Thoughts on Father's Day

While not strictly related to our mission, I share a talk below that I gave today at our church.  I was asked to speak in sacrament meeting, which is the first of three meetings we attend on Sundays.  Its main purpose, as its name suggests, is to partake of the sacrament, but several members are usually invited to share gospel messages with the congregation, later in the meeting.

There was a fair amount of contemplation and scripture study involved in preparing this talk.  I felt the Spirit was helping me to select material and organize concepts to share.  I hoped the talk would touch the father's and future fathers in the congregation, so that they felt a desire to focus on what really matters in life - their family!

Anyways, it doesn't need a lot of preamble.  Here is the talk...

Father's Day - 2016.06.19

Opening

A friend sent me examples of some father’s day cards that he had found on the internet, amongst which was a real treasure.  I suspect it was written by a young boy, perhaps 9 or 10 years old:

“Dad - without me, today is just another day. (You’re welcome).”

This humorous statement also has a serious message - without children, life would be empty and meaningless.  It’s not just that we would miss celebrating one day of the year, but that there would be a huge void in our hearts and in our souls.  This is true irrespective of the parentage of those children.

If that is how we feel about children, think how our Heavenly Father feels about us!

Today, I want to discuss three topics:

1. Appreciating our Heavenly Father.
2. What our Heavenly Father wants for His Children.
3. How we can honour Him.

Let’s think about our Heavenly Father

What is he like?

• Every day, when you pray to Him, how do you visualize Him?  Sometimes I see a face with very kind eyes; other times, it is more a feeling of warm familiarity.  That’s when I know I am actually connecting.
• We know that God is a perfect being, that He is omniscient (that is, having complete and unlimited knowledge and understanding) and all powerful.  But do we really know Him that well?

How does he see us?

• We are his children.  He has told us that we were created in the “similitude of his Only Begotten” (Moses 1:13).  Our prophets have told us that “All human beings - male and female - are created in the image of God.  Each is a beloved son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny”. (The Family - A Proclamation to the World).

How does he feel about us?

• God loves us deeply and perfectly.
• John 3:16 tells us “…For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” 

I can’t imagine the depth of His feelings as Jesus was praying in Gethsemane or hanging on the cross.  But if we try to understand, particularly if we have children of our own, then perhaps we can start to appreciate the depth and breadth of His love for us.  Maybe it is worth thinking about that for a while, on Father’s Day.

For now, let’s just keep in our minds that we have a perfect Father who loves us perfectly.

What does our Heavenly Father want for His Children?

The book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price tells us of several discussions that Moses had with God.  In one, Moses saw the entire earth and all of its inhabitants - the scriptures say that he saw, “…even all of it; and there was not a particle of it which he did not behold, discerning it by the Spirit of God…” (Moses 1:27).  Moses asked God to tell him why and how he made the world.  The Lord at first says “For mine own purpose have I made these things.  Here is wisdom and it remaineth in me”, (Moses 1:31).

But God tells Moses that He made our world and many other worlds by the power of His Son.  Finally, God speaks this transcendent truth to Moses: “For behold, this is my work and my glory — to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39).

What does this mean?  In the last LDS general conference, President Uchtdorf said: “…we can…transcend mortal imagination and become heirs of eternal life and partakers of God’s indescribable glory….".  God’s plan is to build us into something far greater than we can ever imagine.

That means that God’s focus is on his children.  His plan is for us to be happy.  We achieve that by obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel.

“In the pre-mortal realm, spirit sons and daughters knew and worshipped God as their Eternal Father and accepted His plan by which His children could obtain a physical body and gain earthly experience to progress toward perfection and ultimately realize their divine destiny as heirs of eternal life”. (The Family - A Proclamation to the World).

We can honour our Heavenly Father by doing His work

President Eyring’s talk from the last general conference talks about eternal families and some of the following quotes are taken from that talk.

As fathers, our greatest purpose is to help our families and others to progress towards and obtain eternal life.  Quote: “Every priesthood effort and every priesthood ordinance is intended to help Heavenly Father’s children be changed through the Atonement of Jesus Christ to become members of perfected family units.  It follows that ‘the great work of every man is to believe the gospel, to keep the commandments, and to create and perfect an eternal family unit’ (quoting Bruce R. McConkie)”.

We should put our families and the families of those around us at the centre of our concern.  Every decision we make should be based on how it helps our family to qualify for life with Heavenly Father.

In the last conference, Elder Christofferson told us that “…fatherhood exposes us to our own weaknesses and our need to improve…” and appealed to “…all fathers to do better and to be better”.  To me, this was encouragement to make the changes in my own life that are necessary for me to re-prioritize and focus on those things that will help my family - past, present and future - to obtain eternal life.  Here are some ideas that have impressed me as I have thought about this:

1. I need to treat my wife and my children the way Heavenly Father treats me.  Fortunately, modern day scriptures provide direction:
1. In regards to my wife - D&C 42:22 - “Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart, and shalt cleave unto her and none else”.  And in contemplating this scripture, I believe we can consider the additional insight that comes from replacing the words “none else” with “nothing else”.
2. In regards to my children and grandchildren - D&C 121:41 - “No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned…”.  I see this behaviour modelled daily as I watch my children and their spouses deal with the challenges of raising their children.  Elder Christofferson said that “…the most essential of a father’s work is to turn the hearts of his children to their Heavenly Father…”.
2. Teach our children and others in our family the doctrines of the Plan of Salvation:
1. The need to make choices, which means we must have both agency and opposition in our lives, keeping in mind that making right choices is what helps us to grow as our Father intended.
2. The need for a Saviour to allow us to be cleansed from sin and progress towards our eternal destiny.
3. The need for us to exercise faith in Jesus Christ.
4. The need to experience the witness of the Holy Ghost (Elder Hales - “The Holy Ghost provides personal revelation to help us make major life decisions…”).
5. The need to be obedient that we may discover “…what we are truly made of…We come to see obedience…as a liberating path to our divine destiny…”. (Uchtdorf).
6. The need to make eternal covenants with our Heavenly Father in his House, again keeping in mind that the primary blessings of the temple are the ordinances of exaltation.  (President Monson - “Until you have entered the house of the Lord and have received all the blessings which await you there, you have not obtained everything the Church has to offer.  The all-important and crowning blessings of membership in the Church are those blessings which we receive in the temples of God.”)
7. The need for family history work to tie our families together in the eternities, knowing that the Lord organizes eternal families only in temples.  The really cool thing is that all members of the family can be involved with family history and temple work, and there has been no other time when we have been so enabled.

Closing

The Lord expects a lot of fathers - they have an important role to play in His Plan of Happiness.  However, He does not leave them alone.  He gives them the gift of the Holy Ghost, which will always guide them in the important decisions of life.  He entrusts them with the priesthood, which if used wisely will assist them to carry out their roles in life.  And he blesses them with an eternal companion, who can be their best confidante, counsellor, encourager, and smoother of troubled waters.

I pray that today we will take some time to:

1. Think about and appreciate our Heavenly Father, and perhaps gain a more intimate picture of who he is and what he wants for His children.
2. Contemplate the ways that we can “do better and be better” as we teach and encourage our families in their journey to eternal life in a heavenly family and exaltation in God’s kingdom.

Training For Our Mission

Forewarning: This is a long post....

We have been going through a lot of Self-Reliance training in preparation for our mission (see header for link).  However, what we did not expect was to get some very hands on experience with being self-reliant and being prepared.  This is the story of:

The Fort McMurray, Alberta Wildfires

One of our new friends in Australia, Sister Meyers, saw on the news what was happening with a devastating wildfire in northern Alberta.  I was just going to tell her the "short" version, but it evolved into this description...

Hello Sister Myers,

The "short" story is that I went up to Fort McMurray for work this past Sunday, saw the beginnings of a wildfire and posted a photo about it on Facebook, got evacuated to a safer place in Fort McMurray the same night (yep, it’s always at midnight or 1 am), worked the next day (Monday) at the Syncrude oil sand plant about 30 km north of Fort McMurray, stayed in town that night, went back to Syncrude the next day (very unwisely leaving all my clothes, toiletries and medications at the hotel), then was not allowed to return to Fort McMurray after that because the fires had spread aggressively that day and the area in which we were staying was being evacuated.  We were put up in an old camp at Syncrude that had been shut down for a while - I got a small room (maybe 2.1 m by 3 m) with a bed, no sheets, blankets or pillow, initially not even any water in the communal bathrooms, and I was happy to have that.  In some rooms there were entire families, the kids on the bed and the parents trying to sleep on the floor.  The next day, Syncrude tried to bring food in for about the 3000 people (individuals, families with kids and pets, etc.) that had showed up at their site from town, fleeing the fire (that was just the initial wave), but only about a 1/3 got fed breakfast.  Everyone in the camp was supposed to be bussed south to Edmonton that morning, but that plan fell through when the only highway out of town was closed by the RCMP due to the fire.  We were told around 10 am that lunch would be delivered at 3:30 pm.

That’s when I decided I’d better get myself out, or I’d be there for another several days or even a week, under unpleasant (but reasonable) conditions.  I phoned two friends, one each at oil sand plants further north, whose companies had their own air strips, and managed to get all of our group (about 10) out of Fort McMurray that night.  Turns out both of those companies were accepting anyone who came to their site and were trying to help them - each flew about 15 to 20 jet loads of people out that day (maybe as many as 5-6000 people between them, some of those being “non-essential” employees).  It was “first come, first served”, with some priority to families with children.  What a zoo - people milling about everywhere, but waiting their turn and overall still orderly - no pushing or shoving or cutting in line - that’s generally not the Canadian way of doing things.  The companies provided holding areas with chairs, tables, water, food and sanitary facilities.  They also provided power - remarkably, the several cell phone systems in the area were still functioning, which is one of the reasons for the calm - people could contact other family members in town and further away, and could monitor the news services to find out what was happening.  Anyways, the group I was with flew out about 7:00 pm that night and the other group that went to a different site flew out about 11:30 pm that night.

Overall, 88,000 people were evacuated from Fort McMurray.  I think about 1/3 of that number got out to the south of town, running a gauntlet of fire on both sides of the highway, until it was shut down.  It is a 5 hour drive through pretty much wilderness to get to Edmonton.  The few gas stations along the way quickly ran out of gas and many were just stranded along the side of the road for several days.  Shell Canada sent a huge tanker truck up the road giving away gas to get people moving again, and many good hearted people just got in their trucks and drove up the highway, bringing as much food, water and fuel as they pack in their vehicle, to help out.

The other say 2/3 of the people were forced to go north of town.  The highway goes as far as the various open pit oil sand plants - Syncrude, Suncor (2 locations), Shell, CNRL, and Imperial Oil.  Each of these have hotel-like camp accommodation for perhaps 5000 people that they use for contractors and for “shut downs”, when a lot of workers are brought in for general maintenance on their plants.  These companies sent all their non-essential staff away (most of them run fly-in, fly-out operations) so that they could accept the waves of “refugees” from the town.  They didn’t all come at once because the town was evacuated in stages as the wild fires spread.  At the same time, the companies who had fly-in, fly-out operations were trying to send the refugees out as quickly as they could, to free up room for the new ones arriving at their gates.  Many people spent evening(s) in their truck on a jammed highway with children and pets.

I believe finally today the fires moved away from the highway and the RCMP was able to open it up and send people south through town and to Edmonton.  Suncor set up a temporary fuelling station north of town to make sure everyone had enough gas or diesel to get to Edmonton.

The initial emergency responders, fire fighters and RCMP were amazing at their jobs, but were soon overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem.  Fire fighters from all over Canada and from places as far away as Mexico, alerted to the problem, started showing up to relieve those who carried the load for the first few days.  About the same time, the federal and provincial governments started providing relief and organizing communities along the way to Edmonton and in Edmonton and Calgary to take and look after the evacuees.  We owe a huge thank you to these people, but particularly to those who were first on the scene.

They are not sure about the total damage count, but it looks to me like about 15% of the city was destroyed (by latest count, an estimated 2400 homes).  Some housing subdivisions were very hard hit, including one called Beacon Hill where the LDS church is located.  Talking to another friend up there who is a church member, the bishopric in one of the two wards there had just been changed the weekend before the fires started (what a “first week on the job experience”).  80% of Beacon Hill was razed by fire, but the church and adjacent school, and a very few homes nearby, are still standing.  It looks like the church has some scorch marks on one side but it did not burn down.  These areas are still all closed so no one has been able to go in to check it out.

***  Update:  Here is a link to a video taken by someone driving through that area:
Beacon Hill Devastation  ***

However, there isn’t anyone there to check it out - the entire town of 88,000 has been evacuated either south or north.  Except for the emergency responders, it is a ghost town.  Photos are being posted on Facebook and other social media now of people living in vehicles or tents they brought along, families with pets being flown out of town, etc.  As I mentioned, many people had literally minutes warning to evacuate as winds and hot weather suddenly drove the fires in a new direction.  I’ve seen videos of people in their truck or car driving down some of the main connector roads onto the highway, with fires burning immediately around them on both sides of the road, and a sad video of a guy leaving his house while the fire flared up right behind his house and started it on fire, (Fort McMurray is a new town carved out of Boreal forest, so the trees come right up to the edge of every subdivision).

Lots of stories of heroism, patience, support and coordination by all.  Amazingly no person or pet died, as far as we know, and two babies were even born by mothers who had been evacuated from the local hospital to Syncrude the same night I was there.  I have to say, though, that if it hadn’t been for the huge capacity and quick action of all the oil sand mining companies, this fire would have been a disaster of an entirely different proportion.  No one at any of these companies asked “who do you work for?” or “why are you here?”.  They just accepted everyone who came through their doors, supported them, and helped them get out of town.  And they had the capacity and training to do so.

I’ve used the terms “refugees” and “evacuees” purposely.  At first it felt like we were refugees but later most of us were really evacuees because we had somewhere to go.  But many living in Fort McMurray (I don’t know the number, but I’d guess 20%) are immigrants from other countries and some of them truly refugees from those countries.  Fort McMurray was their only home.  They have nowhere else to live.  The provincial government is trying to sort that out, with the help of the Canadian Red Cross, but all of these people will be supported in whatever way is needed, for as long as is needed.

In the meantime, the fires still burn out of control and have caused the evacuation of several, small nearby communities (within 10 to 15 km of Fort McMurray), mostly to the south.  Some of the oil sand operations (not open pit; they are all north of town; but what is called “in situ” developments south of town)  have had to evacuate their facilities as well.  The fire has consumed over 200,000 hectares of forest and is still voracious as hot, dry weather continues.  It is not possible to control a fire of this size, but only to try to direct it a bit and in so doing save some of the critical infrastructure.  Amazingly, almost none of the downtown area with all the hospital, government buildings, shops, water treatment plant, and most general services was damaged.  What has been the hardest hit are the peripheral residential subdivisions.

Albertans are a resilient bunch.  I haven’t heard anyone say “that’s it!”.  While many have lost their homes, they are all saying “This is our home - we’ll be back and we’ll rebuild”.  I’m not sure exactly when that will be - it is likely not going to happen for several weeks.  With the cooperation of the weather (colder temperatures and some rain) and with the efforts of the fire fighters, the fires will eventually die down, officials will get in and assess damage, and eventually, selectively let people back to pick up the pieces of their lives and try to carry on.  It will take a huge effort yet by all those resources that have so far been stretched beyond their limit.

I think this is the biggest natural disaster that Alberta has ever experienced.  To say that we have learned a few things is a gross understatement.

I ask myself how, given my knowledge of the developing situation, I could have left all of my personal goods, including important medications, in a vulnerable location.  They are still there - I don’t expect to retrieve them for weeks.  I ask myself why I didn’t leave right away, when it became evident that it might get out of hand but hadn’t yet done so.  I’ve thought hard about that, particularly given all the training in Preparedness that we have received from the church, taken to heart and practised over the years, and given that we are now preparing to go on a church mission to teach self-reliance to people.  The only answer I could come up with is that it is human (or at least my) nature to deny the seriousness of a situation and to tell ourselves that things won’t get out of hand.  Obviously they did here, and they do all the time in people’s lives in different ways.  So what I have learned is to be more alert, observant, and thoughtful, and start practising those emergency response skills that I have.  I've also learned is better to be pre-emptive and find out afterwards that you over-reacted than to wait and see what will happen, as in the latter case you will always be caught doing too little.

You might say it’s been good training for our mission :>)

Adventures in Fingerprint Land

We've found that there are a lot of preparations to make before going to Australia and one of the most involved is obtaining an Australian Temporary Work Visa.  Earlier this week we visited the local RCMP office in Kelowna to have our fingerprints and photos taken, so that they could be sent off to Ottawa and checked for past criminal activity on our part.  Fortunately, there hasn't been any so we should receive a report to that effect shortly.

When we went to the fingerprint centre, we had to go through a locked door.  Preceding us was a fellow serving time on weekends and before us on the wall was a number of mug shots of people who are wanted for various crimes in Canada.  We did not feel like we fit in very well!

As Jan sat to get her photo taken, she found the bench a little high and slippery.  She remarked that it was not very comfortable and the very pleasant officer working there said that it wasn't supposed to be comfortable.  She balanced on her tip toes just to stay in position for her photo.  We guess her legs are too short to be a typical candidate for a mug shot.

The fingerprinting no longer involves messy ink but rather they are taken electronically.  The device was having a hard time reading our prints and the officer needed to state a reason to over-ride that.  We thought "getting old and worn out" might describe it well, but that wasn't in his drop down menu of reasons.

In contrast to the small, claustrophobic room, the duty officer was very friendly, helping us to feel at ease while going through the process.  As he unlocked the door to let us out (reminding us that yes, we were in prison and you can't leave on your own), we were grateful we were only there for a short fingerprinting session!  We were also grateful to see that the RCMP office is run with such efficiency and by (for us) friendly people.

The News is Finally Here - and it's Australia!

We finally submitted our mission application to the LDS church towards the end of January, 2016, after several months of medical tests, dental work, immunizations, and other related matters.

Earlier this week, we received a letter from the church with our mission assignment, or as it is referred to in the church, our "mission call"!

When the letter arrived at our daughter's place in Delta, BC, we were on a birding trip in Florida. Protocol requires that all family members are present when the mission call is opened and read. So...we had to get all of our kids on line, which we managed to do within about 1/2 hour by a combination of Skype and phone. Our oldest daughter was polling everyone to see where we might go, which resulted in all sorts of crazy suggestions - I think our kids wanted us to be suitably nervous prior to opening and reading the letter.

Our oldest daughter then read through the letter and we found out that we were called to the Australia - Melbourne mission, to serve in the Perpetual Education Fund / Self-reliance centre. We are very excited to be called to Australia - a land and people that we love from several visits there already. As soon as they heard, our kids immediately started speculating about holidaying in Australia some time soon (they never miss a good opportunity).

We will be reporting to the Mission Training Centre (MTC) in Provo, Utah in early August, 2016, for several weeks of training (I wonder if any of that will be in how to speak Australian?) and then will be sent on to Melbourne.

One of my brothers asked the following questions, so I thought it would be helpful to include some answers here, for general consumption:

1.  How long is the mission?  It runs for 18 months from the time we report to the MTC.  We had a choice of 12 months, 18 months or 24 months and opted for the middle amount.

2.  Do you get holidays every year?  Ha!  A mission is a time to dedicate your efforts to helping others.  The PEF/Self-Reliance Centre will have regular hours plus there will be other assignments as given by the local church leader (in our case, the Australia-Melbourne Mission President, who directs all missionary activities in the area, whether they be proselyting, service or humanitarian).  That being said, senior missionaries normally get some time for personal items, such as contacting family members.

3.  How much do you get paid for the work you do?  Our mission is entirely self-funded, except for when missionaries serve for more than 18 months, the church pays their way to and from their assigned location.  Part of the application process for seniors is to help the church assess the health and financial capacity of the prospective missionaries, so that they are sent to areas suited to their conditions.

3.  A great opportunity to not only see Australia but also SE Asia. That seems to be an Aussie hotspot for vacation.  Well, we're not really there for a vacation, but we do hope to see some of the sites around Melbourne during the course of our stay there.  One interest we have is birding; we're sure there are many new birds to see and study.  It will also be a chance to meet and work with Australians living in the mission area, to which we really look forward.

4.  Food wise I suppose it is fairly similar to ours but there will also be local favourites.  A must try item would be??  I think the food there is relatively similar, although there are a few Australian variations that are worth mentioning, such as their obsession with meat pastries and a type of hamburger that contains, in addition to the normal North American fare, a fried egg, beets and pineapple.  Janette already loves that hamburger.

For those who are unfamiliar with the terms of this mission call, read on...

The "Perpetual Education Fund" is a fund that was set up by the LDS church in 2001, to which many church members contribute (voluntarily).  It helps young people in developing countries to get an education and improve their employment possibilities, and is similar in nature to the early "Perpetual Emigration Fund", which helped 30,000 new church members to immigrate to the US, and more specifically to the area around Salt Lake City, Utah, in the mid to late 1800s.  More information on how the PEF was set up and who it benefits can be found at:

https://www.lds.org/topics/pef-self-reliance/perpetual-education-fund?lang=eng


Self Reliance Centres are similar to the Employment Centres with which church members in Canada and the U.S. would be more familiar.  They provide Internet access, mentoring, and other helpful resources to job seekers, the self-employed, and prospective students, and offer services on topics such as:

• How to start or grow your business
• How to find employment
• How to gain a good education
• Personal mentoring
• Networking opportunities

Further information on Self Reliance Centres can be found at:

https://www.lds.org/topics/pef-self-reliance/centers

Getting started is more than half the battle!

This blog is started by Janette and John to describe a mission we plan to serve for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (the LDS church) in 2016 and 2017.  This will be a "Seniors' Mission", of a service or humanitarian type, although that has yet to be fully decided.

As of today, we are still in the application phase -  we've been trying for about 3 months to get our paperwork ready.  This includes providing personal information, stating preferences for type of mission and area of service, arranging for out of country emergency medical insurance, and getting our general health and dental information up to date.

We often wondered why the young people in the LDS church took so long to apply, once they had decided to go on a mission.  Now we know - it just takes time, particularly if you have any medical or dental issues to resolve.  The church wants you to enter your mission in good health, so that you can focus on service and not on personal issues.  We keep telling ourselves: "Be patient!  The Lord is in charge of the process, not us, and our preparations will evolve at their own pace".  Easy enough to say; not so easy to do.

I just hope we don't trip over the quote Sam Gamgee attributed to his gaffer: "It's the job that's never started as takes longest to finish".