It's the first Tuesday of the month, and that means another
fireside has come and gone. Last night was awesome! The guest speaker this month was Camille Fronk Olson. She is incredible! She's a religion professor at BYU and you'll often see her on BYU TV on the round table discussions of the scriptures. She's great. I wrote about 5 pages of notes as fast as I could and I wanted to share with you some of what she said last night. I hope it will make sense to you.
* She talked about her life experiences where people would treat her differently because she was single until her mid 40''s. People would often tell her that she is doing the wrong thing. She said "There are a lot of people who aren't comfortable with where they are, and they find comfort in telling others that they're not doing the right thing. God is the one that can tell us that."
* "If every job and talent had the same salary, we would see a return to artisanship."
* While teaching seminary, she had a student who was a sophomore that later visited her as a senior in High School. The student told Sister Olson that she decided to leave the Church. Sister Olson asked why and she said that all she ever heard about in the Church was temple marriage, and a list of other "church things" but not enough about Jesus Christ. When Sister Olson asked her seminary students how they felt about that, almost all of them agreed. It was then and there that she made it a priority to focus on Christ in every lesson!
* It is Jesus Christ who heals and brings us "at one" with Him.
* I really liked her advice to "look for Christ
first in everything, and He will show you where you are and where you need to go." She talked about Lehi's dream. Lehi was lost until he prayed. Only then did he find where he was. He prayed before he even saw the Tree of Life or the Rod of Iron. We must keep our focus on Christ.
* "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another." She asked what's new about that? If the standard of how we love others is by how we love our selves, then there is a problem! We must love others as He loves us! "We love Him, because He first loved us." When we have His love, it changes the way we see ourselves.
* "Why is it the more diverse the ward, the more unified they are?" She shared experiences in here life where there was diversity in her wards and how unified they were. I loved what she said next. "The architect that designed the Salt Lake Temple designed each stone a slightly different dimension." I never knew that. Later on she said, "You don't look at the Salt Lake Temple and think...I love
that stone! It's when we take a step back and see the whole thing and the beauty of it." We are all different and diversity is important. She said that she never felt like she fit the cookie cutter image that is out there. There really isn't a cookie cutter image! That was one of my favorites! I've felt that same way and it's important to know that the mold doesn't even exist!
* We have a term in the Church that makes people a little uncomfortable. The term is "are you
worthy?" She always felt that the answers she wanted to give in the temple recommend interview questions were "I'm still a work in progress." But she would say yes cause everyone else says yes ;) But how can we say yes with confidence? If we had to wait till we were "righteous" and by our own merits then what? We can answer with confidence when we have faith in Jesus Christ and a desire to be with Him and through the doctrine of justification, we gain some of Christ's righteousness where we can say..."I'm with Him."
*
D&C 18:10 "Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" but read the next verse, "For behold, your Lord and Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore He suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto Him" That is why each soul is great in His sight!
* "Life is full of difficulties and turns out different than we expect. Because of that, we knock on His door more fervently."
* She shared a really cool experience she had one day. It was about the same time of year as it is now, one Spring morning, she was walking to work in downtown Salt Lake and she saw an apricot tree. It was just beginning to blossom. Several weeks went by before she saw the tree again and this time when she walked by, she saw that the blossoms were gone, but that the tree was growing leaves. She thought to her self, that surely along with those leaves, would be little green apricots. Sure enough, they were there. Tears in her eyes, she was happy. Her Insight was this: "Even though everything in her life was spinning out of control, the leaves and little apricots on the apricot tree were there at the exact time they were supposed to be." She learned that God is constant and that He loves each of us and has a plan for us.
There were other things she shared that I felt was personal for her so I don't share them here but this was the gist of her talk. After this, she opened the remaining time for discussion.
* Some one asked "Why is there this cookie cutter mentality in the Church?"
She replied, "It's easy to focus on the outward appearance. Whatever the Ensign cover looks like, that's how life should be! But really, the best articles in the Ensign are by "Name Withheld" :) Life just isn't like the Ensign cover.
* We need to stop seeing labels but instead see people! That's what brings us together!
* This was probably my favorite quote of the entire night! This is from one of her students mothers. "Don't judge others just because they choose to sin differently than you do!" I LOVED it!
* Brother and Sister Matis got up and talked for a little while about Stuart's life experiences. I love listening to them! Sister Matis closed by saying "You are among God's most noble spirits. You just don't know who you are, but I know who you are and I love you!"
That's most of my notes from this last fireside. Next month will be Elder Haight's son and his experiences being an Apostles son. Hope you got some Insight from Sister Olson.
