To be honest, when I had your name assigned to me for this Christmas Service, I was so stumped on how to proceed. You have many talents, but what immediately comes to mind is your contracting and construction experience, which is not something I have particular interest or talent in. So I started pondering what I should do. One week in July, I was particularly fixated on deciding on my service project, so I began to pray intently to know what I should do as a service. I prayed to know who was in need of a Ben-like service. That week I was able to attend my nephew Austin's endowment in the Provo City Center Temple. That session was one that was eternally memorable for a number of reasons. The main reason though was that during the session the heavens truly opened and I received revelation on a number of areas of my life, but most relevant to this post was on what to do for my service.
Something that really has impressed me about you is your monthly firesides (or as close to that schedule as you are able to get) for the youth in our family. I don't quite fit the requirements for being a youth anymore so I hadn't been to any of these firesides, but I was invited to be a guest on a panel discussion for the fireside this past Valentines Day. It really impressed me that you had such a desire to instill the doctrines and teachings of the gospel during this critical decision-making time of these teens' lives. While I was in the temple that day I knew that this was something that I needed to implement for my Schow nieces and nephews.
We started in September and have had monthly firesides on each third Sunday of the month since then with our youth aged nieces and nephews. Our lessons, like Ben's, focus on the teachings in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet and as we continue, we will get into Preach My Gospel. It's been an amazing chance to get to know my nieces and nephews on a spiritual level and help them understand more clearly who they truly are and what they need to be about. Here is a picture from our December fireside last Sunday and we were missing two of our nephews weren't able to come. It's also been a pretty cool missionary experience for us all as Pao (my in-laws' foreign exchange student from Thailand) has attended all of the firesides and is now meeting with the missionaries.
Merry Christmas, again! I love you and am thankful for your righteous example.
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