Isaiah 63:7 "I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord...according to all that the Lord hath bestowed upon us and the great goodness."

CFM Manual, October 12-18 "What loving kindnesses of the Lord can you mention?"

I have been blessed with many loving kindnesses from the Lord and my heart is full of gratitude. First of all, I am encircled by God's love and the grace and mercy of my Savior Jesus Christ. I am indebted to my Heavenly Father for His marvelous plan of happiness, and to the Savior for making every good thing in life possible. The third member of the Godhead also plays an important role in my life. By the Spirit I am directed, guided, comforted, and led, and I rely on the Holy Ghost daily. If I had nothing else in life but the three members of the Godhead, I would be rich!

I am blessed with health to get up and do things every day. My eyes work, my teeth are solid, I can hear, walk, lift, and stand. I am blessed to serve alongside my husband and to serve among the friendly and courteous Filipino people. I live in a comfortable home with access to clean water. I know how to read and I own a cell phone. Though far away, our family is supportive and keeps in touch. We are blessed to have siblings, children, and grandchildren whom we adore. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I live at a time when a prophet is on the earth. I am blessed with scriptures to study coupled with current revelation. The gospel brings me peace and I can face the future with faith, knowing that God is in charge.

No matter what I do, or how I strive to repay God for the multitude of blessings I have been given, I will always come up short and be indebted. I honor His name by showing Him respect and reverence, by keeping His commandments, and in the way I treat others.

 

I have been thinking about the sign outside of certain restaurants here in the Philippines. The sign reads, "UNLI RICE." I didn't know what the sign meant for a few months until a missionary explained to me that the sign tells customers there is unlimited rice offered with the purchase of a meal. Now I know why missionaries look for that sign, because they love rice and can eat as much of it as they would like in those establishments.

Today I was thinking about what items, besides rice, that I would like to have unlimited access to. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have unlimited clean water, or ice cold sprite, and fresh fruit? But besides food, what would I like an unlimited supply of?

Time with family, or memories of time spent with family.
Peace.
The Holy Ghost.
The love of God.
Repentance, rescue, and redemption.

Hope.

Spiritual power and protection.

A connection to God through prayer.

Thanks to a loving Heavenly Father and His marvelous plan, we are incredibly blessed, and as we keep our covenants, we have access to marvelous, unlimited blessings from God.

 

On May 6, Pew Research published a report titled, "Believing in Spirits and Life After Death Is Common Around the World: Younger people are just as likely as older people to hold some spiritual beliefs."

Belief in life after death is widespread around the globe. 

In the U.S., 70% of adults say there is definitely or probably life after death. 

Even in countries where comparatively few people view religion as very important, many do hold beliefs in spirits and/or life after death. 

In general, there is a strong association between standard measures of religious commitment and whether people believe in life after death.

(https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/05/06/believing-in-spirits-and-life-after-death-is-common-around-the-world/)

I just finished a book that a friend recommended which corresponds with this report. The book is called "Death is But a Dream" by Christopher Kerr. It is common for people who are nearing death to have dreams/experiences with people who have already died. These experiences are comforting and prepare a person to face death with calmness and peace. 

"Pre-death dreams and visions are manifestations of the time of integration and coming into oneself.  These are powerful and stirring experiences that occur in the last days or hours of life and that constitute moments of genuine insight and vivid re-centering for patients. They often mark a clear transition from stress to acceptance, a sense of tranquility and wholeness for the dying. They are each as unique as the individual having them" (pg. 3).

"Long-lost loved ones come back to reassure; past wounds are healed; loose ends are tied; lifelong conflicts are revisited; forgiveness is achieved" (pg. 4).

I believe in life after death, and I believe that sometimes spirits are allowed to come to help a person transition from life to death, a sort of welcoming angel(s).

We know that Nephi, Laman and Lemuel literally took a journey through the wilderness, an eight-year-marathon that took them from Jerusalem to the shores of the Arabian Sea--and then beyond.  This journey, however, was also a metaphor of everyone's life experience.  It applies to all of us.

Here in mortality, we are cast into the wilderness, taking a wilderness journey, where, like Nephi's family, we experience the tremendous heat of trial, the tedium of the way, the wandering through a sometimes trackless desert, the hardship, the thirst.

We are place on a wilderness journey because the Lord is doing his work on us, because always the purpose of such a journey is to transform the travellers, burn out their impurities, strip them of the world, clarify their thinking, and sharpen their devotion that they may be candidates to dwell in the promised land.  The wilderness journey is the Lord's kindness to us, to make us fit for His kingdom.

Nephi's journey, which is a type of our journey in life, was joyously transformed because he did know the dealings of that God who had created him.  This core understanding changed the nature of his journey through the desert and later across the whirling, boiling sea because it changed his core, the very essence of who he was.

He did not face anything alone or without purpose. God walked by his side, led him to the more fertile parts of the wilderness.  He knew who stood by him when he climbed into the crags of the mountain tops looking for just the right wood to make a bow.  He had protective arms around him when the way was hard.  Even when he became depressed later in the promised land, and Laman and Lemuel sought his life, he was lifted up again by remembering, "I know in whom I have trusted."

He had been given strength because he could say with confidence: "My God hath been my support...He hath filled me with his love...He hath confounded my enemies...He hath heard my cry by day, and he hath given me knowledge by visions in the nighttime" (2 Nephi 4:20-24).

(Maurine Proctor, "It Wasn't Because Laman and Lemuel Had a Bad Attitude," https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-7193/

 

"All of God's creations serve a purpose and exist for a reason.  We may not know the whys of all of God's creations, but each of God's vast creations is a reminder that He is in charge, that there is a divine plan, an that we are here on this earth for a much greater purpose than what the world would espouse."

(Denise Stephens)

So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-cancelling vacillation and futility; we strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls.  We want to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance.  We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things, big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever--in the light of eternity.

(Will Durrant, The Story of Philosophy)

I am grateful to know who I am and why I am here on earth. I am grateful to know what are "big things," and what are "little things." There is something vital and significant in each of us!  We are sons and daughters of God! The gospel of Jesus Christ gives us a broader view of our present life and of our eternal possibilities.

 

This is not a clear picture, but you can get the idea. Jonathan Linton painted this piece and titled it, "Mercy Claimeth That Which is her Own." Here is an artist statement:

"This painting is a personification of justice being satisfied by the gift of Christ, symbolized by light, and of mercy claiming the penitent man. This stands for the grace extended to all such souls who put their faith in Christ. 'For behold, justice exerciseth all his demands, and also mercy claimeth all which is her own; and thus, none but the truly penitent are saved. What, do ye suppose that mercy can rob justice? I say unto you, Nay; not one whit. If so, God would cease to be God' (Alma 42: 224, 25). These figures are complex, multifaceted symbolical elements in the composition. Further elements include a large spacious field representing the world, the sunset representing the end of the earthly life that each person eventually faces, and the bulastrade separating mortal life from the next stage of existence."

I saw this painting for the first time this week. I was with a friend and we both stopped to look at the painting, read the statement, looked some more and were filled with emotion. Isn't it beautiful? 

 This is powerful and wonderful.

 

Saints believe in a porous membrane joining heaven and earth, which allows us to affect the welfare of the dead, and they ours.  And we believe that from the beginning of the everlasting covenant, we are all in a shared endeavor, working for each other’s progress now and forever. Death does not impose impermeable walls that separate us, nor is it the end of our striving (pg. 47).

The love that envelopes us is not based on our worthiness.  It is not our merit that brings it forth.  This love, unsolicited, is the miracle that tells us we have a permanent and cherished place in the universe (pg. 161).

 

Children feel safest with adults who are kind but firm leaders.  If a parent is indecisive and lets the child run the show, that’s stressful to the youngster.  He gets the unspoken message that he is on his own and has to fend for himself (pg. 58).

The general principle is to use the mildest approach available and resolve the situation with minimal confrontation (pg. 110).

Create conditions where your child can succeed at meaningful tasks (pg. 147).

 

There’s a lot of talk these days about giving children self-esteem.  It’s not something you can give; it’s something they have to build.  There is only one way to teach kids how to develop it: You give them something they can’t do, they work hard until they find they can do it, and you just keep repeating the process (pg. 37). 

Too many people go through life complaining about their problems.  I’ve always believed that if you took one-tenth the energy you put into complaining and applied it to solving the problem, you’d be surprised by how well things can work out. Complaining does not work as a strategy.  We all have finite time and energy. Any time we spend whining is unlikely to help us achieve our goals.  And it won’t make us happier (pgs. 138, 139).

When it comes to men who are romantically interested in you, it’s really simple.  Just ignore everything they say and only pay attention to what they do (pg. 146).