When a mission doesn’t last as long as expected, it can be difficult to adjust to the change in plans. But every mission matters to our Heavenly Father. Based on personal experiences and scholarly research, this book helps loved ones, leaders, and returning missionaries navigate through the mixed emotions of an early release for any reason and press forward with faith.
Home Early...Now What? is a faith-building, hope-filled guide written by early RMs for early RMs. It provides practical helps and spiritual insights for missionaries and their families, mission presidents, priesthood leaders, and ward councils. This international edition includes the thoughts of early RMs from outside of the United States and will be available in English, French (https: //amzn.to/35NuYTm), and Spanish.Destiny Yarbro came home early...twice. Struggling for years, she feared that she had irreparably failed the Lord. But as she healed, and her pain slowly changed to gratitude, she began to value the unique mission she had been given. Destiny interviewed and surveyed over 1,000 early RMs to write the book she wishes she had when she got off the plane. Highlighted Reviews: "Truly an outstanding resource of healing and fresh hope for the brokenhearted. Pages packed with the words of the Lord, words of the brethren, and words of those who've lived the private details of this sorrow and have accessed the enabling power of Jesus Christ's atonement. A trustworthy tool for Mission Presidents, local leaders, family and friends to learn from, and to give to the early returned missionaries they love and care about. An inspired compilation.""The resource we needed in hand when we first felt dizzy with logistical details, yet one that will be read and re-read for fresh hope and healing in the years that follow. Sound gospel principles and practicalities for the missionaries themselves, their families and their leaders. An outstanding compilation of scriptures, words of the brethren, and words of those who've lived through it. A much needed resource.""If you've recently come home early from an LDS mission, or know someone who has and wish to know more about what they must be feeling right now, this book is for you. It's very personal and written directly to the missionary, empathizing with their current situation with stories and advice from other early returned missionaries who came home for a variety of reasons and made it through. Family and friends are critical elements to a missionary's healing process, so if your missionary seems distant and you're struggling to empathize with them, wondering what to say and what not to say, I recommend this book as a guide. Because it speaks directly to the missionary one-on-one, by reading it you can get a fuller sense of some of the struggles and heartaches they are experiencing. Short guides are also included at the end for parents, bishops/stake presidents, ward councils and even mission presidents with helpful advice on how to best assist the missionary. The entire book is very well thought out and filled with experiences and lessons from real people who once felt beat down and defeated, but kept standing up again and again until they gained back their strength. Their experiences are a guiding hand for missionaries who feel like all hope is lost, because it's not."
Through the power of storytelling, inspired author and former YSA bishop Richard H. Ostler brings to life the experiences of LGBTQ Latter-day Saints in his book Listen, Learn, and Love: Embracing LGBTQ Latter-day Saints.In a November 2017 devotional address given at Brigham Young University, President M. Russell Ballard challenged us to "Listen to and understand what are our LGBT brothers and sisters are feeling and experiencing." This book, which is supportive of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, its leaders, and its doctrine, is for all Latter-day Saints. It goes hand-in-hand with the Listen, Learn, and Love podcast, which brings hundreds of stories together in a comprehensive review of the many topics concerning LGBTQs and Latter-day Saints.With the help of this inspired book, we can now better support LGBTQ members in their unique and often difficult road. We can do better in recognizing their gifts and contributions in our wards and families. Listen, Learn, and Love makes a wonderful addition to the spiritual and intellectual curriculum of all members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In How to Boost Your Church Attendance, you’ll find an outline that helped him as he worked to reach Hammond, IN through First Baptist Church. The methods and practices in this book are proven and can help your church grow.
What you believe about God sets the foundation of the person you will become. In God Has a Name, pastor and New York Times bestselling author John Mark Comer invites you to rethink many of the prevalent myths and misconceptions about God and weigh them against what God actually tells us about himself. After all, what you believe about God will ultimately shape the type of person you become. We all live at the mercy of our ideas, and nowhere is this more true than our ideas about God. The problem is many of our ideas about God are wrong. Not all wrong, but wrong enough to form our souls in detrimental and disheartening ways. God Has a Name is a simple yet profound guide to understanding God in a new light--focusing on what God says about himself in the Bible. This one shift has the potential to radically alter how you relate to God, not as a doctrine, but as a relational being who responds to you in an elastic, back-and-forth way. John Mark Comer takes you line by line through Exodus 34:6-8--Yahweh's self-revelation on Mount Sinai, one of the most quoted passages in the Bible. Along the way, Comer addresses some of the most profound questions he came across as he studied these noted lines in Exodus, including: Why do we feel this gap between us and God? Could it be that a lot of what we think about God is wrong? Not all wrong, but wrong enough to mess up how we relate to him? What if our "God" is really a projection of our own identity, ideas, and desires? What if the real God is different, but far better than we could ever imagine? No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God Has a Name invites you to step into a fresh and biblically rooted vision of who God is that has the potential to alter your life with God and shape who you become.
This history of Native Americans, from the period of first contactto the present day, offers an important variation to existingstudies by placing the lives and experiences of Native Americancommunities at the center of the narrative. Presents an innovative approach to Native American history byplacing individual native communities and their experiences at thecenter of the study Following a first chapter that deals with creation myths, theremainder of the narrative is structured chronologically, coveringover 600 years from the point of first contact to the presentday Illustrates the great diversity in American Indian culture andemphasizes the importance of Native Americans in the history ofNorth America Provides an excellent survey for courses in Native Americanhistory Includes maps, photographs, a timeline, questions fordiscussion, and “A Closer Focus” textboxes that providebiographies of individuals and that elaborate on the text, exposing students to issues of race, class, and gender
Much of the history of women, in religion as in other fields, is lost because it was overlooked or considered unimportant. It is therefore surprising that so many fragments of women's stories survive in the New Testament texts composed by men. Why did they include so many references to women and why are women, as a group, treated so positively by the male New Testament writers? Women in the New Testament shows how the stories of women are an integral part of the Gospel and its meaning for us. It also relays how we can respond to the challenge these women represent, whether we are men trying to understand or women trying to find our voices within the tradition of faith found in the New Testament. Chapter one discusses three women of expectant faith. Chapters two and three deal with women who are changed by Jesus. Chapter four focuses on New Testament women of influence. Chapters five and six show how women disciples spread and gave shape to the gospel message. Chapters are "Women of Expectant Faith," “Women Changed by Jesus,” “More Women Changed by Jesus,” “Women of Prominence,” “Women and Discipleship,” and “More Women and Discipleship.” Mary Ann Getty-Sullivan, PhD, teaches at St. Vincent College and St. Vincent Seminary, Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She is the author of First and Second Corinthians from the Collegeville Bible Commentary series, author of the God Speaks to Us series of children's books, and editor of the Zacchaeus Studies: New Testament series published by The Liturgical Press. "
OUR DEAR YOUNG MEN AND YOUNG WOMEN, we have great confidence in you. You are beloved sons and daughters of God and He is mindful of you. You have come to earth at a time of great opportunities and also of great challenges. The standards in this booklet will help you with the important choices you are making now and will yet make in the future. We promise that as you keep the covenants you have made and these standards, you will be blessed with the companionship of the Holy Ghost, your faith and testimony will grow stronger, and you will enjoy increasing happiness.
The spread of Christianity is often presented as a story of conquest, of powerful European missionaries waging a cultural assault on hapless indigenous victims. Yet the presence of indigenous men among missionary ranks in the nineteenth century complicates these narratives. What compelled these individuals to embrace Christianity? How did they reconcile being both Christian and indigenous in an age of empire? Tolly Bradford finds answers to these questions in the lives and legacies of Henry Budd, a Cree missionary from western Canada, and Tiyo Soga, a Xhosa missionary from southern Africa. Inspired by both faith and family, these men found in Christianity a way to construct a modern conception of indigeneity, one informed by their ties to Britain and rooted in land and language, rather than religion and lifestyle. Although they shared a new sense of "nativeness," the men followed different paths. Whereas Budd sought to create a modern Cree village to cope with the upheavals of the 1860s and 1870s, Soga tried to foster among his people a politicized, and Christianized, sense of African nationalism. In telling this story, Bradford portrays indigenous missionaries not as victims of colonialism but as people who made conscious, difficult choices about their spirituality, identity, and relationship with the British colonial world.
