Jessica and her
husband, they know how to swim, they know how to get out of a
rip current. And they have boogie boards. And so they take
their boards out to these people and they start getting these
people out of the current because they know how they start
getting these people out of the current and back to the human
chain. And then the human chain is getting them back to the
shore. And so in case you forgot, the third is to be
different. And she talks about how innovation and creation are
spiritual gifts. And you know, I tagged that because I really
want to come back and talk about spiritual gifts one day to which
ones we know about. I'll save that for another day. But she
says innovation and creation are spiritual gifts. And when all of
the traditional solutions weren't working, and people were
just kind of paralyzed, not knowing what to do. There was a
couple there who was different and had a different solution.
And then she continues that story with number four, point
number four, the fourth is to be distinct. And she talks about
how you know Jessica Mae is standing there on the beach, and
she's like, wait, I can hold my breath. I can go around an
Olympic pool with ease. I knew how to get out of a rip current.
I knew I could get each swimmer to the human chain. Notice that
she didn't say back to shore. She wasn't going to go into the
water, get a person and bring them back to shore. But she knew
she could get them to the human chain. I think that's an
important. I think that's an important point. And so sister
Eubank keeps going and she talks about how the restored gospel is
recognizably well defined, but we have to be distinct about how
we follow it. So I should have started with the fourth is to be
distinct, distinct means to be recognizably well defined. So
the church itself is well defined. How we follow the
gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ as well defined how we
follow the gospel, how we live, the Gospel, should be distinct.
And when you think about it, we are all individuals, right. So
to be distinct means to be recognizably well defined,
doesn't say refined. It doesn't say perfect, it says,
recognizably well defined. So and the other point that she
makes, and I'm gonna read this last paragraph in here, the
restored gospel is recognizably well defined, but we have to be
distinct about how we follow it. Just as Jessica practice
swimming, we need to practice living the Gospel before the
emergency. So that unafraid, we will be strong enough to help
when others are being swept away by the current.
So maybe we are one of the 80 people in that chain. That only
helps them for a second because we're holding on to other
people. And our role is to just stand there and let them go past
us. But we have to be standing there otherwise they can't
there's a break in the chain. Sometimes we might be the
Jessica's out there on the boogie board, pulling literally
pulling somebody out of the current and taking them to the
human chain. Sometimes we might be the person on the beach just
screaming for help. But to be remarkably well defined,
recognizably sorry, not remarkably, recognizably well
defined. People know who we are, what we stand for, and what
we're about.
And then the fifth one, and this is always the clincher for me,
do number one through four in happy ways. Now, we're going to
talk about happiness. And another episode to finding
happiness. That might be a few episodes kind of like stillness
was. But I want to share this quote, because I love it, I will
probably share it again. Being happy doesn't mean to slap a
plastic smile on your face no matter what is going on. But it
does mean keeping the laws of God and building and lifting
others. When we build, we lift the burden of others, it blesses
our lives in ways our trials cannot take away.
So being happy, doesn't mean being fake. Being happy, is
helping others. Keeping the laws of God building and lifting
others, keeping our covenants, doing the things that our
heavenly father would have us do, so that he can give us the
blessings that he's promised if we do. That's what happiness is.
I just found this talk to be really interesting, very
enlightening. And I added a couple of things to the slide
deck. So we'll talk about in other episodes, we'll talk about
being articulate. We'll talk about gifts of the Spirit, we
will probably talk about being different and distinct. And
we'll talk about love, happiness, all of those things.
We will get to all of those things. If you have an idea or
if you have one that you'd like to study first, let me know. I'd
love to hear it.
I appreciate you being here. I know that there are plenty of
other places that you could be. So I appreciate you being here
with me and learning right along with me. I'm grateful for Sister
Eubank and the time and effort that she put into this talk and
encourage you to go read the whole thing. It's worth the
read. I'll make sure that the Link gets put in the video
description. Thanks so much, everybody.