America's Faith

Regrettably, the War of 1812 is known as the “forgotten war.” Though it is true that it may not be as well remembered by our people, its effects upon our county still echo throughout our land every day. It was out of those dark and bleak circumstances that we defined America and her future. The War of 1812 not only gave birth to our national anthem, but it defined our identity and solidified that fervent patriotism that would become the legacy of our young country. We found the strength of character in our victory and proved to the world that we would endure; that this American experiment was no longer an experiment but the beacon that would lead the world in the pursuit of freedom and prosperity.

During the War of 1812, our morning of hope came only after a long night of darkness. That darkness culminated in the “Burning of Washington” where the British invaded Washington, D.C. and burned many public buildings including the White House. That night a hurricane moved in as if by the hand of God with entrenching rains and even a tornado to put out the fires and push the British back to their ships.

The next move for the British was to mount what they expected to be a fateful attack on Baltimore. On September 11, 1814 the British fleet arrived by sea signaling the land attack by the awaiting troops on land. The British troops attacked at 10:00 AM that morning of September 11 but were surprisingly beaten by the American troops. The British troops retreated and awaited the sea attack by the Navy. However, the British ships were unable to enter the Baltimore Harbor to mount an attack on the city. In anticipation of the British attack, the Americans had sunken 24 of their valuable merchant ships across the mouth of the harbor to prevent the British entrance. Being unable to enter the harbor, the British attacked Fort McHenry instead. On the morning of September 13th, nineteen British ships began the assault on Fort McHenry. Throughout the day and on through the night, for the next 25 hours the British ships fired on the American fort. During the attack a small American “storm flag” flew over Fort McHenry. But the following morning, the Americans hoisted the huge 30’ x 42’ American flag which had been specially made for the anticipated British attack. It was that morning of September 14th, with giant Old Glory flying over Fort McHenry, that the Americans won the decisive battle of the War and turned the tables of fate to victory.

It was also that morning of September 14th that Francis Scott Key caught a glimpse of the massive Old Glory and penned the poem that would eventually become our national anthem. Key had been held by the British on one of their ships until the attack was over. He had to wait out that long night of bombing. “And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there.” Although he could not see the flag during that night, Key knew that as long as the attack continued, the Americans were not defeated. The continued attack was a continued sign of the American’s determination to win the battle.

One cannot recall these accounts of the War of 1812 and not think of their paralleled events of recent. It was also on September 11 at 10:00 AM that the first of the two twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed due to the awful attack on our country. We suffered much doubt, fear, and pain in the days following. Just as Francis Scott Key found hope in the flag waiving over the fort, it was also on September 14th that we pulled from the wreckage of rubble a surviving American flag. It was the flag that was flying over the main plaza of the World Trade Center when it collapsed. Though tattered and torn, we held that flag as a sacred survivor. We also hung two giant flags, one on a building at ground zero and one on the Pentagon, just as the soldiers of Ft. McHenry, in defiance to our enemies and as a symbol of our eventual victory.

These experiences, both from September of 1814 and 2001, are gems for the generations of America. They are tangible evidence of our national character and faith. We know that victory comes at the cost of sacrifice. Our country has always been filled with patriots who were willing to sacrifice for the good of the whole. We have been willing to “sink the ships” of sacrifice to secure the victory. And we have.

We should never forget what makes America exceptional and what has carried us through to victory time and time again. America will always face three different kinds of enemies: enemies foreign, domestic, and economic. With the current problems we face, we should never doubt. We should never despair. We have been in impossible times before facing each of these three seemingly impossible enemies. Victory has been our legacy and it will be our future if we can hold fast to the faiths that have made us great.

America has always held to three great faiths for strength in defeating our three enemies. The first is our faith in God. From the Declaration of Independence and through each storm we have passed, we have trusted in the “Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.” Our motto, “In God We Trust,” is not meant to be idle lip service but a sacred declaration of our faith. If our founders recognized God’s sustaining influence in the birth of our country, how could we ever doubt after witnessing our long legacy of prosperity and blessings. In our troubled times, we have always trusted God for our protection, preservation, and prosperity. We have placed our motto on our currency, and our continued trust in God’s hand and acknowledgement of his sustaining power is the currency by which we can purchase our future protection, preservation, and prosperity.

Our second source of power is our continued faith in our people. We carry a faith in the virtue of our people. We know that ordinary Americans are exceptional, and that they, not our government, are the true source of our greatness. The collective contributions of everyone and not a select few create our national synergy. We believe in each other. We know that when the American people are united in a common cause, no road block will stop us. Our persistence and hard work can accomplish the seemingly impossible and trump overwhelming foes. The day we lose faith in our people to govern ourselves is the day we are shattered into helpless multitudes of floundering factions. We must not fail to have faith in our neighbors across our country. We must remember that although many shall fall from our lofty responsibilities, the backbone of our country is good and that opposition will bring out the heroic in our people.

Our third great faith is placed in our system: freedom. Our system is not pure anarchic freedom, but is coupled with a strict moral code, responsibility to the whole, and accountability. Our system is that of equal opportunity and not equal outcome. Freedom and opportunity are the mother of our ingenuity and success. With these as our tools, there is not a problem for which we will not find a solution. We realize that great success can be born of lessons learned from failures. It is not the extremely talented, the gifted intellect, or the noble birthright that are blindly rewarded in our system but persistence and hard work. Though our economic system is inherently cyclical, it is successful. We have in the past and will in the future pass through tough economic and political times. But, the answer to our trials is not to change the system, but to weather the storm and find the real solutions that will lead us through and on to prosperity without breaking the system. Our economic system is living and it changes directions and shifts resources from one sector to another. We need to have the faith in it to allow it to make these changes and adjustments. No, it is not comfortable, but it is necessary if we want to progress. For over two hundred years, we have experienced that on the other side of every downturn is an upturn. Consistently we have been carried from one valley to a peak, from one slump to the next breakthrough. Our pattern is a forward consistency of growth and success. May we leave it alone, and it will ever be so.

Our future path to victory over our enemies foreign, domestic, and economic has been paved by our past. Though the enemies may change, the victory will always be forged with America’s faith and determination. We must secure and strengthen our faith in God, our people, and our system. Each time we see Old Glory, may we remember what three faiths keep her flying over our land. If we will secure America’s faith, we may be assured that no matter how dark and bleak the night, no matter how ferocious and long the attack, when the morning dawn breaks we will see Old Glory flying over the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Jared Kimball Turner

This Independence Day

This Friday we celebrate our nation’s Independence Day. All across America flags will be flying, parades will be marched, and veterans will be honored for their service. Many of us will gather with friends and family. We will throw some burgers and hot dogs on the BBQ while hopefully some patriotic tune is present in the background. Most of us will end the day stuffed with too much good American food while somewhere watching a grand display of fireworks. From coast to coast and border to border Americans will celebrate “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

History chronicles the events that lead to the penning of those now immortal words by Thomas Jefferson. I’d like to recount a few of those events.

For 150 years prior to 1765 the American colonies had enjoyed limited freedom to govern themselves. Though each colony had a local magistrate appointed by the King they were free to assemble as they wanted and worship as they saw fit. They had limited freedom of press and even levied taxes on themselves as necessary. In short the seed of freedom had been planted.

Britain however had just incurred a costly expense in the defense of its colonies during the French-Indian war (ended 1763). In an attempt to reclaim this money Parliament levied the Stamp Act which taxed every piece of paper the colonists used right down to their playing cards. Many of the colonists were infuriated and successfully forced Parliament to revoke it. Continued attempts by Parliament to control the colonies met with the same results. Feelings amongst the colonist were beginning to surface that would eventually lead Patrick Henry to say “give me liberty or give me death”.

The struggle culminated in early April of 1775 at Concord Mass. The Massachusetts militia, the Minutemen as they called themselves because they had promised to be ready a minute’s notice, was called to the old north bridge at 2:00 in the morning to meet a battalion of British regulars that have been dispatched from Lexington to seize a cache of munitions held by the militia. What resulted from this brief skirmish is memorialized on a monument by the side of the river. On it are these words by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

The Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood;
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps,
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream that seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We place with joy a votive stone,
That memory may their deeds redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

O Thou who made those heroes dare
To die, and leave their children free, --
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raised to them and Thee.

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison were not at Concord Bridge. The minutemen that were there were the anonymous rank and file colonists. They wore no uniform, were not trained in battle, the muskets they carried were never intended for military use. At the dedication of the minutemen statue, George William Curtis said the following about these men:

“The Minuteman of the Revolution!—he was the old, the middle-aged, and the young. He was Captain Miles of Concord, who said that he went to battle as he went to church. He was Captain Davis of Acton, who reproved his men for jesting on the march. He was Deacon Josiah Haynes of Sudbury, eighty years old, who marched with his company to the South Bridge at Concord, then joined in the hot pursuit to Lexington, and fell gloriously… at Bunker Hill. He was James Hayward of Acton, twenty-two years old, foremost in that deadly race from Concord to Charlestown, who raised his piece at the same moment with a British soldier, each exclaiming, “You are a dead man!” The Briton dropped, shot through the heart. James Hayward fell mortally wounded. “Father,” he said, “I started with forty balls; I have three left. I never did such a day’s work before. Tell mother not to mourn too much; and tell her whom I love more than my mother, that I am not sorry I turned out.”

This was the minuteman of the Revolution, the rural citizen trained in the common school, the church, and the town meeting; who carried a bayonet that thought, and whose gun, loaded with a principle, brought down, not a man, but a system.” (Charles Eliot Norton, ed., Orations and Addresses of George William Curtis [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1894].)

They were the ordinary citizen just like you and me.

President Boyd K. Packer said of these same men, “However anonymous each may be, the great moments in history rest always on the rank and file of humankind. It was true then and it is true now. (“Except the Lord Build the House” The Spirit of America [Bookcraft, 1998.])

Thankfully for the all the generations that followed, they had what our hymn America the Beautiful calls the “patriots dream that sees beyond the years”.

One year after the shot at Old North Bridge that was heard round the world, the first Continental Congress declared this nation’s independence. America was ready to begin the great experiment of self-governance.

“The doctrine of that crowning document—the Declaration of Independence—is this: That the Creator, God, endowed all men with basic rights, and that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed.

Until the American Revolution, a millennium of political tradition vested powers only in monarchs and dictators. The formers of our republic simply declared the truth—that God gave all men the right to life, liberty, and property. Man, therefore, was master over government rather than the other way round.” (Ezra Taft Benson, The Spirit of America [Bookcraft, 1998.])

The revolution we know was long and bloody. It was fought not on battlefields but in farmer’s fields. Against all odds--against the best equipped military of the day--American won her freedom. In the course of events during the Revolution, whether on the battlefield or in the halls of the Constitutional Convention that followed, one thing became abundantly clear to those involved–God was on their side.

In the Philadelphia Convention, Benjamin Franklin reminded his colleagues that “All of us who were engaged in this struggle have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor… The longer I live,” he said, “the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs the affairs of men.”

James Madison wrote in the Federalist, “It is impossible for the man of pious reflection not to perceive in it a finger of that Almighty hand which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution.”

George Washington insisted that the “Supreme Being” had protected “the liberty and happiness of these United States… The hand of Providence has been so conspicuous in all this,” he said, “that he must be worse than an infidel that lacks faith, and more than wicked, that has not gratitude enough to acknowledge his obligations [in return].” In his Inaugural Address, Washington stated: “No people can be found to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency.”

And so the theme would continue. In Thomas Jefferson’s Second Inaugural Address, he acknowledged “that Being in whose hands we are, who led our forefathers as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life, who has covered our infancy with his Providence and our ripe years with his wisdom and power.” (Jeffrey R. Holland, “Except the Lord Build the House” The Spirit of America [Bookcraft, 1998])

Why was the hand of Providence so evident in the events of this nation’s beginning? Obviously felt but not yet revealed to the citizen at that time were the promises made by God to the ancient inhabitants of this land more than 2000 years prior.

Behold, this is a choice land, and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall be ^afree from bondage, and from captivity, and from all other nations under heaven, if they will but ^bserve the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ, who hath been manifested by the things which we have written. (The Book of Mormon, Ether 2: 12)

This land has always been “preserved for a righteous people”. This promise comes with both a blessing and a consequence. The blessing is stated from the Book of Mormon’s first pages to its last “that in as much as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land”. The consequence is most summarily stated to the Brother of Jared:

“And he had sworn in his wrath unto the brother of Jared, that whoso should possess this land of promise, from that time henceforth and forever, should ^aserve him, the true and only God, or they should be ^bswept off when the fulness of his wrath should come upon them.” (Book of Mormon, Ether 2: 8)

The Founding Fathers were, in the words of President Wilford Woodruff, “choice spirits who laid the foundation of this American Government”. We owe them a great debt of gratitude. Many of them placed not only their personal fortunes but also their reputations and even their lives on the altar of sacrifice to bring about the Constitution. Our Constitution ensures that which God had intended, that the power and responsibility for the weather this nation meets God’s requirement to serve Him lies with WE THE PEOPLE.

John Adams stated: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The collective morality that is required must exist in us, the rank and file citizen. Some of our leaders have and will been good some have and will strive to set us on a course that takes us away from God commandants. James Madison said that there must be “sufficient virtue among men for self-government”. The power to right our course lies with WE THE PEOPLE.

We have in the Book of Mormon a detailed record of two previous American nations. In its pages we read about the blessings showered upon them by a merciful God during those times in which they served him by way of serving one another. We too, in our day, have been the recipients of innumerable blessings as a result of goodness. However, we read next of their ultimate demise. They were swept off of this choice land, they forgot God, public virtue and morality was lost and their voices now cry to us from the dust.

How grateful I am for the prophet Mormon who also had the patriots dream to see beyond the years. Knowing that the Spirit had ceased to strive with the Nephite nation he began to pray for us. He expressed his desires for us in the following words:

“35 And these things are written that we may rid our garments of the blood of our ^abrethren, who have dwindled in unbelief.

36 And behold, these things which we have ^adesired concerning our brethren, yea, even their restoration to the knowledge of Christ, are according to the prayers of all the saints who have dwelt in the land.

37 And may the Lord Jesus Christ grant that their prayers may be answered according to their faith; and may God the Father remember the covenant which he hath made with the house of Israel; and may he bless them forever, through faith on the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.” (Book of Mormon, Morm. 9: 35-37)

God answered the prayers of His prophets. The book and the man that would serve as the instruments to bring forth the dispensation of the fullness of times were found within the borders of the United States of America. Thanks to the freedoms and liberties God has established here the stone cut without hands truly has rolled forth to bless all nations of the earth. Our Constitution has been used as a pattern for most nations of the earth and freedom enjoyed by more people worldwide than ever before in the history of the world.

And yet we know that all is not well in Zion. The freedoms for which those first anonymous colonists fought, for which countless others have fought and died are slipping from our grasp. Forces from within our nation are tearing at our moral fabric and public virtue. God has been ejected from our schools and court rooms. We are much to close to the paralleling the path of ancient counterparts.

What are we to do? Edmund Burk once said the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Let us then something. We have the fullness of the truth and the power of liberty. Let us be patriots.

Adlai Stevenson explained “What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times?. . . A patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”

We are not all required to run for office or even serve as the president of the PTA. Elder Maxwell quotes a character from JRR Tolkien’s Return of The King, it reads:

“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who may live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.” (Gandalf in The Return of the King, by J.R.R. Tolkien. New York: Ballantine Books, 1965, p. 190.)

We all have fields in which we are set, all we need to do is our duty. NO matter how lost the battle may seem at times, let do our duty. At times it may not seem important. Let us remember the Minutemen at the Old North Bridge. No one knows who fired that shot heard around the world - they were just patriots doing there duty. I love the example set by Mormon who, frustrated with the wicked and bloodthirsty Nephites leaves his post as commander and chief, and then repents and returns to lead them despite their inevitable loss – because it was his duty.

I close with a quote from President Packer:

“There must be enough of us who have faith enough and who are moral enough to desire that which is right. Virtues, like love and liberty and patriotism, do not exist in general, they exist in particular. If morality exists at all, it exists in the individual heart and mind of ordinary citizens. Such virtues cannot be isolated in any other place; not in the rocks or in the water, not in trees or air, not in animas or birds. If it exists at all, it exists in the human heart. Morality flourishes when the rank and file are free. It flourishes where a conscience is clear, where men have faith in God and are obedient to the restraints He has set upon human conduct.

There is light, a “true light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9). This light of Christ is the ingredient which binds the whole human family together and forms something of a universal conscience.

There is nothing that is right that we cannot achieve if our individual and our national conscience is clear.

Now what are we going to do? Let me tell you:

Just go home and be decent, Sunday go-to-meeting people. Teach your children decency and honor, cooperation and tolerance, citizenship and patriotism. Teach them to be good. Teach them to have a clear conscience. Then we will produce a generation who will know what to do and have the courage to do it.

Eighty year old Deacon Josiah Haynes who fell at Concord, and twenty-two year old James Hayward whose last words to the girl he loved more than his mother were, “I’m not sorry I turned out,” both had conviction and the courage to die for it.

You live for it! Just be decent. Take care of your family, you yourself. Don’t abandon that responsibility to the government, and don’t let them take it from you. Go where virtue and morality and clear consciences are fostered. Go to church, do your part, pay your tithes and offerings, say your prayers, read the scriptures. Be a citizen, vote; in fact, pray and then vote. Then, when the crisis comes, and come it will, you and all the rest of us will know what is right and be willing to do what is right. (Boyd K. Packer, “The Country with a Conscience” The Spirit of America [Salt Lake City. Bookcraft, 1998])

--Written by James M. Turner, Copyright 2008 Mormon-Patriot. All Rights Reserved.

Freedom, Agency & America

I was raised in a home where matters of patriotism and current political events and ideals were a frequent topic of conversation. I will be forever grateful for the love of my country and the principles of freedom that were instilled in me while growing up.

However, this passion I have is also a source of pain for me, and I suspect it is for many of you, as I watch the trampling of our founding documents, rampant selfishness and the subsequent eroding of our liberties that seems to be taking place on a daily basis in America. Consider this quote:

"We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God.

"We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

"It behooves us, then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."

The source of the quote, I think, would surprise most Americans. To all those who claim that our nation should remove God from its schools, from its courthouses, from all ways of public discourse, I think it would surprise these individuals that it was a President of the United States who proclaimed these words.

Abraham Lincoln stated these words when he gave his Proclamation for a National Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer. The year was 1863 and the date was April 30.

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Going back to the very beginning, in the Pre-Mortal World there was a war over the principles of freedom. Lucifer’s plan was to save every soul by compulsion, by force, that he might have our loyalty and take the Father’s glory for himself. Obviously, he was missing the entire purpose of the plan. Yes, we needed to obtain bodies, but we also needed to be tested. Without the freedom to choose for ourselves, which is agency, there could be no test.

In an article entitled “In Search of Peace and Freedom” in the August 1989 Ensign, President Gordon B. Hinckley said: “Agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and to act for ourselves. Agency is essential in the plan of salvation. Without it, we would not be able to learn or progress or follow the Savior. With it, we are "free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil" (2 Nephi 2:27).

The inspired founders of this nation understood this principle, when they declared:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Later, Abraham Lincoln said that when future generations read these words they would realize that “they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”

Throughout the history of the world, the conflict between those undoubtedly inspired by the Devil to dominate others and those inspired by, as we read in Alma 60:15, “the Spirit of God, which is also the Spirit of freedom” has raged. And it rages on still.

Bruce R. McConkie stated in General Conference in April, 1980: "Nor are the days of our greatest sorrows and our deepest sufferings all behind us...the vision of the future is not all sweetness...All that is yet to be shall go forward in the midst of greater evils and perils and desolations than have been known on earth at any time."

I have often wondered that Mormon, a prophet of God, in compiling the records of a thousand years of history into one set of plates that would be hid away in the soil of this nation to be brought forth and serve as a guide and set of instructions for the whole world in our day; repeatedly included the themes of war, contention, politics and secret combinations. I believe he included these stories because we would need to understand the processes by which a free people can lose their liberty. And more poignantly the methods Satan uses to cause this to happen so that we would recognize them—and reject and oppose them.

Also, that we might learn from their successes and mistakes. Interestingly, I believe the failures and mistakes of the ancient people of this land have to do with their execution of one duty. To teach their children.

The children entrusted to our care come to us with no knowledge or understanding of the history of the world. They are a blank slate. If they are to carry on the causes of agency, they must be taught from their youth the things that righteous men and women throughout history have fought and died for. That this cause is of God.

Satan knows this as well. That’s why he is so focused on making sure we parents and grandparents, teachers and leaders, are distracted by the things of the world. Why he exerts so much effort to see that the causes of liberty and freedom are not taught properly (or at all, even) in our schools. Why our history is revised, our founding fathers defamed. Why he inspires men to dictate to others what is offensive and what is acceptable, by shaming and ridiculing those who speak the truth.

That’s why he inspires men to use our children as the reasons we must give up our freedoms. It’s for the children, we are told. We are told we must not argue with the false and evil principles sometimes taught in publicly funded schools, because the people designing the curriculum know better what to teach our children than we do. What kind of world will we be leaving to the children? We must do as we are told, in order to save the Mother Earth for the children. God has nothing to do with it. Government knows best what to do, give us your freedom, your power, and we’ll take care of everything for you. Does that message sound familiar?

Usually, it is the same people who make such arguments who advocate the murder of the children, before they are even born. Who will not allow our children to pray at school or sing or speak of God in public. Who seek to squelch freedom of speech at every opportunity under the guise of political correctness.

But how do we combat these influences? I believe it is as simple as teaching our children to recognize and obey the Spirit of God in ALL facets of life. By so doing, they will be able to discern truth from the lies of the adversary for themselves.

We must teach them to listen to the Spirit in their classrooms. If they feel uneasy about what they are hearing, teach them to come home and talk about it. Use valuable teaching moments when they arise.

We must teach them to be sensitive to the messages of the music they hear. They will begin to recognize that uneasy feeling as the Holy Ghost.

We must teach them to reject those media influences that cause that uneasy, uncomfortable feeling. To recognize underlying messages and to remove themselves from such situations.

We must teach them that they are Sons and Daughters of a Heavenly King, and as such they are real Princes and Princesses with a divine heritage and responsibility.

We must teach them about their Savior. That they have a Perfect older Brother to whom they may turn for help, understanding and mercy and a perfect example to follow.

As members of the Lord’s Church, which is the Kingdom of God on earth, we have been blessed with everything we need to accomplish this task.

• Scriptures provide a clear instruction book for our day.

• Hymns and Children’s songs contain the inspired messages that help to invite the Spirit.
  

• Opportunities to serve one another keep us anxiously engaged in a good cause and help us to develop Christ-like attributes.

• We have a living Prophet on the earth and apostles who serve to warn and guide us as to the things we should do.

• Baptismal ordinances and covenants bind us to God and enable us to be worthy of His blessings.

• Prayer and personal revelation give us a direct line of communication with God Himself.

All of these tools—if we use them—will enable us to be prepared for all things we must face.
But we must use them.

“But whoso looketh into the perfect ^alaw of ^bliberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” James 1: 25

I’d like to leave you with one of my favorite scriptures. D&C 6:34-37

Written by Melinda Turner. Copyright 2008 Mormon-Patriot. All Rights Reserved.