High Council Sunday

So guess who our HC speaker was today? Pretty fun to have John Byetheway follow Elder Chase Larsen who just returned home from his mission last Wed. Bro Byetheway was such a masterful teacher, taking things Elder Larsen had said and enlarging them and bringing them all together. He said Elder Larsen had given one of the best missionary talks he had ever heard (Dad and I agreed) and that he hoped he would come over once a week for the next 12 years to hang out with his son who is 7 and teach him how to be a missionary. The bottom line was that Elder Larsen had said that one day he had been able to be in the temple and as he looked into the mirrors he felt so good about who he was and what he was doing and he felt so clean and good that he wanted to feel that way forever. Bro Byetheway quoted (literally, from memory) from a conference talk in 1949 by Albert E Bowen, a member of the Quorum of the 12:



“Men are mortal and beset by human frailties. They are enticed by the pressures of immediate … desire to depart from the high standards of the perfect law. When they are under the influence of an exalted occasion, they make high resolves. They firmly determine to avoid past mistakes and to do better. But gone out from under the spell of that influence and absorbed in the complicated pursuits of life, they find difficulty in holding fast to their noble purposes … "



Then he read Mosiah 4:2, and said that the word "AND" in the middle is the most important word in this scripture -- that receive forgiveness of our sins, AND have our hearts changed. Oh yes! How can we sign up for the permanent change of heart??? Well, the sacrament table isn't on wheels, and its bolted to the floor where it becomes an altar every week for us come.....(and now more of the Albert E. Bowen quote:)



"So it is essential that they come again, and frequently, under the influence which kindles anew the warmth of spirit in which good resolutions are begotten, that they may go out fortified to withstand the pressures of temptation which lure them into false ways. Happily, if they refresh themselves frequently enough under ennobling influences, the spirit of repentance will be at work with them, and they will make conquest of some temptations—rise above them—and advance thus far toward their final goal.” (In Conference Report, Oct. 1949, p. 139.)



He also read King Lamoni's father saying he would give away all his sins to know God -- A Lamanite investigator asking not where is the line so I can live right next to it, or please tell me just how good I have to be, or how bad can I be, but the change of heart where you say as Elder Larsen did, that he felt on his mission how good it felt to be that clean and doing what you know it right. So, a very fun Sunday. Fun to see a master teacher that close up. And remember Courtney Johnson, my WC contact person? She was there because they know the Larsens, so we got to talk, and that was really neat, too.