Monday, January 4, 2010

Self Reliance in All Things

The church has a new section on LDS.org called "Self-Reliance" and I was very excited to see our Visiting Teaching Message this month is "Becoming Self-Reliant". The following is an excerpt from a talk by Lane Johnson which explains the 6 different areas of self reliance. Each month Stefanie will be highlighting a different aspect of becoming "Self Reliant in All Things".

"President Marion G. Romney has said that welfare is the essence of the Church. Personal and Family Preparedness is an essential part of welfare. Its purpose is to encourage the economic, intellectual, physical, and spiritual preparedness of family and members.

What is this Personal and Family Preparedness that is so central to the purposes of the Church?

Personal and Family Preparedness encourages families and individuals to become self-reliant in six different areas: 1) literacy and education, 2) career development, 3) financial and resource management, 4) home production and storage, 5) physical health, and 6) social-emotional and spiritual strength. (see the model attached)

Welfare in the family is by no means food storage alone. Home storage is an important part of family welfare, but it is only a half of a sixth of the whole program.

Personal and Family Preparedness isn't just preparation for some kind of disaster; it's preparation for life - the foreseen, anticipated, almost expected needs which can be met through wise preparation.

You can scarcely think of a problem that could arise in the life of any family member-or the family as a whole-that could not be taken care of if preparation were solid enough and early enough in one or more of these six areas. Through this kind of 'provident living', families in most cases really can live happier lives because economic, physical, and emotional problems are held to a minimum and the things that make life worth living are encouraged to a maximum."

(Lane Johnson, "A Little Bit of Planning, a Lot of Success," Ensign, Jun. 1977, 6)

Thanks to Stephanie for this post!

1 comment:

Simone said...

Thank you so much. I'll give a talk for the youth on the Carnival camping next month (I live in Brazil) and the Bishop ask me to talk about the importance of education. This is going to help me pretty much.