11/09/2025
Sunday, November 9, 2025, stake communication director, Michael Clifton, joined a number of other civic and community leaders for the 15th annual Remembrance Day event hosted by Muslims Remember, an organization of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'at Canada, at the Bai'tul Kareem Mosque in Cambridge.
After bringing greetings on behalf of the stake, recognizing his own family members and friends who served in military conflict, and expressing gratitude for the event hosts and their example of seeking peace amongst all nations, Michael offered a reflection based on President Russell M. Nelson's talk, "Peacemakers Needed," saying,
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History is doused completely in the sacred blood of martyrs. Both the soldiers who have served in battlefields throughout the world, seeking to preserve the freedoms of their families and countries, and those who have served closer to home, in factories, in hospitals, and, indeed, in the home itself, seeking to support the same cause, deserve to be remembered with sober thankfulness.
Also to be remembered are the vices that cause, and the virtues that can help to prevent, those sacrifices from ever being needed again. No one fought in any war for the purpose of ensuring that there would be another.
Russell M. Nelson, who was president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 2018 until his death one-and-a-half months ago at the age of 101, taught that as followers of Jesus Christ, who bears the title “Prince of Peace,” that if we are to seek peace generally, we must seek to be peacemakers personally.
He said, "how we treat each other really matters! …I am asking us to interact with others in a higher, holier way…Contention reinforces the false notion that confrontation is the way to resolve differences; but it never is. Contention is a choice. Peacemaking is a choice. You have your agency to choose contention or reconciliation. I urge you to choose to be a peacemaker, now and always."
Amongst the most important virtues that we can develop to overcome contention and help to instill peace in our nations, neighbourhoods, homes, and hearts, are the virtues of charity, mercy, humility.
In seeking to lift ourselves and others toward a holier and happier way of being, President Nelson said, “there is no room for prejudice, condemnation, or contention of any kind,” and he advised, "If you are serious about helping to … [build] relationships [of peace and happiness] that will last throughout the eternities, now is the time to lay aside bitterness. Now is the time to cease insisting that it is your way or no way. Now is the time to stop doing things that make others walk on eggshells for fear of upsetting you. Now is the time to bury your weapons of war. If your verbal arsenal is filled with insults and accusations, now is the time to put them away.
"…Let us show that there is a peaceful, respectful way to resolve complex issues and an enlightened way to work out disagreements."
In short, now is the time that remembrance requires us to adopt the attitude of peacemaking toward all.
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