Elder Enrique R. Falabella: When I was growing up, we didn’t have much. I remember one day when I approached my father and said to him, “Papa, I need a new pair of shoes. These ones are already worn out.” He stopped and looked at my shoes and saw they were really worn out. He said, “I think this is something we can fix.” He took a bit of black polish and polished my shoes, leaving them shiny and nice. He said to me, “Now they’re fixed, son.” I replied, “No, not yet. You can still see my toe sticking out of my shoe.” He said, “Well, we can fix that too!” He took a little more polish, and he polished my toe!
That day I learned that there is a solution to every problem. I am convinced that this principle of self-reliance and this initiative is a way to hasten the Lord’s work. It’s part of the work of salvation. All of us can become better than what we are now. You have to let go of apathy. Many times we become complacent, and this destroys our progress. Every day is a day I can make progress if I decide to do something different to improve what I’ve done poorly in the past. If you do it with faith, exercising faith and hope in Christ that He will be there helping you, you will find the way to make progress in temporal and spiritual things. This is because God lives, and you are His son or daughter.
We will be holding an online devotional on Sunday, September 11, at 7 p.m. to provide an overview of how the self-reliance groups work. We will focus on the “Emotional Resilience – Finding Strength in the Lord” group. We will provide a brief overview of the other groups, but without enough interest, we will not be able to start a group.
There is now a new way to sign-up for a group! You can also search for online groups outside of our area. We will demonstrate this during the devotional.
The first Self-Reliance group will tentatively start on Sunday, September 25.
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