Welcome to Personal Progress

You are a beloved daughter of Heavenly Father, prepared to come to the earth at this particular time for a sacred and glorious purpose. You have a noble responsibility to use your strength and influence for good. Your loving Heavenly Father has blessed you with talents and abilities that will help you fulfill your divine mission. As you learn to accept and act upon these values in your life, you will form personal habits of prayer, scripture study, obedience to the commandments, and service to others. These daily personal habits will strengthen your faith in and testimony of Jesus Christ. They will also allow you to recognize and develop your unique gifts.

Always use your influence to lift and bless your family, other women and mothers, and the men with whom you associate. Honor womanhood, support the priesthood, and cherish faithful motherhood and fatherhood.

As you participate in Personal Progress, you join with thousands of other women who are striving to come unto Christ and “stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places” (Mosiah 18:9). Counsel with your parents and spouse, and prayerfully choose goals that will help you cultivate feminine attributes, strengthen your testimony, and reach your divine potential. Take advantage of your time in this season of life by preparing to receive the sacred ordinances of the temple (or visiting the temple to remind yourself of the covenants you made), to be a faithful wife and mother, and to strengthen your home and family.

The First Presidency

This is everything. Honestly. Relief Society should have something like this! I really wish that I had focused more on completing the goals in this program to prepare me to “cherish faithful motherhood and fatherhood” like the welcome was saying. So now, I am determined to re-complete this program as a mother, and I think it’s okay for me to share about this program and challenge other women and mothers to complete it along with me, changing wording where applicable. And if you have daughters that are old enough to do it with you, I think I would encourage it!

I plan to rotate through completing one goal from each of the different values: faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice & accountability, good works, integrity, and virtue. Just as even more of a precursor to this challenge, here is the scripture and affirmation associated with each value.

faith

Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true (Alma 32:21).

I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, who loves me. I have faith in His eternal plan, which centers on Jesus Christ, my Savior.

One of the required goals for faith is that you read the passage about the mothers of the stripling warriors and The Family: A Proclamation to the World, and then discuss with a mother in your life how to fulfill that role faithfully. I am already so excited for that one!

divine nature

Be partakers of the divine nature. … Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity (2 Peter 1:4–7).

I have inherited divine qualities, which I will strive to develop.

For some reason, when I was in Young Women’s, this one always felt icky to me. I didn’t like thinking about my “divine feminine qualities”. Like, who cares? I’m just a girl. I have to have my period, wear a bra, birth a baby. What do guys have to do? Now, as a mother, I understand that menstrual cycles help us conceive, and breasts allow us feed the babies we have the opportunity to give birth to, and that’s completely divine.

individual worth

Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God (D&C 18:10).

I am of infinite worth with my own divine mission, which I will strive to fulfill.

As a Young Woman, I don’t think I ever really thought about my divine mission as motherhood, but that’s totally what it is. I thought of it literally as serving a mission, and gave myself a really hard time when that’s not how my life ended up playing out. Now I see that being a wife and mother is the mission that I was chosen for, and remembering my individual worth will help me complete it faithfully.

knowledge

Seek learning, even by study and also by faith (D&C 88:118).

I will continually seek opportunities for learning and growth.

I am constantly seeking more knowledge, especially now in that I’m a mother and am take care of my home and my children. In searching my scriptures and studying the gospel, I am expanding on and accelerating my learning.

choice & accountability

Choose you this day whom ye will serve; … but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).

I will choose good over evil and will accept responsibility for my decisions.

This one feels like it may not apply to me as much as it did when I was a teenager, but there are still decisions I face every day that yield good or bad consequences, though they may not feel as big. For me, these decisions may deal more with skipping out on spiritual habits due to sleep schedules, feeding my family good foods, and choosing the type of media we consume. I love the scripture in Joshua that it references for this one.

Good works

Therefore let your light so shine before this people, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven

(3 Nephi 12:16).

I will help others and build the kingdom through righteous service.

Obviously, motherhood is the ultimate role of service, but I hope to see if completing these goals helps me to serve others outside of my home.

Integrity

Till I die I will not remove mine integrity from me (Job 27:5).

I will have the moral courage to make my actions consistent with my knowledge of right and wrong.

This is another one that I feel is like choice & accountability for me; as a mother, I feel like I don’t need a ton of moral courage to get through my day to day life (unless my baby takes short naps). But I think I could focus more on morality and what types of things I let into my home, be it media or my words and thoughts.

Virtue

Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies (Proverbs 31:10).

I will prepare to enter the temple and remain pure and worthy. My thoughts and actions will be based on high moral standards.

I have already made important covenants in the temple, but I need to go more often and be reminded of them. I think that acting like I am preparing to go will provide me with simple knowledge that may be helpful in remembering what my covenants are and why I made them.

I’m obviously not a church leader or anything, but I still think this book is extremely worthwhile. Maybe not every single goal needs to be completed. In fact, there are required and additional goals or every value. (And a value project to complete for each as well.) But I want to complete whichever ones I can that make sense for me, and I hope you do the same!

2023 - making more blog