Dearest Elder Brown,
I am excited to tell you about this weekend we had with the
family at home.
You would have died laughing! At the end of our movie when
the credits started playing, Milah would belly dance by moving her belly and
bum back and forth and side to side. It was hilarious! We all watched her and
laughed for like 20 minutes!
Savannah is going to be the best little mother in the world.
Though Milah was clingy to me (she’s just beginning that phase) Milah would
stay with Savannah and be happy for a long time. Then she would get this funny
questioning look on her face and I could tell she was trying to figure out if
Savannah or I was her mother J
Milah is a little angel and just smiles at everyone all the
time. She has started bouncing up and down to beats just like McKay used to do.
Also, sometimes she refuses to sit down by locking her legs; she just wants us
to keep letting her stand up!
Other than that, we played games, ice skated, did a work out
video in the middle room – all the things that are fun and you wish you could
be doing but doing the Lord’s work is so much greater!
Today I talked with Dad about teaching us kids morals and
how he thought they did that so well. When you have your own children, you
think about that a lot. How am I going to make sure they don’t rebel against me
when I say “here is what the prophets teach” and also not be too lax and hope
they are my friends? Dad’s answer was basically that they didn’t have a special
“plan” to teach us morals, but that they spent a ton of time with us.
I have learned in this last week that simplifying your life
is a key to having a meaningful relationship with our Father in heaven. I hope
to be able to do this better. I want to manage my time by prioritizing with the
Lord’s help so that I accomplish the most important things first. I have
learned that teaching my children the gospel and morals is the most important
things we can do as parents because that is how our children will return with
us to Heavenly Father.
Dan and I have learned how God is a fourth watch God. He
rescues us in the fourth watch (3-6 am)
not the first watch when we want him to come. Do you remember that talk? I read
it in high school. The principle is that God doesn’t always rescue us and save
us from trials but all the while He is watching us struggle through and He will
do what is best for us. This sometimes means letting us struggle until the last
moment when He then comes to us. This has been like Dan’s offers with jobs. We
thought they would be decided almost a month ago but Dan is the last person
left on the waiting list for Bain (his favorite company) and one other guy has
to get back to Bain. If the other kid takes the offer, Dan doesn’t get an
offer. If the other kid doesn’t take the offer, Dan does get an offer. Crazy,
huh? So we are still waiting after everyone including the people at Bain
thought SURELY the waiting would be over. But then if we don’t get that job
(the one that seems the best to us right now) even after the 4th
watch is over, then comes a letter “Bread or Stones.” If we ask God for bread,
does he give us a stone? No! Then the job with the company Cornerstone would
just be the best for us. That would be the bread He gives us.
I think this talk is SO applicable to you. I can’t help but
include it in my letter. I’ll add it at the end.
I have been praying for you and for your investigators.
I love you,
God bless you for continuing on faithfully,
Your loving sister,
Alyssa
S.
Michael Wilcox devotional: Bread or stones: understanding the God we pray to
Lisa Fehoko | University Relations | 3 April 2009
The scriptures are our Father in Heaven's
letters, and there are times in our lives when we need to open the letters,
communicate with Him, and understand what He is like and His concern for us,
taught S. Michael Wilcox, CES Institute of Religion Instructor at the
University of Utah and author, in his BYU-Hawaii devotional address, titled
"Bread or Stones: Understanding the God We Pray to," on March 31.
Wilcox's devotional speech was the first of three BYU-Hawaii Joseph Smith
Lecture Series presentations he delivered throughout the week.
When his daughter was a student at BYU, she
had the opportunity to teach English in Russia, the former Soviet Union.
Because communication with her would have been difficult at best, he wrote her
a series of letters based on situations she might encounter
and gave it to her at the airport prior to her departure.
This experience prompted him to think of how
our relationship with God is in some ways the same—a father counseling his
child through letters, so he based his speech on four important 'letters' that
he has received from Heavenly Father through the scriptures: The Fourth Watch, Tight like a Dish, Bread or Stones, and Holding Places of the Heart.
In the first letter, The Fourth Watch, Wilcox taught from the book of Mark,
stating that God is a fourth-watch God. He taught that the name fourth-watch
was culled from the division of the Hebrew nights into four watches; the
significance of the fourth watch is found in the yawning hours before dawn,
when God is ever aware of our hardships, our trials.
After a day of ministering, the Savior sent
his apostles away and went off to pray. When He later approached his apostles
at about "the fourth watch of the night, ... walking upon the sea" He
saw that they had toiled in rowing against the wind (Mark 6:46-48).
Sometimes we find ourselves in the same
predicament when we toil against the wind, when forces flail against us, or
when an elusive blessing we desire or trial we want over doesn't seem to make
headway against the storms of life. "When the trials aren't over and the
blessings don't come, don't assume that He is not there, or He is not
listening, or He doesn't care, or you're not worthy. Always assume you have not
yet reached the fourth watch," noted Wilcox.
To assume otherwise meant that the second
letter, Tight like a Dish, was needed.
‘Tight like a dish' was an expression that
described the Jaredite barges. As an English major Wilcox found the redundancy
of the phrase ‘Tight like a dish' (in Ether 2:17) taxing, and he even went as
far as telling to the Lord, "I could fix this verse for you if you would
like me to."
Beyond the stylistic divergences he had with
the Lord over verse phrasal, Wilcox noted that the airtight vessel raised two
main problems for the long sea voyage: one problem, of no air, was easily
solved by the Lord with His suggestion of air stoppers on the top and bottom of
the vessel; but the other problem, of no light, required the Brother of Jared's
own resolution.
Wilcox had his own ideas about resolving the
issue of Spartan-travel: "If I were the brother of Jared, I would have
said, 'Lord, we don't need these 'Tight like a dish' ships at all. Since waves
are the problem, and waves are caused by wind, and wind comes out of your
mouth—blow softly. Breeze us to the Promised Land. We'll sit
on deck, we'll fish, we'll get tanned, we'll play shuffleboard'."
His admitted first-watch tendencies coupled
with an aversion to mountain waves helped him to realize that the Lord would
rather prepare us for the storms, rather than still the storms: "If you
are past your fourth watch and He has not come, don't assume that He is not
there, that He doesn't care, He doesn't listen, or that you are not worthy.
Assume your ship is tight like a dish."
But in case the Lord's answers were not
readily accepted, the third letter, Bread or Stones,
taught the hard lesson of coming to terms with a gift from God.
In the book of Luke the Savior taught that if
we asked, we would receive. Wilcox expounded on this scripture, noting that all
good things come from God, but a misplaced desire that veered from what was
needed would turn the given bread into stone. God—Wilcox noted—only gave bread,
never stones; only fish, never serpents; only eggs, never scorpions.
To illustrate, he told of the desire he had
always had to serve a mission in Denmark. Since his family was of Danish
decent, the majority of them served in Denmark—but since he grew up in an area
that taught French in high school, he inherently knew that he was destined to
serve in France. In fervent prayers, he asked God to send him anywhere but
France, even to French Polynesia—just as long as it was not to France.
He was at work when his mission called
arrived, and he dreaded the return home. He stalled, lingered at work, and then
drove home slowly with high hopes for red lights. In a final act of defiance
against what he knew was the inevitable mission call to France, he pulled off
to the side of the road near his home and gave a desperate prayer: "Father
in Heaven, I know my mission call is at home, and I know it says France. Thou
art all powerful; thou art merciful and loving. Please—thou canst do all
things—please change it in the envelope."
When he finally opened his call, it said
France. "Of course it said France. Actually, I think it originally said
Denmark," stated Wilcox.
Post-mission, he found that he had French
ancestors and that he had served in some of the cities that they had lived in.
He loved his mission and learned that God did not give useless or harmful
things—only what was needed.
But when a great need went unanswered despite
continuous pleas throughout his life, the Lord taught him the importance of a
timed answer through the fourth and final letter—Holding Places of the Heart.
Wilcox's father had left his family when he
was one year old. Interaction with his father was minimal—a trip once a year to
Lagoon in Utah. For over thirty years, he prayed and asked God for peace and
comfort about what his father had done—and never received an answer.
One day, while preparing for a talk on
parenting, he felt impressed to speak about his father. He was seated on the
living room couch, across from his two boys that stood near him; they were six
and two years of age at the time. The Lord jogged his memory and he recalled
life experiences he had with his sons. Then the Lord pressed him: "Mike,
life has carved a holding place in your heart, and I will give you the answer.
Now that you are a father, now that you know a father's joys and love, would
you be the son who lost his father? Or the father who lost his son?"
He finally understood that God always had an
answer, but God could only answer his question when he "had shared enough
life with those boys to comprehend" what was given.
To these experiences he summed, "May you
search God's letters when you need them; may your fourth watches come quickly;
may your ship be tight like a dish; may God, as He does, always give you bread,
and may you recognize that it always is bread, [and] may life carve the holding
places in your heart."
—Photo by Monique Saenz
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