It was a bright sunny morning, the kind Florida is famous for, this was in stark contrast of the past few days of destruction. Even though it was a bright morning it couldn’t overcome the massive destruction in view. As the regional director of the Red Cross carefully drove around fallen trees and down power lines. He was looking for where he could setup a base to run his relief effort operation. Up ahead he saw a national guard humvee directing traffic. He thought I can hook up with the National Guard and work with them. He stopped and asked, were is your relief base setup. The seargent said. about 2 miles away “We are set up at the Mormon Stake house” We are taking direction from them. The were setup before we got here they seem to know exactly what is going on. The regional director though “How in the world did they get here before us?” He found the Stakehouse not a food place but one of the church buildings for “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” He soon discovered it was the head quarters for the LDS church in that Area, much like a Catholic dioceses. He also discovered why they were the first ones there. They were local residents that were fully organized and helping with the relief effort both with the needs of their own members and anyone else in need.<\/p>\n
I have heard many stories like this one growing up.\u00a0 Members of the church being the first ones to respond to disasters.\u00a0\u00a0 I have always been aware of how organized and efficient the church is in doing almost everything the do.\u00a0 For instance on the First Sunday of January in any unit of the church throughout the world you will receive the same instruction depending on the which class you attend.\u00a0 If you attend priesthood anywhere in the world you will receive the same instruction whether you are in Japan, London or Brazil.\u00a0 The same is true for Relief Society and Primary classes.\u00a0 Each group being taught something that is appropriate for them, but basically the same curriculum throughout the world.\u00a0 I had been in a Sunday school class a couple of weeks ago where they talked about revelation in the church and that it played an important factor. But it took me two weeks to figure it out. \u00a0 I was visiting a ward in Houston and they were teaching the same lesson that had\u00a0 been taught the previous week in my ward.\u00a0\u00a0 I again heard the word curriculum and then I began to understand what was being talked about an why the curriculum had so much to do with revelation.\u00a0\u00a0 It hit me like a lightening bolt.\u00a0 The reason the church runs so efficiently is because each member has their own testimony that what the prophet directs is the word of God.\u00a0 The leaders of the church don’t have to debate what we are going to do and how we are going to do it because we know what the Lord directs the Prophet so we don’t have to go over that again.\u00a0 If we do have a questions about a particular point all we have to do is pray about it an get our own confirmation again that the prophet is inspired and we need to follow.\u00a0 This in contrast with government and any other organization throughout the world that don’t run by revelation.\u00a0 There seems to be endless debate and compromise. Sometimes taking months and even years to resolve.\u00a0 In the LDS church when with prophet speaks we all follow, not as blind sheep, but as people that trust the prophet because we have our own testimonies that he receives revelation.\u00a0 So there is no debate there is just action.<\/p>\n
I realized that this is why we are are so efficient as a church.\u00a0 We know our leaders are inspired and so when they ask us to do something we already have a testimony that following them is the right thing to do.\u00a0 If our Stake President asks,our Bishop asks, our Relief Society president asks, Our Elders Quorum asks or High Priest Group Leader asks, We act.\u00a0 With revelation there is just action.<\/p>\n
No wonder we are so efficient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overcoming Destruction It was a bright sunny morning, the kind Florida is famous for, this was in stark contrast of the past few days of destruction. Even though it was a bright morning it couldn’t overcome the massive destruction in view. As the regional director of the Red Cross carefully drove around fallen trees and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-475","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-journal-entry","7":"entry"},"modified_by":"D. Gardner","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p32Jie-7F","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.deegardner.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}