Each Sunday, when we take the sacrament, we remember our covenants, our promise to mourn with those who mourn and to comfort those who stand in need of comfort (Mosiah 18:9). This month’s visiting teaching principle and First Presidency message encourage us to remember our Savior as we keep our covenants and get to know those we teach.
Visiting Teaching Principle
Rita Jeppeson and her visiting teacher have become good friends as they meet and share gospel conversations. But their visits also include playing word games together, which helps Rita’s mind stay sharp. Because her visiting teacher has learned what Rita needs and enjoys, they both look forward to each visit. Rita knows that they are friends and that the visit is not just an obligation. There are so many things sisters can do during a visit, such as taking a walk together or helping a sister with her chores.
Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, expressed her feelings in 1842 about how Latter-day Saint sisters in the newly established Relief Society should feel about one another. She said, “We must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction, that we may all sit down in heaven together.” This is still true today.
Read the full message on lds.org.
Ministering Tip: Think of an interest or passion that your assigned sister has. How can you share that with her?
First Presidency Message
Can you picture with me the prophet Moroni inscribing the final words of the Book of Mormon on the golden plates? He was alone. He had seen his nation, his people, and his family fall. The land was “one continual round” of war (Mormon 8:8). Yet he had hope, for he had seen our day! And of all the things he could have written, he invited us to remember (see Moroni 10:3).
President Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) was fond of teaching that the most important word in the dictionary could be remember. Because we have made covenants with God, he said, “our greatest need is to remember” them.
You can find the word remember throughout the scriptures. When Nephi admonished his brothers, often he invited them to remember the Lord’s words and to remember how God had saved their forefathers (see 1 Nephi 15:11, 25; 17:40).
In his great farewell address, King Benjamin used the word remember seven times. He hoped that his people would remember “the greatness of God . . . and his goodness and long-suffering” toward them (Mosiah 4:11; see also2:41; 4:28, 30; 5:11–12).
When the Savior instituted the sacrament, He invited His disciples to partake of the emblems “in remembrance” of His sacrifice (Luke 22:19). In every sacrament prayer you and I hear, the word always precedes the word remember (see D&C 20:77, 79).
My message is an invitation, even a plea, to remember.
Read the full message on lds.org.
Additional Reading Suggestion: “The Living Bread Which Came Down from Heaven” by Elder D. Todd Christofferson