Have or Have Not

The idea of this post came from one of my sweet neighbors, Lisa.  She asked me if I was a Have or a Have Not? I had no clue what she meant, then she continued:

• Do you HAVE clothes to wear?
• Do you HAVE food to eat?
• Do you HAVE shelter?
• Do you HAVE opportunities?

I answered yes to all of these questions...I am definitely a HAVE person.  As this is Thanksgiving week, I invite you to contemplate the HAVES in our lives.  Think about the role these HAVES play in your life, and the doors that are open to you.

Lisa then told me this story about David O McKay:

In 1897 a young David O. McKay stood at a door with a religious tract in his hand. As a missionary in Stirling, Scotland, he had done this many times before. But on that day a very haggard woman opened the door and stood before him. She was poorly dressed and had sunken cheeks and unkempt hair.

She took the tract Elder McKay offered to her and spoke six words that he subsequently would never forget: “Will this buy me any bread?”

This encounter left a lasting impression on the young missionary. He later wrote: “From that moment I had a deeper realization that the Church of Christ should be and is interested in the temporal salvation of man. I walked away from the door feeling that that [woman], with … bitterness in [her heart] toward man and God, [was] in no position to receive the message of the gospel. [She was] in need of temporal help, and there was no organization, so far as I could learn, in Stirling that could give it to [her].”...

A few decades later the world groaned under the burden of the Great Depression. It was during that time, on April 6, 1936, that President Heber J. Grant and his counselors, J. Reuben Clark and David O. McKay, announced what would later become known as the welfare program of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

I hope you all have a blessed Thanksgiving!