An Ensign to the Nations

My church has a lot of online resources. This is something I have known for a while but had never really taken advantage of. This was partly because I had what I needed in hard copy and partly because the main website is not very easy to navigate if you don't already know where you're going. Now that we are in India, however, I have been forced to know where I am going because we don't have the hard copies. This has proved to be a great blessing to us while we are here.

Before we left the US, I was sure to bring some church materials with us: our Joseph Smith manual, a Sunday School study guide, the conference edition of the Ensign, our mini hymn book, scriptures, and the Doctrine and Covenants BYU study guide. These things have helped us remain connected to the church even though we are not able to attend any organized meetings (while the LDS church is in India, it is not in Ahmedabad. We have been holding classes by ourselves where we trade off teaching a Sunday School and a Relief Society/Priesthood lesson each week).

In preparing these lessons, I remembered that the Sunday School lessons are online, not just the study guide. So lately I have been spending more time with the main Church website and gotten to know it better. Recently I discovered that the magazine The Ensign is available in it's entirety online. I was thrilled. We didn't renew our subscription because we knew we would be traveling and out of the country and I have been missing it (ironically, when we got it every month I had gotten behind in reading it, it seems it means more to me now). Yesterday, I read the entire July edition in one sitting. Fortunately I haven't had a chance to read the June one yet so I have something else to read while I wait for August to be available. I'll have to work on pacing myself.

We also use the online music resources. Jason and I have always enjoyed singing the hymns together. We have even, at times, worked on memorizing all the verses for some of them (I can sing all the verses for a Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, although not necessarily in the right order). Now, however, we can use the interactive music player and have accompaniment.

I am so grateful that I am a member of a world-wide church that knows the needs of it's members and makes it's resources as accessible as possible. I know that no matter where I go in the world, the teachings are the same, the lessons are the same and the spirit is the same. And while it has been hard to keep the Sabbath day holy, it has been made easier by everything the church has available for us online.