Your worst nightmare.

Have you ever had one of your worst nightmares happen to you?  Well, mine did...

Long story short.  There was a big misunderstanding about when I was going to teach Relief Society.  I thought I was supposed to teach next sunday, but in reality I had to teach yesterday.  I found out about this about an hour before I was supposed to teach.  I didn't even bring my book with me!  I started panicking and I said a prayer, and I knew everything was going to work out, I just needed to calm down and focus on having the spirit with me.  I quickly found the Joseph Smith manual and I read the lesson over and then I jotted down the main points, thought of an opening activity to do, and wrote down questions to ask the girls.  So with about an half hour of preparation I went up to the front of the class and just started talking.  I don't know how I did it-- well I do know-- it was the spirit.  Half of the things I was saying were not from me, but from the spirit.  The lesson was on the Great Plan of Salvation from the Joseph Smith Manual.  Everyone was so good about commenting and participating.  Afterwards, everyone said it was an awesome lesson and they did not even suspect a thing!!! 

 I learned a very important lesson that day-- to teach with the spirit and to trust in the Lord.  I could have easily shut down and crawled into a corner, instead I stared down my doubts and my fears and put my trust in the Lord.  

D & C 42:

"And the Spirit shall be given unto you by the prayer of faith; and if ye receive not the spirit ye shall not teach."

This next part is a little lagniappe : )

Here is an excerpt from a book I'm reading called Learning and Teaching for Exponential Growth:

"In March 1839, when American prophet Joseph Smith was languishing in the dirty cellar of a jail in Missouri, he received a revelation.  The revelation told him essentially that things could be a lot worse, but then added, "All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for they good."  For the followers of Joseph Smith the implicit message in these words is that one of the fundamental purposes for being alive is to "get experience."  Experience is not just passing through time.  Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.  Learners find out how to have experience.  Teachers lear how to create experience for others.  They shape time and space to crate environments and moments that help others grow into their possibilities."

I think there are experiences and trials in our life for a reason.  It is up to us how we receive them.