Self Reliance is Grand

So this post really ocmes a bit late, but I've been meaning to do this for forever. Mark and I were asked to give talks in the Monta Vista ward (the singles ward here in Nor Cal) before we got married and changed wards. The bishopric asked us to talk about self-reliance and Mark and I received quite a few comments on them. Whether or not people always give compliments and comments to speakers after their talks, we were glad that apparently we did well. For me it was one of those talks that I had a lot of thoughts about but no real structure until that morning and suddenly everything just fit. Blessings for sure. Anyways, you don't have to read this, but I've been telling my family I would post about it because of the theme of the structure. And I figured I would post Mark's as well.

Heather's Talk

Lessons learned from my parents

Intro: Background of my family
-I am the oldest of eight children. My dad has been a stay-at-home dad for as long as I can remember because my parents always wanted someone at home. When I was 12 my parents had the youngest children, a set of twins, in April. That fall my mom quit her job and went back to school to get her PhD. During the first three years of her program, neither of my parents had a real job. My mom would occasionally do some sort of student teaching or something like that and she made $12,000 a year for those three years. Let me be clear, that's $1,000 pre-taxes and pre-tithing per month for a family of 10. We lived and we survived. As my mom told me, they survived due to three reasons; 1) they had already paid off the house, 2) they had no debt, and 3) my dad is a genius at budgeting. (blog insert: we used to call this characteristic being "cheap"). My parents are my heroes and they have taught me much. Let me share with you some of the lessons that I learned from my parents.

1) Provident Living/Budgeting

Elder Robert D. Hales: "Provident living... means joyfully living within our means and preparing for the ups and downs of life so that we can be ready for the rainy-day emergencies when they come into our lives."

My parents budgeting: my dad used to keep up-to-date records of his different budgeted accounts with manual journal voucher sheets that he was always checking and working on; my dad set up bank accounts for each of us basically the day we were born and helped us to see the value of saving (making me feel that our monthly bank account statements were almost a competition of sorts).

D&C 48:4 "It must needs be necessary that ye save all the money that you can, and that ye obtain all that ye can in righteousness..."

Elder Hales: "Provident living means not coveting the htings of the world. It means using the resources of the earth wisely and not being wasteful, even in times of plenty"

Age of entitlement: people now feel like they should own what their parents have. My parents saved up their whole lives to move into a good neighborhood (after I graduated and moved out of course) whereas there are young couples moving into the same neighborhood.

2) Do not go into debt

-We once went to a wedding reception where the couple had put a box in the middle of the table with little pieces of paper to write advice on. My dad in big bold letters wrote "AVOID DEBT" and that was his biggest advice he could pass on.

-My parents only got a credit card when I was probably in college or maybe high school. They never had them before because they didn't like the idea that you're spending money you don't have. Instead, they built great credit with their loans. In fact, when they went to apply for a loan for their current house, the person reviewing their credit scores told them that he had never seen as good of credit as my dad has. And now the only reason they really have a credit card is to earn things from their purchases. They always pay them off immediately.

Elder Hales: "To pay our debts now and to avoid future debt requires us to exercise faith in the Savior - not just to do better but to be better. It takes great faith to utter those simple words 'we can't afford it.'"

3) Pay tithing and fast offerings

Elder Hales: "The primary purpose of tighing is to develop our faith. By keeping the commandments to pay 'one-tenth of all [our increase] annually' (D&C 119:4), we become better - our faith grows and sustains us through the trials, tribulations, and sorrows of life."

-My grandpa (my mom's dad) once told her that tithing was the only commandment that we can each live perfectly. We can all pay 10% and be able to say that we were perfect in one commandment; whereas the others are harder to keep 100% of the time. Don't we want to say we're perfect at at least one?
-Tithing settlements: my parents used to take us each year to tithing settlement as a family where they would state in front of the bishop and in front of us that they were full tithe payers. And then as we stared earning our own money we would have to do the same. They continued to pay tithing even during those three crazy years. This emphasized to me how important tithing was to them.

4) Serve others, even in hard times

Elder Hales: "It is important to understand that self-reliance is a means to an end. Our ultimate goal is to become like the Savior, and that goal is enhanced by our unselfish service to others. Our ability to serve is increased or diminished by the level of our self-reliance."

President Marion G. Romney: "Food for the hungry cannot come from empty shelves. Money to assist the needy cannot come from an empty purse. Support and understanding cannot come from the emotionally starved. Teaching cannot come from the unlearned. And most important of all, spiritual guidance cannot come from the spiritually weak."

-Every Christmas growing up (even through the hard years), my parents always made a big deal about serving someone somewhere, whether we did the 12 days of Christmas for a family in our ward or we participated in the Secret Santa program to purchase presents for people in need.

Elder Hales: "This... is the gospel vision of welfare: to put our faith in Jesus Christ into action. We serve others as the spirit directs."

This is a gospel of action. As it says in Mosiah 4:910- "9: Belive in God; believe that he is, and that he created all things, both in heaven and in earth; believe that he has all wisdom, and all power, both in heaven and in earth; believe that man doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend. 10: And again, believe that ye must repent of your sins and forsake them, and humble yourselves before God; and ask in sincerity of heart that he would forgive you; and now, if you believe all these things see that ye do them."

My parents taught me many other things, including the importance of education and spiritual preparation... wrap-up...

Mark's Talk

Started with awesome funny story about how his mom tried to get everyone excited about food storage once, but Mark's brother Greg came up with a great way around this. They lived next door to a big Mormon family with lots of boys their same age called the Youngbergs. Greg decided that the only food storage they really needed was a baseball bat. If an emergency happened, the could just go over the Youngbergs and take their food storage.

1) Debt

Elder Hales: "where we go into debt, we give away some of our precious, priceless agency and place ourselves in self-imposed servitude. We obligate our time, energy, and means to repay what we have borrowed - resources that could have been used to help ourselves, our families, and others."

Sopranos story about a man who got into debt with his friend who was a mobster (bad idea). The man's whole life got taken away because of his debt (family, home, job, etc).

Story would have been different if there had been a mediator, like the Savior provides for us spiritually.

2) A part of being self-reliant is taking responsibility for our own spiritual and temporal welfare and for those whom Heavenly Father has entrusted to our care

Joseph Smith: "A man filled with the love of god, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the human race"

Keith Knight in Mark's home ward used to home teach a man named Brother Bowser who never came to church and often was drunk when Brother Knight would come on his visits. Brother Knights continued teaching him for years.

Serve those under your stewardship even if it's difficult.

Use your assets to serve.

3) As we prepare for the future, we must have the desire and capacity to rely on the Lord

Nephi's Psalm - Lehi had just died, which was out of Nephi's control, but still Nephi was extremely distraught (2 Nephi 4:17-19)
How many of us have felt that way or would feel that way if we lost jobs or had to move to different houses or sell cars or whatnot?
But then Nephi changes his tune (2 Nephi 4:19-22, 28-30)

Mark's personal job search and how that was so difficult, but then he found peace as he came to the Lord in prayer and everything worked out.

Self-reliance versus relying on the Lord (must have both)

We must make the change ourselves

...wrap-up...

So long!! Sorry for those who actually made it this far.