Sister Cook's talk to the Young Women

Last night for Family Home Evening we listened to this talk from Sister Cook that she gave during the Young Women's broadcast. It has such a good message. The church has 13 Articles of Faith that we strive to live by. The 13th Article says, "We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous and in doing good to all men; indeed we may say we follow the admonition of Paul- We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely or of good report or praiseworthy we seek after these things." This is kind of a long one and it has taken a long time for me to fully understand what it means. This year, that is the theme for our youth in the church and so we have heard a lot about it and studied it.

I've always wondered what the word "benevolent" meant for sure. This talk by Sister Cook explains it well. I wanted my kids to look outside of their little world a little and reach out to someone who might need a friend. We talked about the kids at school who always eat lunch alone, or have no one to play with at recess. I thought it was interesting when Mataia said she knew exactly how hard that must be. Even though she is a social butterfly and has lots of friends now, it wasn't like that her first day of school at Madison. I remember leaving her at school that day and she had tears running down her face because she was so nervous. She didn't know anyone in the school. She had met a few girls at volleyball, but she was on the JV and she was the only freshman on that team. Since the freshman are still in the Junior High at Madison, that meant all of her teammates and the girls she knew were at the High School. It was a very rough first couple of days for her and hard for me as a mom to see her struggle like that. It only took about a week and she had some new friends. Now she has LOTS of friends and is loving school - except for maybe Geometry. So anyway, we talked about some things they could do to reach out to those kids who might need a friend. They are supposed to come home ready to share what they did today. We'll see if it works or not.

I felt like this talk was something I needed to work on. I get so wrapped up in my own little world that I forget to think about other people. I also like in her talk where she talks about wanting the best for others. Sometimes that can be hard, but I'm going to work on that, too. If you have an extra 10 minutes, this talk is a really good one! Here's the link:

http://lds.org/general-conference/2011/04/remember-this-kindness-begins-with-me?lang=eng&format=general-conference&view=sessions&media=