Elizabeth Nielson: This is the Prosper Stronger Podcast, a community where LDS women gather to cultivate covenant connections and strive to be devoted disciples of Jesus Christ.
Hi and welcome again to the Prosper Stronger Podcast. And today I am so excited because I just returned from our very first ever Prosper Stronger Retreat that was about three and a half days long. We held it in sunny St. George and it was so fun and so amazing. And today I wanted to just share with you some of the takeaways that I got from this weekend with some wonderful women.
Now, obviously, I had done a lot of preparation. I had prepared the talks and the activities and asked people to help with some of those and prepared the food. I actually did all of the food. As I mentioned, this was our very first ever retreat. And I have to say that it was far better than I ever imagined it would be. I knew it would be great because I knew there would be wonderful women that would come and share and that we would learn from one another. I had no idea how beautifully everything would work out.
There were about half of the women that I had never met before. The other half were friends from all over the place. Some from my childhood, some friends that I met just six weeks ago, but they came from all different places, all different things happening in their lives. And yet these women came and they brought light and truth and joy with them.
And I had such a marvelous time as we discussed the gospel. As we shared our stories, as we talked about General Conference talks and scriptures and about our Savior, as we shared with one another, we played games and we cried. There were so many things that we did and it was a marvelous experience. Although I could probably talk for hours and hours about what happened and all the things that were just so miraculous, today I just wanted to give you a couple of my takeaways.
So the first, I already mentioned, the first is these women are amazing. You are amazing. Women that are devoted to Jesus Christ are amazing. And you may not think that because you may not think, oh, that person gets a lot of attention or they always stand up in front of the audience or they have such a marvelous talent or gift. And it's more public where maybe yours is more quiet or behind the scenes. I have a wonderful friend who in her home always has a quilt set up. She's always working and inviting others into her home to just make quilts for those that need them. And she finds so many different services and charities and people that benefit from these quilts. And it's just an amazing thing.
And had I not gone to her home, I never would have known that this is what she does among many other things. So it was so great to have just a variety of wonderful women, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, with their own burdens, with their own experiences to share. It was fantastic.
And the one thing that everybody brought was the spirit. Every person there was devoted to Jesus Christ. Every person there was committed to keeping their sacred covenants. Every person there hungered and thirsted after the word of God and after righteousness. And because of that, we were able to have discussions and share experiences that were powerful and that invited the spirit to be with us. And that was the real focus.
So it was the Prosper Stronger Retreat. And if you've listened to my previous episodes, you know as far as I'm concerned, to prosper means to have the spirit with us, to have the Holy Ghost with us, to be worthy, to dwell in His presence. The presence of our Heavenly Father here on earth through the Holy Ghost and for eternity in the Celestial Kingdom.
And so we focused on how do we do that more? How can we access more of the power of God in our lives as we keep our covenants? And then how can we live as covenant keeping women with greater Christlike poise? And I took that from Elder Bragg's talk. From April, 2023.
So because of that, our really tight focus became understanding our divine identity, both our God-given identity and our self-driven identity. And we had lectures and we had conversations, activities based around those things, our God-given identity and our self-driven identity. We even watched a movie about it. It was so fun.
So that was the focus of this particular retreat. And it was hard, honestly, it was so hard to whittle down all the quotes, all the scriptures, all the experiences, all the truth that is out there about our identity as daughters of God and understand what parts to share and what things to discuss and which to maybe save for another day, because there was so much goodness.
But I can testify to you that the Spirit guided and directed me to help me know what to include and what not to include. And so that was the focus of this particular retreat. It was called the Prosper Stronger Retreat, Christlike Power and Poise.
One of the quotes we started with was from the very opening of the Come Follow Me manual. And it reads, "we know that if we can be worthy of the presence of the Holy Ghost, we can also be worthy to live in the presence of Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ." And as we discussed our identity as daughters of God and why it is He wants us to return to Him and why we would want to do that.
Why did we want to return with Him? It was so marvelous to hear the answers. And one of the ones that really stuck out to me was love. One of the women who is just a dear friend and marvelous woman, she said, it's all about love. We want to prosper. We want to have His spirit with us because we want to feel his love. We want to dwell in His love. So what does it mean to prosper? It means to love. And even though we didn't talk about this in the retreat, it brings to mind the idea of charity, that charity never faileth. Charity is the pure love of Christ. We should pray with all the energy of our heart for this gift of charity.
And so charity is why we do it, why we want to be with our Heavenly Father, because it is that pure love. And I don't know about you, but there are so many times when I feel lonely or I feel invisible. I had somebody use that word that they didn't want to feel invisible. We feel like we're not accepted. We're not valued. And why don't we get a glimpse? of the love Heavenly Father has for us as His daughters. All of a sudden, it changes. Everything changes. We can go on. We can do the hard things. We can put more trust in Him. We can submit more of our will to Him, and we can be healed and made whole. And I've experienced that this weekend with these wonderful women, and I was so grateful that she tied not only feeling the spirit, having it with us to guide us and direct us, but especially so that we can feel the love of God.
And I know that those who have passed on and maybe then returned, it's hard to explain, but I have a great-grandmother who died after she gave birth to my grandfather. And she wanted to stay, she wanted to stay there. She didn't want to come back. And as she asked, this is in her record, she asked the person that she met her there after she passed away, what would happen to this baby if she stayed, if she didn't return to earth?
And because of what he told her, he said that baby would die. She chose to come back to her hard life and raise this child. But the love she felt there was so compelling, was so overwhelming that she wanted desperately to stay there and not return to earth. And we share that. That's not uncommon. We share that over and over again. I've not experienced that. I experienced little taste of it. And even those little tastes of God's love. It's enough for me to know that I need it and I want it. And that's where I want to reside forever in the fullness of God's love in the Celestial Kingdom. So that is part of my why.
Why is it that I want to stay on the covenant path? Why do I want to follow it? Just like Emily Bell Freeman talked about in her General Conference talk.
So we discussed some of that. And again, the thing that jumped out at me was love. That is why we want to prosper, why we want to have His spirit with us here on this earth and throughout the eternities.
So another thing that we talked about was how we gather more power, how we access more power in our lives. the power of the Holy Ghost, of course, the power of the priesthood. The power of God's love, the power of knowing who we are. We also talked about how there is power in studying the Word of God. We talked about the scriptures, and I don't want to discount those at all, but we happened to focus a little more this time on the Word of God that is found in general Conference talks.
And as we studied and pulled quotes from and had discussions about our General Conference talk, the messages that were being given to us by our prophet, by our apostles, by other church leaders, the spirit was so strong. It was amazing as we shared what we each had learned from General Conference talks.
And I loved it because I know what I take away from General Conference. I know that Heavenly Father directs me through the Holy Ghost, because our leaders are talking to a general audience. They are talking to the entire church. And so their messages are constructed to address that audience, but it's up to us to make them our own.
It's up to us to study them, to be prayerful, to put forth the effort, to receive the personal revelation so that we know what heavenly Father and Jesus Christ want us to do with what they are giving us. And we had a fantastic discussion around this. I loved it. And I did share some of that. I shared in a previous podcast about how to study General Conference talks.
So we dove a little deeper into that and then had some time. To do that as well and it was so great. I just find that as I study the General Conference talks, it isn't about what I'm gonna tell you to do. It's about what the Heavenly Father tells me to do. And I know He speaks to us through General Conference.
He will guide direct us as individual daughters to know what to focus on, to get the answers that we need and to know what He needs us to do next. So that was another wonderful. session that we had here at the retreat. And it was so fun.
Then we talked about the power of personal revelation. And as I've mentioned sometimes on the podcast and typically at the end, you can go to prosperstronger.com and you can download a free It's a journal page and kind of an exercise for increasing your capacity to receive personal revelation. And we actually did this at the retreat. It was something that I wish we'd had more time. Unfortunately, there's never enough time, but we still were able to do it. And we had about 15 minutes to go through, walk through the exercise and how to do it.
And then 20 minutes to actually go do it. And I just loved it as the women came back to the main area. They had separated to find their own quiet place, but as I came back, I loved hearing the comments that they shared. One of them came down with a big smile on her face and she just said, I got my answer in minutes, just minutes.
And another said, that was different than I expected. I had faith it would work and I did get an answer, but it wasn't the big answer I was expecting. Heavenly Father just gave me the next step. But because He gave me the next step, I know that He will keep giving me the steps and I know ultimately the big answer will come.
And then there was another one. And she said that she struggles with believing in the process to having the faith and trusting in the actual process. And so self-doubt or just doubt in the process comes in. And so her experience was different. But what I love about her experience is that she didn't give up. She kept going.
And she said at first she was led to read one particular passage and then another, and she didn't feel like she was getting the answer, but as she continued to put forth the effort, she was led to the answer that she sought. She found what she needed and the Holy Ghost taught her.
And I loved that she never gave up. She continued in the effort and increased her faith each time that she read something else. She increased her faith and didn't close the book, didn't stop seeking, but continued forward until the answer came. And I hope now that the next time she tries it and does this exercise, that she will have more faith in the process and the answer will come even faster.
Because that's for all of us what we're doing. We are learning, we're growing, we're experimenting on the word. We're trying out the processes, we're seeking to increase our capacity. And it's a journey for each of us. So I hope that we can follow the example of this sister and not give up. not give up hope and continue to increase our faith and our effort. It was so beautiful to have that experience with personal revelation.
As I mentioned, we focused on knowing our identity and drawing upon more power. And you can't do those without recognizing that although sometimes we feel like we are up to our eyeballs or over our head with so many things to do, that Heavenly Father will sustain us and He will help us.
And sometimes we are just merely in survival mode and that's okay. And if that's where you are, that is okay. But, at some point, He's going to stretch us. At some point, He needs us to reach up and to be lifted up because He doesn't ever want to leave us where we are. He always wants to help us progress. I believe that to prosper also includes progression.
And so the whole point of the retreat was not just to get us to understand our identity and how to access the power, but to use the power and the poise to understand our purpose, what the Lord needs us to do now. Maybe it's just for today. Maybe it's for another week. Maybe it's for a month. Maybe it's for five years.
Everyone's purpose is different. Everyone's timing is different, and that's why personal revelation is so beautiful. So I invited a special guest to help us get some tactics and tools of how to get more clarity around our identity and how to identify our purpose using journaling. And this was amazing. I have never, ever learned, or I even heard of someone journaling the way Candace Chandler does. I was blown away. And you know what? I thought I was going to be entirely overwhelmed. And the truth is I could have been, it would have been very easy for me to have been overwhelmed. But I love the idea of the 1%. I love that.
I don't have to do everything all at once. I only have to wear one hat at a time. And so I was grateful to have her teach and to share so many things. But then worked to just seek direction on the 1 percent that I could do better in my journaling. And I do know that as we journal, as we write, as we put pen to paper, that this is a key to opening up personal revelation.
This is a key to helping us understand our identity and it is a key to helping us access more power so that we can fulfill our purpose. And so I love that she shared so many things and hopefully sometime I will have her join me here on the podcast and she will share some of them with you.
But I also appreciated the thoughts of one of the sisters there. This is a woman I have known for a very long time and I know that she is a woman of great capacity and great love for the Lord. And yet she sat and listened to the journaling and she did become overwhelmed and she was starting to get frustrated. And thank goodness she asked a question to Candice who was presenting.
And in Candice's answer, just a simple thing, she gave this sister the one percent, the one thing that she could do to increase her journaling, to increase her capacity to access the power that comes through journaling. And the relief it brought to the sister to know, to have this tool. And I love that. I truly believe that good information leads to good inspiration, just as president Nelson has taught us.
And so I was so inspired by the sister. Because she chose not to be overwhelmed, even though she was starting to feel it. She asked the question, she did the work. She put herself out there and asked the question, and then she got the answer she needed. And she can do that one thing and not be overwhelmed.
I loved it. There's so many lessons I feel like I learned this weekend from these women. I love what they shared. I love what they did. I watched them as they served a myriad of ways. Some women served by listening compassionately to other women. Some women served by being joyful and inclusive and inviting and celebrating everyone there.
Other women served by helping me. They would come and just help clean up the dinner or help prepare the dinner or simply just give me encouragement. Some women served by teaching. We had a water aerobics class that one of the sisters teaches regularly at home. And so she offered to come and teach it there to everyone at the retreat.
Those who wanted to participate. It was so amazing. It was so great. Another woman came and she did Christ-centered yoga just for us. It was beautiful. It was so neat. And I love that people share their talents. You could see that some had the gift of compassion. Recognizing the needs of other people.
Others had the gift of wisdom. Some had the gift of being fearless. We talked about fear and how so often we are frozen or we are unable to progress because of our fear. And I'm guilty of that as well. But some people are fearless. So amazing. Others were so quick to pull up quotes. It was so fantastic.
So I loved seeing the gifts and talents of everyone come together and create a atmosphere of unity and strength. I think that's the biggest takeaway is that when we gather as women, as covenant keeping women, we empower one another. We strengthen one another. We learn from one another. We love one another, and I think we all need that.
We get it in Relief Society, but sometimes we don't get it to the depth that we need. And maybe we get it in our families. Not everybody needs a retreat to go get this, but for me, it was a great blessing. And for these women, at least from what they said, it was a blessing to them as well. And we all left lighter, filled with increased light, the light of Christ.
We all left with increased joy. We left with increased purpose and we left with great connection with our Heavenly Father, connection with our identities and connection with one another. So many said, oh, I can't believe this. I just made so many new wonderful friends and they already are planning a reunion retreat for next year. It's so fun.
And I want to share with you one of the things that we almost didn't talk about, but the became so obvious that so many of us need healing and how important it is that we know our stories and that we have the courage to face and re frame. Our stories that using the terminology of Benjamin Hardy, Dr. Benjamin Hardy from the gap in the gain and 10 X is easier than two X. And some of his other publications that present frames our past. We choose instead of saying our past defines us, we can actually re frame what our past means to us. Our present defines us, but also that our future defines us. When we cast forward and create a vision for our future, who we want to be, how we live each day will be impacted.
The decisions we make each day will be impacted by the future we envision for ourselves. And I think this is so true. I love the idea of vision and putting forth. What we want to become, and that's this self-driven identity and hopefully incorporates our God-given identity as well, that we want to be true daughters of God.
We want to be covenant keeping women. We want to dwell with Him and our loved ones forever. And you can go back and look at President Nelson's talk, Think Celestial, and he talks about and shares with those decisions that we are making now. what they determine. So it was a great experience to be reminded that we have the power to re frame our stories, to re frame our experiences, and then to frame the future. I loved it. And I just know that there is great power in the written word, the word of God, and in the words that we write ourselves, the words that we say, and in the stories we create. It's interesting to me that as we listen to General Conference talks, as we study in the scriptures, stories are everywhere. They are so powerful. And I wish we'd had more time at the retreat to dive into our stories. I think we're going to do that in one of the next ones here pretty soon. So it was marvelous.
The final thing that I want to share is one of the things that I learned for sure is that I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.
It was about four weeks ago when I truly felt that I needed to do this retreat. I thought about it for years. I'd been doing some small preparations. I'd been talking about it, but I wasn't really all in. And then four weeks ago, the spirit made known to me that I needed to do it and I needed to do it now.
And I will tell you that trying to pull together a three and a half day retreat, In a destination and plan all of the food and the activities and all of the swag and all the teaching, all the activity everything, the communication, like every little bit was on me because of the short timeframe.
And I looked back even before it started trying to prepare the meals, trying to get everything done. I was staying up till 2 a. m. every night, getting up around six, so four hours of sleep for many nights in a row. And that is not something I do well with. I need my sleep. And I prayed. I prayed and I asked the Lord for help.
And after many days of this, He blessed me with knowledge. He opened my mind and my heart and helped me look back so that I could see. How He had been strengthening me, how He had been helping me, how He had been enabling me to do all that was required in order to do this retreat. And He also showed me in such a very tender and sacred moment, those on the other side of the veil who were helping me as well.
Then as I went to the retreat and prepared and served these women, it was such a privilege and a blessing for me. I was filled with joy and light and happiness because Heavenly Father was blessing me. The Savior was blessing me with His power to have the strength and the energy to do all that was needed.
It was not a burden. It was a delight. And I know that joy and capacity came from my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I felt like Nephi when he said, "I will go and do the thing which the Lord commandeth. For I know that he giveth no commandment unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commanded."
Now my retreat, this retreat, it's not my retreat, it's Heavenly Father's, the Lord's retreat for his daughters. But this retreat was nothing in comparison to going back and getting the breastplate. I was not tied. I was not threatened or abused by anyone in the process, but it was an overwhelming challenge.
And I know that I could not have done it without the enabling power of God. The atonement of Jesus Christ without the help of my Savior and the guiding and directing and comforting influence of the Holy Ghost. I know this. I don't believe it. I know it.
And so I wanted to share with you a couple of quotes that some of the sisters shared while we were at our retreat. These are quotes, one I'd heard before, one I had not, and it is powerful. So powerful.
Here's a quote about the gift of the Holy Ghost. It reads, the gift of the Holy Ghost. Now, actually, before I start this, I want you to pay attention to all the blessings and the promises and the powers that are available to us through the gift of the Holy Ghost. Just even pick one that you think, hey, I, maybe I could use that. Cause I guarantee you there's going to be at least one. Probably many. Quote, this is from Parley P. Pratt. "The gift of the Holy Ghost quickens all the intellectual faculties, increases, enlarges, expands, and purifies all the natural passions and affections, and adapts them by the gift of wisdom to their lawful use."
Okay, we could spend forever just on that part of it. That's amazing. Going on, because we can't. Another time. Going on. "The Holy Ghost inspires, develops, cultivates and matures all the fine toned sympathies, joys, haste, kindred feelings, and affections in our nature. It inspires virtue, kindness, goodness, tenderness, gentleness, and charity."
This is what I saw from the women at the retreat. All of these things. "It develops a beauty of person, form, and features. It tends to health. Vigor, animation, and social feeling. It invigorates all the faculties of the physical and intellectual man. It strengthens and gives tone to the nerves. In short, it is, as it were, marrow to the bone, joy to the heart, light to the eyes, music to the ears, and life to the whole being."
I'm overwhelmed with everything that is true here that was spoken in this quote by Parley P. Pratt. And it makes me desire to want to have the Holy Ghost with me even more. And I want to start to recognize these things in my life because I can testify that the Holy Ghost has done some of these things in my life. And there's others that I really want more of. So that one is amazing.
And then another quote, and this is the quote I would like to end with, because like these sisters at the retreat, I know that you are a precious daughter of God. I know that whatever you are going through, every single one of these sisters came with a different burden, and it was different from mine.
I know we're all going through things. No matter what storm you are facing in your life, I know that the Lord is there for you. And I know that he will strengthen you. He will help you grow. He will refine you. And at some point, whether it's today, tomorrow, a year from now, five years from now, He will guide you in your growth to a purpose that is only yours, a mission for you.
And so with this concluding quote. I hope you will know that you belong to Jesus Christ, that He loves you, and that He needs you. This is from Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf. He taught, quote, "I believe the Savior Jesus Christ would want you to see, feel, and know that He is your strength, that with His help, there are no limit to what you can accomplish.
That your potential is limitless. He would want you to see yourself the way He sees you. And that is very different from the way the world sees you. He gives power to the weary and to those who feel powerless. He increases strength. We must remember that whatever our best but imperfect offering is, the Savior can make it perfect.
No matter how insignificant our efforts may seem," and I would add, sometimes we feel our purpose or our mission is insignificant, but it's not. It's yours and it's important. So no matter how insignificant our efforts may seem. "We must never underestimate the Savior's power."
And that is what I want to leave you with is that the Savior's power is available to you.
He loves you. He desires to bless you. He wants you to experience more of His power. So reach up to Him, seek Him, seek His word, seek personal revelation, turn your heart to Him and trust in the process for He will strengthen you. I know this is true. I hope together we can prosper stronger. And if you would like to enjoy the personal revelation exercise, just simply go to prosperstronger.com and download it for free. It's just right there. You'll need to put your name and email in, but I promise I'm not going to spam you. Just download the worksheet and the instructions, and I hope you enjoy it. Have a wonderful week. Enjoy the light of Christ.
Thank you for joining the Prosper Stronger Podcast today.
We hope that you have felt inspired and empowered. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast and share it with your friends and family. I also invite you to join me at prosperstronger.com where you will find. free resources to help you grow and learn, as well as join in our discussions where we go deeper into some of the things that we talk about here on our podcast.
Remember that you are loved and cherished by Heavenly Father who wants you to prosper and thrive. Until next time, may you continue to cultivate covenant connections with God, with others and with yourself, and find strength in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Comments