Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays everyone! The Young Ambassadors had a great time bringing in the Christmas spirit this year at Randy and Sue Boothe’s annual Young Ambassador Christmas Party. The night started with mingling and a fun musical activity: playing a group xylophone while singing Christmas carols. Each of us was given an individual bar on a xylophone and instructions to strike it in a certain sequence. When we all played our bars at the right moment, we created beautiful renditions of our favorite Christmas tunes.

Next came a delicious dinner prepared by Sue. After a busy week studying for finals, it was nice to enjoy a home cooked meal. Thanks Sue! Another thing the Boothes prepared for us was an original Christmas song. Every Christmas since they got married they have written a special holiday song. This year the song was titled “The Christmas Bells Still Ring.” Randy taught us the song at the piano, and we all sang it together!

After the wonderful musical number, we all listened to a reading of The Polar Express, a Boothe family tradition. Sue spoke to us about how we are all children aboard the Polar Express. We all received bells just as the boy from the story. She encouraged us to remember the true meaning of Christmas and to focus on keeping and hearing our own personal bell of truth ringing. We also heard a message from Brad, Alexis, and Brent, the Young Ambassador Presidency. They shared with us the story of the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and they challenged us all to remember and celebrate His birth, His life, and His ultimate gift to us.

The party came to a close after we ate wonderful cupcakes with peppermint ice cream and expressed many well wishes for the coming year. With the new school semester and upcoming shows starting in January, we really do have a lot to look forward to in 2012.

We hope all of you are enjoying time spent with family and good friends this holiday season. From the Young Ambassador family to yours, we want to sincerely say Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Christ's Love

Here is the BOM reading schedule for this week:

Today: 3 Nephi 13
Tuesday: 3 Nephi 16
Wednesday: 3 Nephi 18
Thursday: 3 Nephi 20
Friday: 3 Nephi 23
Saturday: 3 Nephi 27
Sunday: 3 Nephi 28

What a blessing it is to be studying Christ's ministry among the
Nephites at a time so close to Christmas. 3 Nephi 11-28 is the
absolute climax of the Book of Mormon. One of my favorite moments in
all of scripture is found in 3 Nephi 17. In verse 4 Christ announces
to the multitudes that He will go back to the Father and also show
himself unto the lost tribes of Israel. I love to think about and
visualize what happens in the next verse. It says:

"And it came to pass that when Jesus had thus spoken, he cast his
eyes round about again on the multitude, and beheld they were in
tears, and did look steadfastly upon him as if they would ask him to
tarry a little longer with them."

I can just imagine the faces, old and young, of those Nephite people
looking up at the Savior and pleading him with their eyes to stay just
a little longer. His love for them was so pure, powerful, and perfect
that the thought of him leaving their presence, even for a short time,
compelled them to tears. Having felt so tangibly of the personalized
love that radiated from their savior, they yearned desperately for him
to stay. These verses are such a beautiful description of the reality
that each of us is in need of Christ's love. When we feel it, our
spirits recognize it as something special and yearn for it to remain.
There are people in this world, people we will meet, people we will
perform for this year whom have not in a long time or rarely at all
felt Christ's love for them. We have such a great opportunity to be
messengers of that love. As we read of Christ and strive to acquire
the attributes he demonstrated, we can be made vessels of his love.
Our hearts will be changed and enabled to love others the way that He
loves us. Once our hearts are changed, once love begins to be the
motivation for what we do, will we have the power to touch and change
others. As we gain a sincere love for those around us, those around us
will subsequently feel of Christ's love.

I love you guys and I love the Savior. The Gospel and all of its
principles are so true!

-Derek Davis

Tune My Heart

Hello everyone :)

The scripture study list for this week is:

Dec. 6 - hel. 14

Dec. 7 - 3 nephi 1

Dec. 8 - 3 nephi 3

Dec. 9 - 3 nephi 6

Dec. 10 - 3 nephi 8

Dec. 11 - 3 nephi 11

Just some thoughts I had:

This Fast Sunday I was writing down the titles to some of my favorite songs and one I wrote down was "Come Thou Fount". As I continued to write the lyrics to the song "Come, thou fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing Thy grace" the phrase Tune my Heart really brought me to pondering. What does this phrase call me to do? Tune my heart. I looked the word tune up in the dictionary and these are some of what i found:
1- to adjust for proper functioning;
2- to adjust so as to make it compatible in frequency with a transmitting apparatus whose signals are to be received;
3- to bring (someone or something) into harmony.

How incredible are those statements.

As we continue to dig deeper into these meanings this is what I gathered:
From definition 1 - adjusting for proper functioning... We are the ones who need to change to become one with the proper way of functioning... each of us have our own unique styles and understandings - but the doctrine is the same in all the world - the way you live it shouldn't differ on where you are (I do understand some have to deal with more worldly temptations - but to each is given what the Lord knows they can handle *with His help*).
From definition 2 - Unless we have adjusted ourselves we will not be compatible to receive the promptings of the Holy Ghost. His messages Need to be received, so unless we are in tune with the spirit and make necessary adjustments, our plug to the answers we need may seem muddled and incomprehensible... so possibly - maybe it is the clearing of the frequency that needs to be adjusted.
From definition 3 - HARMONY: a pleasing combination of sounds that are played at the same time; rather than sounds I think the word Actions is applicable. When we are on the road to becoming who our Father and Savior see us becoming - we are also on the road to harmony. What we constantly do, we eventually become.

Tune Your Heart. We all need it. No one is so humble that a little bit of tuning is not necessary...
also!! Merry December :) May we remember that our Savior, the Redeemer of our Souls is the reason we celebrate this season at all. Were it not for him there would not be such a sense of cheer as there is during the holidays. Remember to tune your heart towards Him :) love you all so much!

Love,

Jessica Jenkins

Get Your Tickets!

Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10:00am for the Young Ambassador show in the de Jong Concert Hall here at BYU! We have performances January 12-14 at 7:30 along with a Saturday matinee at 2:00. Seats will go fast, so buy your tickets now! Use the promo code, Harmony, to get

two tickets for the price of one!

Buy tickets here:

http://arts.byu.edu

Tune into ABC 4’s “Good Things Utah” tomorrow December 5^th at 10:00am to see the Young Ambassadors perform, talk about our show, and the release of our new album!