President Henry B. Eyring

President Eyring points out the Savior calls those who have been faithful in their service to him “friends” (D&C 84). We can become his friend by serving others.

President Eyring tells us that over the next few days we will each have opportunities to be the Savior’s friend. If we are alert over the next few days, we will see others carrying heavy burdens, or have old friends called to mind we have not seen in years. We need to reach out to these people and lighten their burdens.

Our Savior will bless us to feel what they feel. As we serve them, our love for them will grow. That will give us courage to reach out again to others.

President Eyring also recounted how old friends had reached out to him in the past in his time of need across many miles and years when only Heavenly Father could have told them of his burdens.

Its a great feeling to reach out to old friends in their time of need, and soothing when they do the same for us. May we all follow his counsel and be especially alert this month for these opportunities to grow and to become the Savior’s friends.

A Mormon Wordle of his message is below:

Faithful Friends Mormon Wordle

Wordle.net recently released some new color combinations, among them was Indian Earth, the earthy colors used above. We think it does a nice job of representing the warmth of old friends.

President Thomas S. Monson

President Monson talks of when he was a young bishop, a widow in his ward passed away and left three canaries. Instructions had been left for the two with pretty yellow wings to be given to her friends, but the third, with its yellow wings marred by gray was to be given to President Monson. Her note asked him to give it a home, it is not the prettiest, but its song is the best.

He likened the widow to the canary, “She was not blessed with beauty, gifted with poise, or honored by posterity”, but her “song” (meaning her life), blessed the lives of others and strengthened them in their time of need.

President Monson told us the world is full of canaries with grey on their wings. Only a few have learned to sing. We must develop our capacity to face trouble with courage by gaining a true perspective of who we are (sons and daughters of our heavenly father) so that we too can have a good “song” and bless the lives of others.

A Mormon Wordle of the message is below, along with a description of our efforts in producing it.

Canaries With Gray on Their Wings Mormon Wordle

We spent longer trying to Mormon Wordle this message than any previous post to date. We were trying to overlay it on the photo of some parakeets I took a few years ago below.

Parakeets

We tried to use a white on black image version of the Mormon Wordle above, extract the white text, and overlay it onto the parakeet image. After exhausting the selection tools in Photoshop Elements and Inkscape and never being able to cleanly select the white text, we gave up in the second week of July and posted our efforts.

One of the basic wordle shapes resembles a footprint. We chose it to promote the concept of us walking in the footsteps of the lady who walked in the footsteps of the canary with gray on its wings. Interestingly, on close inspection, you may note the lime green parakeet closest to the camera is actually just a plastic bird. Many of us are like that, we have not reached our potential and are just sitting there like a bump on a log. May we all emulate its song in our lives by lifting the lives of those around us.

President Thomas S. Monson

Once again, President Monson gave us a great uplifting closing message along with some guidance. He thanked those who participated in the conference, said he had seldom heard so good of sermons with so few words, reminded us the messages would be reprinted in the May issues of the Liahona and Ensign, and urged us to study, ponder, and apply those messages.

He used seaman’s terms to describe how the world around us, “seems to have slipped from its moorings of safety and drifted from the harbor of peace.” Similar to the previous closing address, he mentioned how permissiveness, immorality, pornography, dishonesty and a host of other ills cause many to be tossed about on the seas. President Monson urged us to look to the lighthouse of the Lord, thanked us for our prayers in his behalf and in behalf of the General Authorities, and invoked a blessing upon us that the messages and spirit of this conference might find an expression in all that we do.

Although the closing messages are usually pretty brief, I always look forward to them. This time I especially enjoyed his use of sea fairing terms which fit so well with the rescuing message that is being strongly promoted across the church. His choice of terms is especially relevant when you consider the rescue painting that is currently being used to help energize our rescuing efforts.

We wordled his closing message in similar format to that we used on his October 2009 Conference closing message to allow some comparisons to be made.

President Monson's Closing Remarks April 2010 General Conference Wordle

This LDS visit teaching message is composed of brief quotes from four leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We even more briefly summarize their thoughts below, then created a Mormon Wordle to visually express their discussion of Seeking and Receiving Personal Revelation.

Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Individuals prepare to receive revelation just like the prophets do. Study the scriptures, fast, pray and build your faith if you are seeking revelation. Elder Hales says Faith is the key, just as it was for Joseph Smith when he asked in faith.

President Boyd K. Packer of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
We need to unlock the veil and the key is on our side, it is prayer. But it is not only prayer. We have to work for it by studying the matter out in our mind, then asking if we are right and receiving a burning in our bosom.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
Revelation normally comes by words or thoughts communicated to our minds, by sudden enlightenment, by positive or negative feelings about courses of action under study, or even by inspiring performances , such as the performing arts.

Silvia H. Allred, First Counselor in the Relief Society General Presidency
The temple is a house of learning. Our understanding of the temple increases as we return with an attitude of learning and contemplation. “Let us enjoy the spiritual strength and the revelation we receive as we attend the temple regularly.”

We hope the Mormon Wordle below will further inspire more discussion of this message on Personal Revelation.

Seeking and Receiving Personal Revelation wordle

We took one liberty with the text of this visiting teaching message before we wordled it. We removed the phrase “Quorum of the Twelve Apostles”. It was used several times to identify the position in the Church held by President Boyd K. Packer, Elder Robert D. Hales, and Elder Dallin H. Oaks. These three great men are wonderful sources to learn about personal revelation from, and their position in the Church both signifies and requires that they are well versed on this topic. We only removed the phrase because it was very long, and being used several times, it overpowered and dominated this Mormon Wordle. We left in the names of the apostles, we just removed the phrase, “Quorum of the Twelve Apostles”. When studying the message provided in the Ensign, please note that it is based upon comments by at least three members of the “Quorum of the Twelve Apostles”.

We created this particular wordle solely using the tool at wordle.net. The colors were selected using the custom color palette feature provided there. It came out very nice, so we elected to not further modify it.

Receiving Personal Revelation is often misspelled as Recieving Personal Revelation.

A Great Work of God
President Dieter F. Uchtdorf
First Presidency Message – April 2010

President Uchtdorf

In this home teaching message, President Uchtdorf tells us of the organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830. The meeting was simple, but the Holy Ghost was poured out upon those in attendance. While the event went unnoticed by the world, the heavens must have rejoiced, for on that day the Church of Jesus Christ was returned to the earth.

He recounts the story of Solomon Chamberlain, who had been promised earlier in a vision that he would see the day when the Church of Christ of organized on the earth after the apostolic order. Traveling through Palmyra, New York on his way to Canada by boat, he heard talk of a “golden bible”. Solomon said those words sent “a power like electricity (that) went from the top of my head to the end of my toes.” After spending two days at the Smith home, Solomon took off for Canada with 64 newly printed, unbound pages of the Book of Mormon. Everywhere he went, he taught people “to prepare for the great work of God that was now about to come forth.”

Since then, millions have been baptized. President Uchtdorf closes with his testimony that the great work of God is on the earth today. These are glorious times. The Lord is mindful of those like Solomon Chamberlain who follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost and join in helping bring forth this great work of God.

We created a Mormon Wordle of President Uchtdorf’s message in a brilliant green to convey some off the luster of this home teaching message about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints being restored to the earth, the Holy Ghost leading people to it, then those people joining the Church and sharing the Gospel with others.

Great Work of God wordle - President Uchtdorf April 2010 First Presidency Message

We did take a few liberties with the phrase “Great Work of God”. In the text it was sometimes presented as “Great Work of God” and other times as “great work of God”. We changes all of them to read “Great Work of God” before we wordled it so all the weight and size of word frequency would go to one phrase instead of being split between them. We also changed the opening sentence “One hundred eighty years ago” to “180 years ago” so wordle would drop the number and not leave a long phrase in our completed Mormon Wordle.

The greens and reds we chose may be a bit difficult to distinguish by any brethren that may be color blind.

Earthrise photo by Apollo 8 - NASA image

Genesis Chapter 1
Let there be light

I love this history of the creation of the earth provided by the Bible in the first book of the Old Testament.

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void: and darkness was upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.”

I still remember hearing those words from Apollo 8 in lunar orbit on Christmas eve back on December 24, 1968. William Anders, an Apollo 8 crew member,   read these same verses to the world that night as the crew closed their Christmas eve broadcast. The other crew members, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, also read from the first chapter of Genesis. They were the first men to leave earth orbit and fittingly, entered lunar orbit on Christmas eve 1968.

The same mission brought us the well known Apollo 8 Earthrise photo. Their image of the earth rising over a lunar horizon had a tremendous emotional impact on the world as we saw our planet from a new perspective.

The earthrise image together with their reading of the first chapter of Genesis gave the world a much needed spiritual boost. Sometimes, I wish we could recapture our feelings from that time, and try to go forward now as a better people.

We reworked some of the materials we used in preparing our earlier Mormon Wordle of Genesis Chapter 1 to created a lighted version. We widened the frame a bit, slightly changed the color schemes, lighted it using Photoshop Elements 8, then saved it as a PNG image to try to keep some of that brightness we see on our Mac for our PC visitors. We think the light blends well with the scriptural account of the creation of the earth.

The lighted Mormon Wordle of Genesis Chapter 1 is below.

Genesis Chapter 1 - lighted wordle

We considered trying to post a pdf of this image that could be zoomed and expanded like viewing it with a telescope, but at over 5 mb, it was just too big.

Sister Julie Beck

This visiting teaching lesson on personal scripture study is composed of three short collections of quotes from our Church Leaders.

First, Sister Julie B. Beck, General Relief Society President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints tells of how she was invited to a Relief Society luncheon many years ago for all the sisters in her ward that had read the Book of Mormon or a short Church history book. She had elected to read a short Church history book, but while at the meeting she felt the Holy Ghost prompting her to change her scripture reading habits. Although the book she had chosen was a good one, she felt she should have read the Book of Mormon. As a result of that experience, she began reading the Book of Mormon that day and a lifelong habit of daily scripture study. She encourages all sisters to develop similar habits to better prepare them for their responsibilities in this life and in the eternities.

Second, President Thomas S. Monson tells us the scriptures will help strengthen our testimonies and the testimonies of our family members. Our children are susceptible to the influences of the world. The scriptures can help us fortify and protect them.

Thirdly, President Spence W. Kimball said, “We want our sisters to be scholars of the scriptures…” Studying the scriptures will acquaint sisters with eternal truths that will strengthen them, and can be taught to their children and other within their influence.

My wife aided me in the creation of  this Mormon Wordle on Scripture Study.

Scripture Study Visiting Teaching Lesson wordle

We tried to accent the word “scriptures” by selecting a wordle with “scriptures” near the center, then later accented the color of “scriptures” to make it the center piece of this wordle. It is interesting the way “Book of Mormon”, “scripture reading”, “Jesus Christ”, “gospel”, “Relief Society” and several other key phrases clustered in the middle of this wordle around the “scriptures”. My wife was at first a bit surprised to see the word “lunch”, then noted how we need to feast on the scriptures.

As always, we appreciate any comments you may have about the wordle and especially those from anyone who used it in preparation for giving this lesson or as a part of presenting the Visiting Teaching lesson itself.

We limited the maximum number of words to wordle to 100 in order to create a more similar format.We may try upping the word count a bit in the future.

Family Proclamation wordle - lighted

We hope you enjoy it.

We also place a larger, unlighted version of our Family Proclamation wordle on MormonCharts.com.

Earlier today I noticed a quote from a Denver Catholic Archbishop, Charles J. Chaput on CNN online news. In defense of their Church’s stand on not allowing children of a same sex couple to re-enroll in a local Catholic school, The Sacred Heart of Jesus School, he said

“… what the Church does teach is that sexual intimacy by anyone outside of marriage is wrong; that marriage is a sacramental covenant; and that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman. These beliefs are central to a Catholic understanding of human nature, family and happiness, and the organization of society. The Church cannot change these teachings because in the faith of Catholics, they are the teachings of Jesus Christ.

He noted the Catholic Church does not claim people with same sex tendencies are bad, or that their children are less loved by God. He added that people with other views of marriage and family life had other excellent options for education for their children.

Its nice to see we are not alone. Archbishop Chaput wrote his comments in an article to be published in Thursday’s edition (11 March) of the Denver Catholic Register. His statement echoes several concepts put forth by The Family: A Proclamation to the World issued by the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1995.

We may try wordling Archbishop Chaput’s full comments on the family in the future, but meanwhile, our latest Mormon Wordle of the Family  Proclamation is below. We trimmed it down in size a little to keep the download times reasonable.

Famliy Proclamation wordle - gradient background