The ennobiling principle of work

There is a quote by Dieter F Uchtdorf from a talk titled Two principles for Any Economy.

" It is often in the trial of adversity that we learn those most critical lessons that form our character and shape our destiny"

The two principles he speaks about are Work and Learning. These two principles no one should try to escape but we should embrace them as our lifeline to help us become and overcome.

In his talk he says that " work is an antidote for anxiety, and ointment for sorrow, and a doorway to possibility"

As my work week ended this week I was grateful to come upon this article as a reminder of how important it is to work and learn. As I reflect upon this past week my first thoughts are I am grateful it is over; then on a more realistic note, I am grateful for the ladies I work with who I could not do what I do without them. My job is to lead in feeding a thousand students two meals everday. That equals to about 1700 or so meals everyday.

There are fifteen of us who under my stewardship pull off this great task.
So you can only imagine the fun we have, the work is mind boggling and back breaking sometimes, but very rewarding. We always start our day off with great music, we have been known to dance and sing while we work. There are many times that I will be doing some computer work and one of my girls will come and get me so I can join in the line as we dance around the whole kitchen to one of their favorite songs. You learn a lot about people when you spend eight hours a day with them, they become an extension of your family.

In spending that much time and doing what we do; there will be times that mistakes are made. This past week was one of those times. I was asked to make Oatmeal cookies for all the elementary sites, that is a lot of cookies. There are about 10 or so sites and they all need 500 to 700 cookies. I have until Feb 10th to get them ready. We will make the dough and freeze it then send it out for them. This week I needed to get started, I am currently missing two of my employees for a large period of time and have had several girls out sick, but the cookies still need to get done. So the adventure began this week, without telling the whole story needless to say a mistake was made where an amount of a particular ingredient was added to the dry ingredients.

So now instead of making a batch of 400 cookies we will now have to make this batch for 1600 cookies. That is a lot of product!!!! One example it will take 96 eggs to pull this off. So the rest of week was spent figuring this out. We have still yet to finish, and will start Monday ready to tackle it.

The greatest thing that I learned from this experience is One :Mistakes will happen and its okay, Two : appreciation for the people you work with, Three :Friday always comes, Four: I am a lucky lady to have such a great place to work and the freedom to be creative.

Would I have learned this without this particular experience, didn't I already fill this way?
I think all experiences add up and reinforce our belief system.
Work is what make us who we are, the work we do tells a story about us.
Another quote from the previous talk mentioned by Dieter F. Uchtdorf

"When our wagon gets stuck in the mud, God is much more likely to assist the man who gets out to push than the man who merely raises his voice in prayer—no matter how eloquent the oration. President Thomas S. Monson put it this way: “It is not enough to want to make the effort and to say we’ll make the effort. … It’s in the doing, not just the thinking, that we accomplish our goals. If we constantly put our goals off, we will never see them fulfilled.”

At almost 47 I still have many mornings ahead of me that will start at 4 am and end with my work at home at 10 pm. Am I tired most of the time? I am; but I find that in hard work there is an energy that comes form no other place. It propells me forward to keep going ,kind of like that little choo choo train... I think I can, I think I can .

" The Lord doesn’t expect us to work harder than we are able. He doesn’t (nor should we) compare our efforts to those of others. Our Heavenly Father asks only that we do the best we can—that we work according to our full capacity, however great or small that may be."
Dieter F. Uchtdorf.

If we want to be educated we have to study, If we want to be physically fit we have to exercise and eat right, if we want to be successful at a work or life in general we have to Work at it.
Small steps !!!!
6 Now ye may suppose that this is foolishness in me; but behold I say unto you, that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass; and small means in many instances doth confound the wise.
7 And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls. Alma 37: 6&7
So let's all role up our sleeves and be engaged in the work that is our lives.