Entrepreneurial Journal Entry - Week 10

This week was full of great readings and videos. Two great articles that I'd like to refer to are "Formula For Success" by President Monson - 1996; "Attitude on Money" by Stephen Gibson.

Stephen Gibson talks about the positive side of money:

   1.  Money is not evil. (How it is used may be, but money itself is not.)
   2.  Money has great power to do good.
   3.  Money reveals the kind of person we are.
   4.  Money makes good men better.

He goes on to explain how we need to seek for wealth with righteous intent and for righteous purposes. He gave great examples of people that use their wealth to do good.  Jon Huntsman from Utah has given over $100 Million dollars to fight cancer. The good samaritan gave freely of his wealth to meet the needs of a total stranger. Brother Gibson and his wife have given of their wealth to build a school for return missionaries in the Philippines.

Presiden Monson talks about three things we need to fill our lives with:

   1.  Fill your mind with truth.
   2.  Fill your life with service.
   3.  Fill your heart with love.

Truth: He suggests that when we search for truth we search among those books and in those places where truth is most likely to be found. "You do not find truth by groveling through error. You find truth by searching the holy word of God."

Service: Remember that "when ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of your God."

Love: I like how he talked about love. He gave a great example of Abraham Lincoln:

When I think of love, I think of Abraham Lincoln, one of the outstanding presidents of the United States. He was also one of the nation’s greatest writers and orators. I have seldom read words that better characterize the love that a man can have for others than the love he described as he penned a letter to a mother who had lost all her sons in the Civil War. It is known as the Lydia Bixby Letter. Note carefully the words of Abraham Lincoln and see if you don’t feel within your heart the love that filled his:

Dear Madam:

I have just been shown, in the files of the War Department, a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming, but I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully, A. Lincoln