Some things that I have learned to be true

• When someone is looking for the door marked out, any excuse will do. You have never failed until you give up or blame someone else.

• If a person intends to offend you it is foolish to take offence as you are just playing along with them. If they don’t intend to offend you it is even more foolish to take offence.

• Drugs, alcohol, and all forms of sin are anaesthetics – they allow you to damage yourself without feeling pain. They de-sensitise you. The opposite of an anaesthetic is ethics or aesthetics, such as goodness and virtue, good books and music, and obedience to the commandments. These sensitize you and allow you to become aware of things that desensitized people are not aware of or are not fully aware of. Such as the pain of others, promptings from The Spirit of God, answers to prayer.

• Church members sometimes wonder about the fiery trials and difficulties they sometimes have to endure. Unless we are careful, these at times might make us appear to be joyless. But it is entirely understandable. As the prophet Joseph explained “Grain is not beaten, threashed and sorted until it is gathered into the barn” In other words church members are subjected to some trials that other are not.

• Unless someone has made binding commitments to be totally chaste honest and true (as in the Temple) they will inevitably fall down in these areas when the pressure becomes sufficient. “He that is unjust in least is also unjust in much” – If we cannot be honest in trivial things how can we be honest in things that really matter. Also, how can we expect public morality if the leaders that society looks to are without private virtue ?

• When you try to do someone a favour out of the goodness of your heart, it can sometimes come back and “bite you on the bum”. If you havnt had that happen to you yet, you havnt lived! As long as your motives have been pure, don’t take it to heart.