Tuesday Teaching

This morning I taught Ty and Michelle how to make bread and then I went visiting teaching. 

Our visiting teaching lesson this month was on being self-reliant so we gave a loaf of homemade bread, referred to the story of the Little Red Hen, and read the following story of the gulls by Marion G. Romney:

the seagulls (next to Ivar's on the Seattle pier) lined up waiting for someone to feed them french fries 

“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. …

“The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.

“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.

“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.”  (Excerpt from October 1982 General Conference Address, “The Celestial Nature of Self Reliance.”)

 The friend we were visiting had picked a large dishpan full of strawberries the night before and was drying them in her fruit dryer.  Her house smelled so good and it was a fun lesson to discuss with the smell of fresh picked strawberries in the background.  There is nothing quite like feeling capable of caring for ourselves and others who need our help.