Relief Society Lesson: The Second Great Commandment Leads to Service

This month my Relief Society lesson was on "The Second Great Commandment" by President Russell M. Nelson. 

This talk is less of a traditional talk, and more of a summary and statistics report of the service the Church has provided worldwide - which is great information; but I struggled turning it into a lesson. I felt inspired to separate all of the examples into broader categories and ask my fellow sisters to share ideas and examples of service in those categories at a local level.

We started off by identifying the first and second great commandments: 1. Love God with all your heart. 2. Love your neighbor as yourself.

Of these two commandments, President Nelson said, "When we love God with all our hearts, He turns our hearts to the well-being of others in a beautiful virtuous cycle."

Service can sometimes be stressful for me, because I want to do it perfectly or make a big impact. And the examples given in this talk, while amazing acts of service, did just that. So, with the goal of putting everyone in the right frame of mind, I brought in Sister Bonnie L. Oscarson's talk "The Needs Before Us." She said:

"I think that sometimes it's easy to miss some of the greatest opportunities to serve others because we are distracted or because we are looking for ambitious ways to change the world and we don't see that some of the most significant needs we can meet are within our own families, among our friends, in our wards, and in our communities. We are touched when we see the suffering and great needs of those halfway around the world, but we may fail to see there is a person who needs our friendship sitting right next to us in class... 

...What good does it do to save the world if we neglect the needs of those closest to us and those whom we love the most? How much value is there in fixing the world if the people around us are falling apart and we don't notice? Heavenly Father may have placed those who need us closest to us, knowing that we are best suited to meet their needs."

At this point, one sister expressed that for moms of young kids, taking care of our families and raising our children is service. She also said that giving someone a genuine smile or sitting with them and talking with them at church is service.

I introduced the service categories we would be discussing: 1. Financial assistance, 2. Food, water, etc., 3. Spiritual/Emotional. In reference to all types of service, President Nelson said, "This assistance is offered to recipients regardless of their church affiliation, nationality, race, sexual orientation, gender, or political persuasion."

Financial Assistance

Deuteronomy 15:11 "For the poor shall never cease out of the land: therefore I command thee, saying, Thou shalt open thine hand wide unto they brother, to they poor, and to thy needy, in thy land."

Notice that the verb used is command. It is a commandment to care for the poor. President Nelson shared two examples in his talk: 1. The Church donated labor and modest financial assistance to the mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand that had been devastated by a shooting. 2. Back in the '80's fast offerings in Ethiopia totaled above what was needed, and the surplus sent elsewhere, leading to the creation of Latter-day Saint Charities.

When discussing financial assistance at a local level, I gave the example of a sister in the ward and I who babysit each other's kids for free. We don't keep a tally to make sure it's even, we just do it to help each other out. Another sister emphasized that we do help locally and globally with our fast offerings. That money starts local is then sent to the next need. We don't know exactly where our fast offerings go, but we know they are helping someone.

Food, Water, etc.

Matthew 25:35-36, 40

"For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

...Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

When we serve others, we are serving Christ. One sister shared that a couple of years ago when there were fires in Spanish Fork Canyon, the houses closest to the mountain had to be evacuated. The Red Cross set up tents for people to stay in, but no one came because everyone was invited to stay in the house of someone else nearby. Another sister shared the idea of providing a spiritual or emotional shelter, where when people visit our homes they can feel the Spirit, and receive peace and comfort from the rest of the world.

The Church has donated wheelchairs, water, and emergency supplies. There are 124 Bishop Storehouses worldwide. Vision care and newborn care is available to those in need; and the helping hands program provides first responders to disaster relief. At a local level we talked about compassionate service, which covers so much.

Spiritual/Emotional

Mosiah 18:8-9

"...as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another's burdens, that they may be light.

Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life."

We spent this section going into depth on what it means to mourn and comfort. A couple of sisters shared  how it comforts them when people are able to know and understand how they are feeling. That led to a follow up question: How do we mourn with or comfort someone who is going through something we haven't? We talked about providing a listening ear free of judgment and advice. We talked about using the Spirit to guide us on how to serve someone.

At the end of his talk, President Nelson said:

"Giving help to others - making a conscientious effort to care about others as much as or more than we care about ourselves - is our joy. Especially, I might add, when it is not convenient and when it takes us out of our comfort zone. Living that second great commandment is the key to becoming a true disciple of Jesus Christ."  

This statement summarizes what I was trying to emphasize during this lesson: Our love of God and each other leads to service. We should allow ourselves to serve when it might appear inconvenient or be uncomfortable, because we will grow in that experience; and serving with the right heart will bring us joy.

My Forever Home is not Brand New

Last July we bought our first - and we are fairly certain our last - house. It has been an exciting, scary, emotional, and educational journey; that actually started two and a half years ago.

*Disclaimer: I am not an expert on finances, the housing market, or mortgages. This post is me sharing my journey, I am not giving advice.

Right before I got pregnant with Lily, we thought we would start figuring out if we could afford to buy a house at that time. My mom got me in touch with a realtor in her ward, and he set me up to receive notifications when a house that met our criteria came on the market. We quickly realized that what we wanted in a house was not in our current price range. We also got pregnant with Lily, and our rent increased by quite a large amount. So we decided to take a step back from looking at houses. (In hind sight, if a rent increase was that difficult for us, then we definitely could not have afforded a mortgage payment. But we were at the beginning of our housing education, so I'm not judging myself.)

Long before we started seriously looking at houses, my parents gave us advice that my grandparents gave them: when you buy a house, make sure that you can see yourself living in it for the rest of your life. Even if you think you are going to move, there is no guarantee that you will.

I know lots of people whose first houses were starter homes, and they have successfully sold them and purchased or built a bigger and better house. But I had this feeling that was not the right path for us. I felt very strongly that the advice my parents gave us was for us. Two years ago we could have purchased  a starter home, but we didn't feel like it was the right thing to do. We were inspired to be patient and keep working to be able to purchase the right house.

Back then, I thought the right house was going to be building a brand new house. My parents' first and only house - the house I grew up in - was built brand new. Gerson's parents' first and only house they built also. It was what we knew, and I could not imagine living in a house that someone else had lived in before me, the way we had been living in apartments.

Adding Lily to our family filled our apartment to bursting capacity. 5 people in a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom apartment was incredibly cramped. We desperately needed another bathroom, and Benjamin was getting too old to share a room with his sisters. We started looking at starter homes, which got us in touch with a different agent. During this time (2018) I also started working for VIPKID, and I took the Personal Finance class provided  by the Church. *Testimony tangent - we could not have prepared for and bought this house without learning and applying the information from that class. I went to the class, Gerson stayed home with the kids, and when I came home I taught him what I learned and we counseled together on how to apply it.*

We started to consider letting go of our desire to build a house and settle in a starter home because we were literally out of room and it was affecting my mental health. Also, two other issues with building we were realizing were that 1) We were dead set against HOA neighborhoods, and all of the new neighborhoods in Utah County are HOA, and 2) We didn't like the size or styles of the current new houses. They are too big and fancy - which is exactly why we can't afford them. We accepted that we would one day buy a lived-in house, but we still wanted it to be a decent house. In fact, when I brought this up in my personal finance class, the facilitator told me about a teaching from Gordon B. Hinkcley:

"When I was a young man, my father counseled me to build a modest home, sufficient for the needs of my family, and make it beautiful and attractive and pleasant and secure." 

I felt like what would really help us would be to actually start walking through houses that were in our price range that we liked, because pictures don't give you a true idea. Gerson didn't want to because he wasn't ready to buy, but I promised him that is was just research, I wasn't looking to buy. So, in March 2019 we started going to open houses. Through that, we learned what we liked and didn't like. We also realized that our eyes were still too big for our budget. Gerson thought that meant we needed to wait and save some more. I agreed for the time being, but hidden gems existed in our price range - I had come across them. So I was determined that our house would be one of those hidden gems.

During this time I started talking on the phone with a realtor that I had been emailing for almost a year. She recommended that we get pre-approved if we were ready to start walking through houses, and she set us up with the lender she worked with. Gerson was unsure about having a realtor, my parents had purchased their house from the builder, and I think Gerson's parents had as well; and he definitely was not ready to get pre-approved. So, we searched on YouTube "How to buy a house" and watched about ten videos and took notes. After watching those videos Gerson realized we needed a realtor to help us (us specifically, not everyone), and he agreed to get pre-approved. In addition to the financial advise, two other important takeaways we liked from the videos:

1. Ask yourself: If the price of this house goes down $25,000+ next year, will I regret buying it now? If the answer is yes, this isn't your house. If the answer is no, this is your house.
2. Ask yourself: If my offer is not accepted, will I regret not offering more? If the answer is no, this is not your house. If the answer is yes, offer more if you can. If you can't, then take a step back and save more before continuing house hunting. 

The reason why those two questions resonated with us, is because our house is not an investment in the form of making money because we are not going to turn around and sell it in a few years. This is the house that our children will grow up in and our grandchildren will visit us in.

In May, we agreed to meet our realtor in person and walk through some houses. We walked through five houses that day. Both Gerson and I fell in love with one of them, and we agreed to make an offer. We spent several hours on the phone with the lender that night, and it took us 2 hours to read the offer and sign it. We didn't really like the loan the lender was able to give us, but my dad said that we could spend the time waiting for the offer to be accepted and the first little bit after finding a better loan. The seller rejected our offer pretty quickly, which in hindsight was a huge blessing.We had spent ample time working on our budget and researching the housing market, but we had failed to research loans! So we spent June researching different banks and lending companies. We felt confident again after our loan research to jump back into looking at houses again in July.

On July 3, 2019 our landlord sent out a notice that rent was going up - not a big deal - and that one year contracts were now required. We had until July 15 to sign a contract or give a notice of "intent to vacate." When we first moved into that apartment six years previous, a one time one year contract was required, but after the first year, your contract transferred to month to month, and we simply needed to give a 30 day notice before moving. I called and let him know that we were looking for a house, and would move as soon as we purchased one, but I couldn't guarantee we would find a house by the 15th and asked if he could give us an extension on signing the year contract. He wouldn't, and said that if we did not plan on living there for another year we needed to move out by the end of July.

We already had three showings scheduled with our agent that same day, but going in with the stress that our landlord just put on us did not have us in the right frame of mind. This whole time we only wanted to consider houses in Orem or Provo - mainly because Benjamin had been accepted into the Spanish Immersion program at his school, and the possibility of transferring Spanish programs is very slim. However, our agent kept sneaking in one showing in Springville everytime we saw her. That day, two of the three showings were in Springville. Gerson liked both of those houses, and he wanted to put an offer on both of them. I agreed to one offer because it was a backup offer and so we didn't have a high chance of getting the house.

The whole drive home I just cried and cried, "I can't live in Springville!" That night I called my parents on the phone and asked, "Will the family dynamic change if we move to Springville?" My dad chuckled, and I started crying again. At that point, the tears were due to stress of being unable to sign a year contract and also having no idea where we were going to live after July. My parents and brother came over at 11:00 at night with cheesecake and we talked about Springville. My parents told us that when they were looking for houses my mom wanted only Orem or Pleasant Grove, and when my dad suggested Provo my mom exclaimed, "I am not living in Provo!" Guess where their house is?

We showed them the houses we walked through and my dad put the addresses in with theirs and showed me that the drive was only five more minutes than our current drive from our apartment to their house. My parents also said we could live with them until we found a house; they had even already mapped out where everything of ours would go in their house.

When they left at midnight, I got on our realtor's website and looked at the houses in Springville. I saw one that had just been put back on the market due to the first accepted offer falling through. Just looking the picture of the outside of the house, I knew. It was the exact same floor plan as the first house we had put an offer on with a better asking price, and a better location and a better neighborhood! I prayed before going to bed, and the next morning I still knew. We contacted our agent on the 4th of July and said that we needed to see that house ASAP. She set up a showing for the next day.

That night I felt inspiration on exactly how much to offer for the house. During our showing, another agent with their client also came through at the same time - this is actually not supposed to happen.  I knew this was our house so I loudly talked about who I was going to put in which room and how I was going to set up the kitchen, etc. They zoomed through the house and were gone in less than five minutes. Mission accomplished. We signed and sent the offer two hours after our showing, and the sellers accepted our offer SIX hours later! In fact, they even cancelled their open house that was scheduled for the next day.

We still had to choose a lender, and we narrowed it down to the lender our agent had put us in contact with and the bank we bank with. After telling the lender the loan our bank was able to give us, she changed the loan she could offer, and it ended up being the best loan, so we took it. I'm so glad that we did our research and talked to as many lenders and banks as possible. If we hadn't done our research and just accepted the first loan we were quoted, we would not be in a house right now.

Our house is not brand new. It was built in 1998, one year after both mine and Gerson's parents built their houses. The floor plan is perfect, the style is perfect, it is our house. There are some minor improvements that we made immediately: we changed out the carpet upstairs, we built new shelves for the bedroom closets, we replaced half of the sprinklers, and we replaced all of the drain stoppers in the sinks and bathtubs. We have a few more projects planned for this year, and with each completed project, the house becomes more and more ours.

As to the location, Springville is wonderful! With each month that passes, little blessings present themselves that show that Heavenly Father led us here. I am so grateful for this enormous blessing.