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Posts Tagged ‘mormon’

When the Twin Falls Temple was scheduled to be built and dedicated, the youth and the leaders of the Mormon Church in our area were notified that they would be called upon to create a youth celebration where the youth of the temple district would come together and put on a cultural even for the visiting Prophet.  This event was called the Youth Cultural Celebration, or YCC.

At the time, I was the Young Men’s President in our ward, I was the spearhead in our organization to get the youth ready and prepared to participate in this event.  All of our Wednesday night activities were canceled and the YCC practices were put in their place.  Each week we would gather the youth of the stake and practice singing and dancing.  This went on for 6 months.  There were times, I must admit, that the practices seemed to drag on and on.  Finally, the event was upon us and we went to the Twin Falls County Rodeo to put the final touches together.  As we practiced the week before the dedication, it seemed like the groups would never come together and get it right.

The day finally came and the youth of each stake went and performed with excitement and will energy.  The Youth Cultural Celebration was a huge success.  How lucky I was to even be a part of the event.  Now, when I see other YCC’s occur around the world, my eyes tear up with fond memories of how special this time was for me in the dedication of the Twin Falls Temple.

Below is a video I just watched of a YCC put on for the Prophet in Kyiv Ukraine.

A few months ago we were presented a lesson in Elders Quorum that talked about the Gifts of the Spirit.  There was an Ensign article a few years back given by Elder Robert D. Hales that talked about these gifts.  Normally I listen to the lessons if it is something that interests me but I have heard the “Gifts of the Spirit” lesson several times so I as on the verge of tuning out.  For some reason, this time, I decided to focus on the lesson and really try to learn something new.  Sometimes I’ll go the whole hour and really just hash over the same topics that have been presented over and over again.  For example, the gift to ponder, the gift of charity, the gift of tongues, the gift to be calm.  As these gifts of the Spirit were brought up one by one, I paused and pondered one particular gift.  The gift “to believe on other people’s words.”  Hummm, what a lame gift that must be.  Then, it hit me, I have that gift.  I also started to think about how important that gift can be in one’s life.  Some people go though life not believing what they have been taught and have to go out and try all of it for themselves.  That is scary prospect.  Instead of just believing in the word of wisdom, someone without the gift to believe in other peoples words would have to go out and try all of the vices in the world for themselves to see if it truly is bad for them.  I am grateful for the gift to believe.

My two kids started a paper route just a few months ago. It has been great to have them learn how to work and that work does pay off. They are enjoying the money they are making and at the same time, they are learning how much a dollar is worth. The one down side of doing a paper route is that you have to work every day, including Sunday. I really would rather not have them work on Sunday but a paper route is not one of those jobs that gives you a choice. So, we do the paper route on Sunday and we try to keep our minds on the Sabbath. One morning I decided to turn on the radio to see if there was any uplifting music playing at the early hour of 5:00am. I bounced around the radio dial looking for something other than rock and roll and country music. I didn’t find anything. Then, I came across Mix 103. It is a local radio station and I was surprised to hear a “Mormon” song. I was a little shocked. We don’t live in a predominantly Mormon city so I was curious. We listened to the station all morning on the route and heard many inspiring stories and beautiful hymns. Some of the comments made during the program I could tell were specifically LDS topics. They mentioned the Book of Mormon and many scriptures from the Mormon Standard Works which includes the Bible, Doctrine and Covenants, Perl of Great Price, and the Book of Mormon. But, there were other messages that were just uplifting and positive with no reference to any specific religion.

I enjoyed it so much that I was determined to contact my local radio station, Mix 103, and let them know that I appreciated the programming of “Sounds of Sunday“. Every Sunday for several weeks I remembered that I wanted to call the radio station but each week I kept forgetting. Well, this morning I called and offered my thanks for such great programming for Sunday Morning. I also decided to go the “The Sounds of Sunday” website and thank them for what they were doing. I received wonderful feedback from both institutions. The radio station even mentioned that they are thinking of playing “the sounds of Sunday” all the way till noon.

So, now, every Sunday morning when we are on our paper route, I turn my radio to 102.9 and listen to some beautiful Sunday music so that our little LDS Family can prepare ourselves to participate in the Sunday services at Church later in the day.