Teacher prep

Taking over the dining room table

This is the shot of what I left for the night on Tuesday when I went to bed, spread as my mother would say, 'from heck to breakfast.'  There's room for Hubby to sit and eat his actual breakfast on the other side, honest.  The stack of mail is on the upper right corner, that's not due to me.  By the time my beloved was downstairs to eat, this spread pile was gathered from the left and right into its center and ready to be loaded in the car when I was. 

Our lesson yesterday [Wed.] was on the calling of the Twelve Apostles in Kirtland February 14, 1835.  How's that for a Valentine's present to the world?  The keys to take the gospel throughout the earth.  I had a lot of research materials printed up from GospeLink, Deseret Book's indispensable database which only drives me crazy sometimes, my normal lesson materials, the Church Almanac because it lists information on every apostle ever called, my markers, pen, and pencil.  The honey bear was just hanging out as an observer.

The Documentary History of the Church gives the record of that meeting, actually those meetings plural, in which the Twelve were ordained by the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon, with the counselors of the First Presidency in attendance, after they had been called by Joseph Smith, the prophet.  Those blessings were exhilarating, and sobering.  Exhilarating in the vision they offered up of divine promises. They were sobering both in what they warned of tribulation to come, and in the fact that only three of those brethren stayed faithful without faltering:  Brigham Young, Heber C.Kimball, and David Patten who died later in Missouri.

One of the blessings as an example:

 John F. Boynton's Blessing:—Thou hast prevailed and thou shalt prevail, and thou shalt declare the Gospel unto many nations. Thou shalt be made mighty before God; and although thou shalt be cast out from the face of men, yet thou shalt have power to prevail. Thou shalt lead the elect triumphantly to the places of refuge; thou shalt be like the brethren who have been blessed before thee. Thou shalt stand in that day of calamity when the wicked shall be consumed, and present unto the Father, spotless, the fruits of thy labor. Thou shalt overcome all the evils that are in the world; thou shalt have wisdom to put to silence all the wisdom of the wise; and thou shalt see the face of thy Redeemer in the flesh. These blessings are pronounced and sealed upon thee. Even so. Amen.

Remarkable promises, reading along with warnings of difficult experiences.  Yet in standing fast, the powers of heaven would be unlocked and the blessings  exceed anything he had ever known or imagined--if he put the service of God first.  If he measured all challenges by the calling he was given; which, like many others, he did not.  He reacted to the financial troubles which set in at Kirtland with disaffection from the leadership, and along with William McLellin, Luke and Lyman Johnson, he lost his place and was excommunicated from the Church.  He never came back.  So much hoped for, so much lost.  Promises of miracles, gifts, and powers were lined out for all of the Twelve, and so many trials and pitfalls lay in the way that the majority of them tripped over.  Some of them managed to set their lives right afterwards, but not all.  The work continued, regardless.