I am grateful today to speak to Heavenly Father's young children.

Heavenly Father's older children may also choose to listen.

Children, do you love to answer the question, how old are you? Are you 5, 8, or 11? That is how long you have lived on earth.

But did you know that your spirit is much, much older? Although you don't remember, you spent a long time in the spirit world learning and growing.

On the day you were born, your body was new, but you had lived as a spirit for many years.

You were born with gifts.

I am grateful today to speak to Heavenly Father's young children.

Heavenly Father's older children may also choose to listen.

Children, do you love to answer the question, "How old are you?" Are you five, eight, or 11? That is how long you have lived on Earth.

But did you know that your spirit is much, much older? Although you don't remember, you spent a long time in the spirit world learning and growing.

On the day you were born, your body was new, but you had lived as a spirit for many years.

You were born with gifts.

But I, I would love to hear from your perspective, uh, what kind of role that plays in the calling and, uh, how, how important it is to, to the work that you're called to do.

What a blessing it was when we were first called.

We each received letters from the First Presidency of the Church inviting us to each participate in executive councils.

Uh, receiving that letter from the First Presidency to be a member of a council, uh, gave us pause in that it helped us realize we needed to actually be spiritually prepared to be a contributing member and speak those words and those thoughts that the Lord put into our heart.

I remember the first time I was going to, uh, attend a, one of the executive councils I had been assigned to, and I was walking over.

There are two sisters assigned to each executive council.

We were walking over together, and I remember very clearly saying, "Everybody else in this council has been serving together for a number of years.

Amen.

So I wondered, how did that shape who you are, and how do you feel that it's allowed you to relate to families with varying circumstances all around the world?

Yeah.

Thank you for that question.

Yes, my mother is the youngest of ten children, grew up in Salt Lake City, convert, great-grandparents from England, so she grew up in that environment.

My father is German Jewish and was actually a refugee from Germany just before World War II.

So they had very different life experiences growing up.

But when they married, they agreed that the children could be raised in the church.

Different