Sunday Report

Dear Sisters, 

Spring break is over and things should get back to normal this week.  Remember the Cline family in your thoughts and prayers as Jeff has his surgery on Wednesday and will be in the hospital until Sunday at least. 

Today's lesson was #6 in the Gospel Principles manual: The Fall of Adam and Eve given by Traci Cline.  The lesson emphasized the valiant spirits of our first parents who were trusted with bringing mortality into the world so that each one of Heavenly Father's spirit children who remained faithful during the war in heaven would have the opportunity to receive a body and come to earth. There knowledge and experience would be obtained and faith and obedience would be tested so that we might gain the right to  return and live with Heavenly Father again and continue to progress eternally.  The role of Adam and Eve in the plan of salvation as revealed by the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ gives us a vastly different picture of the these choice spirit children of Heavenly Father than is widely held in the Christian world.  Most people without the benefit of the knowledge which blesses our lives see them as having committed a serious sin which brought pain and suffering and even death into what had been an ideal setting without any of those things.  We know that while the Garden was free from sin and pain and suffering it was also free of opportunity to choose and grow and progress.  It would have been impossible for Adam and Eve to obey all the commandments given to them by Heavenly Father, for in obeying one, it would have been impossible to obey another.  One could not multiply and replenish the earth without eating of the "forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil."  With the veil of forgetfulness drawn, these first parents made the only choice that would have allowed Heavenly Father's plan to proceed as He desired.  They are praised and respected for the choices they made and the adversity they endured that we might have the opportunities that we now enjoy.  Traci compared the knowledge received in Genesis 1 and 2 with the wealth of insight and understanding to be found in the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price.  How blessed we are to enjoy the truth that has been restored to the earth by the Prophet Joseph Smith.

Traci also quoted extensively from 2 Ensign articles that were very enlightening regarding Adam and Eve and the role they played in the plan of salvation.  "In the Beginning": A Latter-day Perspective by Robert J. Woodford and What Modern Revelation Teaches about Adam by Arthur A. Bailey. 

Next Week Jennifer Walker will teach #7 The Holy Ghost.

The Relief Society Presidency