Sue: It has been a very slow, restful week lying on the couch trying to get rid of a bad cough and a headache and a 16” long, now golden, bruise on my left shin. Fortunately there were several kinds of my homemade soup, and Tom’s homemade black beans in the fridge so we didn’t have to cook much and took it very easy. We cancelled all our appointments except one with Pres. Catogni visiting some of our branch leadership 1 1/2 hours away. Tom could still function well as the medical advisor while I watched favorite period movies on Britbox like Pride and Prejudice ( Colin Firth) North and South (Richard Armitage). I also caught up on Terry Smith’s 332 page commentary on the first 10 sections of the Doctrine and Covenants and am ready for the next installment this week. Inspiring insights! I am often amazed at the methods the Lord uses for personal revelation.
Tom: I am a bit further along in recovery from this virus, so I was asked to speak today in church. I felt like sharing some stories about building personal growth and development, with the hope that it will help us as a branch.
The first is so long ago that I don’t remember all the details. I was stake YM President. The youth committee was in charge of planning and carrying out the stake activities. We had a stake youth council (SYC) chair who was a teenager and a bit rebellious (feisty might be a better word). The council planned a dance, and at the direction of our stake presidency counselor we discussed what could go wrong and what we would do about those issues. Pres. Harris helped me to understand that once you give someone a responsibility, you can’t take it back without damage, so you had better learn how to be supportive and help him avoid failure. Sure enough, at the dance we had three youth who disappeared from the building for over an hour. When they returned, they were met and led into a classroom by our SYC chair, to have a conversation and impose any discipline. We stayed outside and prayed! When the door opened, all emerged without any damage done - they had been chastened and a limitation had been imposed on their next activity, but all was well. The result was a SYC chair whose testimony had been greatly strengthened because he lived up to his responsibility - an opportunity he had never experienced before. I learned a lot about leadership, and put those lessons to good use when called as bishop 2 years later.
The second story is my wife’s, about dealing with our oldest son when he was about 12. I have always said that about the age of 12, young men turn into something other than human for a few months or a year. I was used to that, being the middle of 5 boys. Sue was the youngest of 4 girls, her brothers having left home by the time she was aware. She became very frustrated dealing with the 12 year old under our roof. Finally, out of desperation, she decided at the end of every day that she would write down the good things that he had said or done that day. After 2 weeks, she found that she had the most wonderful young man living in our home.
Third, I found out while living in Kenya that in the last area, Versailles, of my first mission to France, that there were two children in that primary who had grown up to be prominent leaders: Sr. Caussé, wife of our Presiding Bishop, and Elder Giraud-Carrier, General Authority Seventy.
We live around many people, but usually we are not able to visualize their eternal potential and nature without great effort and inspired vision. If we could see each other as God sees us, we would likely treat each other differently. We are called not only to love each other, but to help each other develop the potential that we have to become like our Eternal Father.
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