This last month has not been stellar for my family. Two car accidents, a broken foot, health problems, and cancelled work contracts all added up to more than we had on reserve, both emotionally and financially. So when I got in the banged up car that was NOT in the shop and it sputtered and threatened to die, my heart sank. Rationally I knew that whatever happened with the car we’d be fine. But I also believe that the Lord is aware of our breaking points, and I was dangerously close to mine.  That’s when I laid my hands on the dashboard on my ’98 Sienna and asked that its life be extended and expressed my gratitude for a car that has seen me through so much.  In short I blessed my car. 

While the judgy part of my brain thinks my actions were a bit ridiculous and possibly heretical, there’s another part that wonders how my praying for a car is any different from the stories we hear of a pioneer woman blessing her fallen oxen. I also thought of my father and his fondness for referencing Eugene England’s essay “Blessing the Chevrolet.”  My dad was a bit sarcastic about it and always laughed at the absurd image of England laying his hands on the hood of his old Chevy that refused to start while he was traveling out of town. “If he’d bought a Toyota he never would have had to resort to such measures!” my dad remarked one time. But I could tell he never doubted that the blessing, however unorthodox, had been efficacious. It was priesthood power, and not luck, that got that car going again.

Others may find my actions disturbing not because the recipient of the blessing is a vehicle, but because I am a woman and hence, am not authorized to give blessings. As anyone who has read about the early days of the Church knows, women routinely gave blessings.  And the temple is filled with women who exercise that gift. Much has been written about this by people much cleverer than I am. But let me add that there are many wonderful spiritual gifts out there.  As these are gifts that Lord gives freely and are used to bless the lives of others, I see nothing wrong with being the vehicle of these blessings.

The next day I took in the car (that I affectionately refer to as Grizzly) and my mechanic diagnosed it as a loose thingey-ma-bobber, kept if for a half hour, and charged me $40.  When I returned home I got on my knees and thanked the Lord for his tender mercies and pledged to be generous with whatever life was left in that car.  Ever since my husband’s grandma loaned us a car in 2000 when ours broke, he has insisted that if we have a second car, we need to be willing to loan it to anyone who needs it. So Grizzly spends a fair portion of her life in other people’s driveways. I am convinced that the goodness of my husband’s heart has been returned to us over and over. Call it karma, or better still, “carma.”

So what is my point? I believe that the Lord watches over us in our trials, whether large or small. I believe that as a faithful saint I have access to the priesthood. I believe that blessings are a sacred and powerful means of comingling our righteous desires and concerns with the Lord’s. I believe in miracles, even in the automotive variety. I believe in the spirit of reciprocity, that all our sacrifices and service will flow back to us in a tidal wave of blessings.

Because Grizzly is old and our lives are busy, she doesn’t get tidied up much. For a whole week after this incident I could see an imprint of my two outstretched hands, a testimony in dust, stamped on the dashboard.  The marks have since faded but my faith has not.

Like the other lesson plans before, I think looking at both the Young Women outline, in comparison to the Young Men outline, is important.

Before I get into the lesson, I feel impressed to tell  of my experience in Young Women from a Beehive to Laurel. My ward had an awesome Young Women Presidency. The President was driven to ensure that each young woman had leadership experience. In this, she saw and positioned herself as an adviser, rather than as a leader. Sure, she and her presidency were leaders, but she reminded us that we were the “Young Women,” and she was not. So. One of the Young Women (YW) would conduct the meeting. We started with a prayer, a hymn, a chorus of the YW theme, and upon breaking into classes, the Beehive, Mia Maid or Laurel president would conduct the class, and invite the “adviser” (adult female in the YW presidency) to teach. This was my experience. And it made me into a leader. I did not fear speaking in public, and grew to understand the importance of communication, organization, and inviting the spirit. This was a powerful lesson, and yet—it was just in the way it was structured. But it was structured to make us into leaders. And it worked.

This lesson gives an excellent opportunity for you to invite this system into your Young Women meeting, and will allow the Young Women in your ward experience the act of conducting meetings, arranging for prayers, songs and so on. It will encourage them to develop leadership characteristics. This is a powerful part of this lesson: the concept of leadership, or in other words, the daring of standing alone in the face of opposition and disorder.  

Did your grandmother make a quilt that featured a temple? Or did you ever make temple cross-stitch? For the upcoming temple issue of Exponent II, we are searching for the temple folk art of LDS women.  We want everything lovely, kitschy, horrible, and wonderful.  If you have ever made temple textiles or temple art, or you are in possession of a temple family heirloom, please email our Art Editor, Margaret Olsen Hemming at arteditorATexponentiiDOTorg.

Time is running out; please email us today!

After I had my first son, we used about half male babysitters and half female babysitters. I was careful to make sure I had a balance. A’s first sitter while I worked was my brother who came to live with us for the summer and be our “manny.”

We moved to Arizona, and I only found one male babysitter that I liked and would be able to sit consistently when I called. He went on to BYU a couple years ago and is now on his mission.

I don’t have any male sitters right now. I think it’s complicated by the fact that my youngest is a girl, and I am more picky now about a male sitter.

I’d like to do better, but I feel like in my area, we’re in the minority when it comes to families who are willing to hire male sitters, and when I find a boy who will babysit, he usually only does once or twice. So, I have to polls this week. The first question speaks to hiring preferences. Keep in mind this first one is so generalized I don’t know if it will do any good, but it’s mostly as a jumping off point. Why do you (or people you know) think it’s safe (or not) to use a male babysitter?:

The second question speaks to the supply of male babysitters. (I’m wondering if location and local culture has something to do with the willingness of men to babysit.)

My friend Ellen posted this on her Facebook feed yesterday, along with the comment, “I’ve had this job 4 years today.” I love that she’s smiling in it, and that she’s used a style that’s best associated with the word “change.”

Maybe it isn’t what you’d expect from most ward Relief Society presidents. For me, the office conjures up a mental image of a conservative married woman in her sixties, someone who wears sensible shoes and insists on referring to everyone in the room as “Sister” in a syrupy voice.

Ellen isn’t any of those things (for one thing, she has excellent taste in shoes!), and I know the women in her ward see her as a leader and a compatriot.

So I have a few questions for you all: How can a Relief Society president be an agent for positive change within a ward? What’s the best thing you’ve ever seen a Relief Society president do?

I don’t normally teach youth Sunday School, but I was asked to sub for three Sundays this month. Already, the Bloggernacle has tackled the tall order to come up with 10 separate lessons on priesthood this month. That is no easy feat. Luckily, the first topic for Sunday School is really useful- we all need to learn how to work together to make the Church a better place. I had main points I wanted to hit. I didn’t use all of my outline because I could tell when the students were mentally “done” and so the last 10 minutes we played improv games. I also used some of the tips here. I started the lesson by asking each student to share something they had done that week that they had never done before.

Let me guess: You surfed onto this site looking for a way to make this month’s Visiting Teaching message interesting.

Now, I don’t mean to be disrespectful towards family history temple work. But it is a topic that comes up rather often, (I have written about here and here , oy!). So- either I get hit with the family history thing way too often in the Lesson Plan lottery, or the spirit is trying to get me to do work. Either way, looking up my family tree is not new. And clearly the topic can be hard to address and re-address, especially because it is a topic that so often hits news headlines.

Out of interest, Mormons are not alone in proxy work. There is evidence that the Coptic Church practiced baptisms for the dead in the 3^rd Century C.E., but ended as it was decided that those who are deceased are not privy to receiving Eucharist ordinances. (1) Mandaeans also practice proxy baptism, but only on a small scale. (2) But, by and large, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are the primary group that performs proxy ordinances, likely because it is taught to us so very often as a part of applied and real, church piety. There is some evidence that the LDS church members practiced proxy work for the living in the early days of the church- likely for other church members or relatives that were unable to migrate to Nauvoo (3) But because there is also evidence that not everyone enjoyed being proxy-baptised into another church, the practices was changed for the dead. It seems to me that the long lists of unrelated proxy temple work that were completed and created controversy furthered this practice to focus only on family history. Perhaps that is why there is such an emphasis in the church today; because if we do the work of our ancestors who have dead, we offend fewer of the living.