081624, Friday

Vitals: Weight: 223.3, GMI: 6.7

Book of Mormon review (review of earlier Come Follow Me lessons): Alma 37, The commandments of Alma to his son Helaman.  Comprising chapters 36 and 37.

Journal Entry 

Cathy served in the Bishops Storehouse. I stayed home and our new housekeeper, Angelica, spent most of the whole day cleaning this house in amazing ways. She mopped, vacuumed, scrubbed, dusted with amazing thoroughness. She will come every two weeks and she will be a great blessing to us and our home. 

I got the 5,000 mile service completed on our car which is running flawlessly and we want to keep it that way. Jake came over and helped lift some heavy plants from our garden into the trash. While he was here he noticed what afloat to be a growing hornet or wasp nest up in the rafters of the front of the house. He suggested a post control service that he uses and Cathy and I both think it would be useful to get that going too. So with a housekeeper and pest control we'll have more expense but the house should be week kept for the remainder of our lives... at least that is my hope. Cathy talks about moving from time to time, mainly because the weather is difficult with being too hot in the simmer and too cold and snowy in the winter. But we're here and the house is new and now well cared for with little effort on our part. Hopefully I can keep her happy with being here. I really don't want to move again.

Come Follow Me 

Alma 47:11 And it came to pass that when Lehonti received the message he durst not go down to the foot of the mount. And it came to pass that Amalickiah sent again the second time, desiring him to come down. And it came to pass that Lehonti would not; and he sent again the third time.

12 And it came to pass that when Amalickiah found that he could not get Lehonti to come down off from the mount, he went up into the mount, nearly to Lehonti’s camp; and he sent again the fourth time his message unto Lehonti, desiring that he would come down, and that he would bring his guards with him.

"Could it be that we have been slowly desensitized into thinking that high moral standards are old-fashioned and not...important...?

"...Lehonti…was well positioned on the top of a mountain. He and those he led were “fixed in their minds with a determined resolution” that they would not come down from the mount. It only took…four tries...to get Lehonti to “come down off from the mount.” And then…Lehonti was…poisoned...“by degrees.” It may be happening today…that first we tolerate, then accept, and eventually embrace the vice that surrounds us?... Have we been deceived by false role models and persuasive media messages that cause us to forget our divine identity? Are we too being poisoned by degrees? What could be more deceptive than to entice the youth…to do nothing or to be busy ever-texting but never coming to a knowledge of the truths contained in…the Book of Mormon? What could be more deceptive than to entice women…to be so involved in ourselves, our looks, our clothes, our body shape and size that we lose sight of our divine identity and our ability to change the world through our virtuous influence? What could be more deceptive than to entice men...to view seductive pornography and thus focus on flesh instead of faith, to be consumers of vice rather than guardians of virtue?"

.    Elaine S. Dalton, Young Women General President, October 2008