One should not try to console either those who lost their eyes, or those who have suffered other losses--of money, health, or a loved one. It is necessary instead to show them what their loss brings them, to show them the gifts they receive in place of what they have losst. Because there are always gifts. God wills it so. Order is restored; nothing ever disappears completely.

We wish to force our own conditons on life; this is our real weakness. We forget that God never creates new conditons for us without giving us the strength to meet them... By all this, I learned at the same time that we shoule never give way to despair, no matter what brutal and negative events occur in our lives [because] just as quickly the same sum of life is given back to us.
--Jacques Lusseyran, Buchenwald prison camp survivor, blinded at age 7.

SAMBA PARTY BIO'S

advice from Church's leading scholar

Have faith that there is more than you know; repent of all your present shallowness and silliness; wash off everything of this world in the waters of baptism, and be reborn...to a course of action requiring perpetual, progressive repentance...until you are full of grace and truth...then "ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" and get the guidance you need.
--Hugh Nibley

lepote flom Taiwan missionaly namba wan

Yo 'sup y'all,

I've left my abode in XinDian AnKang (see pic), I love that place. It was a ghetto little piece of city nestled in steep-cliff mountains coverd with thick jungle. I saw MANY miracles there, to share a few:

Cui [my non-English speaking Korean companion] & I had an impression to go to a certain aera of the city & contact people/knock doors. When we got there we came to a place where the small street we walked divided into 4 small lanes, we both felt to walk down a certain one, and the first door we knocked a small Taiwanese came out, she listened intently as we briefly shared about Heavenly Father & His restored gospel. She didn't really understand what we said (many of them really have no idea who Jesus Christ is, so his 'restored' gospel has even smaller import) but she felt the spirit & wanted the blessing we promised her family - she is doing great & LOVES church, she's progressing so fast.

One day Cui I were contacting in a park, & I saw an apartment building across the river & thought to go there & knock a bit. When we got there, we had several doors to choose from (each door leads into a complex of probly 50+ appt.) We rang one of the 50 doorbells, and someone let us in without checking to see who we were- Cha Ching! We started knockin' the complex without much luck, when we only had 5 min. left, Cui said, "K, just knock the ones that feel good we only have a few minutes" "This door seems good" We knocked & met a college-aged girl, gave her a tract & welcomed her to church- expecting nothing of it... Next sunday she showed up!!! & started meeting with the sister missionaries, she will be baptized this month! It's a great feeling to be a sharp RAMBO knife in the hand of the Lord.

There were many more miracles, I will miss that place..
-Elder Pietr Mikkelsen

marked for greatness from an early age

Which member of the OCCINCO bishopric or OC stake presidency is pictured above? ($7.00 cash prize)

a responsible step

When we take a responsible step to do what is right or sacrifice what is wrong, there flows to us, often immediately, a quiet confirmation from the Spirit of the Lord that we are doing right, and encouragement and strength to keep going. If we start doing any of the things we have been commanded to do, we will be given strength to persist, and our persistence will bring us more strength. What the Lord contributes is infinitely greater than what we contribute, but it comes to us only by our initiative and diligence.
--Enzio Busche

every moment an age of happiness

Fyodor Dostoevsky stands shivering in the middle of Semenovsky Plaza in St. Petersburg, Russia, the next in line to die. It is December 22, 1849, and it looks like he will not see Christmas.

After eight months in solitary confinement the twenty prisoners, all members of an intellectual circle suspected of disloyalty to the government, have been marched into this square and are commanded to remove their clothes in the -20 degree (Celsius) weather. The first three are shrouded in white smocks for execution. They are allowed to kiss the cross, hoods are placed over their heads so that they will not see the rifles trained on their hearts, and then they are shackled to three posts.

Dostoevsky waits in the freezing cold, dressed only in his underwear, and counts out the last minutes of his life. He estimates that there are about five minutes remaining to him, and with his remarkable sense of detail, he divides them in the following manner: two minutes to think of his beloved brother Mikhail and others in his family, two to look around him one last time, and one last moment to think of God.

It is at this last moment, when he has exchanged last words with his two fellow prisoners and offered his last prayer to God, that the rifles are suddenly lowered and a new sentence is read. The Czar has extended clemency — prison in Siberia and enforced service in the army for a total of eight years. Dostoevsky is a man reborn.

A few hours later he writes to his brother: "As I look back upon the past and think how much time was spent to no avail; how much of it was lost in delusions, in mistakes, in idleness, in not knowing how to live; what little store I set upon it, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit — for this my heart bleeds. Life is a gift. Life is happiness. Every moment could have been an age of happiness."