Sacrament Meeting Program

Presiding: Bishop Todd Christensen
Conducting: Brother Grady Stoner
Opening Hymn: #138 - Bless Our Fast, We Pray
Invocation: By Invitation

Ward Business

Sacrament Hymn: #189 - O Thou, Before the World Began
Administration of the Sacrament

Testimony Meeting

Closing Hymn: #1062 - Lord, Accept Our Humble fast
Benediction: By Invitation

Come Home

By Elder Clark G. Gilbert
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

In Elder Patrick Kearon’s remarks of the inadequacies we feel in a new calling, perhaps it was significant that he made reference to a “small Clark.”

As Christine and I have felt the overwhelming weight of this calling, we have been grateful to know that Christ’s grace makes up the difference in our lives. We have been grateful for the prayers and sustaining support of so many. We have also been strengthened by President Dallin H. Oaks’s first message as an Apostle, given nearly 42 years ago. In 1984 he declared, “I will devote my whole heart, might, mind, and strength to the great trusts placed in me, especially to the responsibilities of a special witness of the name of Jesus Christ in all the world.”

Today I echo that same declaration. I pledge my life to be a witness to the name of Jesus Christ. Today, I will specifically witness to the names of Redeemer and Repairer, as I focus on Christ’s invitation for all of us to come home.

William Shakespeare’s famous words pronounce that missed opportunities can bind our future:

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

Choices do have consequences, but we know in the gospel of Jesus Christ that when we lose our way spiritually, the Savior still allows us to change. As President Russell M. Nelson taught:

“Because of our covenant with God, He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us.”

And “should [we] stray, He will help [us] find [our] way back.”

After our first son was born, Christine and I struggled to have more children. We found hope in Minerva Teichert’s painting of a pioneer mother entering the valley with her little family, beckoning others to follow behind her. Like that young mother, we were pleading for our future children to gather with our family. Eventually they did come, but our years of hoping and praying, for us, were difficult.

In my weekend assignments as a General Authority, I have repeatedly witnessed people finding their way home. It may not always have come quickly, but it happened—over and over again. Let me take you on just a few of those ministering visits.

Come Home

Elder Gilbert shares examples of people who found their way back to the gospel of Jesus Christ and teaches that Christ will help all to “come home.”

Clark G. Gilbert