Cultivate good, valuable friends
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Young Aaronic Priesthood bearers were urged at the Saturday evening priesthood session by Elder Malcolm S. Jeppsen to, "Look closely at your friends. Cultivate good friends. They're so valuable."
Elder Jeppsen of the Seventy said he was amazed some years ago when he, as a physician, examined a young man about the age of Aaronic Priesthood holders and found him to be an alcoholic."He told me that he had begun having alcoholic drinks at a very early age due to the encouragement of his so-called friends," Elder Jeppsen recalled. "I wondered to myself, are friends that encourage us to break the Word of Wisdom really our true friends?"
He decried what he said was deceptive advertising in magazines and newspapers about cigarettes.
"The end results are not nearly so pretty," he emphasized. They include oxygen masks and intravenous medications, pain and misery, "and literally hours of gasping for breath."
"Remember approximately 5,000 people quit smoking each day," he said. "Another 1,000 die from cigarette smoking each day, or one every 90 seconds in the United States alone."
"You don't have to reject your friends who are on the wrong path," he remarked. "You don't even have to give them up necessarily. You can be their caring friend, ready to help them when they are ready to be helped."
He urged his listeners to "cultivate our Savior and Redeemer Jesus Christ as your friend above all."
