Personal Preparedness

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Stake High Priest Meeting
Sept 2005

My dear brethers and sisters I’m delighted to welcome you to this annual High Priest Quorum meeting.

This is an interesting meeting, because we don’t conduct any business. And we don’t have any specific doctrine or teachings given to us to share with you. It is just an opportunity that we as a High Priest Quorum Presidency get to share with you something which will strengthen and lift our High Priest Groups throughout the stake.

Before we get started – I wanted to get us a bit more familiar

First I want to thank all those who serve in our HP Groups as Leaders or assistants. . These group leaders are diligent and proven leaders. They receive the direction of the Prophet with gladness and find ways to make it work within their respective groups. Perhaps the biggest instruction our HP Group leaders have had to incorporate into their programs this year is the call to have the HP GL’s be responsible for the Perspective Elders in each Ward.

We appreciate the way that you GL’s have sought to find ways to make it work.

We appreciate you High Priests who have taken on additional home teaching assignments to make sure that these PEs have a friend and someone to call upon.

I would like to thank the Bishops in each ward. These brethren are the presiding High Priests in each ward. They are the judges, and responsible for ensuring that all the Priesthood activity done in the ward is done according to the Lord’s direction. They have a heavy responsibility. But these brethren have broad shoulders as well and as I meet with them on a weekly basis, I am so encourgaged by the good work they do weekly.

I want to express gratitude for our high council. These are the brethren that we depend on each week to carry business back and forth to the wards and quorums. We depend on them to conduct much of the business that’s done in the ward and in our priesthood groups. We are asking them to also attend your group leadership meetings and to bring training to you. So please invite them and include them in these meetings
You are a miracle to me. You quietly pick up the work to which you are called, and you do the work, without complaining, without fanfare. Day in and day out. What a blessing it is for me and my family to live among you, and to see your wonderful examples.

Finally, I want to express gratitude to you wives of the high priests. I know that while these are wonderful men, men who love the lord and want to do what he asks, that if your homes are like mine, that much of the goodness in my life, is directly attributed to the goodness in my wife. He expectation of me, and her desire to please the lord in everything is probably the greatest example and motivation I have to do what’s right. So to my wife – I love you. And to all you wives out there, thank you.

Our opening song will be Hymn #43
Our invocation will be given by Dave Juett – a member of the HC from the 16th ward


We are excited to have with us here tonight the Walkers. You probably know the Walkers because of their extensive service in the Stake.

Currently Bishop Eldon Walker is serving as Bishop of the 4th Ward. He is serving as the Chairman of our Bishops Welfare Council.

Sister Dorothy Walker is serving as the Director of the Family History Center. It was of Sister Walker that Elder Swinton spoke at Stake Conference when he said, “Sister Walker has a disease (referring to family history work) which you want to catch.”

But it’s not about these other remarkable callings that we’ve asked them to speak to night. The Walkers are also currently serving a unique church service mission. It is a church service mission which touches on the pioneer theme that we have this year.

And so there’s a couple of messages I hope we’ll all take away from hearing the walkers.

1. There are wonderful opportunities to serve
2. You can often serve many of these calls even if you’re busy doing other things.
3. We pray that again, our hearts will be turned to our fathers as we consider the experiences they passed through on their journeys.

We will first hear from

After Sister Walker we’ll have a rest hymn #147 – Sweet is the work
And then we’ll hear our concluding remarks from Bishop Walker.

We’ll then close this meeting singing hymn #87 – God is Love
After which Junior Bonza a member of the high council will give our benediction.

We want to express our gratitude to those who provide our music – Steve Stott and Brian Parker. And to the Relief Society for providing our refreshments.

Let me share with you something my brother told me this week that was inspiring to me.

This has been an interesting week for my extended family. For those who don’t know, I grew up as a young man in Texas, I still have a lot of family there.

It was a funny set of emails we received…let me share with you a couple of emails…

Out of the blue I got an email from my brother
We are being evacuated tomorrow and here are our details! Our family goes where the leadership team for the refinery goes and this is where we will be. The Bassetts have had a change of plans. Our new evacuation plan is to stay at the following hotel
>Lakeway Inn

I replied:
What is this...? Is this what your plan is IF SOMEDAY IN THE FUTURE there's a problem? Or this is what you are doing tomorrow?

He replied:
Bret,
Rita is coming our way! We are leaving tomorrow for Austin and hoping our home and yard will be okay when we return. The information I sent earlier is where we will be staying.

This was early enough, that I hadn’t even heard of Hurricane Rita yet. All I knew was that this same brother was in Louisiana helping do cleanup with a chainsaw as part of a priesthood assignment. The newspapers later called this organized group of cleaners the “Mormon chainsaw brigade”. But since that time, he had gotten word that Hurricane Rita was on it’s way to his home, and so he flew home, and then he and his wife prepared themselves to evacuate their family.

About 8 hrs later, we got an email from Sid saying:
“… I will add though that the stories you hear on CNN regarding traffic in Houston - is absolutely TRUE. We have a guy in this group that took 29 hours to get here. He spent 14 hours on the Beltway alone. The stories told around this place are really amazing. “

So why am I telling you this? I mean his home and the home of my sister were fine. There was some rain, some wind, but nothing worthy of a major evacuation. So why take time with this here?

It’s for 2 reasons –
One is to remind us of the need to prepare yourselves for a physical emergency or disaster. When they packed up and left they were doing what they could to prepare for a potential emergency, they were blessed. We can anticipate that as we get closer to the 2nd coming of the savior, that things will get more volatile and disasters more common. We will not be immune nor spared. So preparation is ismportnt.

The second reason is a bit more metaphorical, so see if you can follow me on this.

I wrote a letter back to my brother and said,
“So the question I want to ask you is, what did you take with you? And what did you leave.”

I suspect we’ve all played this game – “If you were going to be on a deserted island, what would you take?” Well this was real life. His reply was great.
1) The family
2) All personal scriptures
3) 100GB portable HD with all pictures we have (scanned over the years)
4) All picture negatives we had
5) All family DVDs with all our old family movies
6) All critical paperwork and records
7) Clothes for 4 days, including church clothes
8) All computer programs as a back-up
9) Cash and food for the trip
10) Gas tanks full

That's about it. We had two relatively empty cars. I will say that the only thing that was of value to us (that was accidently forgotten) was Dad's old shirt that Brittany sleeps with every night. That was a mistake.

Nothing beyond that was all that important. Oh, the golf clubs were already in the trunk - I did not take them out. :)

So now the metaphor.

Each of us will have a day of crisis in our lives…I guarantee it. It may not be a hurricane or an earthquake. But it will occur, because we are all promised that no one makes it out of this world without passing through this crisis…the crisis we call death. We WILL follow the path that our dear departed patriarch followed. None of us will escape it. And when that day comes, we will either be prepared, and have filled our “cars” with things we need, or not.

So knowing ahead of time, that our personal crisis, will come – we can prepare for it. We can load up our car with all the things that are really valuable, so that when we arrive, we have what we need to be safe from the effects of the crisis.

So what are the items we need to have in our cars when we come to that time of crisis?

· We want to have our families with us. We want to have all our sweet memories. We want to have the love of our spouse and children. We want to have our families safe. Can we do more now to strengthen our relationships with our spouses and our children? Can we do more to ensure they are safe from the temptations of the world? Can we do things to endear us to them and love them deeper? Next month we will have a “Marriage Celebration”…we would encourage all couples who are able to join us for the activity. Also this entire year we have tried to encourage families to work together on some goals…spiritual, family resources, physical, and now to work on family unity goals. Please find something which will better unify your families.

· We want to have our scriptures with us. We want to study our lessons, study our scriptures. We won’t have our books with us, but what’s really important is which scriptures we have in our hearts and which we live by. We need to attend our conferences and study the discourses of the brethren. We need to honor our leaders and seek from them the wisdom they extend. We can’t bear fruits of righteousness, if we don’t know what is right and wrong. And we can’t truly know right and wrong if we don’t listen to the prophets and the scriptures.

· We want to have all our critical paperwork together. We need to make sure we’ve performed all the covenants which are necessary for salvation…baptism, endowment, sealings. IF you have not received any of these ordinance, please come talk with us so we can help you get those important thigns done.

· We should carry with us the DVDs, the home movies, and the pictures of us living the kind of life the Lord has asked us to live. That of service to others. That service can take many forms.
o Serving in the Temple
o Church service missions at home
o Full time missions
o Church service in the ward, stake, etc.
o Family History work serving those on the other side of the veil.
o Sacrifices in home teaching, goal programs, missionary work etc.

· We should also carry with us our golf clubs. What does that represent? I don’t know, it probably represents that we need to have wholesome means of recreation which bless us and our families. But the golf clubs should never displace other more important things which need to go in our cars.

Brothers and Sisters – I believe that our entire lives should be filled with doing the things which fill our cars. If you find yourself with out a an ordinance or calling. Please talk to the Bishop. He will find you something valuable which you can do. If you are at odds with your family – repent, forgive, and start today to build a stronger relationship that is more kind, and more service oriented. If you want to serve a mission – talk to the bishop, and he’ll work with you to find the best way to serve and the best time for you to serve a mission. There are so many options…as Bishop and Sister Walker and Bro and Sister Nelson have shown.

I love you good people. You are the salt of the earth. I know the Savior loves you. I pray his richest blessings as you seek to get the car packed so that you are always carrying with you the blessings of the Lord.