(BALL PARK BUILDING)

Please place your donation in a plastic grocery bag by your front door before 9am on March 20, 2021

You are cordially invited to attend the upcoming temple preparation class.  Details of the class are as follows:

When:                Each Sunday afternoon beginning at 1:00 PM

1^st Class:          March 7, 2021

How:                 Class will be available online

Instructors:      Bro. and Sis. Sharp

We hope you can join us.

The Sunday School Presidency

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You are cordially invited to join our virtual West Jordan Utah Sunset Ridge Stake Conference on Sunday, February 21 from 10:00am to 12:00pm. Elder Paul N. Clayton of the Seventy will preside at the conference.

We’re excited to share these messages and music together virtually and can’t wait to be together in person again soon.

Here is the Webcast information for our upcoming Stake Conference General Session.

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In the event of technical difficulties please use the link below to the stake page to find an updated link to the Stake Conference.

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For viewing links please see the following link:

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Brothers and Sisters, I hope you have been doing well this part month and hope you are as excited as I am to hear from our beloved Prophet and other General Officers at General Conference in just two short weeks. This week the Gospel Doctrine is on 3 Nephi 8-11 which is titled “Arise and Come Forth unto Me”. The Nephites who lived nearly 2,000 years ago experienced three days of great tribulation and destruction immediately prior to the visitation of our Beloved Savior Jesus Christ to the America’s following his crucifixion and miraculous resurrection three days later. We too are living in a time of increasing tribulations long prophesied by past Prophets in the Holy Scriptures. In just the past several months, our nation has endured seemingly unprecedented lightning storms, fire tornadoes, flooding, earthquakes, hurricanes and windstorms, violent riots by hateful mobs inspired by the spirit of contention racking our cities and wildfires which have destroyed entire towns. At the same time we have been experiencing a deadly pandemic which has cost the lives of a couple hundred thousand of our fellow Americans and nearly a million people worldwide thus far.

Throughout scriptural history, when the Lord’s people have turned to worldly things and become lax in their adherence to His commandments, picking and choosing which ones they would keep and which ones they transgress, the Lord has sometimes used adversities including famine, pestilence and war to chasten us to turn back to Him as was the case with the Nephites in 3 Nephi 8-10 and as is the case in our time today. As Elder Jeffrey R. Holland has suggested, the increasing trials and tribulations we are now beginning to experience are meant by the Lord to provide the people of our nation and the people of our world with a spiritual re-awakening to prepare us to endure more devastating tribulations to come. These future tribulations might well resemble those that the righteous Nephites experienced in 3 Nephi 8. I believe our current tribulations are a tender mercy of the Lord to motivate us to turn to Him … Read the rest

Good Morning Brothers and Sisters!  I hope that you are all doing well.  My study this week took me down several paths and I hope that your study was meaningful to you.  I believe that this week’s lesson was meant to help give us time to reflect on our lives and take inventory of the things that we need to correct.  I hope that you were able to find time to peacefully reflect on the promptings that the spirit taught you.  I know that finding quiet time is a hard thing to come by these days.   

In 4 weeks, we will have the privilege of participating in General Conference.  This event excites me, for one because it is an event that will actually happen when it was originally scheduled.  General Conference will continue to be held in a little different manner than I would like, but we will have the opportunity to hear from our prophet and leaders.  I have never in my life been so grateful for a prophet than I am today.  I know that there are things that I would like to have the Prophet tell us (ex. The exact moment that this pandemic will end and life will return to “normal”).  Past experience will tell me that the prophet probably won’t answer this question.  Instead, I will hear messages that I have heard before, but they will inspire me in a different way where my testimony will be strengthened and I will be at peace.  During General Conference, we might be given instruction on updates to church callings, curriculum or policy.  We might hear things that are hard for us to accept because we have always done something a certain way.  We might confuse policy changes as changes to doctrine and get confused on the reason for the change.  In any event, we should follow the prophet.  We should pray for the Spirit to touch our hearts.  We should pray for additional understanding. 

I found a few quotes this week about prophets that I would like to share:

Ezra Taft Benson: “The prophet will not necessarily … Read the rest

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PLEASE NOTE:
All those participating must SIGN-UP ONLINE

Brothers and Sisters, I hope you have had a good week this past week and that you and your family are feeling well and staying safe during this difficult time. This week’s lesson is entitled “Preserved by His Marvelous Power”. This lesson focuses on Alma Chapters 53-63, which concern many of the military battles between the Nephites led by Chief Captain (General) Moroni (aided by Chief Captains Lehi and Teancum and followed by his son Moronihah) and the Lamanites led by Amalickiah, his brother Ammoron. Of Moroni, we learn in Alma 48:17 that if all men and women had been and ever were like Moroni the powers of Hell would be shaken and the Devil would have no power over us.

Some members have wondered why the Book of Mormon which focuses on what the Lord wanted us to learn that was most important for our time relating to spiritual matters deals so much with war in these chapters. For others like myself, who have been lifelong students of military history and have served in the military, these chapters are of greater interest. These chapters and others on war in the Book of Mormon, are important because they teach us more about the principles of just war–that wars are only justified by the Lord if they are fought in self-defense or in the defense of others. We have been told by modern Prophets that soldiers are held guiltless by the Lord in killing enemy combatants, however no such promise is given if they deliberately target and kill innocent civilian men, women and children. Some people mistakenly believe that the laws of God forbidding the shedding of innocent blood are somehow suspended during war and that the deliberate mass murder of non-combatant civilians and other great evils promoted by the Devil are somehow justified by God during wartime. Nothing could be further from the truth. The laws of God forbidding the shedding of innocent blood can only be expressly suspended by our Supreme Creator himself who is the author of all life and then only very specifically through the Living Prophet … Read the rest

Hello Friends!  I hope that you are all well enough.  I hope every month that we will return to a “normal” church schedule so that I can stop writing my thoughts by letter.  I sincerely miss having an actual discussion with you so that I can hear your thoughts and learn from you.  I feel bad that you have to read my ramblings, however, you are stuck with me!  

There were a few prevailing themes that ran through my head as I read this week’s readings.  The first was “Fathers” and the second was “How the Lord blesses us”.  I will start off by sharing my thoughts about Fathers. 

Ezra Taft Benson said, “The sacred title of ‘Father’ is shared with the Almighty.   …Fatherhood is not a matter of station or wealth; it is a matter of desire, diligence and determination to see one’s family exalted in the celestial kingdom.  If that prize is lost, nothing else really matters.”

Elder D. Todd Christofferson said, “Perhaps the most essential of a father’s work is to turn the hearts of his children to their Heavenly Father.  If by his example as well as his words a father can demonstrate what fidelity to God looks like in day -to-day living, that father will have given his children the key to peace in this life and eternal life in the world to come.”

In this week’s readings we conclude the blessing that Alma is giving his sons with the words that he shares with Corianton.  I noticed that Alma does not give Corianton a long list of how Corianton did not listen to him.  Alma got straight to the point about what Corianton had done wrong (vs 2-4), conveyed to Corianton what the spirit had directed Alma to say (vs 12) and then taught Corianton beautiful doctrine.  This allowed for the Spirit to teach Corianton at a level that Corianton could understand due to his life experiences.  There was a teaching moment in this for me as I parent my children.  I know that the Book of Mormon Videos are artistic interpretations of “What … Read the rest