Life in Our World - Sign Me Up

When you belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you get lots of opportunities to serve others.  In fact, you're expected to help.  Here are three projects Calvin was a part of this week:

Cooking for the High Priest banquet.

Calvin was asked to cook the brisket.  He started at 11:00 pm on Thursday night and got up every hour on the hour to tend to the smoker.  It paid off; the brisket was good and Calvin smelled like a campfire.

Feeding the Young Men breakfast.

The YM leaders:  Calvin, Brent, & Mitch

The leaders promised a big breakfast to the young men if they would all read their scriptures faithfully.  Not all of the young men are in this picture, but all of them are fun to be with and each have a story.

Juan is quite possibly the happiest person I've ever met.  He lives in pain from his spinal deformations.  It is impossible not to smile when you're with him. He is a leader in his special ed choir and it's inspiring watching him perform.

Anthony often misses out on fun events because he has to babysit his younger siblings while his parents work (often in the fields or on the poultry farm).  Often Anthony's little sister will follow him a few steps behind when he passes the sacrament.

Benexie was chosen by his teachers to represent the school at a leadership conference at Harvard this last summer.  He can catch a football from anywhere.

Gaston strikes up conversations, contributes to gatherings, and leads out with the other boys.  Incredible for a boy who only grunted and said "Idunno" a few years ago.

Denny is gregarious, spiritual, and funny.  One minute he's fourteen and the next he's forty.

Those boys consumed a lot of milk, pancakes, sausage, bacon, and eggs.  


Helping Jaime finish his Boy Scout Eagle project.

 

Jaime (far right in the top picture) is the first young man in the Spanish Branch to get his Eagle badge in forever . . . maybe ever.  Calvin helped Jaime organize his senior-citizen-center-shelf-project and the troop helped ("helped" being relative) complete it.


One Sunday many years ago, my young women's leader, Vera, told our class how grateful she was that she belonged to a church that expected her husband to serve other people and to serve often. She said it helped him to be a better man, husband, and father.  She nodded knowingly as she told us and acted as if we would all understand some day.  I've thought of her comment a hundred times through the years and came to understand exactly what she meant.  It is as President Spencer W. Kimball says,

“The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls. We become more significant individuals as we serve others. We become more substantive as we serve others—indeed, it is easier to “find” ourselves because there is so much more of us to find!”