Basic Principles of the Gospel -- in Japan

My Son, A-5, gave a talk in another ward as a "traveling elder" with the Stake High Counselor last Sunday. He shared the text with me so I could post it here:

Minasan konnichiwa!

A-5 on the left

My name is Aaron Vaughn. Recently, I've returned from serving a mission in Nagoya Japan. I grew up down the street in the Centerville 3^rd Ward. This summer, I've just been working with the Bountiful City Parks and Rec, and I will be going down to BYU this next week to play trumpet in the marching band and to study Physics and Japanese.

 

I'm grateful for this opportunity to speak and share some of the experiences I had on my mission regarding how the gospel changes lives.

 

First, I want to ask, what is the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The first answer that often comes to mind is the 4^th Article of Faith. “The first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are: first, Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, Repentance; third, Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins; fourth, Laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.” While those are all very important parts of the Gospel, in True to the Faith, we can find a more compact definition. It reads, “The gospel is our Heavenly Father's plan of happiness. The central doctrine of the gospel is the Atonement of Jesus Christ.” In Japanese, the word for Gospel, 福音, is made from two characters. “福”which means happiness, and “音”which means sound. So literally, the gospel is a sound of happiness.

Live-Blogging LDS General Conference - Saturday A.M. - April 2015

Getting set up here. These are my personal notes on General Conference shared (potentially) with the world! For direct broadcast, do not rely on me, but see LDS.org and watch live or recorded sessions.

It will be interesting if there will be any mention at all of President Obama's recent visit to Utah. I'm bettin' on President Uchtdorf.

President Monson is there looking rather rather thin and drawn.

Please note that they started with the Mormon version of "Cwm Rhondda," the great Welsh Hymn.

Live-Blogging LDS General Conference Spring 2014 - Saturday AM

Here we go! We're just about through all the Mormon movie and book ads.

Watch it LIVE here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/watch?lang=eng&cid=HPTU040114644

Pres. Uchtdorf conducting. We have a "Firm Foundation" singing in the choir.

Of course I could always get called away to Saturday chores. I did spend 3 hours in the garden last evening when I got home so I wouldn't feel so guilty sitting here today. I decommissioned the snow blower for the season first trying to drain out the gasoline. Then, reading the instructions "Don't drain the gasoline - Let it run until it stops with all the gas burned out" OK, a little eco-unfriendly, but we killed it off in a bout an hour while I did other Spring gardening chores. I just had this brilliant flash with our fence still down since the great East Wind blow down of a while back that maybe I could plant a hedge of lilacs. The wind can't blow them down! We could have a trestle gate with roses over it. Yeah! OK, prayer . . . .

The Armor of Light Against Darkness

Last night while playing family games, I looked around and sensed my opportunity. While my wife secretly starts listening to Christmas music about Halloween, I generally try to hold off on Christmas decorations and themes as long as possible. But with all those good kids of mine, I figured today would be December Eve and a great day to do the Christmas lights on the house and the tree up in the living room. They were helpful to a point. I took it all calmly enough with the usual jitters of my height anxiety. The end result is lookin' good!

Whether it's preparation for the solstice, the Hannakuh celebration of ights, family fun festivities, or the Christmas Spirit, there is something about the glory of light when the world turns dark and cold.

The Gospel ≠ Politics

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Good News that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, atoned for our sins and resurrected from the grave so that we all will rise in resurrection and stand before Him to be judged. We will inherit a kingdom of glory (with a few exceptions). Those who exercise Faith in Christ, Repent, are Baptized by His authority, Receive and live by the Holy Ghost, and endure to the end keeping the Commandments (Moses's 10 plus a few related others you'll find in your Temple Recommend interview or the Temple itself), will be joint heirs with Christ of all that the Father has. (See 3 Nephi 27:13-27; D&C 76; Romans 8:17) And this is available to all, living or dead. (See D&C 128).

Now, what the Gospel is not:

Object Lesson Fail - Reasons Not to Sin

The Bloggernacle is driving me crazy these days arguing about modesty and so many other issues. Unless I really need a lengthy discussion and argument about mo-whatevers dancing on pin heads, I'll keep to politics and my own interests.

I just thought one clarification is needed so my issues with bad object lessons are not misunderstood. While I believe it is wrong to teach that we shouldn't sin implying in any way that we can never be fully clean, I do agree that we should keep the commandments and not sin. The problem is--we don't. (1 John 1:8).  Thank heavens for the Atonement and the opportunity to repent!

But here are my reasons why it is better not to sin in the first place:

Pornography, Saints, & the FCC, etc.

They read a letter in Priesthood this morning encouraging us to participate in the Utah Coalition Against Pornography (UCAP). I checked out the website. It looks like a good organization. This is another area where I support the nearly impossible standards of the Church to avoid pornography. Pornography may be a perfectly normal and natural thing that has been around since humankind began and even related to the perpetuation of humanity. But there are some problems. 

As the Lord has said, "the natural man is an enemy to God."  Mosiah 3:19. But we can put off the natural man through the Atonement of Christ to become a Saint - changing perfectly natural and normal beings into godly and holy people. Id. It's a process. And I'm not quite there yet even as we aspire to such by referring to ourselves as Latter-day Saints. God has changed me for the better as we keep working together on that.

Men's Hearts Shall Fail Them

For a long time in my life, I interpreted this portion of the prophecies of the end times to mean an increase in heart attacks. As we have conquered so many diseases, there has been a rise in coronary disease - which is also preventable to some extent if we stop eating french fries. OK. Sometimes I can be a literalist too, but I'm not getting to my point here.

We have posted on some rather difficult issues recently. I want to share with you what I now think the Lord meant by "Men's hearts shall fail them." We first see it in Luke 21:26, clearly related to the Lord's Second Coming to the earth. And in Luke, there's a clear connection to fear. Some say that fear leads to anger, hate, suffering, and even the dark side (according to Yoda. And he was technically a Muppet when he said that, so I think he's trustworthy).

Obedience Talk: A Seatbelt Story

In an effort to redeem myself a bit from my last posting which some consider to be a little irreverent, I am pleased to share a guest post from a good friend of mine just returned from an LDS mission in Italy. My friend, we'll call him Friend-B, gave one of the best homecoming talks I've heard. Without further ado, I present Friend-B's talk on Obedience:

Several years ago, as a young deacon, I would often get a ride to church from RL for Deacon’s Quorum Presidency meeting. I was always the last stop on the very short trip to church and, as RL will certainly recall, I would almost always find at least one person who hadn’t put on their seatbelt. And I would call them to repentance. It quickly became our weekly joke. And that is all it was—a joke. At that point in my life, wearing a seatbelt was just an uncomfortable rule imposed on me by my parents, backed up with words—meaningless to me—about safety. I would guess all of us, at times, have felt like it was a nuisance to dig up the lost seatbelt in the back seat, fumble around to put it on, and then be rooted in place for a seemingly risk-free drive. As a missionary I learned why my parents taught me such an obnoxious rule. *Mom, you might want to buckle your emotional seatbelt—you’ve never heard this story before.*

Just over a year ago, it was my first Sunday in Battipaglia and my first time with a mission car. A member in Policastro—about 2 ½ hours south of Battipaglia—had called us and requested a blessing. So we jumped in the car after church and set off. Thick clouds threatened rain, but all we got was thick humidity as we set off down the narrow and winding roads of Italy. I knew nothing of Italian traffic laws, so I left the driving to my companion and enjoyed the beautiful landscapes. Then, after over 2 hours, nearly at our destination, my companion took a curve just a little too fast. In an instant that seemed to last hours the car sped head-on into a concrete wall and was thrown violently into the air. It landed on its side—my window—sending tiny shards of shattered glass past my eyes as the car slid a good thirty feet down the road while spinning on its side. The car stopped. And then, hanging by my seatbelt just inches off the ground, completely unharmed, I knew why wearing a seatbelt was important. Suddenly a joke and annoying rule became a literal life-saver. To my parents and those of you who are devout seatbelt wearers, I say thank you for setting the good example. To the rest of you (and especially you, RL), wear your seatbelts.

Basic Principles

As it's Sunday, I felt it appropriate to go a little (actually, a lot) religious today. I have a lot of thoughts going around my head for blogging, including one actually in draft form, but I come back to this idea of the most important message I could convey.  I have this opportunity rather frequently as I teach young Aaronic Priesthood men on Sundays (14-15-year-olds in Teachers Quorum).  I also used the theme when I was Bishop. And I used all the way back through my life including when I spoke in church on my LDS Mission to Brazil.  This isn't something I came up with on my own, but had an amazing spiritual instructor when I was a young man of eighteen.  It has formed the basis of my religious life.

My freshman Book of Mormon teacher at BYU was a guy named Jeff Holland.  I only had him for the first semester or first half of the Book of Mormon.  But when we got to Second Nephi, Chapter 2, he launched into a presentation of the basic principles of the Gospel.  Jumping from Second Nephi to Third Nephi which would have normally been in the second semester, he went through Chapter 27 starting at verse 13, where the Lord Jesus Christ himself explains his Gospel to the Nephites, and listed seven basic principles: