Procrastination: loss of progress
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
To illustrate the consequences of procrastination, Elder Donald L. Hallstrom of the Seventy told of an incident regarding his son, then 11, who was assigned with other sixth graders to submit his favorite family recipe to be included in a cook book that would be distributed in the community.
"Brett's procrastination caused him to forget the assignment and be completely unprepared," related Elder Hallstrom in his priesthood session address. "Flustered, he turned to a fellow student seated nearby and confessed his problem. Trying to be helpful, the classmate said, 'I brought an extra recipe; if you want, use one of mine.' Brett quickly grabbed the recipe, wrote his name on it and turned it in, feeling he had escaped any consequences related to his lack of preparation."
Several weeks later, Elder Hallstrom said, he arrived home before going to evening Church meetings, having recently been called as stake president after several years as a bishop. "'There's something you need to see,' my wife, Diane said as I walked through the door. She handed me a bound book with a page marked. Glancing at the cover titled Noelani School's Favorites — 1985, I turned to the identified page and read 'Hallstrom Family, Favorite Recipe — Bacardi Rum Cake."'
"Many of us place ourselves in circumstances far more consequential than embarrassment, because of our procrastination to become fully converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ," Elder Hallstrom remarked. "We know what is right, but we delay full spiritual involvement because of laziness, fear, rationalization or lack of faith. We convince ourselves that 'someday I'm going to do it'; however, for many 'someday' never comes, and even for others who eventually do make a change there is an irretrievable loss of progress and surely regression."
