A Firm Foundation

     While in medic school, after a long day of studying, I would often take a break from my school work by designing my family’s future house on graph paper.  After several years of Army duty, and after many revisions to my graph paper drawings, spring came, the ground was finally prepared and the day came to build the foundation.  Measurements were made as I carefully constructed the footers out of boards that would later be used as headers over doors and windows to support our home.  I coated the insides of the boards with the used motor oil from our family car so the cement would not harm the wood.  Reinforcement bars were carefully spaced inside the footers to provide increased strength.  My friend Marty Bruns assisted me in the pouring of the cement. 

     The cement cured, the boards were carefully removed for future use, and the time arrived to lay the concrete blocks.  The summer was hot and humid.  My wife mixed the mortar in a wheelbarrow and I laid the blocks.  Block by block and course by course we built the foundation in perfect alignment for our house to rest upon.  By the end of the summer, my wife was nicknamed “Popeye arms.”

     As autumn approached, the school year started and our oldest son would board the school bus at the construction site.  I would work on the house until he came back from school.  Many individuals assisted in the completion of the house, such as my home teacher Geoff Jones.  On two consecutive Saturdays, members of the priesthood came -- we raised the sides of the house, and we placed the roof trusses thereon.  Roger Poland helped me place the last few rows of shingles on the roof as the first snow of winter fell.

     Our family moved into the basement while my father, a licensed professional engineer, and I wired and finished the upstairs.  For years to come, there always seemed to be another project to be completed.  My good friend Fred Allodi always cheered me on and helped me with whatever needed to be done.  It would have been impossible to endure to the end without such a good friend.  Family and friends are key for our progress.

     I was reminded of the preceding events as I read the following by President Henry B. Eyring.  “As a young man I worked with a contractor building footings and foundations for new houses. In the summer heat it was hard work to prepare the ground for the form into which we poured the cement for the footing. There were no machines. We used a pick and a shovel. Building lasting foundations for buildings was hard work in those days.

     It also required patience. After we poured the footing, we waited for it to cure. Much as we wanted to keep the jobs moving, we also waited after the pour of the foundation before we took away the forms.

     And even more impressive to a novice builder was what seemed to be a tedious and time-consuming process to put metal bars carefully inside the forms to give the finished foundation strength.

     In a similar way, the ground must be carefully prepared for our foundation of faith to withstand the storms that will come into every life. That solid basis for a foundation of faith is personal integrity.

     Our choosing the right consistently whenever the choice is placed before us creates the solid ground under our faith. It can begin in childhood since every soul is born with the free gift of the Spirit of Christ. With that Spirit we can know when we have done what is right before God and when we have done wrong in His sight.

     Those choices, hundreds in most days, prepare the solid ground on which our edifice of faith is built. The metal framework around which the substance of our faith is poured is the gospel of Jesus Christ, with all its covenants, ordinances, and principles.

     One of the keys to an enduring faith is to judge correctly the curing time required. …

     That curing does not come automatically through the passage of time, but it does take time. Getting older does not do it alone. It is serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.”

     I know that there are many true and good patterns in life, and that we need to build our life on a firm and true foundation with Jesus Christ as our chief cornerstone.  I am grateful for Christ's example and the example of his followers.  There is help and guidance if we will but seek, ask, and act.  I testify in the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.