Exploring Resources for Welfare and Self-Reliance

From the following list, choose and complete one or more activities that best apply to your situation.

Note: You will need the internet and a projector for this lesson.

Read the following statement:

“God has given us many tools to better understand His comprehensive instructions for our happiness in life. . . . He has given myriad tools of modern technology to help us in our walk of discipleship. Many of these marvelous instruments can be found at LDS.org.

“Why has our Heavenly Father given us so much help? Because He loves us. . . . In other words, Heavenly Father is our God, and God is a mentor to us” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Our Father, Our Mentor,” Ensign, June 2016, 4–5).

Go on guided tour of LDS.org. As the facilitator displays different pages of LDS.org on the projector, imagine that you are taking a tour and that the facilitator is your tour guide who can answer any questions. Be as creative as possible on how you approach the guided tour and invite other learners to answer the questions that come up.

The facilitator should spent time at the following sites:

The Welfare Department provides great resources that can help you coach associates to become more self-reliant. Lee Hardy, the director of Deseret Employment, made the following call to action last year:

“Self-Reliance Services (SRS) has produced My Foundation: Principles, Skills, Habits as a tool to help individuals and families better understand how to become spiritually and temporally self-reliant. Found on Gospel Library under the Self-Reliance tab, this material can be easily accessed and studied.

“For the next several months, I am asking that each staff meeting and council meeting begin with a reference to this material. Take time to read and watch videos together that will enhance your understanding of the aspects of self-reliance we hope to reinforce with our associates and within our own families.

“Over the next few months, SRS will begin to roll out the self-reliance initiative to many more stakes in the U.S. and Canada. We need to be prepared to begin reinforcing this material with our associates, who will undoubtedly be participants in this initiative. As we do so, we will be offering a wonderful composite of the best Deseret Employment and Self-Reliance Services have to offer in helping individuals ‘foster greater hope and self-reliance’” (Deseret Employment Update [Aug. 2016]).

As a group, browse through the My Foundation booklet. Individually read through at least a page of one of the lessons and think about the principle explained. Then, as a group, discuss the following questions:

What are some of the topics covered in My Foundation?

What did you like about what you read?

How can this material be helpful when working with associates?

One job coach trainer’s planned to implement My Foundation teachings with his associates by focusing on three principles, skills, or habits during a three-week period. He used these materials in the weekly development plans by showing related videos and then discussing them. These discussions were usually fewer than five minutes long. Here are some of the things he focused on:

Faith (to encourage associates to act on the development plan)

Use Time Wisely (to discuss associates’ progress on goals on their development plan each day and each week)

Obedience (to discuss the power of the DI program and the blessings of obeying the AWARE standards of attendance, productivity, and so forth)

As a group, discuss the following:

How can you take advantage of and appropriately share the material in My Foundation with associates?

“Brethren, study the revealed principles and doctrines first. Read the handbooks regarding Church welfare; take advantage of the Internet website providentliving.org; reread the June 2011 Ensign article on the Church welfare plan. Find out about the Lord’s way of providing for His Saints. Learn how the principles of care for the needy, service to neighbor, and self-reliance complement each other. . . .

"Once you studied the doctrines and principles of the Churchwide welfare plan, seek to apply what you have learned to the needs of those within your stewardship” (Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Providing in the Lord’s Way,” Ensign or Liahona, Nov. 2011, 55).

Individually, take four or five minutes to further your knowledge of what the Lord has already revealed about welfare and self-reliance. Choose to study one of the following resources. As you do study these resources, consider associates who are struggling to become self-reliant. Then answer the following questions:

What are the doctrine and principles of welfare and self-reliance?

What are some obstacles to my associate’s path to self-reliance?

What self-reliance principle(s) can I apply to help this associate diminish or eliminate this obstacle in his or her life?

How can I apply this principle (or these principles)?

Resources:

Form groups of three and discuss the following questions:

What did you learn or review about welfare and self-reliance from these resources?

What insights did you get about how to assist an associate to become self-reliant?

How can continual study these resources help you to assist associates to become self-reliant?