Dearest Children, God is Near You

This is a picture my lil' sis took of Benton a while back. She is away in Manti right now learning to be an adult. I'm so proud of her and all that she is learning and we all miss her, but are glad she is having so many wonderful experiences. This picture also goes along with feelings I have been having the past few months...since my new calling in the ward. I have always had a special place in my heart for children, I like to think of it as a "mother heart", but now that love has grown so much. It's really amazing to see how after having a second child you can love them as much as the first, equally. Your heart seems to "grow 10 sizes that day". Well as crazy as it may seem your heart just makes room for more and more as you serve others and learn to love them as well. I have felt my "mother heart" grow and expand to include many children I barely know. These sweet spirits touch my heart so deeply and it seems they bring me closer to heaven as I let their pureness embrace me. I read an Ensign article recently from President Hinckley and he quoted E.T. Sullivan; "When God wants a great work done in the world or a great wrong righted, he goes about it in a very unusual way. He doesn't stir up his earthquakes or send forth his thunderbolts. Instead, he has a helpless baby born, perhaps in a simple home and of some obscure mother. And then God puts the idea into the mother's heart, and she puts it into the baby's mind. And then God waits. The greatest forces in the world are not the earthquakes and the thunderbolts. The greatest forces in the world are babies." How precious these sweet little spirits are. It is truly awing to think that we as parents are responsible for teaching these little beings and molding them and helping them learn the gospel of Jesus Christ, when these little spirits are already more perfect than we...and what we are to emulate. How dear children are!