L is for Latter-day Saints

In the spirit of catching up, I have wanted to do a Sunday feature on this blog for the past few months.  Yeah, it isn't Sunday but I thought I would share what I wanted this feature to be.  I wanted to share some quotes and ideas of what I have learned spiritually over the course of the week.  These might be scriptures, quotes from the prophets or the Church magazines, and they might just be random thoughts that have run through my head. I thought today with it being L, doing LDS would be a good choice to help me catch up a bit of the thoughts I have had and the quotes that I wanted to share.

Before I get too far, I wanted to talk a little about LDS. LDS stands for Latter-day Saints.  It is a quick acronym people use because we are lazy.  But I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  By latter-day, it shows that we are apart of the same Church that Christ established during his ministry, just we belong to it in this day too.

We believe that God speaks through his prophets to us on this earth right now. As members of the Church, we participate in General Conference which allows the prophets to instruct us in what we need to hear.  We just got done with General Conference on the first weekend in April, and we won't have another session until October.  However, in between we are encouraged to read and ponder the messages received at the last conference and any other conferences previously.  I have become very fond of one particular speaker, Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

This is President Uchtdorf

President Uchtdorf is in the presiding body of the Church called the First Presidency. He is a sweet man from Germany-his accent is great.  And he says things that I usually need to hear.  I have been really studying two of his talks the last few months and I want to share a quote from each (which is going to be hard because there are soo many!).

In the October conference he gave a talk called, "You Can Do it Now!" In it he said:

Stand tall and walk in the light of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ! You are stronger than you realize. You are more capable than you can imagine. You can do it now! 

I loved this because life can be really hard sometimes.  But I know that I can make it through with the Savior by my side.

The other talk was from October 2011 called, "You Matter to Him".  In this talk he reminded me how much my Heavenly Father loves me.  He said:

My dear brothers and sisters, it may be true that man is nothing in comparison to the greatness of the universe. At times we may even feel insignificant, invisible, alone, or forgotten. But always remember—you matter to Him! 

The power in which he says those words just reaffirms to my soul how much my Heavenly Father does love me.

I am grateful to be a Latter-day Saint because I can receive the guidance and direction I need to help me through life's hardest challenges.