My Dad serves in a Stake Presidency, and his stake had the opportunity to have Bishop McMullin come visit for their stake conference! The Stake Presidency hosts a dinner for presiding authorities before the adult session on Saturday evening. My parents asked if Jeremy and I would help out in the kitchen!
This was the AWESOME crew... us, President Hill's kids, and President Short's two daughters. We worked really well together and had a lot of fun. We served all the food, cleared all the plates, and cleaned up the kitchen!!
Here is Bishop McMullin pictures in the center. (The short one!) It was a great opportunity to shake his hand! What an amazing person he is. I was quite surprised by the things he did during the stake conference... if he ever visits your stake, be on your toes... you never know what he will do next!
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The best part of the night for me was hearing my Dad speak. He gave an amazing talk that I think everyone needs to here. I am going to try and summarize it, but I probably won't do it justice.
He talked about the things he has in his living room and what each of those things mean to him. Such as the picture of his family, and individual pictures of his grandkids, picture of the temple, the cute stuff my Mom puts out, the fireplace, ect...
Then he talked about his symbolic "shelf." On this shelf he has a statue of a young mother with two young boys, a picture of the man from UP, a picture of his parents, and also his mother and father in-law.
The young mother of course represents Natalia with Logan an Mason. Why did she have to die so young?
The picture from UP is to represent his question of why can't a worthy couple can't have kids, but a young teenage girl can?
The picture of his parents and parents-in-law represent his question of why did they have to die the way they did? (cancer, tree cutting accident, multiple strokes, alzheimers)
He talked about how these are things he doesn't understand right now, and he has to put them on the shelf next to Christ. He has to give these troubles to Christ, otherwise he can't progress, he can't move forward, and he can't enjoy all those other wonderful things on his shelves in the living room such as his family and the gospel.
We all have things we don't understand. Maybe it's a gospel principle, maybe it's a trial, whatever it is we need to put it on the shelf... we need to give it away to Christ and understand that someday we WILL understand, and we will no longer need that shelf. We can't let one trial, or one test of faith, stop us from enjoying all the blessings the gospel has to offer, and all life has to give us. We need to put it on our shelf, and move forward with faith...
