At our Young Women's in Excellence, three of our girls were awarded a medallion for completing their personal progress. For those of you who don't know what personal progress is, it is a little book filled with eight values that we are supposed to complete during our time in young women's. Each value contains six experiences and one project to complete in it. It takes a lot of time and effort to complete it, but it is designed to help each girl grow personally, spiritually and in some ways, physically as well.
As these girls were awarded their medallions, I was thinking about when I got mine. On my mind lately have been the things that I have learned during my time in young women's. Here are a few of the lessons that I have learned over the years:
- Sometimes you just have to do things a little different.
During my time in young women's I have gone in multiple directions in my life. I was in public school, then I did online school for the first two years of my high school experience, but then I came back. But when I came back I decided to graduate a year early and am going to
BYU-I in the fall.
It's not necessarily the being different part that I learned. What I truly learned is that sometimes the Lord will tell you that in His plan for you, he wants you to do something a little differently than most. DO IT. Follow the promptings you receive. Prophet Thomas S. Monson tells us that we should never postpone a prompting and Joseph Smith once said that if you follow the feeling or prompting you have, 9 times out of 10, you will be right. It was the spirit.
Follow the Lord's plan for you. Even if it is different from those around you, He only wants the best for you, so follow Him.
- Patience is a virtue.
This one is obvious, but that doesn't mean it is easy. My patience has gradually increased throughout my time in young women's.
There is a girl in my ward who has Tourette's Syndrome. If you don't know what it is, TS is something that causes her to not have a filter and she speaks her mind as it comes to her. She has some nervous tics as well. When she turned 12 and entered young women's, she annoyed me. I knew she had something, but I didn't know what it was. Because I have known her, I have been able to be more patient.
- Open your heart to the spirit.
In the Book of Mormon, Lamen and Lemuel had hard hearts. That's why every time something miraculous happened to them, they would forget and it would not increase their faith. I personally have struggled with this. Growing up, I had a mean and hard heart. I am not even joking. I was a brat. Anyhow, eventually I realized how crappy my attitude and I was as a person, so I was able to open my heart. However, I could not have done this on my own. I didn't know how to soften my own heart, so I prayed intensely for a softening of my heart. Eventually, my Heavenly Father allowed my heart to be softened. With a softened heart, I was able to grow in my knowledge and testimony. (A testimony being your belief or faith in something. It is something to share with others. Don't keep quiet about what you believe.)
- Who you are friends with matters.
Again, this should be obvious, but it was something that was hard for me to learn. I had some friends in 8th grade who would talk really negative and introduced me to things that opened up my mind to be extremely curious. Though I didn't do anything necessarily wrong and didn't find the things to satisfy my curiosity, I knew they weren't good things. I think my Heavenly Father pushed me to do online school because He knew I couldn't stop being friends with these girls if I still went to school with them. I would have continued seeing them for a long time and it would have hardened my heart as well as broken my spirit.
Heavenly Father cares who I am friends with. He is looking out for me.
- Service is key.
- Be friends with everyone.
- Be kind.
- Spread the love.
- Get to know the quiet ones.
These five really go together. I learned them all at once.
I was feeling really down about myself and I didn't really feel like I could talk to any of my friends about it. I just didn't know what to do. But I remember something reminding me of someone who once told me that when they were feeling down they decided to serve someone. Serving someone made them feel better.
So I looked around the room, this was during a young women's activity, and my eyes feel upon a new beehive (beehives are girls ages 12 and 13). She had just turned 12 and none of her friends were in young women's yet, so I decided that I would be her friend. She was really quiet and kind of hesitant to talk to me for a while, but eventually we became really good friends.
It didn't matter that I was older than her and in a different age group. What mattered was the fact that we became friends and she wasn't alone anymore. I didn't feel so alone afterwards either.
These five go together because serving others helped me to feel the pure love of Christ which helped me to spread the love and when I was serving others with kindness and striving to be friends with everyone, I got to know even the quiet girl in the corner who didn't have any friends yet. Through these five things, I could feel Heavenly Father's love for me and for the people that I was surrounded by.
If you'd like to learn more about personal progress, or being something that will help you grow spiritually and teach you things about yourself, I'd encourage you to click on these next words: "Personal Progress". This will take you to a website on LDS.org that will give you more information about it.
I love Personal Progress and am working on it for a second time because there will always be more to learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ and about myself. Though I know myself pretty well, my Heavenly Father knows me better and personal progress has helped me stay with close to the Holy Ghost and close to my Heavenly Father.
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