It has occurred to me that I have learned few things at church.  Nearly everything that I've learned has been taught to me by the Spirit.  The value of church meetings is not in what I learn there, but in being put in touch with the Holy Ghost.  That is the major purpose of church meetings:  to put a person in a setting and in a frame of mind where the Spirit can reach him.

A good example is my experience as I investigated the Church.  I knew nothing, about religion or about anything else.  My mind was a blank slate.  I was depressed, lost, anxious, and knew not which way to turn nor what to do.  In my extremity I cried out to the Lord, hoping that He was there and actually existed, and that He knew me and would hear me.  It was the first time I had prayed.  The prayer lasted perhaps four hours.  A voice came into my mind.  It said, "Everything is going to be all right."

The voice was so real that I was shocked.  I was flabbergasted.  I was dumbfounded.  I was all alone, and yet a voice had spoken.  Upon the blank slate that was my mind, there were suddenly some indelible things written.

One, was that God is real.

Two, was that God knows me, that He cares, and that He will answer earnest prayer.

Three, was that everything was going to be all right, and that I wasn't going to remain in my prison of darkness and confusion.

The Spirit now had an eager learner.  Within two weeks a Book of Mormon was given to me.  As I read, light came into my head.  I actually felt it.  It pushed the darkness out.  I couldn't get enough of that feeling.

I desired baptism.  I found where the missionaries lived, knocked on their door, and asked them to teach me.

The amazing thing thereafter is that I never learned one thing from those flannel board discussions.  I remember waiting for the missionaries to start teaching me about the Book of Mormon, because I was excited and wanted to talk about it, but the discussions never got around to that.  I thought that I was going to learn great and marvelous things from the discussions, but the Spirit had already taught me.  The missionary discussions were merely a formality that I had to endure to fulfill a prerequisite for baptism.

I began attending church in November 1966, over three months before my baptism.  There have been few Sundays since then in which I haven't been at church.  Even during this COVID-19 lock down I can say that I'm still attending church because Marjorie and I have our own sacrament meetings, which we love.

As I think back over 53 years of church attendance I can think of only one thing that I learned from the talks or lessons that were presented.  I'm sure there were many more; but the one thing I learned was from the Teacher Development course taught by Grant Lindsay during Sunday School.  I learned there how to organize and teach a concise lesson with a purpose.

I can think of many "aha moments" in church when the Spirit has taught me something that was triggered by the speaker or the teacher.  These weren't points that the teacher was trying to make, but were things that the Spirit wanted me to know.

And so, one of the most important prayers that we can make is to say, "Teach me.  Teach me what I need to know.  Teach me what Thou would have me learn."  I rarely say that in a prayer but what new thoughts come.  It is then that I reach for pen and paper, and more thoughts come.  Such was my prayer before I began writing this article.  I didn't know where it was going to go.  There is no more exciting feeling than to feel pure knowledge begin to flow into my mind and to come out through my pen.

Nephi said, "I ... did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things."  (1 Nephi 18:3).

What was happening there was that Nephi had reached a point in his ship-building project where he wasn't sure how to proceed.  So he went to the mountain, prayed, and said, "Teach me."

The same thing happened to me yesterday.  I put a cabinet together in my shop.  It was glued and screwed together when I realized it was wrong.  This cabinet couldn't be like the others that I'd put together.  The glue hadn't set up, so I knocked the cabinet apart, cleaned up the glue, and set the cabinet parts aside.  I was obviously too tired to think straight, so I quit for the day.

That night I prayed for instruction, and for the ability to successfully and satisfactorily complete my project.  Just before arising this morning, from out of nowhere, came the solution.  It wasn't at all what I had previously imagined.  It was all so simple.  I wasn't even thinking about my problem when the solution came.  I now know how to make a different part, make adjustments to the existing parts, and to put them all together.

Joseph Smith uttered many "Teach me" prayers.  The results of those prayers were the First Vision; the visit of Moroni; the bestowal of the Aaronic Priesthood by John the Baptist; the appearance of Jesus, Moses, Elias, and Elijah as they bestowed keys; and the vision of the three degrees of glory as recorded in D&C 76.

President Joseph F. Smith sat meditating upon the spirit world when the vision of the world of spirits opened to him as recorded in D&C 138.  His meditation was a prayer that said, "Teach me."

President David O. McKay used a practice wherein he knelt in a quiet room, began a prayer, asked for instruction, and then fell silent without ending the prayer.  He let his mind go blank, and then the Spirit filled it with things that he needed to know and to do.

I tried that once.  One thing after another came into my head.  There were five items--five things that I was to do.  They were big things.  Realizing that I wasn't going to be able to remember them all, I ended the prayer so that I could write everything down that I'd been told.  I began the list, but I'd already lost one.  I only got four recorded.  After several months of effort I accomplished three of the items, but the fourth one is still not done.  I'm to figure out Andrew H. Adams and Lydia Temperance in my family history, and to get their temple work completed.  I can't find the information.

I need to have another "Teach me" prayer.

I've learned to have pen and paper at the ready.

Addendum:

Marjorie says in response to this: "I had some good thoughts.  They were so good that I thought I should write them down.  I didn't want to wake James up, and I didn't know where a pen and paper were, so I thought that I'd write them down in the morning.  Now I can't remember what they were.  I can't even remember what they were about."