When we got settled into our seats at church today (a few minutes late like usual), I was happy to see who was on the stand-- my cousin, Dean Millsaps! First there was a talk by another guest speaker, then a nice musical number by a men's quartet: Jeff Andersen, John Gammon, Jacob Hyatt, and Bert Millett. They sang "How Firm a Foundation" a capella and did such a great job.
Then Dean (a High Counselor in Mesa North Stake) spoke about the Holy Ghost. He made some great points about how most of us members of the Church don't fully take advantage of the gift of the Holy Ghost--that we all can have that power and influence stronger in our lives. He gave us many reminders of what we need to be doing as individuals and as families--the usual obvious things like prayer, scripture study, FHE, etc. and also that we need to eliminate the contention in our homes and eliminate the things/influences that take the spirit away like unappropriate music, movies, etc.
I liked the example he used to explain the Holy Ghost: When the power is out at night, we quickly find a candle, then a flashlight, then we're able to find some better light sources like a lantern until we are more comforted & can see during the power outage/storm. When we invite the spirit into our lives we are more and more enlightened, comforted, and blessed. He also shared a story that many of us have heard about Bruce R. McConkie when he was a kid. He was riding his horse in the orchard when all of a sudden the horse was spooked. Bruce R. McConkie was just hanging off the horse, about to fall to very serious injury or death. At that same time, his father was in the house and got that prompting to go out into the orchard. He listened and went out to the orchard where he saw the horse and knew he needed to stop it (even before he realized that his son was hanging off the horse in serious danger). The father was able to stop the horse and a great lesson was learned about listening to those promptings. I think we all can learn something from that and dedicate ourselves to doing a better job of listening and acting upon the promptings of the Holy Ghost as they come.
As Dean was wrapping up his talk, I leaned over to Marlyse to let her know that he was my cousin, yes, even though he's old enough to be my dad! After the meeting was over, I took Marlyse up to the stands to meet my cousin. I shook his hand and said, "hi, cousin!" It was nice to visit with him briefly. I thanked him for giving such a good talk and that we really needed the reminder--that we all need to do better. He congratulated me on expecting another baby and commended me for being willing to have a big family, even when it's not easy to do. He said he was too selfish and only wanted 2 kids because he worried about providing for more. He's a little regretful about not having more kids because his wife wanted more kids. He told me that Grandpa Donaldson would always say, "every child of ours had a grain of wheat in their bellies and never went without" (or something like that) and they had 14 children!
I really enjoyed Sacrament Meeting today, even if every other second our kids were restless and a bit fussy.
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