Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of Primarily Scripture. I am Cindy Young, and I'm so glad that you are here. We follow Come, Follow Me. We're in the Book of Mormon this year, and this week we are studying Ether chapters 6 through 11. So many good things in this story. If you remember, last week we studied about the brother of Jared. The Jaredites lived even before Lehi and his family left Jerusalem and came to the Americas. The Lord decided to change the language of everybody on earth so that there would be lots of different languages. And the brother of Jared and Jared were talking and Jared said, Let's pray that we can stick together and that our language will be the same and maybe we can have friends with us too. And let's ask the Lord if he will take us to a promised land. And the Lord said yes, and they started preparing. So this week we start in chapter six. And one of my favorite things to do when I'm studying the scriptures is to look for a beginning and an ending. Which might seem a little bit silly because we have the beginning of the book on the end of the book, right? But we have all these mini stories in between. And so if you can look for a starting point and an ending point, then you can look at what happens in the middle. And what happens in the middle, will teach you something. I'll show you. It's so cool. Okay, so let's look at Ether chapter six. You can go onto the website and get free worksheets every single week, and this activity is on the worksheet. Go to Ether chapter six verses four through twelve. Now, there are a lot of big words in the scriptures, and if you have trouble understanding what they mean, then the worksheets are going to be really great for you. We've got a couple of columns here, and it's got scriptures. And then it tells you what the scriptures mean in more modern terms. Okay, verse four is the beginning of this section so that will be our starting point. Okay, let's read that."It came to pass that when they had done all these things, they got aboard their vessels, or barges," meaning boats, they got on the boats, "and set forth into the sea, commending themselves unto the Lord their God." That's the beginning of this little section that we're going to study. So they gathered all their stuff, they got on the boats, and they commended themselves unto God. What does that mean, to commend yourself unto God? If you look in a dictionary at what it means to commend, it's going to tell you that it means to like give compliments, to say something is really good."I commend you for your good work." But if you look really closely, some of the dictionaries will tell you that the old fashioned definition means To trust. I'm going to commend something to you means I trust you with this. And so they commended themselves to the Lord. They trusted the Lord would take care of them. And that's what's going on. That's the beginning. Let's mark the beginning, okay? I'm going to mark that in yellow because that's my favorite. We could sit and talk about different ways to commend ourselves to God in everyday life, and that could be a nice long conversation in and of itself. We don't have time, but we know that it means they trusted God. So now let's jump down and find the end. This set of verses, I said the end was verse 12. What does verse 12 say?"And they did land upon the shore of the promised land." Hooray, they got there!"And when they had set their feet upon the shores of the promised land, they bowed themselves down upon the face of the land." Oh, I'm going to mark that. What do you think it means to bow down on the land "and did humble themselves before the Lord and did shed tears of joy." They were so happy they were crying before the Lord "because of the multitude," oh I love this phrase, "because of the multitude of his tender mercies over them." Okay, wow, they made it to the promised land. And they were so happy that they were crying. So we've got the beginning and the end. They're trusting God. They made it there. They're happy. They're blessed. These wonderful things. I'm going to put smiley faces in the margins so that I can remember that this is good things happening. Smiley faces. Awesome. We found the beginning and the end of this section. Now you can do this with any other section and pick other beginning and ending parts. But what happens in the middle is what's going to teach us the lesson, because they start out on this journey, and then how do they actually get there? We can apply this to our own lives, because we're all starting out on a journey, and hopefully the end of the journey, is getting back to live with Heavenly Father again, right? So what happens in the middle, from now, when we trust ourselves to God, until we get back to His presence? Could this maybe teach us something? Let's look and see. It's a little bit shortened on the worksheet, so I'm going to read it off the worksheet now."It came to pass that the Lord God caused there should be a furious wind." A furious wind? Does that sound happy and fun? You get onto a boat. Okay, I trust the Lord that he'll get us there safely. And then this crazy wind comes up. That sounds almost like a storm to me. And if we keep reading, we will find trial after trial after trial. I'm going to get a different color. Let's do this blue. And let's mark the words that stand out that might not have been as perfectly smooth sailing as they thought it was going to be. It wasn't all sparkling oceans and rainbows and dolphins. They had some serious trouble on this trip. So let's look in verse five. A furious wind. Oh my goodness. And it was blowing and they were tossed upon the waves. Oh, tossed. Not just they sailed, they were tossed. What was that like to be in a boat that was being tossed around? That might have been scary. I would have been scared. And then in verse six, many times they were buried in the depths of the sea because of the mountain waves. The waves were as big as mountains. Does this sound like an easy trip? Not at all. There are great and terrible tempests, and a tempest is a storm. They have crazy storms that they're going through. Now, wait a minute. Didn't they trust God? That God would get them there safely? Why, when they exercised faith, and they put in all that work, and they trusted the Lord, why were they given storms and waves? And they're under the ocean sometimes. And the winds. And they're tossed to and fro. That sounds really hard. If it was me, I might question, um, Heavenly Father, do you know that I'm going through all this? Wait a minute. Am I doing the right thing having faith? This is hard. Let's look and see what they did when those hard things happened, okay? Verse seven."When they were buried in the deep, when they were encompassed about by many waters," when they were like surrounded by water, "they did cry unto the Lord, and he did bring them forth again on top of the waters." They trusted the Lord, they went through all these things, and then what? They cried unto the Lord. Let's mark that. They cried unto the Lord. That's an important thing that they did. It doesn't say they complained. It doesn't say they wanted to turn around. It doesn't say that they started thinking that maybe there was no such thing as God. No, they prayed to get them through. And, he did bring them forth on top of the waters again. And the wind never ceased, blowing them towards the promised land. The other thing they did is in verse nine. Let's find it." They did sing praises unto the Lord. Did thank and praise the Lord all the day long. And when the night came, they did not cease to praise the Lord. All day and all night, whatever they were doing, they were remembering the Lord and telling Him they were grateful for His help. One more thing let's look at verse 11. Thus they were driven forth, Three hundred and forty and four days upon the water. Three hundred and forty four days. Do you know how long that is? That is like almost a year. It's three weeks shy of a year, which means like if they started sailing on Thanksgiving day, then they wouldn't have landed until the next Halloween. And they were on the water for that long. And it says in verse eight, the wind never stopped blowing. There was always wind and waves, but guess what? Those winds and waves are what pushed them to the promised land. It's what got them there. So I'm going to take my blue. And in my margin, I'm going to draw squiggly lines from the smiley face of verse 4, squiggly squiggly, all the way down to the smiley face of verse 12. Because we've got that nice happy start with trusting the Lord, and we've got the wonderful happy ending of landing on the shore and being grateful for blessings. And what happens in the middle is not just a smooth journey, is it? There was a lot of trials, a lot of waves and winds of being tossed around, but they made it through because they, let's look again, they prayed, they sang praises, they were thankful, they were always thinking of the Lord, even though it was a super long trip. About six or seven years ago, I was reading this story in my personal scripture study, and I was thinking about how long that is to be in a boat, and to be on a journey. They didn't know how long it would be. I thought, oh man, could I do something hard if I had no idea when it was going to end? Could I do something hard for that long? And the spirit whispered to me, the next thing you go through is going to take a year. I was so shocked. And then, we went through a big life change, and guess what? It took one year for us to make this life change, to go through this trial. And there were hard parts, and there were fun parts, and through the whole thing, I could trust the Lord because I had read my scriptures and listened to the Spirit. And this story helped me to get through my trials. Now, not every trial that you have is going to last a year. Some are shorter, some are longer. But, knowing that we can start with faith, and pray and sing praises and be grateful the whole way through is so helpful to me. I have a testimony that learning about the scriptures will help you in your own life. I love it so much and that's why I've made these worksheets. That's why I'm sharing this channel with you! Because I want you to learn how to study your scriptures so that you can hear the voice of the Lord and be guided in your own life. There are a lot of good things to read. A lot of ways you can study the gospel, even watching or listening to channels like this, is really great. But it's not going to do you nearly as much good as it is to read your scriptures yourself. Go have your own experiences with the scriptures, feel the spirit, and build your testimony. I'm Cindy Young. Thanks for being here with me on Primarily Scripture. I'll see you next time. Bye guys. Thanks for tuning in to Primarily Scripture with Cindy Young. Don't forget you can subscribe to the newsletter and download free worksheets on the website PrimarilyScripture. com. And if you like the channel, be sure to subscribe, like, share, and leave a review. See you next time!