In the beloved hymn “Come Thou Font of Every Blessing” there is a phrase that says “Here we raise our “Ebenezer.” While we all know the hymn is not referring to the curmudgeonly character in “A Christmas Carol,” we usually wonder what the word means. Ebenezer comes from a Hebrew phrase that means a “stone of help.” The Israelites stacked stones to remind them of the help they had received from God in fighting their battles. Therefore it is a monument of stone or stacked stones reflecting the goodness of God in the lives of His people.

The Lord counsels us in several places in the scriptures to build our lives on solid stone foundations. As sisters of the Granite View Stake, we literally live on Granite rocks.  Our homes are built on foundations of rock and stone — that same stone from which the Prophets chose to build the walls of the Salt Lake Temple and the Conference Center. The question then is, are our lives and testimonies also built on a solid foundation —the Savior, Jesus Christ, and His teachings and example?  If so we can build our own monument to the Lord as we stack those experiences and witnesses of the Lord’s hand in our everyday lives.

Our God is a God of miracles. Miracles are around us every day. We usually chalk them up to coincidence or good luck or fail to acknowledge them at all. But they are there. The Savior admonished us to have “eyes to see”.  President Eyring counseled us to look for the ways we have seen the hand of the Lord in our lives each day.  We challenge you to open your eyes and be a witness to the marvelous “coincidences” that you see each day, and to acknowledge the author of those miracles. President Nelson promised, “As you make your testimony your highest priority, watch for miracles to happen in your life… Seek and expect miracles.”

Nephi when commenting on his record, wrote, “For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved. Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and to those who are not of the world.” (1 Nephi 6:4-5)

Our RS Presidency would like us to build a Granite View Stake Relief Society figurative “Ebeneezer” to the Lord - a monument to His goodness and sustaining influence in our lives. We want to gather from each sister an experience, miracle, testimony, or story … those things that are “pleasing to God”.  We would invite each of you to submit a paragraph to a page outlining a time when you were witness to the Savior’s hand in your life: the way He spoke to you, a time you knew what had happened would not have been possible without His sustaining power, or your own testimony of His guidance and love.

We would invite you to submit your letters and experiences, along with a picture of yourself or your family, to the Stake RS Presidency c/o Melaney McKellar, graniteviewstakereliefsociety@gmail.com  As we gather these stories from you, they will go through an editing process, then returned to you for your final approval and agreement to share on a private Granite View Stake RS Facebook, Instagram page and searchable webpage.  Eventually, we would like to publish them in a book so that each sister may have her own copy.  We hope this repository of faith will be a source of lift and encouragement for us to turn to when we need an extra boost of faith and that it would serve as a constant reminder and majestic witness of the hand of God.

We invite each of you to ponder and consider the things of your heart and find an example or experience you can contribute. We hope you will each feel you can share something. This is not a comparison or competition in any way. Your experiences need not be huge, showy, or newsworthy - the still small voice is often more evident in those quiet tender mercies that we see and hear when we are still and reverently acknowledge Him.  

We hope this will be a blessing to each of us as we reflect and ponder on the Lord’s constant goodness. And as we celebrate the examples of His guidance in our lives, we hope this project may become our own monument of Granite stone to our Heavenly Father and His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, reflecting the faith, testimony, humility, dependency, gratitude, and love of Their daughters in the Granite View Stake.