Small and Simple Things

2011

February 2011

“Small and Simple Things,” Ensign, Feb. 2011, 70–72

Small & Simple Things

“By small and simple things are great things brought to pass” (Alma 37:6).

Why Sing?

Singing hymns can invite the Spirit into our Church meetings, our homes, and our everyday lives. President J. Reuben Clark Jr. (1871–1961) of the First Presidency taught, “We get nearer to the Lord through music than perhaps through any other thing except prayer.”

The Church has provided a Web site for accessing the hymns (available in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish). Music.lds.org includes instructions for leading music and for playing hymns using keyboards and also suggestions for choosing appropriate hymns for sacrament meeting.

Music and lyrics can be read, downloaded, or played directly on the Web site, which could be especially useful for members who do not have a piano or keyboard.

Music can be used at home as well as at church. The First Presidency has counseled: “Teach your children to love the hymns. Sing them on the Sabbath, in [family] home evening, during scripture study, at prayer time. Sing as you work, as you play, and as you travel together.” Hymns can bring a spirit of love and unity into the home.

Milestones in Church Welfare Services

The humanitarian outreach program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints strives to improve the lives of those in need by providing food, clean water, vision care, wheelchairs, immunizations, and emergency response. From simple beginnings, the program has expanded through the years to help millions throughout the world.

Late 1920s: Welfare farms are established. Harvests are stored in storehouses.

1932: First cannery is established.

1936: General Church Welfare Committee is formed. Fourteen welfare regions are created to manage welfare activities around the world.

1936: First official employment center is established.

1936–40: Production projects begin, including a sawmill, a tannery, a pasta plant, salmon canning, peanut butter canning, soap production, and milk bottling.

1937: First regional storehouse is erected in Salt Lake City.

1938: Construction begins on Welfare Square, including a grain elevator and a central storehouse.

1938: The first Deseret Industries thrift store opens in Salt Lake City.

1940: Construction on Welfare Square is completed.

1945: Church ships large amounts of food, clothing, and other supplies to struggling members in Europe at the end of World War II.

1960: New cannery and milk processing plant is completed at Welfare Square.

1970s: Church expands welfare projects and production to Mexico, England, and the Pacific islands.

1973: LDS Social Services (now LDS Family Services) is created as an official Church corporation.

1976: Church begins expansion of storehouses into all parts of Canada and the United States. Expansions of canneries and production facilities are also announced.

1982: U.S. president Ronald Reagan visits Welfare Square.

1985: Church begins to provide clean water wells in Africa, marking the beginning of a worldwide expansion of Church humanitarian efforts.

1990s: Latter-day Saint Humanitarian Center is established to sort surplus clothing and other goods, including medical supplies, for shipment throughout the world in response to poverty and disasters.

2002: LDS Charities begins wheelchair, clean water, and neonatal resuscitation initiatives.

2003: LDS Charities joins worldwide measles initiative and commits one million U.S. dollars each year in support of the campaign. Also, a worldwide vision treatment initiative begins.

2010: LDS Charities starts a food initiative to increase food production and nutrition in some of the poorest nations of the world. Ground is broken for a new 600,000-square-foot (56,000 m²) Bishops’ Central Storehouse in Salt Lake City.