courage to stand strong.

so on this lovely sunday afternoon i have been preparing for efy and we have been asked to ponder and study this years theme (which i wrote above, and can also be seen below).

my coordinator sent me the theme song so i have been listening to that as well. the songs are always a bit cheesy but they usually have a good message. the first line of the chorus says, "it takes courage to speak". as i heard that line it reminded me of the ucap (utah coalition against pornography) conference i went to with my dad back in march. at first i only went because he didn't want to go alone but i'm really glad i did, it was very informative and i learned a lot. at one point one of the speakers boldly stated this:

"silence is acceptance".

..when she said that it really got to me. then of course i forgot about it two seconds later and never did anything. i think many times we want to do things about issues we see around us yet we don't know how to go about it. as i thought about this i decided to stop thinking about it and feeling guilty and just do something. i then remembered a website they told us about that just started in march.it gives you the ability to make a difference in a really fast and efficient way.  

the website can be found here. 

here is a little summary about it:

"The Family Action Center empowers individuals and organizations to defend the family. Through FAC's website, individuals can find, launch, and take action on efforts to promote decency, marriage, life, and religious liberty. Organizations can share their efforts and find others with whom to collaborate."

..So here is how it works. You create an account (it takes five seconds) and then you decide if you want to  see issues on decency (the nice way of saying pornography), marriage, life, or religious liberty and if you want to just see things happening in your state, nation, or internationally. you can skim through the different issues and when you see one that you feel impressed to agree with, you just click on the "take action" button. it will then take you to a PRE-WRITTEN (you don't even have to write it yourself, how great is that) email that you just type in your email address and name and then click send.it is great! they do all of the work and find all the issues, and then we get to feel good that we made a difference. its a win-win-win situation. ..i just tried it out and in probably a good 2 minutes (if that) i sent an email to bath and body works about a new ad they have out with naked women on it, protesting that it is just short of soft pornography.

i know, for most of us, we are in a bubble and we like to think that the world is awesome and that nothing bad will happen to us. for some, maybe that is true. for most, it is not. whether we realize it or not - things like this are happening all around us and i think it will be a sad day when we closed our eyes too long to find that things our happening to our own children and family because we didn't do our part. i was reading a talk today that discussed how important prevention and awareness is and how much easier it is to withstand the temptations of satan when we don't even allow ourselves to be tempted. i think about all the filth that is out there and then i think about my nieces and nephews who are now in junior high and high school and it breaks my heart to think of all that they have to deal with. going on a mission opened my eyes and as much as i would like to shut them again and pretend like i didn't see the things i saw or realize the things i realized, i cannot do that. the next line in the chorus is "it takes courage to know"..and it really does. when we learn of things and gain knowledge, our Father in Heaven expects us to do something with it. maybe it is to be more obedient to his commandments or to repent. or, quite possibly, it might be to take five minutes out of your day and with the click of your mouse protest something that offends Him. 

i'm sorry if this was too wordy or serious for a blog such as mine, but i couldn't stand to be silent any longer. i hope you can't stand it either.