(Courtesy of the Central Indiana Chapter of the BYU Alumni Association)
My wife and I attended not one but two sacrament meetings today, in both cases to attend missionary farewells. A couple in our ward will be going to Wheeler AFB in Hawaii as military relations service missionaries — he was an Air Force officer and then, having earned a doctorate in computer science along the way, taught at BYU-Hawaii — and the eldest daughter of our brand new next-door neighbors is headed off for a mission in Texas. That’s one sacrament meeting. Regarding the other: Our friends Dil and LauraBeth Parkinson are bound for a two-year volunteer service assignment in Jordan. (BYU’s Arabic program will never be the same. He’s been my senior colleague since my arrival here more than thirty years ago and is among the most vivid personalities I’ve ever encountered.)
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It occurs to me that one good reason for attending church is that it provides an opportunity for public group singing. There just aren’t very many other places where that happens much.
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Just so you know:
I’ll be speaking to a single adult fireside in the Orem Lakeview Stake on Sunday, 24 September 2017. I haven’t yet chosen my topic.
On Sunday, 22 October 2017, I’ll be giving a fireside in the Carmel, Indiana, area. That’s greater Indianapolis, near the new temple there. See the flyer shown above.
I’ll also be speaking at the BYU Wheatley Institution’s biannual “Reason for Hope” conference on Thursday, 16 November 2017: https://calendar.byu.edu/event/reason-hope.
More information on all of these will be forthcoming.
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Are you looking for an opportunity to serve? An opportunity for service for a business or other organization with which you’re involved? A place where young people can learn to serve? Do you know of a place that needs help? Are you involved with an organization that could use more volunteers?
This site is ideal for all of that, for bringing those who want to serve together with groups that need such people:
JustServe is a project of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but it’s not even remotely Mormon-oriented and you don’t have to be a Latter-day Saints to use it or to benefit from it.
Please spread the word.
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“A rabbi I know devotes one day a week to simply being of service. She gets up in the morning and dedicates the day to God. She then leaves her home for the city close by and wanders about looking for ways to be of service to others. ‘I have no plan for the day, other than to be present to what needs doing and to do those things I can without pride or prejudice. Sometimes I will find myself helping someone move into or out of an apartment, or sitting with the homeless, or walking tourists to their destination. The idea is to be free of any idea other than to serve, to befriend, to be kind.'”
Rami Shapiro, The Sacred Art of Lovingkindness
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