Michael's First Talk

Don't worry about the schedule. Whenever we want to post, we will. By the way, on Sunday, it was the Austin show at church. Our stake was re-divided a few months ago, and the new bishopric (bishopbric? bishobric?) has been having whole families do talks in sacrament meeting. It was our turn, the girls were singing a song, and my parents and I were giving talks. When on Monday (6 days before it happened) we got the topics. In about thirty minutes, I had written a talk. Here is the full text of it.

My talk is about how scripture study blesses our family. In preparing for this, my first talk, I read about President Monson's first talk. It then talked about how to write your own talk. One of the first instructions was to find a scripture that compared to your topic. I couldn't think of one at the moment. I used the search tab on the church website to look for one. Then I saw an article by L. Tom Perry called “Back to Gospel Basics” from the Ensign for May 1993. He says,

"Let us consider again the blessings promised us if we faithfully practice daily family prayer and daily family scripture study. The scriptures are filled with admonitions to stay close to the Lord and call upon His holy name in prayer. In the latter days of Alma’s ministry, he instructed his sons on how they should live. After Alma’s remarkable conversion, he spent his life proclaiming the gospel and perfecting the Saints. Before he died, he wanted to instill in his sons a desire to be obedient to God’s will. To Helaman he said:

'O, remember, my son, and learn wisdom in thy youth; yea, learn in thy youth to keep the commandments of God.'" (Alma 37:35)

In our family scripture reading, we had recently read these chapters, which are chapters 36-39 in Alma. I realized that, like Helaman, we too must learn wisdom in our youth. One way we can do this is by reading scriptures as a family. In this way, the parents can help their kids understand the scriptures better and they will learn lessons in the scriptures and become wise as Alma wanted Helaman to. In a way, we are Helaman, struggling to be good while Satan acts as Corianton, running around being bad. We too have someone who wants us to learn wisdom in our youth. He is our Father in Heaven. I bear my testimony that our Heavenly Father loves us and He wants us to return to Him someday. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

I was super nervous on that morning, but when I had finished, I felt happy. The best thing about talks is that once you do one, you don't have to one again for a while.

Michael

P.S. Even Henry helped. At the beginning of Dad's talk, he said into the microphone, "I luh tures." A.K.A. I love scriptures. :D