"Beauty for Ashes"

Today we had a great sacrament meeting and a new couple, Dee and Karen Upham spoke to us.  They spoke about member missionary work and talked about how we must first look inward and make sure we are truly converted before we can even have the desire to share it with others.  We can be active in church but not active in the gospel.  Meaning we can go through the motions of church attendance, going to activities but not really have a testimony of the gospel.  If that is the case we will not survive when the wind and rains come.  The Uphams served in the mission presidents' office in San Antonio and said that the mission president would tell the new missionaries that to be successful missionaries they cannot have one foot in the mission and one foot back at home.   He said the mission president would take the new elders/sisters to the Alamo and draw a line in the sand.  He said when you cross this line you are all in.  You are committed to being 100% a San Antonio Missionary.  In young womens our lesson was on being in the world and not of the world and I told the girls that you could relate that analogy to that as well.  You cannot have one foot on the straight and narrow path and one foot on the worlds path.  The chasm is too wide and even doing the splits would not be sufficient to straddle both paths.  The talk, Which way do you face from Elder Robbins was a great talk about that as well.  He also talked about how in our life we might experience trials and perceived set backs and he used Joseph Smith's families story.  How grandparents struggled and were victims of con men which caused them to move around and in the moves Josephs parents met and married and through their trials they ended up in Palmyra where the plates would be found nearby.  He said that during the hard times the Smith family had no idea that this was all part of the plan that the Lord had for them.  The trials needed to get them to the place that he needed them to be.  Often in our lives hard times come and we cannot see the "beauty in the ashes".  I love that phrase from Isaiah.  We have to trust and believe in good things to come and continue faithful.   Elder Eyring said, "There is a God.  He is our Father.  He really knows us.  He knows the future.  I don't know how He knows it in such detail, but He knows the future.  He knows every challenge ahead of you.  He knows every opportunity ahead of you.  He knows your power and wants to lift you to every opportunity and to be able to go through every trial that may be ahead of you, and to go through smiling."