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Preparing to
Become an Eternal Companion
Surely no one reading the scriptures, both ancient and modern, can doubt
the divine concept of marriage. The sweetest feelings of life, the most
generous and satisfying impulses of the human heart, find expression in
a marriage that stands pure and unsullied above the evil of the world.
Such a marriage, I believe, is desire-the hoped-for, the longed-for, the
prayed-for desire-of men and women everywhere. (President Gordon B.
Hinckley CR Apr 1991)
The most important step you have made or will make in your life is
marriage. Its consequences are many, so important and so everlasting. No
other decision will have such tremendous consequences for the future.
Look to the establishment of a home in which there will be peace and
happiness and love. Welcome the children who will come to that home, and
rear them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. (President Gordon
B. Hinckley BYU commencement, Marriott Center, April 27, 1995.)
The most important decision of life is the decision concerning your
companion. Choose prayerfully. And when you are married, be fiercely
loyal one to another. Selfishness is the great destroyer of happy family
life. I have this one suggestion to offer. If you will make your first
concern the comfort, the well being, and the happiness of your
companion, sublimating any personal concern to that loftier goal, you
will be happy, and your marriage will go on through eternity. (President
Gordon B. Hinckley April 1995, BYU)
Let every mother realize that she has no greater blessing than the
children who have come to her as a gift from the Almighty; that she has
no greater mission than to rear them in light and truth, in
understanding and love; that she will have no greater happiness than to
see them grow into young men and women who respect principles of virtue,
who walk free from the stain of immorality and from the shame of
delinquency.... I remind mothers everywhere of the sanctity of your
calling. No other can adequately take your place. No responsibility is
greater, no obligation more binding than that you rear in love and peace
and integrity those whom you have brought into the world. (President
Gordon B. Hinckley CR Oct 1993)
The mother in the home is a daughter of God, a soul of intelligence,
devotion, and love who may be clothed with the Spirit of God; that it is
her privilege and obligation as a steward of our Heavenly Father's
children to nurture those children in their daily needs; that she, in
companionship with her husband, is also to teach her children to
"understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the
living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying
on of the hands . . . [and] to pray, and to walk uprightly before the
Lord." D&C 68:25, 28 (President Gordon B. Hinckley Ensign Jan 1994)
The true strength of any nation, society or family lies in those
qualities of character that have been acquired for the most part by
children taught in the quiet, simple everyday manner of mothers.
(President Gordon B. Hinckley Motherhood, 1995)
To mothers, daughters, and women everywhere, let me stress the fact that
because of your great potential and influence for good in the lives of
all of us, Satan is determined to destroy you. You cannot compromise
with him. You must have the courage, the strength, the desire, and the
determination to live as the Lord would have you live--good clean lives.
Girls, keep yourselves virtuous and worthy of a fine young man who has
likewise kept himself clean, so that together you can go to the House of
the Lord to be sealed in the holy
bonds of matrimony for time and all eternity, and prepare a home where
God will be pleased to send his spirit children. Then you will be able
to face your children secure in the knowledge that your own example is
the way to happiness and eternal progression. They are entitled to this
heritage. I humbly pray that you will so live as to give it to them.
(The Role of Womanhood Pamphlet; President N. Eldon Tanner 1973)
Girls, prepare yourselves to assume the roles of mothers by gaining
knowledge and wisdom through a good education. We teach that the glory
of God is intelligence, and so we must all be aware of what is going on
around us and be prepared to thwart Satan in his attempts to divert us
from our divine destiny. With knowledge, wisdom, determination, and the
Spirit of the Lord to help us we can succeed. (The Role of Womanhood
Pamphlet; President N. Eldon Tanner 1973)
This life is a time of testing, a time of trials, a time of education.
It is a time of gaining experience, a time of trying to qualify for
things that lie ahead. (President Gordon B. Hinckley June 1995, Church
News Interview)
None of us can assume that he has learned enough. As the door closes on
one phase of life, it opens on another, where we must continue to pursue
knowledge. Ours ought to be a ceaseless quest for truth. That truth must
include spiritual and religious truth as well as secular. As we go
forward with our lives and our search for truth, let us look for the
good, the beautiful, the positive. (President Gordon B. Hinckley BYU
Hawaii, 1983)
We live in a very challenging world. It isn't likely to become less
challenging, but more challenging. We encourage our young people to
educate their minds and their hands and qualify themselves to take
places of responsibility in society in which they will become a part.
And in the process of so doing, remaining faithful and true in the
Church which they love and in which they are members. (President Gordon
B. Hinckley Press conference, Salt Lake City, 13 Mar 1995)
M3L4
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