Learn, Share, Create

Do you have talents in taking photographs, making videos, or creating other types of media?

This site will help you share your media with the Church and other members.

The new section of LDS.org is designed to help members access gospel-oriented media such as videos, audio files, and still images in one trusted location, and members can help achieve that goal by submitting their own work.

Your submission will go through an acceptance, editing, and tagging process and are then placed in the LDS Media Library for general Church membership to use in teaching in the home and performing their callings.

Media Library materials may also be used for personal blogs, websites, and other places where members would like to share gospel messages.

It's wholesome. It will be free.

But first we must Create and Contribute.

Learn more at LDSTech.org.
Go straight to Create.LDS.org.
See a list of current photo needs and video needs.
Learn how to submit.

For now it's a call for photography and videos. Eventually you'll be able to submit music, writing, scripts, even blog templates.

Get busy.

e

Lesson: Developing our talents

Gospel Principles, Chapter 34  

Developing Our Talents, 

taught by Amanda Hall

Amanda began by talking about gardening. We plant seeds and they grow into tender plants which we must protect, and nourish with sunlight and water. And eventually we enjoy the fruits of the harvest.

How is developing talents like growing a garden? 

There are so many comparisons...we need to choose the right seeds to grow, we need to study and learn, we need to nurture, we need to be patient.

What
We all have special gifts, talents, and abilities given to us by our Heavenly Father. When we were born, we brought these gifts, talents, and abilities with us.

The prophet Moses was a great leader, but he needed Aaron, his brother, to help as a spokesman (see Exodus 4:14–16). Some of us are leaders like Moses or good speakers like Aaron. Some of us can sing well or play an instrument. Others of us may be good in sports or able to work well with our hands. Other talents we might have are understanding others, patience, cheerfulness, or the ability to teach others.

These gifts come from God. James 17:1 says, "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning."

[An old poem says, "If I were to write a poem or pen a sonnet, I must go and choose a dish or tie a bonnet." In other words caring for home and family can be seen as talent, or another interpretation might be that there is a time and season for all things.]

Why

Why are these gifts given? In D&C 46:8-11 we find the answers:

 8 Wherefore, beware lest ye are deceived; and that ye may not be deceived seek ye earnestly the best gifts, always remembering for what they are given;

 9 For verily I say unto you, they are given for the benefit of those who love me and keep all my commandments, and him that seeketh so to do; that all may be benefited that seek or that ask of me, that ask and not for a sign that they may consume it upon their lusts.

 10 And again, verily I say unto you, I would that ye should always remember, and always retain in your minds what those gifts are, that are given unto the church.

 11 For all have not every gift given unto them; for there are many gifts, and to every man is given a gift by the Spirit of God.

12To some is given one, and to some is given another, that all may be profited thereby.

Our gift and talents can also bring us personal satisfaction and joy.

How
We have a responsibility to develop the talents we have been given. Sometimes we think we do not have many talents or that other people have been blessed with more abilities than we possess. Sometimes we do not use our talents because we are afraid that we might fail or be criticized by others. We should not hide our talents. We should use them. Then others can see our good works and glorify our Heavenly Father (see Matthew 5:16).

There are certain things we must do to develop our talents. We must...

1. Discover our talents. We should evaluate ourselves to find our strengths and abilities. Our family and friends can help us do this. We should also ask our Heavenly Father to help us learn about our talents.
2. Be willing to spend the time and effort to develop the talent we are seeking.
3. Have faith that our Heavenly Father will help us, and we must have faith in ourselves.
4. Learn the skills necessary for us to develop our talents. We might do this by taking a class, asking a friend to teach us, or reading a book.
5. Practice using our talent. Every talent takes effort and work to develop. The mastery of a talent must be earned. [It takes 10,000 hours to master something...so be patient!]
6. Share our talent with others. It is by our using our talents that they grow (see Matthew 25:29).

All of these steps are easier if we pray and seek the Lord’s help. He wants us to develop our talents, and He will help us. As in all things we depend on Jesus Christ and His grace in our lives.

How can we develop our talents in spite of our weaknesses?

Because we are mortal and fallen, we have weaknesses. With the Lord’s help, our weakness and fallen nature can be overcome (see Ether 12:27, 37). Beethoven composed his greatest music after he was deaf. Enoch overcame his slowness of speech to become a powerful teacher (see Moses 6:26–47).

Blessings
The Lord is pleased when we use our talents wisely. He will bless us if we use our talents to benefit other people and to build up His kingdom here on earth. 

Some of the blessings we gain are joy and love from serving our brothers and sisters here on earth. We also learn self-control. 

All these things are necessary if we are going to be worthy to live with our Heavenly Father again. 

Thanks to the talented Amanda Hall for lesson today. Choose to develop a talent today.

 I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.

~ Picasso

e

Photo credit: seriousbri

Mormon Poet Emma Lou Thayne: On Going Away

My spiritual life withers in too much togetherness,
just as it thrives in quiet.

I traveled with my husband and family and with tennis players and members of boards. I spoke to groups across the country, always to be met and taken care of. My life was full. And I was dying. In all my busyness, something was missing that I could not name.

When I was accepted for a poetry symposium in Port Townsend, Wash., with some persuasion, my husband agreed. There, just an anonymous one of dozens of poets, living in a sparse single room in an old barracks, I learned to find space to pay a different kind of attention. I had time to focus on details and moments, not generalities. I had time to reexamine, to revise, to reinvent my sense of the world. And it was joyous fun! On the saltwater shores of Puget Sound, I learned to breathe in the "full measure of my creation."

Knowing is a process, not an arrival. Coming home, I struggled with how to be available to the many and the much I love and still be true to myself and to what solitude had offered me. The clarity of what I had learned pushed me to find spaces to be alone. I rented a little studio close to home to go to one day and night a week. I was accepted by writing retreats in Virginia, Illinois and Florida that were sponsored and inexpensive enough that I felt guiltless about going. I accepted offers from friends to visit their unused places. My family adjusted to my absences and learned that spaces in our togetherness made room for more relished time together. And I claimed the space to be all I can be.

Read the full article at the Huffington Post to find out what Emma Lou Thayne has to say about staying up all night!

More about Emma Lou Thayne:
Mormon Literature Database
A Woman of Gentle Strength
Emma Lou Thayne - Alive Again

e

Developing Your Talents for the Lord

Here is an excerpt from Sister Beck's remarks that she recently gave to an assembly of Relief Society sisters in Idaho about how we can develop our talents for the Lord (Thanks Ellen for your previous link to this article!).  I loved this story she told about Sister Ruth Funk.  These are Sister Beck's words:

Last week I went to the funeral of Sister Ruth Funk, who was the general Young Women president when I was a Young Woman. Sister Funk was an amazing, talented woman.

When she was a young woman, Leopold Stokowski, the famous pianist, traveled to Salt Lake. He happened to be staying in the home next to her family’s home. Sister Funk was a talented pianist and her father had told her if she could master a certain Chopin piece, he would buy her a grand piano. At age 14, she had just earned that piano.

So now she’s listening to this world-famous artist play the piano in the home next to hers, and he’s playing the same piece she just learned to earn her piano. So she went and sat on the porch and listened to him.

When he came out, he said, ‘What are you doing here?’

She said, ‘I’m just listening to you practice. It’s interesting, but I struggle on the same passage as you do.’

He said, ‘You don’t play that piece. I’m the only person I know who can play that piece.’

She said, ‘Oh, I’ll play it for you if you like.’

She did, and he invited her to go to New York City and be his personal student at no charge.

This was something that became a matter of prayer in the Hardy family with her father and mother and her. They fasted and they prayed. She received a priesthood blessing. In that blessing, she was told, ‘If you go to New York and pursue this career, you will leave the Church, and you will give up the promise and the blessings Heavenly Father has for you, and that you covenanted to make before the world was.’ And she didn’t go.

She graduated from East High School in Salt Lake City, she graduated from the University of Utah, she went to Chicago with her husband as a young woman. There the director of the symphony in Chicago asked her if she would come and travel with the symphony and solo with them. She said it was the greatest trial of her life to have this gift and not do the things she dreamed of doing.

I think of how the Lord used her to help build up His kingdom. She not only served as the Young Woman general president, but she served for over a decade on the Church Correlation Committee and knew prophets and apostles by name. President Monson spoke at her funeral and commended the work and the faithfulness of her life. Her grandchildren said the crazy thing was that she probably spent as much time doing Church work as she would have if she had been a concert pianist. She was away from home a lot, serving the Lord.

She recognized that the Lord owned her gift, and He could call upon it to do whatever He desired to do.

Isn't that a remarkable woman, to give up her "dreams" for the Lord?  I love it, and it makes me want to look inside myself and ponder what I am willing to give up for the Lord.

If you haven't had a chance to read Sister Beck's remarks, you can read more of them here.  Enjoy!

Devon
 
Image Credit