Ministers Among Us

I learned something new today that I thought I'd share.  The missionaries in the Alabama Birmingham Mission informed me today that they have a great missionary tool called MinistersAmongUs.com.  Apparently, it's been around for awhile, but I didn't know about it.  So you might already know about it, but I thought it was new and awesome.  I'm also going to add it to my list of links on the right side of the page, so you can access it more easily.

To use the site, you first have to meet with the missionaries and have them set up an account for you.  After that you can use it to make referrals of friends, coworkers, family members, whoever that you would like to share the gospel with.  They will then make a sleeve for a copy of the Book of Mormon with that person's name on it and deliver it to their home explaining that they have a special gift for them from YOU!

Missionary work couldn't be easier, right?  So contact your local missionaries and set it up!  I know I'm going to!  :D

Career Assistance - Combined Lesson

LDSJobs.org - Helping Members Find Employment

I'd just like to say right off the bat that I think our Church is amazing. I love that it not only strives to uplift us spiritually, but emotionally, socially, and temporally, as well. Today we had a combined lesson with the Priesthood on Career Assistance. I thought it was neat because there are so many people without jobs or maybe about to lose a job due to the economy, and our Church leaders are trying to help us be prepared so that we can get the best job we possibly can.

We received a 25 page packet on making a resume, acing a job interview, and networking. 25 pages! That's a lot o' job searching help!

I think I'm just going to list some facts and tips that I thought were important.

Resumes

• The resume gets you the interview while the interview gets you the job!
• A successful resume will not list what you did at your job, but what you accomplished. What goals did you help them reach at your last job?
• Every resume should have a career objective at the top.
• Don't make your resume a novel. Keep it simple--1 to 2 pages is plenty. That's what the interview is for!
• A resume is your time to shine, so work it! :)
• For more great tips on resume writing, go here.

Job Interviews

• Spend more time preparing for the interview than the interview will actually last.
• Study the organization your interviewing with. Learn as much as you can about the company, your desired position, etc.
• Anticipate what questions you're likely to be asked. Here's a few examples.
• Dress appropriately for the interview. If in doubt, wear your Sunday best.
• Arrive 15 minutes early. Showing up late for an interview just gives the impression that you don't take the job seriously enough to be on time.
• TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE!!
• The first five minutes are the most important!
• Ask lots of questions. You're interviewing them, as well. Just keep the questions job related.
• After the interview, ask for a business card, follow up, and send a Thank You card.

Networking

• Networking is simply who you know. A network could be your friends, coworkers, fellow church members, whoever! If you're looking for a job, use your network to help you find one.
• The internet offers lots of ways you can search for jobs. I'll post links to those sites at the end of the post.
• Social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace can also be used to find jobs. For example, I know a guy who used a status update on Facebook to say he could fix frozen pipes and got several jobs that way. So now you can tell the naysayers that you ARE doing something productive on Facebook. :)

This is what we talked about in a nutshell. I really enjoyed it but thinking about getting a job makes me nervous. I've been a stay at home mom for 3 years now and plan to be one for awhile so going back in the working world scares me. Hopefully, I can remember these awesome tips when I go back on the job market in the future.

Happy job hunting!

Job Searching Websites
Employmentguide.com
Indeed.com
Craigslist.com
Americajobs.com
I-hire.com
Monster.com
Alabamajobs.com
Careerbuilder.com
TheLadders.com
Tva.gov
Usajobs.com
Google
Yahoo

Social Networking Sites
Facebook
My Space
Linked In

Other Helpful Websites
Times Daily
Salaries.com

Chapter 1 - Summary

Chapter 1 - Our Heavenly Father

Since it's a new year, we're starting a new set of lessons in Relief Society. We're taking a break from Teachings of the Presidents of the Church and learning from the Gospel Principles manual, instead. This manual is generally used for the Gospel Principles class which is taught to investigators and new members during the Sunday School hour of church. The book has recently been updated and revised, which hasn't happened for over 30 years! To read more about the updates and why we're studying them in Relief Society/Priesthood, go here. Russell M. Nelson does a wonderful job of explaining it.

As usual, I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off, so I missed part of the lesson. What I did hear was wonderful, though. This manual teaches very simple truths. We have a Heavenly Father. I have always known that, but it's good to be reminded of his love for me.

The part that I loved the most was at the end. These lessons are really short (so we have no excuse to NOT read them haha), so we had some extra time. Our teacher bore her testimony about how she loves Heavenly Father, and then turned the time over to the sisters to share their testimonies of Heavenly Father.

The first testimony was my own. I know that God is a God of miracles. Early last year my daughter was born. She started her life with double pneumonia from miconium aspiration. The x-rays of her lungs were really bad. So bad, in fact, that she could've died. My husband and his father were able to give her a priesthood blessing. The very next day, she was out of the NICU and in a recovering unit. During the doctor's rounds, I heard one of the doctors say, "Oh, yes, I remember this baby. She is the baby that got miraculously better." So, yes, I believe in miracles.

Not long after that experience, she was in the hospital again for a condition called NEC. It was scary stuff. As part of the treatment, she couldn't eat for 10 days. I remember one night after a long day of watching my baby suffer and not being able to help her getting on my knees and asking God why she had to suffer so much. I knew that ultimately her suffering now would help her later, but it was still really hard to watch. As I was praying, I realized that our Heavenly Father had a similar experience. He watched his own Son suffer because he knew that ultimately it would make all of His children's lives better. It made me realize how much my Heavenly Father must love me to allow his own Son to suffer so that we might live.

After my testimony, another sister stood and talked about her trials with having a child with Down Syndrome. She said that she knew God answered prayers even though they might not always be in the way we wanted it to happen. When she was pregnant with her first child, she prayed for two things: that her daughter would be healthy and intelligent. After her daughter was born with Down Syndrome she said that most people would say that her prayers were not answered. She said that she remembered reading in John 9 about Jesus and his disciples coming upon a man who was blind, and his disciples asked him who had sinned that this man was born blind. Jesus answered and told them that no one had sinned but that he was born blind so that the works of God may be made manifest in him. He then healed the man. She said that she had read that scripture so many times and thought nothing of it. This time when she read it, she thought of her dear daughter. She shared some experiences of when the greatness of God had been made manifest through her. Her daughter is my niece, and I completely agree. She then testified that she knows that Heavenly Father loves and knows each of us individually. It was such a strong witness. I loved it.

If you'd like to read the lesson, I've put a link at the very top of this post. It's very simple, but it speaks such great truths.

Read the Scriptures With a Little Help From the Internet

I've added a new link to my 'Helpful Links' box on the side. (Has anyone even noticed that little box? haha) It's to a site I was just informed about via Facebook called ReadTheScriptures.com.

How many times have you said, "I'm going to read the scriptures EVERY DAY!" and then fail miserably after about a week? That would be me pretty much all the time. I forget. A lot. This website lets you choose whatever book of scripture you want to read (or even Sunday School lessons, etc.) and choose the amount of time you want to read it in. You can choose the default of a chapter a day, or you can do a custom time where you choose when to start and finish. Once you set your goal, it will e-mail you the scriptures you need to read every day. And it won't send you the next day's reading until you've marked it "completed" just in case you skip a day.

I think this is a wonderful tool! I've signed up to read the Old Testament, and set a goal to read it by the end of the year. I've tried to read it before and quit before I even got out of Genesis. Hopefully, this will keep me on track, and I'll actually finish it this time!

There's also a Team feature where you can set up a team of people to encourage one another to reach your goal. It could be fun to do it with other people.

Check it out! This could be YOUR year to finally keep that goal to read every day! :D

New Year's Resolutions

I don't like New Year's resolutions. I really don't. I think that if you're going to start something new, you should just do it! Why wait until the New Year, right?

And, yet, every year, I set some New Year's resolutions that I know I'm not going to keep. This year, however, I resolved to NOT resolve anything. Ha! But that didn't work, either, because instead I thought about things I'd like to change about myself.

I finally came up with one that I'm going to try my hardest to stick to. I am going to try to say only positive things about my family. And not just my husband and kids, but all of my extended family. It's easy to say negative things about anybody, and I tend to do that--especially when I'm with other women. For some reason, husband bashing happens a lot when married women get together. Or kid bashing, for that matter. I am very guilty of it, and I'm very aware of it when I do it.

SO my resolve is to say only positive things, and for every negative thing I say, I must say two positive things to make up for it.

After I told my husband that, he said the thing about saying two positives for every negative was in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I guess I'm just as smart as Mr. Covey. :)

I figure that if I start with my family, then I'll eventually branch out to people outside my family, as well, and develop a more Christ-like attitude towards all people. Because, I mean, that's my main goal, after all--to be more like Christ.

What resolutions are you going to make this year? I'd love to hear them! We could all work together to make sure we actually keep them this year.

P.S. Due to stomach virus, there won't be a lesson summary this week. Sorry, guys. :(