The Church is not a monastery for the isolation of perfect people. It is more like a hospital provided for those who wish to get well.

Maybe the purchasing and the making and the wrapping and the decorating - those delightfully generous and important expressions of our love at Christmas - should be separated, if only slightly, from the more quiet, personal moments when we consider the meaning of the Baby (and his birth) who prompts the giving of such gifts.

The Atonement of Jesus Christ is rightfully seen as the central fact, the crucial foundation, and the chief doctrine of the plan of salvation, which we are called to teach.

The world around us is an increasingly hostile and sinful place. Occasionally that splashes onto us, and perhaps, in the case of a few of you, it may be nearly drowning you. To anyone struggling under the burden of sin, I say again with the Prophet Joseph that God has ‘a forgiving disposition’ (Lectures on Faith, 42). You can change. You can be helped. You can be made whole—whatever the problem.

Whatever else the Book of Mormon makes clear, it makes clear that every soul in every dispensation is precious to God, and therefore no age or era was-or is-left without its witness of Christ.

Try not to compare your children, even if you think you are skillful at it. You may say most positively that "Susan is pretty and Sandra is bright," but all Susan will remember is that she isn't bright and Sandra that she isn't pretty. Praise each child individually for what that child is and help him or her escape our culture's obsession with comparing, competing, and never feeling we are "enough.

Preparatory faith is formed by experiences in the past-by the known, which provides a basis for belief. But redemptive faith must often be exercised toward experiences in the future-the unknown, which provides an opportunity for the miraculous.