Becoming Self-Reliant

What Is Self-Reliance?

" 'Self-reliance means using all of our blessings from Heavenly Father to care for ourselves and our families and to find solutions for our own problems.' Each of us has a responsibility to try to avoid problems before they happen and to learn to overcome challenges when they occur. . . .

"How do we become self-reliant? We become self-reliant through obtaining sufficient knowledge, education, and literacy; by managing money and resources wisely, being spiritually strong, preparing for emergencies and eventualities; and by having physical health and social and emotional well-being."¹

Julie B. Beck, Relief Society general president.

A Gospel Responsibility

"As we live providently and increase our gifts and talents, we become more self-reliant. Self-reliance is taking responsibility for our own spiritual and temporal welfare and for those whom Heavenly Father has entrusted to our care. Only when we are self-reliant can we truly emulate the Savior in serving and blessing others.

"It is important to understand that self-reliance is a means to an end. Our ultimate goal is to become like the Savior, and that goal is enhanced by our unselfish service to others. Our ability to serve is increased or diminished by the level of our self-reliance."²

Elder Robert D. Hales of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

"Self-reliance is a product of our work and undergirds all other welfare practices. It is an essential element in our spiritual as well as our temporal well-being. Regarding this principle, President Marion G. Romney [1897–1988] has said: 'Let us work for what we need. Let us be self-reliant and independent. Salvation can be obtained on no other principle. Salvation is an individual matter, and we must work out our own salvation in temporal as well as in spiritual things.' . . .

"President Spencer W. Kimball [1895–1985] further taught concerning self-reliance: 'The responsibility for each person's social, emotional, spiritual, physical, or economic well-being rests first upon himself, second upon his family, and third upon the Church if he is a faithful member thereof.' "³

President Thomas S. Monson.

Self-reliance

Sisters, here's an example of a family in Kansas City, whom we can all really emulate.  Take a look at the pictures and see how organized they are.

This also gives us an idea of how to go about doing our own home storage, garden, etc.  I hope all of us will read this article before the Enrichment Activity on the 27th of this month.

(For the full article, click here, and for the photos, click here)

Enrichment

I want to thank President and Sister Renner for allowing us to have our Enrichment Activity in their home and for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to learn about how to raise rabbits for food, how to start a vegetable garden, how to rear fish for food as well as to generate some income from it.

Gullible Gulls

I clipped the following article from the Reader’s Digest some time ago. It reads:

“In our friendly neighbor city of St. Augustine great flocks of sea gulls are starving amid plenty. Fishing is still good, but the gulls don’t know how to fish. For generations they have depended on the shrimp fleet to toss them scraps from the nets. Now the fleet has moved. …

“The shrimpers had created a Welfare State for the … sea gulls. The big birds never bothered to learn how to fish for themselves and they never taught their children to fish. Instead they led their little ones to the shrimp nets.

“Now the sea gulls, the fine free birds that almost symbolize liberty itself, are starving to death because they gave in to the ‘something for nothing’ lure! They sacrificed their independence for a handout.

“Let’s not be gullible gulls. We … must preserve our talents of self-sufficiency, our genius for creating things for ourselves, our sense of thrift and our true love of independence.”

--Marion G Romney, "The Celestial Nature of Self-Reliance", Ensign, March 2009, 61-65

(For the full article, click on the title)

What a marvelous analogy! I hope we can all learn not to be gullible gulls but cultivate our creative talents like the counsel above, which also brings to mind the counsel by President Uchtdorf, which is beautifully captured in the video below. It's one of my personal favorites.