Brenda Emmett

Developing and Strengthening Personal Testimony

February 10, 2016 by Brenda Leave a Comment

One of my concerns as a parent and teacher in the church is how to help others develop and strengthen their personal testimonies. While it may seem overwhelming when you look at the task as a whole, the Lord has given us simple tools to cultivate his light in our souls. Just as we would never expect a seed to grow without nourishment and care, we should not expect a personal testimony to grow up overnight. We live in a world where everything is available in an instant. However, developing a personal testimony takes time and commitment. It takes work.

While we cannot make someone develop a testimony of the Gospel, we can help them to nourish it and to recognize their opportunity to grow one. I think perhaps this is the most difficult to do when we are dealing with a troubled teen or even a willful spouse or parent. The most important thing is to never lose hope and never stop being an example of the Lord’s light.

One of the things I have noticed when working with the youth is that often they do not recognize when they have a testimony. Sometimes the most important thing that we can do as parents and leaders is to help them to learn to recognize the influence of the spirit. Never discount even something that they or we may deem as a small thing. Just as you don’t need to actually eat an entire cookie in one bite to know that it is good, you don’t need to read the entire Book of Mormon to know that it is good. We should continue to daily read it, but the Lord never intended for us to swallow the entire scripture course in one sitting. It takes time.

Once you have learned to recognize the spirit, then everything else will fall into place in due time. Remember that our desired timeline may not be the same timeline that the Lord has in mind. He has said that by small things he accomplishes great things.

Here are some things that you can do to continue to develop and nurture your testimony:

PRAY

When we take the time to talk with our Heavenly Father, we invite His spirit into our day. We can pray about most anything that we may need or desire. Do not be afraid to discuss everything with your Father. He loves and cares about you. He is interested in your life. He wants to help you. Ask. Don’t be afraid to share your desire for a testimony with Him. He will be glad to help you. If you are praying for someone else to develop a testimony, share your concerns with God. He will help you to know what to say and do when the time is appropriate in His eyes.

READ

Take the time to read your scriptures daily. He has given us His words to help us enrich our lives and develop our testimonies. Many times we will find the answers we are seeking in the words that He has already provided to us. Really search the scriptures and devour the words that are contained therein.

Also take the time to read the church magazines and conference talks. These will help enrich your mind and allow the spirit to be present in your heart.

LISTEN

Take the time to listen to talks from church leaders. The talks that we listen to each General Conference are inspired and are there to aid us in becoming more valiant members of the Gospel.

Listen closely to the promptings of the spirit. The spirit will speak to your heart and mind the very things that the Lord wishes you to know.

IDENTIFY

One of the most important things we can do is to identify the spirit in our lives. I cannot stress this fact enough. If you need ideas of how to identify the spirit, then I invite you to ponder the words we find in Galatians 5: 22-23. Here we are given the fruits of the spirit. “But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

Another of my very favorite scriptures concerning the spirit is found in Jacob 4:13: “…for the spirit speaketh the truth and lieth not. Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be; wherefore, these things are manifested unto us plainly, for the salvation of our souls.”

SERVE

When we help others, we invite the spirit to be with us. We demonstrate the love of the Lord to those we are helping and allow the love of the Lord to work within us.

When we do all of these things, we are providing the nutrients we need to help our testimonies develop and grow. They may seem simple, but the Gospel IS simple. We just tend to make it difficult.

Remember that the Lord expects us to learn “line upon line, precept on precept.” As we do this, our testimony will grow and bloom. We will be able to stand tall and strong against the winds of the adversary and we will be able to help others learn to do so too.

Love At Home

February 3, 2016 by Brenda Leave a Comment

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, and have you thought about what you are going to do this year as a family to celebrate it? When I was a kid, I have fond memories of making homemade cards for each of my family members. Construction paper, scissors, glue, stickers, magazines, and paper lace doilies were my Mom’s go to items for Valentine creation. We were fond of finding bee pictures to say, “Bee Mine” and other times, we looked through the magazines to find pictures of something the person we were making our card for actually really liked. It was a practice of giving of ourselves to make someone else smile.

Another tradition, was that my Mom would make a heart-shaped cake for us that day. It always seemed to be chocolate,and have pink frosting with coconut sprinkled on top. She still makes one every year to this day and I have been known to make one for my own family.

One of my fondest memories was the year we had a box social for Valentine’s Day. She didn’t make the traditional cake that year, and I’ll tell you why in just a moment. There was just me and my brother at the time, so it made things super simple. But the idea could be adapted for a larger family, quite easily.

Mom had us kids decorate two large shoe boxes however we liked. We had our choice of construction paper, stickers, magazines to cut up, artificial flowers, beads, and other craft items. It was an exciting project and we had a lot of fun making our boxes look “just so.”

Once we had those completed, we then helped our Mom make the picnic dinner that we would pack into our boxes. I remember frying chicken with her and making potato salad, which were favorites of ours, and something my Dad liked a lot. We added some grapes and carrot sticks and then it was time for dessert. We didn’t make the traditional cake. Instead, we made individual cheesecakes by placing a vanilla wafer cookie in the bottom of a cupcake wrapper to act as the crust. We poured the filling on top of the cookies and let them set up in the refrigerator. Once those were set up, we topped them with cherry pie filling. Then we placed two of the little cheesecakes into our boxes.

Once our boxes were filled, we went to our living room and placed a picnic blanket on the floor. Our boxes went into the middle and it was time to get Dad and have dinner. My brother got to go on a “date” with my Mom, and I got to go on a “date” with my Dad. Our boxes were admired and the contents were devoured. We had a lot of fun sitting on the floor with our family on our “dates”.

As I have thought about this over the years, I think this was a great bonding moment as a family. It would be easy to change things up so that all the boys were with Mom, and all the girls were with Dad. Or you could put siblings with each other and Mom and Dad could have a date together. Or you could number all of the boxes and have everyone draw a number. They would then get to share that box dinner with the other person who had the same number. The possibilities are endless. Let your imagination go wild and have some fun! The important thing is that you are doing it as a family and that you are together. And that in your home, you are learning to speak the true language of love.

The Parable of the Chocolate Chip Cookie

January 27, 2016 by Brenda Leave a Comment

A couple of years ago, I shared a personal story during a lesson I taught in young women. I told them I called it the Parable of the Chocolate Chip Cookie. The story really made an impact on the girls in our ward, and they termed that year, the “year of the chocolate chip cookie”. There have been many references to this story since I shared it, and I thought perhaps you might enjoy it as well.

When I was a missionary, I served in Southern Spain. In my first area, my companion and I were assigned to work with hundreds of less active members. Our first task was to figure out who we needed to work with first. And so our chocolate chip cookie project began.

We decided that in order to make contact with each less active member, we would make cookies for each of them. Who could resist a fresh baked, homemade chocolate chip cookie? We thought we might just have a few less doors slammed in our faces when we offered such a sweet treat as well. We prayed about our idea, and presented our plan to the Lord. We felt good about our idea, and began to make the necessary arrangements.

We sat down with our recipe and figured out what we would need to make our hundreds and hundreds of cookies. It didn’t take long for us to discover that we only had enough money to purchase exactly half of our ingredients. We weren’t sure exactly how we were going to make this happen, but we knew we needed to give all we had for our project. So we went forth and purchased half of the required ingredients, deciding to have faith that the Lord would help us make it happen.

With anticipation, we mixed up our first batch of cookie dough. Now, there weren’t chocolate chips readily available to purchase, so to make chocolate chip cookies required a little more effort on our part. We had to purchase chocolate bars and cut them up into chunks to make our own chips. Then we added those chunks to our bowl of dough and folded them in with our wooden spoon.

Once we had our first bowl all mixed up, we bowed our heads in prayer and prayed over it and once again expressed our desire and plan for the cookies to our Heavenly Father. We also explained we only had enough money to purchase half of the required ingredients, but that we knew it would somehow all work out.

We took a small teaspoon and put little drops of dough onto our cookie sheet. Then we put them in the oven and to our surprise and delight, when we removed the baked cookies, they were BIG and perfect cookies, instead of the small tiny ones we were expecting. This continued on and we got dozens and dozens of large chocolate chip cookies out of a single batch of cookie dough. Our bowl of cookie dough seemed to be endless. It was a modern day version of the loaves and fishes miracle.

As we baked hundreds and hundreds of cookies, our kitchen table began to be completely covered. We had several layers of cookies and there wasn’t a speck of table to be found. And still we baked on and on. Only on the rare occasion did we need to stop and mix up a new batch of dough. Those few occasions were memorable as we were tired of looking at the same dough and just needed to have a break by mixing up a new one to look at for awhile. Amazingly, we had ingredients left over. How was this possible except by the hand of the Lord?

While the cookies baked, we hand wrote scriptures on slips of paper that we could attach to the bags of cookies we would deliver. Then we put a cookie for each person in each household into a plastic sandwich bag, tucking the scripture inside. Since we had so many cookies to deliver, we enlisted the help of the other missionaries in our city to help us get them all delivered and determine which families we should start meeting with first.

Amazingly, none of the missionaries had a single door shut in their face. Though not everyone was ready to make changes and come back, they were accepting of the contact. Everyone was happy to get cookies and were amazed to get cookies that had chunks of chocolate in them. They had had cookies before, but not chocolate chip cookies. They didn’t know what they were missing.

This is the same with the gospel. The people we meet and know that don’t have the gospel in their lives, or have stepped away from the church, are missing the chocolate chips in their lives. They might have what they feel are really good cookies that they enjoy. But they don’t know what they are missing and that those cookies are supposed to have chocolate chips. It is up to us to bring them the chocolate chips and help them to see what they can add to the cookies of their lives with the chocolate chips of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Don’t forget the chocolate chips in your cookies…What you have may taste good, but you don’t know what you or others may be missing. Help others find the chocolate chips of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Scripture Scrabble

January 18, 2016 by Brenda Leave a Comment

Perhaps one of the most difficult teaching moments that we face as parents is teaching our children which activities are appropriate for the Sabbath. With a seemingly endless supply of activities that we may feel are not appropriate for Sunday, what is a parent to do? The trick is to be creative and find ways to invite the Spirit into our homes while the kids are having fun. If you are looking for something just like this, you may want to try a game that my family created while I was growing up called Scripture Scrabble.

This is a game that quickly became a hit for both young and old. It truly turned an ordinary board game into something extraordinary. In fact, I have used it successfully over the years with several youth groups and they have delighted in sharing this game with their families.

Here is what you will need to play this game:

One Scrabble Board Game
One set of scriptures for each player

Now the rules are simple. You begin the game just as you normally would a game of Scrabble. The letter tiles are placed face down and each player draws the required number of letters and then tries to come up with words to place on the game board. The players work in creating and building words off the words that are already placed on the game board and earn points for them. While that is all there is to it in regular Scrabble, this is where it begins to vary in Scripture Scrabble.

In order for a player to be able to place down a word and receive points for it, then they must either find a reference to it in the scriptures and share the scripture, or they must share a gospel principle with the other players that is centered around the word they choose to place on the board. Also, where proper names and places are not allowed in regular Scrabble, they are acceptable in Scripture Scrabble. If a player chooses to share a gospel principle, then they must be convincing in their explanation or the other players can deny the player the full points that the word would bring. Instead, they would only be allowed ½ of the normal points.

This is a great way to get everyone thinking about how the gospel can be centered around seemingly ordinary, everyday things. For instance, one of our favorite words over the years was the time I played the word carrot. It was worth a lot of points. I was just a youth at the time and I had learned to be creative in this game. I could have taken the obvious answer and said how carrots were a vegetable and we should eat plenty of fresh vegetables in keeping with the Word of Wisdom. But I didn’t go there, because I wanted to ensure that I would receive the points and my family could be brutal at times. Instead, I chose to use the analogy of how carrots are planted by a tiny seed and grow when they are nurtured. The same is true of our faith. It is planted by a tiny seed and when we nurture it with the things that help it grow, like reading our scriptures, attending our church meetings, serving others, and saying our prayers, it can become full grown and help us and others. It was a much longer explanation at the time, but you get the idea.

The most important thing about this game is to have fun and jumpstart your brains with the gospel. There are many things that are taught by playing this game. A greater knowledge of the scriptures and gospel language are just a couple of the things your family will learn. So grab that Scrabble game off of your shelf and see what your family can create while playing a game of Scripture Scrabble together.

The Importance of Setting Eternal Goals Instead of Temporal Ones

January 13, 2016 by Brenda Leave a Comment

Since I have had requests from online friends and family to share the talk I gave in church the end of December, here you go. 🙂

I thought I would share a poem I wrote years ago that I think fits the topic assigned to me. It is called My Light.

My Light

The darkness gets closer,

I am all alone.

The silence, it’s deafening,

What seeds have I sown?

The light it is familiar

Yet distant to me.

In the darkness of the shadows

I long to be free–

I see the light before me

So brightly it shines

So steady, not a flicker

So different from mine.

My own light is fading

It’s dimming so fast,

My lamp, almost empty,

My oil won’t last.

The light, it comes much closer,

The lamp, it is full.

It shines so ever brightly,

Mine in contrast, is dull.

The owner of the lamp’s before me,

The face it is kind.

I beg to use some oil from her lamp,

To brighten up mine.

With eyes full of sorrow,

A tear on her cheek

A voice full of gentle love,

Humbly did speak;

“I cannot give away my oil

To help your lamp to burn.

A testimony and good works

Are drops of oil you must earn.

“The oil I have within my lamp

Is not enough I fear,

To help us both to reach the side

Of the Savior who is near.”

She turned away and with heavy heart,

I did watch her go…

The light of her lamp was steady,

Her countenance did glow.

I looked upon my tarnished lamp,

My heart about to break,

The steady tears rolled down my face

As from my dream I did wake.

The morning light shone on my face,

The darkness, it had passed.

A brighter light of my own

Was still within my grasp.

The stranger in my dream familiar,

Her face I clearly see…

With a startling recognition,

I realize the stranger is me.

A different sort of person

She’s what I could be,

If I make the effort…

If I clearly see–

My lamp is almost empty

But now I must begin,

To make my oil to fill my lamp,

The light that shines within.

It seems like at this time every year, we begin to think about setting new goals for the New Year. We like new beginnings and fresh starts. We like having a clean slate. So we set new goals to better ourselves and inherently we break them by the end of January.

Yesterday, on my facebook, I posted a meme about goals and it pretty much fits this cycle. It says:

“My goals for 2016 are to accomplish the goals I set in 2015,

That I promised I’d do in 2014,

That seemed like a good idea in 2013,

That I aspired to accomplish in 2012.

It was accompanied by a hashtag that said: #HaveFaithInMe.

Despite the humor of this truthful meme, there is another subtle truth within it: As long as you don’t give up on your goal, you haven’t failed. As long as you keep trying, you get endless 2nd chances. And this pertains not only to temporal goals, but also the more important spiritual goals.

It should be no surprise that goal setting is a principle taught in the church starting at a young age. In Primary, we have the Faith in God program where children are taught a basic program of setting and achieving goals. In Young Women, the Personal Progress program teaches goal setting as they make and achieve goals set around Christlike attributes and values that will help them to become women of God. The Young Men have the Duty to God program where they set and achieve goals that help them prepare to be priesthood leaders in their future homes. By the time we are adults, the Lord hopes we have learned to implement the eternal principle of setting worthy goals and we will use them in our church callings and homes. Goal setting is an eternal principle patterned after our Heavenly Parents.

We have been learning to set goals long before our time here on earth. We learned to set goals in the pre-existence. Goals helped us to progress spiritually there just as they do here. Our main goal in the pre-existence is the same one we have today: To become like our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. In order to achieve this major goal, we had to set 3 smaller and specific goals:

1. Come to Earth

2. Receive a Body

3. Prove that we can keep the commandments given to us by the Lord

Since we are here, we have already achieved the first two smaller and specific goals: Come to Earth and Receive a Body. Now we are all working on the 3rd goal we set: Prove that we can keep the commandments given to us by the Lord. Of course, we all have made mistakes in achieving that goal. It’s hard. But our Heavenly Father knew that and provided us a way to have endless second chances while we are here on earth. The first way is when we are baptized by one who has the authority to do baptize us in the name of the Lord. All of our mistakes are washed clean and we are brand new. Of course we still make mistakes after that, as we are human and this is part of our learning process. However, we have been given the gift of repentance. When we use the Atonement, which is something we should be using ALL THE TIME—not just once or twice—but CONTINUALLY, we get to start over with a clean slate again and again. Each Sunday, we get the opportunity to take the Sacrament. This gives us a chance to renew our baptismal covenants and once again it is as if we are washed clean and get a new chance to do better.

Even though the goal of “Proving that we can keep the commandments given to us by the Lord” is a smaller goal of the larger “Become like our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother” goal, it is still too big for us to do without breaking it down. It helps us to set smaller spiritual and eternal goals that will help us to progress spiritually.

So how do we set spiritual goals for ourselves and our family that will help us meet our big eternal goal? I thought that I would share some of the things we have tried in our family. Now before you think that the Emmett’s are perfect—we are SO NOT perfect. This is not going to be one of those “Do this exactly and then you will reach the celestial kingdom” kind of examples. I fully plan to share not only what HAS worked, but also what HASN’T worked for us. Believe me when I say we are very much a work in progress. But maybe some of what I share will help you come up with new ideas for your own families.

Let’s start with the goal of daily scripture reading as a family. This is a goal that can help us to feel the spirit in our home and bring us spiritual protection if we are faithful in keeping it. We so failed at this one over and over. We would start and stop. Start and Stop. Start and Give UP! I was pretty sure we would never be one of those families who read the scriptures every single day. It seemed impossible. I was just hoping that Chandler wouldn’t be at church and ask what the Book of Mormon or the Bible was. Seriously.

It wasn’t until AFTER we had moved here to Lovell, that we got it finally figured out. About 6 months after we moved here, I decided we should try one last time. So on January 1st, 2009, I sprung it on Gary and Chandler. I asked them if we could try to set a goal as a family to read our scriptures every single day. They agreed. So we set up “The Rules.” We decided to start with The Book of Mormon. We would read just two chapters a night before bed. We would rotate on who started each night. It was that person’s responsibility to say the family prayer at the end. It was kind of a 2-in-1 goal. We decided that we would each read 5 verses at a time and if we got to the end of the chapter and there were only 2 verses left, that person would keep reading to finish it. If there were 3 or more, the next person did it. This worked well until we got to Jacob 5 which has 77 LONG verses. That was when we decided to just read ONE chapter that night. The next night we would read 3 chapters as they were much shorter. We decided that we would be doing 2 chapters a night on AVERAGE.

I wish I could say that we had amazing spiritual experiences right away. We didn’t. There were some nights that one or two of us just didn’t feel like doing it. But the 3rd person always drug us along because we couldn’t break our record after XX days or XX months. So we persevered. We just read them to get it done and say we did it. It worked. We’ve read them for 6 straight years. We’ve read the Book of Mormon several times, the Doctrine & Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, and even the Bible twice.

One year we decided to see how many times we could read The Book of Mormon in a single year, reading just 2 chapters a day on average. We found out we could do it 3 ½ times. Who knew? Now I am happy to say that we have evolved a bit since those first couple of years. We now often make comments as we go along and share personal insights or ask and answer questions. We discuss what we are reading and it really is an enjoyable time for our family each night.

Now maybe reading 2 chapters a day seems like more than you can possible do in your own family. It really doesn’t take that long. However, if you have small kiddos, then maybe just ONE VERSE is all you can do. It still counts. I promise. Maybe try reading the Book of Mormon reader instead and read one of the scripture stories in it. Maybe read it as a bedtime story. The point is you may have to be creative and think outside of the box to make it work for your family.

One of the challenges we had was that Gary’s job often had him traveling away from the family. We couldn’t always go with him. So how do you read scriptures and have family prayer when Dad is in another state? We chose to do it over the phone. We would put Gary on speaker phone and read scriptures and pray over the phone. Sometimes this would be really late at night (like midnight). Sometimes he would still be driving, so we would read to HIM over the phone and then pray. He was allowed to not close his eyes for the prayer on those occasions. The point is we found a solution and sometimes we had to be creative to make it happen.

The year after we started the scripture and family prayer challenge, we decided to try adding Family Home Evening into the mix. We had a track record with Family Home Evening, much like our previous scripture reading record. We’d hit and miss all over the place. So we decided that we’d make sure we did SOMETHING every single week. Again since Dad was traveling at the time, this meant Family Home Evening wasn’t always on Monday Night. We had to be flexible. Sometimes we watched a movie together. Other times we played a game or went for a walk as a family. Occasionally we had a lesson. The idea was to create the habit.

Once we had this down, I decided to up the stakes. I arranged a time in December to talk with Gary alone. I suggested we set a schedule with themes for the following year. We talked about what we thought we needed in our family and set our themes for each month.

Toward the end of that year, in 2012, I decided we needed to up the stakes again. Once again, I arranged time to discuss this with Gary. I thought we ought to have a monthly scripture and sing a new hymn or primary song each week. So our first week was always a lesson that Gary or I taught out of the Preach My Gospel manual. The second week was a conference talk that Gary chose for our family. Either he or I would teach that, depending on who taught the first week. The 3rd week we had Chandler teach and it was based on the youth theme for that month. The 4th week, I taught a lesson based on a Scripture Hero that we had chosen. If there was a 5th week, we did a family service project.

This worked really well, and we had some amazing progress as a family. However, we forgot to schedule any FUN time into Family Home Evening. We missed our game nights. We needed to improve on that.

At the end of the year, Gary and I had our usual planning meeting. For 2014, I suggested we set our themes around the monthly Youth Themes in the Come Follow Me program. We implemented the monthly scripture again and chose a hymn to sing each week. We set up a schedule where Gary would teach the lesson the first week, based off of a conference talk within that theme. The next week, I taught from another conference talk. On week 3, Chandler shared what he had learned in Young Men and Sunday School so far that month. The 4th week we had a planned Family Game Night. And once again, if there was a 5th Monday, we did a family service project.

Last year, we decided to try something new since Chandler was not going to be in Young Men for much longer at that time. We set the goal that for Family Home Evening, we would read a chapter of Jesus the Christ. We have only been partially successful in keeping that goal. We’ve had Family Home Evening regularly, but sometimes we’ve played a game or watched a movie together instead. Sometimes we have had a lesson that our family needed right then rather than reading from Jesus the Christ. But the times we have read Jesus the Christ together, have been amazing times of learning for our family. I am sure that as Gary and I sit down to plan for next year this week, we will continue with that goal of reading a chapter of Jesus the Christ. I’ve missed not doing our weekly hymns this year, and we are already planning on re-implementing that that along with a monthly scripture to Ponderize as a family.

Now doing some of what we have done might work well for your family. If you have small children, you can teach lessons around the primary theme. Use the Youth theme for your youth. No kids? Adults can choose conference talks or Sunday lessons to study together. Family Home Evening is what you make of it. Be creative. Make it fit your family. But don’t lose sight of the spiritual progress you can make as a family. Anything you can do together can help you progress and keep open the lines of communication. Games are a great way to learn to talk with your kids. It makes you both feel comfortable and will help later on when they have serious things that need to be discussed.

Can’t do Family Home Evening on Monday night? Choose a time that works for your family. Maybe you have a free Saturday and can take a road trip up to the Temple grounds. Walk around the grounds and talk about temples and what they mean. That can totally count as an awesome Family Night during the day. Can’t make that drive? Have a picnic in the park instead. Or play a game. Just do SOMETHING and identify it as Family Home Evening for your kids.

As we set spiritual goals for ourselves and our families, we will help each other become closer to our goal of Becoming like our Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. They want us to return to live with them. The want us to grow and learn. And a way has been provided for us if we will take advantage of the Atonement of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We can become like them as long as we keep trying and changing our spiritual goals as the Spirit directs us in our own lives and families. Remember: As long as you don’t give up on your goal, you haven’t failed. As long as you keep trying, you get endless 2nd chances. As long as we do this, our lamps will be filled with everlasting oil and our lights will shine for all to see no matter how dark the world may become in these latter days. We will help others “Come Unto Christ”, as we Come Unto Him.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen