Gospel Story Finder

On a quiet November night in 1943, Nellie Middleton heard her doorbell ring. It was dark outside, but she knew enough not to have the lights on when she opened the door. Nearly three years had passed since German bombs had first fallen near her home, and Nellie continued to darken her windows at night to keep herself and her daughter safe from air raids.
With her lights out, Nellie opened the door. A young man was standing on her front step, his face in shadow. He extended his hand and quietly introduced himself as Brother Ray Hermansen. His accent was undeniably American.4
A lump came to Nellie’s throat. After their branch disbanded, she and other women in Cheltenham had longed to take the sacrament more regularly. The United States had recently sent troops to England to prepare for an Allied offensive against Nazi Germany. Once it had occurred to Nellie that some of the American soldiers stationed in her town might be Latter-day Saints who could bless the sacrament, she had asked her stepsister, Margaret, to paint a picture of the Salt Lake Temple and place it in town. Below the picture was a message: “If any soldier is interested in the above, he will find a warm welcome at 13 Saint Paul’s Road.”5
Had this American seen her poster? Did he have authority to bless the sacrament? Nellie shook his hand and welcomed him inside.
Ray was a twenty-year-old Latter-day Saint soldier from Utah and a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. Although he was stationed ten miles away, he had heard about the Salt Lake Temple painting from another Church member and obtained leave to visit the address. He had walked to Nellie’s home on foot, which was why he had arrived after dark. When Nellie told him about her desire to take the sacrament, he asked her when he could come to administer the ordinance to her.
On November 21, Nellie, her daughter, and three other women welcomed Ray to their Sunday meeting. Nellie opened the meeting with prayer before the group sang “How Great the Wisdom and the Love.” Ray then blessed and passed the sacrament, and all four women bore testimony of the gospel.
Soon other Latter-day Saint soldiers heard about the meetings at Saint Paul’s Road. Some Sundays, Nellie’s living room was so full that people had to sit on the staircase.6

My own childhood is a testament of the powerful influence a Christian adult can have on the life of a child. My mother died when I was four years old, and my grandmother helped care for me and my siblings. She belonged to the Salvation Army church, and she taught us to pray, love our enemies, and treat others kindly. Her guidance during those few critical years laid the foundation for my future choices.

May brings Teacher Appreciation Week, and youth of the Jurupa California Stake did not let their teachers be forgotten. Each student invited the best teacher he or she had ever had to a teacher appreciation dinner held at the stake center.
During the dinner, the young men and young women provided musical entertainment, and Bishop David Hanson of the Jurupa Fourth Ward spoke about Christ as the Master Teacher. Many of the 50 teachers who attended the dinner wrote thank-you notes commenting on how impressed they are with the youth of the Church and with the Church’s emphasis on education.

Following the concert in Prague, Czechoslovakia, a choir member went outside Smetana Hall and walked up to greet a father and mother and their teenager, but they were unable to communicate. Very shortly a young man stepped up to translate. As he talked, he said that the couple were his parents, that he had gone to the United States as an exchange student, had found the Church, and had been baptized. But he said that his parents were very much against his decision and that he had practically forced them to come to the concert that evening. He explained, however, that during the concert, “they come on fire.” “We talked for a few more minutes, then I turned to the parents and said to the English-speaking son, ‘Tell your parents that if they want to be truly happy, they will join the Church. Tell them the gospel is true. Tell them that I love them.’ The Spirit was overpowering! They hugged me. They kissed me. They held my hand. And they said they would see the missionaries.”

It’s easy to say, “The time isn’t right.” But there is danger in procrastination. Years ago I worked for a man in California. He hired me, he was kind to me, he seemed to regard me highly. I may have been the only Latter-day Saint he ever knew well. I don’t know all the reasons I found to wait for a better moment to talk with him about the gospel. I just remember my feeling of sorrow when I learned, after he had retired and I lived far away, that he and his wife had been killed in a late night drive to their home in Carmel, California. He loved his wife. He loved his children. He had loved his parents. He loved his grandchildren, and he will love their children and will want to be with them forever.

Now, I don’t know how the crowds will be handled in the world to come. But I suppose that I will meet him, that he will look into my eyes, and that I will see in them the question: “Hal, you knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Illustration by David Malan/Malan Creative
I have always wanted to play in the Orchestra at Temple Square, the orchestra of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I play the clarinet and have a degree in music, but it’s unlikely I will ever get the opportunity.
After all, I live in New Zealand.
The Holy Ghost reminds me, however, that I can “be content” (Alma 29:3) as a musical pioneer for the Church in New Zealand and other areas. My first calling at age 18 was as music leader in the nursery. Since then, I have been blessed to direct and produce stake and ward musical productions, as well as play the piano in Primary. I have shared music across New Zealand and in the Philippines. I have sung a duet at the Provo Missionary Training Center.
Music has kept me in the Church throughout a difficult battle with anxiety and depression. When I felt I couldn’t do anything else, I knew I could say yes to helping with music. Music helps me see the world through spiritual eyes.
I get to create music with my wife and three children. Together, we have performed in the ward, created a musical contribution for a missionary broadcast in the Auckland New Zealand Mission, and sung for an online stake conference. I know how the word of God, through Church hymns, invites the Holy Ghost and can touch hearts in our families and wards.
I continue to love the Orchestra at Temple Square from afar, but I know we are blessed when we seek opportunities to serve and praise the Lord wherever we are and in whatever way we can (see Psalm 150:6). I am grateful we can share our testimonies through our gifts and talents, including music. We are blessed, and we bless others, as we share those gifts and talents with God’s children and “lift where we stand.”

There is a particular challenge we face as Latter-day Saints in establishing and maintaining friendships. Because our commitment to marriage, family, and the Church is so strong, we often feel challenged by constraints of time and energy in reaching out in friendship to others beyond that core group. I experienced this dilemma personally in recent days as I tried to steal a few moments at home to prepare this talk. Twice, friends from my past, whom I love dearly but see only occasionally, dropped in to visit. During what ought to have been choice times of reunion and reminiscence, I ironically found myself growing inwardly impatient for the visits to end so that I could get back to writing my talk about friendship!

I have since felt ashamed. How selfish we can be. How unwilling to be inconvenienced, to give, to bless and be blessed. What kind of parents or neighbors or servants of the Lord Jesus Christ can we be without being a friend? In this information age, is not friendship still the best technology for sharing the truths and way of life we cherish? Is not our reluctance voluntarily to reach out to others in friendship a significant obstacle to helping God accomplish His eternal purposes?

Years ago when I was serving as a bishop, a recently converted family moved into our rural Utah community. These good people had joined the Church in the eastern United States and had been warmly fellowshipped and put to work in a small branch there. When they came to our larger, more-established ward, they somehow slipped through the cracks. Some of the family members, particularly the father, became disenchanted with the Church and its members.

One Sunday morning when I noticed the father was missing from priesthood meeting, I left the meetinghouse and drove to his home. He invited me in, and we had a very honest conversation about the struggle he was having with his new faith and neighbors. After exploring various possibilities for responding to his concerns, none of which seemed to appeal to him very much, I asked him with a tone of frustration in my voice just what we could do to help him. I’ve never forgotten his reply:

“Well, bishop,” he said (and I will need to paraphrase here slightly), “for heaven’s sake, whatever you do, please don’t assign me a friend.”

I learned a great lesson that day. No one wants to become a “project”; we all want spontaneously to be loved. And, if we are to have friends, we want them to be genuine and sincere, not “assigned.”

Brothers and sisters, my message today is very simple: if we truly want to be tools in the hands of our Heavenly Father in bringing to pass His eternal purposes, we need only to be a friend. Consider the power of each one of us, 10 million strong, of our own free will and choice reaching out to those not yet of our faith in unconditional friendship. We would no longer be accused of offering warm bread and a cold shoulder. Imagine the consequences for good if each active family in the Church offered consistent concern and genuine friendship to a less-active family or a new-member family. The power is in each one of us to be a friend. Old and young, rich and poor, educated and humble, in every language and country, we all have the capacity to be a friend.

Our Savior, shortly before His Crucifixion, said to His disciples: “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends.” Having been so richly blessed by Christ’s friendship, I pray that we will now be to others what He is to us: a true friend. At no time will we be more Christlike than when we are a friend. I testify of the inestimable value of friends in my own life and express my gratitude to all of them this morning. I know that when we offer ourselves in friendship, we make a most significant contribution to God’s work and to the happiness and progress of His children. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

President Nelson, in his address, gave several suggestions3 to help us increase our faith. May I relate how I worked on some of them.
Study. I studied President Nelson’s address during last general conference and was reminded of Alma’s invitation to experiment upon the word and “exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if [we] can no more than desire to believe.”4
Yes, it was easy for me to choose to believe in Jesus Christ. But in order to allow the Atonement to fully apply to me I needed to work harder. This provided an opportunity for me to remember and to ponder upon the Savior’s ministry, and His infinite Atonement. I soon felt my faith growing and my hope increase. And I had an eternal perspective on the events of the last few weeks.
My heart swelled with gratitude as the Spirit helped me to recognize the hand of the Lord in so many details of these events and His perfect timing. Even behind my mother’s request to be brought back home. This allowed my mother for her last few days in her mortal life to be with her loved ones, feel more peace, and see her beloved doctor son taking care of her. Indeed, the Lord blessed me with this unique opportunity to be close to her whilst trying to provide the best medical care I could. I am so grateful for the precious moments of that Saturday afternoon I spent with her a few hours before she died, discussing nonmedical things. My siblings and I have never been as close as we were when we were all united in taking care of my mother and later, of my widowed father.
I remember that when mom was dying, and as I still felt her weak pulse during the resuscitation treatment, I laid my hands upon her head with the intention to give her a priesthood blessing to command her to stay with us, but my mouth could not utter what I intended to say. Instead, I said a silent prayer for the Lord’s will to be fulfilled and the outcome to be the best for her and for all of us.
This was indeed the best option, under the Master’s hand. As taught by Elder Neil L. Andersen, my faith grew as “a gift from heaven that comes as we choose to believe and as we seek it and hold on to it.”5
The “act in faith” part, apart from following President Nelson’s and Alma’s invitation, also consisted of writing and sharing my testimony to my relatives and through social media, and through this article I was invited to write. Yes, my increasing faith in Jesus Christ helped me feel His love and removed the mountain of doubts before me.
I know Jesus Christ loves me and each one of us. I know we can rely upon that love and that “the trial of [my] faith [is] much more precious than . . . gold,”6 as the trials we experience are there to help us increase in faith and be blessed.
May we all have that desire to work on increasing our faith in Jesus Christ to be able to remove the mountains before us, and to receive the blessings our Heavenly Father desires to bestow upon us.
Ifanomezana Rasolondraibe was named an Area Seventy in April 2019. He is married to Felambolafotsy Cardiss Keithy Suman Ratsitobaina; they are the parents of three children. Elder and Sister Rasolondraibe reside in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

While on a Church assignment in Cusco, Peru, my wife and I attended a combined Relief Society and Melchizedek Priesthood class. The teacher that day was the adult Gospel Doctrine teacher. Because of scheduling issues during the first two meetings, only about 20 minutes remained for him to teach what he had prepared.
He began by asking all members to stand who had joined the Church during the past two years. Five members stood. He wrote the number 5 on the board and then said, “Brothers and sisters, it is wonderful that we have these 5 members with us who have recently joined the Church. The only problem is that during the past two years, we baptized 16 new converts in this ward.”
He then wrote the number 16 next to the number 5 and with great earnestness asked, “So, brothers and sisters, what are we going to do?”
A sister raised her hand and said, “We need to go find them and bring them back.”
The teacher agreed and then wrote the word rescue on the board. “We’ve got 11 new members to bring back,” he responded.
He then read a quote from President Thomas S. Monson about the importance of rescuing. He also read from the New Testament about how the Savior went after lost sheep (see Luke 15:6). Then he asked, “So how will we bring them back?”
Hands went up, and he called on one member after another. Class members had suggestions about how they as a ward family or as individuals could work together to help recent converts return to church. Then the teacher asked, “So if you were walking down the street and saw a man you recognized as one of these recent converts on the other side of the street, what would you do?” One member said, “I would cross over and greet him. I would tell him how much we need him to come back and how eager we are to have him join with us again.”
Others in the class agreed and offered additional specific suggestions about how to help these members. There was an enthusiasm in the room, a determination to do what needed to be done to help these recently baptized members find their way back to full activity.
My wife and I left this lesson with a renewed desire to do something ourselves to help someone return to activity in the Church. I believe that everyone in the class left with such a feeling. Following this experience, I asked myself: What made this short lesson so effective? Why did everyone leave the class feeling so motivated to live the gospel more fully?
While participating in the class in Peru, I could feel the love the teacher had for those present as well as for the recent converts he was inviting class members to activate. Love seemed to permeate the room—from teacher to learner, from learner to teacher, from one learner to another, and from learners to the recent converts.
When a teacher’s motive is to cover the lesson material, the teacher focuses on content rather than on the needs of each individual learner. The Peruvian teacher seemed to feel no need to cover anything. He simply wanted to inspire class members to reach out to their brothers and sisters in love. Love for the Lord and love for each other constituted the driving force. Love was the motive. When love is our motive, the Lord will strengthen us to accomplish His purposes to help His children. He will inspire us with what we as teachers need to say and how we should say it.
The teacher in Peru did not read from the lesson manual as he taught. I am convinced he used the manual or conference talks to prepare for the class, but when he taught, he taught from the scriptures. He recounted the story of the lost sheep and recited the following verse: “And when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren” (Luke 22:32). He shared President Monson’s invitation to all Church members to rescue those who have lost their way. The doctrines at the center of his lesson were faith and charity. Class members needed enough faith to act, and they needed to act out of love.
When the doctrines of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ are taught with clarity and conviction, the Lord strengthens both learner and teacher. The more class members offered their suggestions for reaching out to their brothers and sisters who were less active, the closer everyone felt to the Savior, who constantly reached out to others during His earthly ministry. Doctrine is the key to effective gospel learning and teaching. It unlocks hearts. It unlocks minds. It opens the way for the Spirit of God to inspire and edify everyone present.
Great gospel teachers recognize that they are not actually the teachers at all. The gospel is taught and learned through the Spirit. Without the Spirit, the teaching of gospel truths cannot lead to learning (see D&C 42:14). The more the teacher gives inspired invitations to act, the more the Spirit will be present during the lesson. The Peruvian teacher gave an inspired invitation. Then, as class members responded with suggestions, the feeling of the Spirit grew and strengthened everyone.
The teacher was not trying to cover the lesson. Rather, he was trying to uncover the lesson that was already inside the learner. By inviting class members through the power of the Spirit, the teacher helped members discover their own desire to act—to reach out to their brothers and sisters in love. As class members shared their ideas, they inspired each other because they were jointly drawing upon the Spirit.

Some years ago, Elder ElRay L. Christiansen told about one of his distant Scandinavian relatives who joined the Church. He was quite well-to-do and sold his lands and stock in Denmark to come to Utah with his family. For a while he did well as far as the Church and its activities were concerned, and he prospered financially. However, he became so caught up in his possessions that he forgot about his purpose in coming to America. The bishop visited him and implored him to become active as he used to be. The years passed, and some of his brethren visited him and said: “Now, Lars, the Lord was good to you when you were in Denmark. He has been good to you since you have come here. … We think now, since you are growing a little older, that it would be well for you to spend some of your time in the interests of the Church. After all, you can’t take these things with you when you go.”

Jolted by this remark, the man replied, “Vell, den, I vill not go.” But he did! And so will all of us!

I remember the time so well as we were preparing for my very first invasion, sitting out in the Pacific on a troop ship with three thousand men aboard. This large group of soldiers represented the first seven waves in the invasion force. Prior to disembarking, one of the Protestant chaplains held a final church service. He had us all look around and get acquainted with each other and then he said: “Now, gentlemen, I don’t want to worry you, but do you realize by tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, many of you will be standing before your Maker? Are you ready?”
Well, how would you feel, young men, if that challenge were hurled at you? At that time I was almost nineteen. Shortly after the service I found a secluded spot on the ship and called time-out and talked to my Heavenly Father. I didn’t sleep that night nor did most of the men. The next morning as the seven waves of infantry went ashore, many not making it, I dug my first foxhole and took another time-out. I remember the event well. I called upon my Heavenly Father and said, “I really need to know if thou art there.” Heavenly Father spoke to my mind, and I haven’t been the same since.

To Joseph Fielding Smith, “family is the most important organization in time or in eternity.”7 He was raised in a family governed by love, faith, high moral standards, and diligent work ethic, and he sought consistently to bring those same principles into his own family. (See chapters 4, 15, and 16 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Fielding Fielding Smith.)
He married Louie Emily Shurtliff in the Salt Lake Temple in 1898. One year later he was called on a mission to Great Britain for two years and was loyally supported by his wife. Upon his return, the two resumed their lives together and were blessed with the births of two daughters. Sadly, during a difficult third pregnancy Louie passed away.
In his sorrow Joseph prayed, “Help me, I pray Thee, to so live that I shall be worthy to meet her in eternal glory, to be united again with her, never again to be separated. … Help me to rear my precious babies that they shall remain pure and spotless throughout their lives.”8
At the urging of his father, the bereaved father of two prayerfully sought for a wife and a mother for his young children. His righteous desires were blessed in having Ethel Georgina Reynolds brought into his life. They were married in November 1908 in the Salt Lake Temple. This marvelous woman became the mother of Joseph’s first two daughters and later gave birth to nine additional children.

As a young man I considered and learned the doctrine of eternal marriage and family. This was of great interest to me and a determining factor in my conversion. I had witnessed the breakup of my parents’ marriage; I had seen sorrow caused by death without spiritual knowledge and friends marrying without temple ordinances. I wanted to avoid these tragedies.
The true concept of marriage and family, the unit composed of a husband, wife, and children sealed together, was instituted at the beginning by God to create eternal families. That foundation principle became my vision and my goal and also reality as my companion and I were sealed in the temple in Zollikofen, Switzerland. As a husband and father and later as a grandfather, I was and still am responsible for the development, temporal support, protection, and salvation of my family.

Recently a young couple whom Kathy and I love wrote me about the precious baby they were expecting.

The father wrote: “[When my wife was] 10 weeks pregnant we found out that our miracle baby has the genetic condition of trisomy 21, commonly known as Down syndrome. We felt the pressure … from the medical field to consider termination. A few weeks later we discovered … our unborn child … would require multiple heart surgeries in her first year of life. Throughout this process as we prayed fervently for divine help, … we have felt the Spirit give us comfort. We received revelation and understanding that our daughter is an elite child of Heavenly Father and has an immense desire to be in our family and to come to earth.”

The baby’s mother wrote: “[We] were completely shocked, confused, and honestly devastated by the news. … When I was 14 weeks pregnant, we found out that our baby had multiple congenital heart defects, one that could be potentially fatal. We saw countless doctors and specialists from 10–18 weeks’ gestation. … At each of our appointments, we were asked if we wanted to continue with the pregnancy or terminate. … The Savior healed my heart and gave me a sense of peace and excitement about our baby girl. … [Heavenly Father] has shown me time and time again that He has a perfect plan for me [and] I trust Him.”

They excitedly welcomed their baby girl exactly one week ago today. She is theirs and they are hers forever.

Although he was a school teacher, my father raised animals and cared for a large garden and fruit orchard. In the summertime, it was a rule that we worked in the mornings in the garden or orchard; in the afternoons, we could play.
My father had a way of making our work pleasant. He could turn any chore into a game. He knew that we loved to play baseball. One day he told us to pick up fallen apples in the orchard and feed them to the pigs. We didn’t particularly enjoy that job. So he placed boards in the form of a man on the back of the pigpen. Then he stepped off the distance from the board form to a pitcher’s mound. From that point, we threw the gathered apples at the pretended man just as a baseball pitcher would in a game. Of course, the apples crashed against the board and split into pieces, and the pigs had a feast.

My brother Bryce and I have been best friends since we were little. I remember afternoons when we’d compete to see who could catch the most bees in a clear plastic cup or he’d “catch” ants on a piece of licorice.
When we were a little older, we read poetry and went for ice cream together, and everyone told us how lucky we were to have each other. Eventually I graduated from high school and went to college 750 miles away. Two years later he followed me. That year together at school was one of the best of my life. It was great to have him close again. But we both knew change was inevitable.
As Bryce’s 19th birthday got closer, we would talk for hours about how excited we both were for him to serve. We couldn’t wait to see where the Lord would ask him to go. The day finally came, and our family gathered as he read us the letter calling him to North Carolina. He’d report to the missionary training center in less than two months.
Suddenly, the reality that Bryce would be leaving hit me with more force than I’d ever imagined it would. That night I poured out my heart, begging Heavenly Father to send me peace. I would miss Bryce so much. It wasn’t that I didn’t think a mission was the right choice. We’d both known it was since we were little. I just needed comfort so I could support my brother as he prepared to enter the mission field.
One night, just a few weeks before Bryce would enter the missionary training center, the Spirit was especially strong as I prayed. I cried, telling Heavenly Father all the things Bryce might miss. Then a thought entered my heart: “Shelli, this is just mortality.” I opened my tearful eyes and looked up, wondering at its simplicity. I smiled, realizing that we were a family and that the blessings of our parents’ temple sealing could hold us together forever. Yes, Bryce was going to miss a lot, but we’d have an eternity to catch up.
The day we took Bryce to the missionary training center was one of the best days of my life. I’d been with him while he shopped for suits and journals, but nothing prepared me for what I saw that day. He was really a missionary. As I hugged him good-bye, I said a silent prayer of gratitude to Heavenly Father for this wonderful young man and all the years of friendship we’d shared. Those years had truly been a gift. And now, the next two years would be a gift to Him.

When I was a student in dental school, the financial outlook of our local economy was not very encouraging. Inflation dramatically decreased the value of currency from one day to the next.
I remember the year when I was to enroll in surgery practices; I needed to have all the necessary surgical equipment before enrolling that semester. My parents saved the needed funds. But one night something dramatic happened. We went to buy the equipment, only to discover that the amount of money we had to buy all the equipment now was sufficient to buy only a pair of surgical tweezers—and nothing else. We returned home with empty hands and with heavy hearts at the thought of my losing a semester of college. Suddenly, however, my mother said, “Taylor, come with me; let’s go out.”
We went downtown where there were many places that buy and sell jewelry. When we arrived at one store, my mother took out of her purse a small blue velvet bag containing a beautiful gold bracelet with an inscription that read, “To my dear daughter from your father.” It was a bracelet that my grandfather had given her on one of her birthdays. Then, before my eyes, she sold it.
When she received the money, she told me, “If there is one thing I am sure of, it is that you are going to be a dentist. Go and buy all the equipment you need.” Now, can you imagine what kind of student I became from that moment on? I wanted to be the best and finish my studies soon because I knew the high cost of the sacrifice she was making.
I learned that the sacrifices our loved ones make for us refresh us like cool water in the middle of the desert. Such sacrifice brings hope and motivation.

For most of his early life, the only sports Stanley Moleni played were rugby and basketball. But before his junior year of high school, after his family had moved from New Zealand to Hawaii, Stanley discovered football. “I fell in love with it,” he says. It didn’t hurt that he was naturally good at it too.

Coaches were impressed with his size. Stanley is six-feet-two inches tall, and at the time he was a lean 200 pounds.

“I was still learning, but by my senior year I started catching on and the coaches stuck me at outside linebacker. I was still only 205 pounds, and I was missing a lot of plays. I really didn’t know how to play the game that well,” he says.

That didn’t stop college coaches from showing interest in him—especially after he bulked up to 250 pounds. The sport he’d taken up for fun was suddenly his ticket to college. After a lot of thought, he signed a letter of intent to play football for BYU. But instead of enrolling in school immediately after high school graduation in 1994, Stanley moved to Utah and worked to save money for a mission.

“My whole life I was planning on a mission,” says Stanley, now known as Elder Moleni as he serves in the California Ventura Mission. “There was nothing that was going to stop me from coming on a mission.”

And that included the glamour of playing big-time college football.

Says Elder Moleni, “One of our investigators said that he really admired us because he knew we really believed in what we were teaching. When he said he admired me for coming on a mission and leaving my scholarship behind, it felt really good.”

And now just three months short of the completion of his mission, Elder Moleni is concentrating on the work at hand. Soon enough, he’ll be a college student and an outside linebacker.

“I’ll be behind physically. I know that,” he says about football. “But I see a parallel between my not knowing how to play football and missionary work. Through hard work and sacrifice I became better at football. And through hard work and faith in the Lord, I’ve had a successful mission.”

These powerful truths were life-changing for my friend Jen,12 who as a teenager caused a serious car accident. Though her physical trauma was severe, she felt exquisite pain because the other driver lost her life. “Someone lost their mom, and it was my fault,” she says. Jen, who just days before stood and recited, “We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, who loves us,”13 now questioned, “How could He love me?”
“The physical suffering passed,” she says, “but I didn’t think I would ever heal from the emotional and spiritual wounds.”
In order to survive, Jen hid her feelings deeply, becoming distant and numb. After a year, when she was finally able to talk about the accident, an inspired counselor invited her to write the phrase “I am a child of God” and say it 10 times daily.
“Writing the words was easy,” she recalls, “but I couldn’t speak them. … That made it real, and I didn’t really believe God wanted me as His child. I would curl up and cry.”
After several months, Jen was finally able to complete the task every day. “I poured out my whole soul,” she says, “pleading with God. … Then I began to believe the words.” This belief allowed the Savior to begin mending her wounded soul. The Book of Mormon brought comfort and courage in His Atonement.14
“Christ felt my pains, my sorrows, my guilt,” Jen concludes. “I felt God’s pure love and had never experienced anything so powerful! Knowing I am a child of God is the most powerful knowledge I possess!”

Disagreeing with my older sister was not unusual for my nine-year-old self. As with most brothers and sisters, our disagreements were more for the challenge of being the winner than for the subject of the argument.
This time, however, it seemed vital to my intellectual esteem that I be right. We were arguing about the clouds in the sky and the earth’s rotation. I had learned in my science class that the earth revolves in constant motion so I just knew that it wasn’t the clouds we saw moving across the sky, it was the earth rotating beneath them.
Since my sister and I couldn’t come to an agreement, we took the problem to our fact source: Mother. “Mom, do the clouds move or do they stay in one position and the earth moves beneath them,” we asked in unison, each anxious for her theory to be the correct one.
To my sister’s delight and my disappointment, mother explained that although the earth is constantly revolving, the clouds moved as the wind blew them across the sky. My understanding of earthly laws was incomplete and I had to alter my thinking process. There was more I needed to learn.
Fifteen years later I see how silly my idea was. I thought I could base all my observations of the physical world on the partial knowledge I had of it and be accurate in those observations. That is, until they were corrected by a more knowledgeable source.