Flooding the Earth and our Lives with the Book of Mormon--Chapter 10, Melissa

Great lesson on Sunday---"He can't be serious!!" thought Margo Merrill...when she first heard President Ezra Taft Benson's request that parents read the Book of Mormon with their children.  'My children are only six, five, and two years old.  I'll just be wasting my time and patience.'
Brother and Sister Merrill decided to try reading the Book of Mormon with their children anyway.  When they came to the story of Nephi and his broken bow, six-year-old Melissa became ill with pneumonia.
Melissa pleaded with her mother to let her go back to school even though she was sick, Margo said, She said that if she didn't go back, her friend, Pamela--who is a member of another church, wouldn't know what happened to Nephi.  Then Melissa sobbed and slumped into my arms.  I dried her tears and suggested she call Pamela on the phone and tell her what had happened to Nephi.

1. The Book of Mormon was written for us!!  I think we sometimes forget this!!  The Nephites never had the book---The Lamanites never had the book.  It was meant for us.  Mormon wrote near the end of the Nephite civilization.  Under the inspiration of God, who sees all things from the beginning, he abridged centuries of records, choosing the stories, speeches, and events that would be most helpful to us.
2. As we study the Book of Mormon daily, the power of the book will flow into our lives.  The spirit, as well as the body, is in need of constant nourishment.  Yesterday's meal is not enough to sustain today's needs.  So also an infrequent reading of the most correct of any book on earth, as Joseph Smith called, is not enough!!!
3. We must flood the earth and our lives with the Book of Mormon.  We each need to get our own testimony of the book through the Holy Ghost.  Then we need to share!!

President Benson's vision---
Of homes alerted, of classes alive, and of pulpits aflame with the spirit of the messages.  A vision of home teachers and visiting teachers, ward and branch officers, and stake and mission leaders counseling our people out of the most correct of any book on earth--the Book of Mormon.  A vision of artists putting into film, drama, literature, music, and paintings great themes and great characters from the Book of Mormon.  A vision of missionaries going into the mission field with hundreds of passages memorized from the Book of Mormon so that they might feed the needs of a spiritually famished world.  A vision of the whole Church getting nearer to God by abiding by the precepts of the Book of Mormon.

Our challenge from President Benson:  

To prayerfully consider steps that we can personally take to bring this new witness for Christ more fully into our own lives and into a world that so desperately needs it.

Melissa did a great job.  She bore a STRONG testimony of the Book of Mormon to all of us and expressed her love for the book.  Thanks again...and we missed you if you weren't with us!!!