While sorting her late daughter’s belongings, Becky makes a surprising discovery that eventually takes her across the world to India, where her eyes are opened to a whole new world. Consumed with the desire to “do something” but unsure of what to do, the answer to Becky’s prayer is startlingly simple, and begins an effort that will eventually impact thousands, but most importantly, lead Becky to personal healing through Jesus Christ.

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TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn  0:03   Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people, who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. 

As someone who works full time – and maybe a little bit more than full time, because I really love my job – Saturdays are my only day to run errands. And when it comes to General Conference, I'm not organized enough to remember to get everything done ahead of the Saturday sessions. So I admit, sometimes I find myself on the road when conference starts. And I tell you this so that you'll understand why I remember that I was sitting in the parking lot of a dollar store when I first heard sister Craig's talk, "Eyes to See" from the October 2020 General Conference. 

I picked it up right as Sister Craig was telling the story of a friend who was in the middle of a painful divorce. That friend really just wanted to come to the chapel and go unnoticed on the back pew, because Sunday's had become really hard days for her with the change in her family situation. But there was a 16 year old girl who had other plans. 

She saw the sister sitting at the back of the chapel, and then made it a point to go and talk to her, to hug her, to comfort her that Sunday. And then she did it again and again, week after week after week. And Sister Craig quoted this friend who said, "It made such a difference in how I felt about coming to church. The truth is I started to rely on those hugs, someone noticed me, someone knew I was there, someone cared." And I of course, sat crying in my car in the parking lot, having all the feelings, because that concept of seeing others deeply from this talk, it resonated with my storyteller heart. 

It's basically the whole reason that "This Is the Gospel" exists. Because seeing people deeply is the key to the kind of charity that isn't just giving things away. It's the kind of charity that demands and offers us Christlike connection to every person, and the kind of charity that defines our Christian discipleship. 

The thing I loved most about Sister Craig's talk – look, I'm crying before we even get started – the thing I love about a Sister Craig's talk was that she acknowledged that in order for us to see others deeply, we first have to have eyes to see. And that part is going to take some introspection, and a commitment to examining the terms of our covenants. 

So today, we have one powerful story from Becky, a woman who desperately needed eyes to see, and how the Lord offered that gift to her in a truly unique way. 

A quick note, this story contains a brief mention of suicide and descriptions of disease that might be difficult for some sensitive listeners. Here's Becky.

Becky  2:41   My oldest daughter, Amber, was severely bipolar. Amber struggled in and out of mental institutions when she got into high school, for the next seven years, trying to find healing. And she eventually gave up and took her own life. I was devastated. The loss of a child is always soul rending, but the loss of a child through suicide is absolutely crushing. 

She was in college at the time that she died, and when we went through her things, we found that she had been sending part of the money we gave her for college every month to support an orphan in India. I was really surprised to find this out because, you know, typically college students are really struggling to make ends meet. But I think maybe because she suffered so much she just had a tender spot for the underdog. And I think it lifted her and it kind of helped keep her going. 

So we decided that her funeral, instead of having people send flowers, we just asked them to send donations to this little orphanage that she was sending money to. People were so generous than enough money was sent in that the orphanage asked me to be on the board of directors. And I thought, okay, if I'm going to be on this board, maybe I better go to India and see what it is I'm doing. 

But there was more than that. I was struggling to find healing for this gaping wound that seemed to have hit my own soul. And I was really hoping that when I got to this orphanage and saw what Amber was so involved in, that it would bring some closure for me, also. 

When I got to India, the children in the orphanage were darling. 54 of them, and this was back in 2000. As we would go from our hotel to the orphanage and then at night back again, on the streets of India, every time our car stopped at a stoplight, these beggars would just engulf us. Pounding on the windows and these were not normal beggars. Their faces were sunken. Some of them their eyes were gone. They had pus dripping down their arms and rotting hands and feet. I just have never seen anything like it. 

They're suffering to me just seemed almost palpable. And they were pounding the windows. And I was with three other women, and so we would just start talking to each other whenever the car started slowing down at a stoplight, because we didn't want to look at them. We didn't know what we could do for them. I said to our driver, "Who are these people?" And he said, "Oh, those are the lepers." I said, "What are you talking about? There's no leprosy in the world today." He goes, "Yeah, we have millions in India."

 And I thought, seriously? Millions of people live this way? Why doesn't somebody do something? At night when I would be in my bed trying to sleep, I would just keep thinking about these people. And I just thought, this problem is huge. What can I do? I mean, who am I? I'm a homemaker. I mean, I'm not anyone that could do anything. But I kept thinking, why doesn't somebody do something? And then finally I thought, well, duh, you're somebody do something. 

One night, I just started to pray. And I said, "If you want me to do something, you need to teach me. I mean, I have no idea what to do." And the thought just came to me, you can just look at them. And I thought, what? I just have to look at them? I mean, seriously, that's it? But I thought about it, I thought, well, maybe no one looks at them. Maybe they need to be validated or accepted as human beings. So I thought, well, you know, this is a little thing. 

Yes. Okay, so I can look at them. So the next day, I was determined to look at them. But, as we got in the car and started to go in the morning, it was just that same sense of feeling – so sad to look at them. I had a hard time. But then we came to a stoplight. And the driver said, "Becky, open the window, stick your head out and tell that woman to back away. I'm afraid that when the light turns green, I'm going to run over her." So I opened the window and put my head out. And here's this woman who had crawled up to the car on her belly. Now, you have to know that everyday in India in the summer in Chennai is over 100 degrees, that blacktop is boiling hot. But she crawled up, she was bone thin. This ragged, sari draping, and of course, saris are just a long piece of material, there's no – they're not really sewn. And so it was, you know, separating as she crawled and she was there scratching the tires on our car trying to get our attention. 

And I leaned my head out the window and yelled at her, you know, "Move away, move away." And she looked up, and there was just the split second that our gazes met. And I thought, oh my gosh, she's just a woman. She's just like me. She's probably a mother. I mean, I have no idea, right? I mean, it just, it was so fast. And then the light was green, the car was gone. And that was it. You know, there are moments of life – they're gone. You just can't get them back. And that was one of those moments, but I could not get her out of my mind the rest of the time I was in India. 

When I finally got home to Georgia, I had the same problem. I couldn't sleep because these images just haunted me at night. And finally, one morning after a long night, I got up and I thought okay, Becky, well, you can have insomnia forever, or you can do something about this. 

And so I called three of my friends who were also homemakers. These were people I'd worked with over the years in different organizations, Young Women's, Relief Society, whatever, and people that I knew were doers. And I said, "I have a project for us. It's a surprise, come on over to my home, and let's talk about it." They came over, we sat around my kitchen table and we talked about my experience. And I said "We gotta do something, ladies." 

And they said, "Well, what are your thoughts?" I said "Well, I don't really have any thoughts." "Well, what do you think we should do?" "I have no idea. But you are very creative people. Maybe together we can think of something. At the very least we need to raise money and hire a doctor. Those people over there need to get their wounds treated for one thing." So they said, "Okay, well we could raise money to hire a doctor."

 But really, we were clueless. Frankly, we threw out ideas, we didn't know anything, but we were excited. And everybody left excited. So when my husband, John, got home a few minutes after they left, I was still very excited. I said, "John, you are never gonna believe what I did today." He said, "Becky, those are words that strike fear into my heart" –does have a history. But he said, "Alright, hit me." And I said, "Okay, so, you know, my friends came over and we have formed a charity. We are going to serve people in India that have leprosy," and he just was stunned. And he said, "Seriously?" He said, "Becky, what do you know about leprosy?" And I thought, oh, well, nothing. And he said, "Okay, well, what do you know about medicine?" And I said, "Well, not a lot . . .  I mean, you know, nothing – essentially." And he said, "What do you know about India?"

 And I said, "I was there. I was there for 10 days." And he just kind of rolled his eyes and he said, "What do you know about running a nonprofit or a business?" And I said, "Okay, nothing." And he said, "Well, what do you think you're going to do?" And I said, "I don't know. But we're gonna do something. And I know, if people donate to us, we're gonna need a license that says that they don't have to pay taxes, you're an attorney, you need to get us that license." And he said, "I see." He said, "That's called a 501C3 license, and normally, Becky, when you ask the government for one you have to tell them what you're going to do." 

I said, "Great. Just tell them we're going to do something." And that's how we started. We were four housewives and a secretary. And we thought we were going to change the world, right? But I have learned since then, that it is possible for one person to make a difference in this world. There's all kinds of things written about the power of one, but when one person is joined by others, then that power is multiplied exponentially. And in our case, we just literally saw that happen. Not because we were smart, or we were anything, because we weren't nearly smart enough to create what has followed. And we made mistakes. And we were humbled. We encouraged each other though, rather than give up. 

But I kept wanting – when I would go back – to find that one lady, I just kept looking for her. I never did find her again. But God brought many wonderful people to help us.

One day, I was sitting in my bedroom in Norcross, Georgia, and the phone rang and the woman was on the phone. As she said, my name is, "Padma Venkatraman and I work in India with people that have leprosy, why don't we partner?" And I just thought, well, who are you? And I didn't learn from her then, but later, I learned that she was the daughter of the former President of India, that she had been the permanent woman's representative to the United Nations from India for 20 years, and that during much of that time, she was the Head of the Council on women's affairs. So essentially, the top woman in the world on women's issues. And so she had all the experience that we didn't have, and she began to teach us and to try to guide us. 

In India, there's a very strong caste system. The government claims that it was outlawed, and it no longer exists, but it's very much alive in the hearts of the people. And the leprosy affected know that they're not to be touched. In fact, they're that very, very bottom of the untouchable caste, there are hundreds of well defined levels within each caste. And they are the very, very bottom – they're the most cursed by God. In fact, they are so untouchable that until just the late 1980's, by law, if their shadow touched you, you were considered defiled, and you were justified by law in beating them almost to death. 

So they were frightened when we first started touching them. Because in India, typically the lighter your skin, the higher your caste. And since we have light skin, they were afraid that if anyone saw, that they would become angry, and that they would beat them because they were being touched by a high caste person. So they were in fact afraid of being touched by us. So there was a huge gulf there that we had to learn to cross, and they had to learn to be able to cross it. 

We could not find a single doctor that would work for us, because the leprosy affected are considered the very bottom of the untouchable caste. And they are so stigmatized that when we tried to hire doctors for any amount of money, they'd say, "Oh. I could never work with people that have leprosy, because then I would become defiled and all my patients would leave me and I would lose my entire practice. And so no, I can't work for you."

When Padma joined as she said, "Oh, I've worked with so many doctors at the UN, with leprosy, I can surely find you a doctor in India." And she did. And we were able to start a little mobile medical clinic. But every time I came to India, I noticed that the wounds weren't really getting any better. They seemed to be just the same to me. As I said to our doctor, "Hey, we're paying you all this money, how come these wounds aren't getting any better?" And he just looked so discouraged. He said, "You know what, it's because they never do anything I asked them to do." And I was astounded. I said, "What do you mean, why? Why won't they do what you asked him to do?" And he said, "I don't know." 

I asked Padma, and Padma was quiet for a few moments. And then she said, "You Americans. You come to India, and you just give things away. I know it probably makes you feel good, but the truth is, nothing given free has any value. And anytime you give something to someone, you diminish that person, because in essence, all you're doing is making them beggars to you. If you truly want to lift people, make them responsible for their own well-being. You can't just give away medical treatment." 

And I said, "They don't have any money". She says, "Well, they can pay two rupees" – which is like about three cents, U.S. – "and they'll feel like they're paying for their medical treatment." But she said, "If you want to lift them, give them the power to lift themselves." And so we started charging two rupees to see the doctor. Well, the amazing thing is the next time I came to India, those wounds were all healing. And the doctor said, "They're doing everything I asked them to do." 

So we created a campus at Rising Star Outreach. And in this campus – all of our students have to live on campus because the leprosy colonies are so far spread apart, they couldn't possibly come and go every day. They're not welcomed on public transport. And so the donor who donated the money to build the girls and the boys dorm, they got to name them.

And they decided to name the little girl's dorm, the "Amber Douglas Home for Girls," after my daughter, Amber, who really was the one that started all this. And I have to tell you that every time I go to India, and I've now been 66 times – but every time I walk on that campus as see her picture over the doorway, I get chills. And I think you know, there are hundreds of girls on this dorm right now, and there are hundreds, over the years that will go through this dorm, and their lives will be vastly different. They will be able to go back into normal society, they will lose this stigma of being an untouchable. And these girls will one day marry and have children, and those children's lives will be vastly different. Because their mothers came to Rising Star. 

And over time, thousands and thousands of little girls lives will be changed for the better, and all because my daughter suffered. I think that God is so incredibly wonderful. That he can take our most terrible tragedies, and he can find a way to bring beauty and joy out of them and healing out of them. 

There was a time in 2004, this terrible deadly tsunami hit the Indian Ocean, and was ranked as one of the top natural disasters ever recorded, because it killed a quarter of a million people across several countries. And our little children's home was right across the street from the ocean. And that tsunami, it was six feet high. It was traveling over 500 miles an hour, it destroyed everything in its path. And our children's home was on a hill, and we were above six feet. And so that wave literally came to the bottom of our porch and stopped and pulled back. And it was just this unbelievable, tender mercy of God. We didn't lose the single life. But all around us were tens of thousands of deaths. It was just absolute devastation. 

I caught the next flight to India, and spent the next several weeks trying to help these people recover. Trying to help mothers find their children or their husbands. We worked 18–20 hour days with just a few hours of sleep at night. And one day when we came home, the guy who was with me, his name was Gopi. He was the leader of our children's home. And he looked at me and he said, "Becky, I'm afraid I'm losing my belief in God. What kind of a God would do something like this?" He said, "Look at the suffering that we see, all day every day. I just can't believe that you talking about a loving God." 

And I felt like I needed to have an answer for him. And so I just sent a little prayer heaven ward, and I truly felt the presence of my daughter, who just immediately was in that car with us. And it was so sweet and so overwhelming. And I knew immediately the answer. And I said "Gopi, the hardest thing I ever did in my life was bury my daughter." And he knew that, because that's what had brought me to India. And he, I mean a little tear came down his cheek and I said, "But Gopi, if I hadn't buried Amber, the children in the children's home that you love – as if they were your own – where would they be today? If I had not buried Amber?" And I said, "You know Gopi, God is so wonderful. He gave the Atonement for us and that's why he can take anything that is so horrible in our lives, then He can bring good out of it. And He will bring good out of this. I don't know how, I have no idea what. But He will bring good." 

And by now, his head was in his hands and he was sobbing. Just, I mean, he was so stunned by this whole thing. He went home, years later after he left Rising Star I got an email from him and he said, "Becky, do you remember that night when we had that talk?" and I went, "Oh, do I remember that night. Yes, I do." And he said, "I didn't believe you." He said, "But you know what? You were right." He said, "Look at what's happened." He said, "All these international charities poured into India, those miserable huts that the fishermen lived in, have all been rebuilt, close – further inland, they now have water and electricity and bathrooms. They've made they've built schools for their children."

 And he said, "And the best thing of all," he said, "You know what, I just thought about it. I've never seen a higher caste person reach down to help a lower caste person in India. But at that time, they came from all over Chennai. They brought food, they brought blankets, they brought cooking oil, they brought bandages, water, they came by the hundreds. And they came day after day after day trying to help these lower, untouchable people." And he said, "That's the only time I've ever seen India come together as brother and sister." And he said, "Good did come from that." 

And I think that little moments like this, I did learn that each of us has a power within us to make a difference in the world. 

We work with 65,000 people today, across the nine states of India, 160 leprosy colonies, we have 1300 children in school. And I think, God did this because my daughter suffered. 

The other thing that happens is – I have to tell you, I feel her. When I go to India, I feel a closeness with my daughter, that I don't normally feel. And there have been times in India, when that feeling is so overwhelming, it just brings tears to my eyes. I feel like I'm being taught not only by God, but by my daughter. And that because of the sacrifice she made, many people have been healed. And of all the people that have been healed, I feel like I have been the most healed. 

And I just have to humbly say how grateful I am to the Savior. Because it was His Atonement, that made this all possible. He was the great exemplar. It was his suffering that made it possible for all of us, to not – to be able to be healed of our sufferings, right? And I just feel like the fact that we can in some small way, do a small thing for others, we are following in His footsteps. 

God has equal love for all of His children. I think sometimes we get confused by the term, "Chosen people." But I believe that we're chosen to serve and to bring God's truth to others. But God Himself, I don't believe plays favorites. Because I have seen as many miracles in our school for our Hindu students, as much as I have seen miracles in the lives of the few students that are members of the Church over there. I think that we need to learn to see people that same way we need to see them as God sees them, that every life has equal value. And I have learned that even through tragedy, He empowers us. 

We sometimes say, "Who are we?" "I'm only a student, I'm only a wife, I'm only a mother, I'm only a secretary," whatever, "What difference can I make?" But the truth is, we all have a power within us to make a difference, because I've seen it happen.

You know, I have to admit that there are times in my life when I would walk past a beggar on the street, and I would purposely not see them. I didn't want them to think I had money and that I could give it to them. Plus, it made me feel helpless to see people that were homeless. And so the fact that this was India was not the first time I had ever not seen someone. But, I don't look at beggars the same way anymore. I see them as people that just haven't had the opportunity to develop their talents, and I don't look away. 

If you have eyes to see, if you're willing to see, then you have to also have a heart that cares. And if you will see, and if you will care, then you have to take some action. And once you take that action, you bring the power of God into your life. When our volunteers come to India, they always say, "I'm here to help. I'm here to heal, I'll do anything you need to do. I just can't clean up those leprosy wounds." We go, "Okay, okay." And we assign them different duties to do, working with the patients and they fall in love with the patients. And before long, all those volunteers are cleaning out leprosy wounds. 

Because when you love a person, you don't see them as a disease. You see them as a friend. You see them as a child of God, and that makes all the difference in the world. And people who never thought they could do it, they'll sometimes tell us when they leave that that was the most meaningful experience that they had. These are God's children. And honestly, I think when we reached out to help his children, I feel like it opens the heavens and God pours blessings on you and you are healed. And I just think that that's a beautiful thing. That God gave us a gift, that we can reach out to others so that we can find wholeness within ourselves.

KaRyn  25:17   That was Becky Douglas. We are so grateful for the years of soul searching and effort that she put into her quest for eyes to see. It led her to an understanding about the true value of every human life. 

And we agree, if you or someone you love is struggling with mental health or thoughts of suicide, please, please reach out to someone for help. You can text 741741 from anywhere in the U.S. or call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255, because there is always hope for healing and light at the end of the tunnel. 

Maybe after listening to Becky's story, you feel like I do, that there are almost too many lessons to take from it. There is so much good stuff here. But one thing I love about the spirit is that it helps us to hear what each of us needs to hear individually. So maybe what you heard was that when people are united in a righteous cause with hearts turned towards the Savior, they can accomplish anything. Or that sometimes we need other people like Padma and Gopi, to show us what we don't know as we embark on our mission. 

Maybe it was the lesson that when we see each other with the pure love of Christ, it transforms any act of service from an obligation to a true joy. Whatever it was, you heard, write it down. Don't forget it. We've been lucky enough to sit together in the Spirit today, to have our eyes open, and it's our privilege to write it somewhere permanent so it can be written in our hearts. 

Since first recording this story I've been drawn to look closer at a painting that we have hanging in our living room. It's Carl Bloch's healing at the pools of Bethesda. It shows the Savior moving among people who were by many objective standards, untouchables, like the friends that Becky met in India. They were lame, diseased, disfigured and hidden from society. 

In the center of the painting, there's a little shack made of sticks and straw and a drape of fabric covering a man who we learned from scripture is at the pools because he hopes for healing from its waters. But there's no one there to help him get down from his perch and into the water fast enough. And of course, he has no idea that the source of all true healing and hope is standing right in front of him, not until the Savior tells him to take up his bed and walk. That he doesn't need the pool, he's healed without ever having to touch the water. 

I love that story. But I love the painting because it shows Christ actively uncovering the hiding place of this man. Lifting the curtain of his darkened makeshift shack, and bringing him into the light so he can be seen and see the miracle that is about to occur. 

Sister Craig said this, "Jesus Christ sees people deeply. He sees individuals their needs and who they can become. Where others saw fishermen, sinners, publicans – Jesus saw disciples. Where others saw a man possessed by devils, Jesus looked past that outward distress, acknowledged the man, and healed him." End quote. He looked, He acknowledged, and then He healed. 

I loved how Becky put it in her story, if we will have eyes to see, then we'll care and once we care, will act just as the Savior did. Loving action is the natural result of the gift of Godly vision and eyes to see. And that action definitely doesn't have to look like all of us running off to India to do exactly what Becky did. 

I always think of Sister Linda K. Burton's talk, "I Was a Stranger," where she wisely reminded us with a story I might add, that as we seek to do good in the world, we should also go home and serve our neighbors. I say let's start there. Let's start by asking humbly for eyes to see what's really going on around us in our current sphere. And let's ask for the courage to look beyond the things that feel strange or different or confusing. 

As we practice the spiritual skill of looking, opportunities to see deeply will come. We'll grow in our ability to acknowledge one another the way that Christ did, and it only gets better. From there, our vision, our vision will bloom and grow and deepen and expand until, like those volunteers who couldn't possibly imagine cleaning the wounds of a leper, we will be filled with the love of the Savior that makes it possible for us to do whatever we are called to do. To lift the curtains of those hiding places, to bring one another into the light to be seen, and to finally see the miracles of Christ's healing.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storyteller Becky Douglas and all the people she works with at Rising Star Outreach. We'll have more about Becky and her experiences in India including pictures in our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. 

You can also get more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. We love to hear how this podcast and specific stories have stuck with you, you can leave a review on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen on. 

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storyteller, and we find a lot of our stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time when maybe you were sitting in $1 store parking lot and learned something new about the gospel of Jesus Christ, well, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179. 

This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with so much story production and help and editing from Sarah Blake, Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and all the other LDS Living podcasts at LDSLiving/podcasts.

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Wendy's childhood is fraught with bullies and self-doubt until she asks God to teach her what her parents knew all along; A run-in with a trampoline right before the family reunion sends Cassidy into hiding, but she can't hide from the Spirit; When artist Melissa can't find herself in museum paintings of Heaven, she decides to take matters into her own hands.

For shownotes and more, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel.

Follow us on facebook and instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay  0:03   Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. 

Today, we're talking about beauty. And I have no quippy intro or funny anecdotes or poems. I don't even really have a good etymology lesson about the word beauty for us. Because here's the thing, defining what is beautiful in today's society, and how that's connected to our worth, and our value – that's a really hard thing for me, personally. 

I mean, I can look at some flowers or a flaming purple sunset over the ocean, or even a baby wrapped up like a burrito, and somehow I know that there's beauty there. But how those things are beautiful, and why some things are beautiful to me and not to other people? That's just confusing. Maybe you feel the same way, or maybe you think I'm nuts for being tied up in knots about all of this. 

But all I know is that I kind of need something or someone a little bit smarter than me to break it down and teach me the truth about beauty and its place in God's plan. 

So if ever there was an episode where I need stories to open the door to new spiritual insights, this is the one. And that's what we're going to do today. We'll listen to three stories from three storytellers who grapple with ideas of beauty, and learn something about themselves and God in the process. 

Now, I have to acknowledge that all of our storytellers today are women. And I really wanted to find a story about beauty from a man, because I know that women are not the only ones wrestling with this ideal. But hopefully, regardless of gender, we can open our minds and recognize ourselves in these stories. Our first story today comes from Wendy.

Our first story today comes from Wendy.

Wendy  1:47   So when I was a toddler, I was at the grocery store with my mom, and she was going down the aisles and a woman with a bunch of teenagers came up and pointed at me and said, "Hey, look kids, that kid doesn't need a Halloween costume. She's already got one." And then they all laughed and walked off. And my mom was so shocked. She didn't know what to say. 

When I was about two months old, I had a little red dot that was right center of my forehead and it started spreading out and it was a hemangioma, which is a blood tumor. And it was coming out like a golf ball off the top of my head. A hemangioma, it's got lots of blood vessels in it, you can't take it off because there's too much blood, things, going on in the head.  It's kind of purple and red. They usually will deflate a little bit when the child is older, more like nine or ten. Until then you just have to live with it. 

So I knew I looked different. My mom was always trying to comb my bangs so that they would cover my forehead. I always had bangs right to my eyebrows, but I was an active kid. So you'd run around the bangs would split and you can't cover a little . . . a ball on your head. So no matter what we did, it was always showing and then I would forget that I had it and then run into a new person that didn't know me, and they would stop and stare and look at me and . . . if it was a kid, well, even sometimes adults, then that's when I would get teased for it. 

So when I was in preschool, I was going to a religious school and the teacher told the class that I had the mark of the devil and that they shouldn't associate with me because they might be infected by my badness, just because of how I look. So I came home and asked my mom, "How come I have the mark of the devil?" And my mom pulled me from the school – because she's a good mom – and then we had to go find somewhere else for me to go after that. 

So my mom and dad both were very protective of me. And they were trying to be the buffer between me and the world. One time my dad, I had told him that I was being bullied and pushed around on the way home from school, and so he waited for me on the porch. And he saw these kids following me home from school and they were pushing me into the street and pushing me down. 

And so he came out and told them, "You don't have to be her friend. But you do have to be kind to her, and you cannot put her in danger." And so he was, he was a protector for me. And then right after that, he went to the school and asked them to have a meeting of all of the kids anywhere near my grade and he talked to them all about it. About what a hemangioma was, and that Wendy was a pretty, pretty neat kid if they'd give her a chance, they could be friends. 

When my dad came to my school, I felt very special. And I felt very loved and protected because my home and the protection that I had at home extended to this school at least somewhat. They were trying to reach out and, and just have a little bit of a safety net for me farther out than our home.

So when I was about nine, then the hemangioma started to deflate. So it slowly lost the big redness of having all the active blood vessels. And we were able to go and have it removed. I remember in the hospital, my mom was reading me A Wrinkle in Time, as we were getting ready to go back for the surgery. And my mom doesn't even like reading fantasy books, but she would read me anything that I would listen to. 

When I came out and had it off, then I traded it for a scar. The scar for a long time was really, really bright. So if I was angry, or exercising or anything, then it was almost as glaring as the thing was to start with. But slowly it faded. And at first I always had bangs, because I was still trying to cover this scar in this place where I used to have this thing that I felt was shameful. 

My self worth was something that I did struggle with. Having been someone who was told that I had the mark of the devil, often made me wonder what my worth was. I often felt like there was two faces, because there was this face that the world would see, and then there was the real person inside that didn't have value. Because if I was somebody of worth, then why did I have things like this happen? Why were people cruel? 

There just came a point when I realized that I had to make a choice. If I was going to keep feeling this way, if I was going to keep disliking who I was, if I was going to keep doubting whether or not I had any value, or if I was going to believe in myself and believe that I was worth loving. And so I started to read scriptures more and have prayers that were less routine and more heartfelt. And I just started asking that even if I lacked the belief, Christ and Heavenly Father would help me with my unbelief and make up the difference. 

A few years went by, and pretty soon I stopped using the bangs, and my parents got me into Taekwondo. And I started pursuing more interests that I loved, like art. So the change in how I perceive myself and where I thought I was, for being worthy to be loved, is not something that happened overnight. But something I had to deliberately work toward. And it's something I'm still working toward, but I think that my mind understands that I am of worth and that I'm worth loving, and that God loves me. 

Now my scar, it has faded to the point that most people don't notice it. But I remember what it was like I feel that this whole experience growing up with a birthmark and the other things, I feel that that has really taught me compassion, that when I see someone else struggling, then I try to reach out to them. Whenever I see a kid who has any kind of a birthmark especially, then I run right over and talk to him. I feel it. I know what they're going through. And I know what the parents are going through. 

My parents were wonderful examples for me, it was not uncommon for me to go to see them in the evening and to find them on their knees. So in those moments when I didn't have the faith, to believe enough that I had any value or when I didn't have faith enough to believe that someone was there to listen to me, then I could rely on my parents testimonies, because I knew that they believed enough for both of us. 

So my whole life whenever I have doubted myself, whenever I have doubted whether or not I was strong enough or smart enough are brave enough to do anything that I wanted to do, then my parents were the ones that were like you can do this. You are a daughter of God and you are of infinite worth. With them believing that, then they were kind of my shield against the world. 

And they make it so that I can go out. And I can share my stories and my message and I can achieve dreams that I didn't think were possible when I was little. When I didn't think I had any value at all. And a lot of that is because of the faith of my parents. 

So now I have five children of my own. And I have one who wants to be an artist and another who wants to go on a mission and another who wants to make prosthetics for people who are missing limbs, and another wants to be a dancer. And the other one he doesn't know what he wants to do. He mostly wants to snuggle, but the point is that I tell them that they can do anything they want to do, and that they're smart enough and they're good enough, and that they have enough value, that whatever dream they have is valid, and that I will support them in anything they want to do.

KaRyn Lay  11:18   That was Wendy. Wendy Swore is the author of, A Monster Like Me, which is a lovely middle grade novel about a girl with a hemangioma. I love that she's been able to take that love of fantasy books and her own experience and translate that into a passion for telling and writing stories that help us find the humanity in one another. 

I was struck by Wendy's description of her scar and the transformative effect that it had on her sense of worth. How at first, it was a painful reminder of something that she couldn't control about her body, something that she felt shame about. But as she prayed and asked for help from heaven to see herself and her value differently, eventually those scars became a gentle reminder of her divine beauty, a beauty that was revealed in her ability to offer empathy and compassion to others. 

And here are the truths about beauty that I'm going to take from Wendy's story. True beauty is always present when our actions are a reflection of the Savior. And I believe that it's perceived only through the lens of charity or the pure love of Christ. You know, when Christ returned to His disciples after the resurrection, His scars took on new purpose. 

They were more than just a reminder of his past pain, they became a tool of testimony. A symbol to His disciples of his power, and His love for us all. And as Wendy showed us, our scars can also be made beautiful tools of testimony if we allow them to be transformed through the gift of Christ's atonement. And that is really beautiful. 

Our next story comes from Cassidy, who's run in with a trampoline right before a family reunion left her with some questions about beauty. Here's Cassidy.

Cassidy  12:59   It was a few summers ago, me and my two sons, after we ate some lunch, decided to go and have a little bounce on the trampoline in the backyard. And we were bouncing and having fun. And my oldest son just did a really strong bounce and bounced up and hit my nose with his head, and it broke right away. I could tell it was bleeding, and if you could imagine my nose, you know, it's straight now, but it was like completely swelling and it was crooked and I had bruising, and I just did not look like myself. 

When you break your nose, they can't just fix it right away. I remember going to the instacare and just wanting them so badly to just like, push it back into place, just fix it right away. But they have to wait for – I think – at least a week, in order to help the swelling to go down and the bruising to kind of calm down so they can actually go in and fix it the way it should be fixed. 

I had a family reunion coming up, and I knew that I was going to have to go to that before I could have the surgery to fix my nose. And I was just feeling sad that I had to participate in this fun family thing while I was feeling uncomfortable and quite self conscious, to be honest. I didn't like having to go out and about with my nose looking the way that it did. 

I feel like sometimes I have the tendency to worry a lot about what people think of me and worry about how I look to other people. And sometimes I fall into, you know, the traps of comparison or not measuring up and so I think all of those feelings were surfacing as I was going to have to be out in public and with my family with my broken nose. 

We got ready to go on our trip. It's funny, I still remember I actually asked my sister to pack some hats for me, I'm not normally a hat person, but – and my sister wears hats more often and I was like, "Can you just bring some hats?" And maybe that will be able to conceal my face a little bit more if we're going out. So she packed some hats for me, we went up to our family reunion. 

And this place that we stayed is this little condo in a ski town, and we stayed with a few of my sisters and their families in the same unit. So there were multi-levels. And one morning, I was cleaning up breakfast, and I was washing the dishes, putting things away, I looked down as I was at the ceiling, I looked down and I saw at the top edge of the cabinet, a little label – like the labels that you get, you print off of a little label maker – and it was just on the very top edge of the cabinet door, and it said, "Fire extinguisher below." I remember thinking that was really interesting. And so I curiously opened up the cabinet door and looked inside the cabinet, and there was the fire extinguisher just kind of sitting in the dusty corner. 

So I just thought that was interesting and closed it up and finished up my morning cleaning up. Then shortly after I was downstairs, getting ready for the day. Some families were out and about already enjoying their day and my sister was in her room. And I heard the fire alarm going off, and I couldn't smell smoke yet. And so I ran upstairs, ran to the upper floor, the main floor, couldn't smell anything, couldn't see anything. 

And as I was running around and trying to figure out why the smoke alarm was going off, I finally went back down into the basement and opened up my sister's room. And as I opened up the door, I saw the closet kind of open and smoke coming out of the closet. Me and my brother in law opened up the closet and saw a fire in the closet. 

Because it's in a ski town, they had these interesting amenities where in the basement bedrooms, there was a closet that had a small stove and sink inside. We opened it up and there the fire was going and it was it was getting kind of big. I knew right away, I told my brother in law, I said, "I know right where the fire extinguisher is." Ran upstairs, got under the cabinet and ran downstairs and my brother in law was able to extinguish the fire really quickly.

It happened so fast that I think that we were all just grateful that I knew where it was, but there was a moment after when we were all kind of waiting on the street and talking about it, where I just I knew that it wasn't an accident that I had seen that little labeled that that morning. 

I remember feeling at that time, a distinct impression that Heavenly Father and Jesus loved me, and that it didn't matter what I looked like, that they could still use me to be a tool to help others and love others and save others even. 

Even if it's not about my physical appearance, there have been times in my life where I've felt inadequate or unprepared or not enough. Sometimes throughout the day, I just say, "Am I doing okay? Do you love me?" And I know that I feel His love when I'm trying. And I don't have to be perfect. I can do His work, because He will help me and He will guide me.

KaRyn Lay  19:20   That was Cassidy. Her conclusion that God can use us at all times and in all states of being is an important one as we try to understand what true beauty is. 

I think that sometimes it's really easy to inadvertently confuse the word beautiful with the word ornamental. And here's what I mean by that. A few years ago, I learned of a concept called self-objectification which is this idea that when we're considering our own physical appearance, we're often thinking about it with regard to how other people are perceiving us. And just like an object, we might start to see our bodies only as useful as long as they're perceived as useful by someone else. 

This kind of self objectification can stop us in our tracks. It keeps us from showing up to the family reunion with our broken nose or getting into the swimming pool with our kids or being anywhere else that God might need us to be. And isn't that exactly what the adversary wants from us? He wants us to stop working towards eternity, to stop showing up and to become objects moved only by fear and shame instead of beings filled with the agency to move forward towards salvation. 

If he can successfully convince us that these bodies that we were so excited to get, are only valuable or worthwhile if they look or work a certain way, then his work here is done. And here's the truth about beauty that I am going to take from Cassidy's story. These bodies that we live in, and we serve in and we love in – their beautiful right now, as is. Imperfect, weak, whatever. Because beautiful is not the same as ornamental. True beauty is inherent in the gift to act with agency so that we can bless each other and serve one another. And true beauty became a part of us the minute that we chose to follow Christ in the life before this one, to take up this body, and to get to work as part of the plan of salvation. 

We've got a few more truths about beauty to discover, and our final story today comes from Melissa who decided to create beauty for others, when she had trouble finding it herself. Here's Melissa.

Melissa  21:30   I don't ever remember a time when I didn't love art. When I was little I would always be drawing, I would always be painting and I had the biggest imagination. And thankfully, I had parents who saw value in my hobbies and they cultivated my gifts. And they helped me grow them. They were always buying me art supplies, or children's books. 

I grew up in a rural town called Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada. My father's from the Democratic Republic of Congo, and my mom grew up mostly in Connecticut. My dad is from a tribe in central Kasai in Congo, and obviously, that that did affect me growing up because I was one of the only Black people in my school, in elementary school in junior high, and in high school. So I knew that – the obviously the older I got – I knew that I stood out. And I knew that I had to do more to fit in. 

One moment I do remember is when I was in second grade, and I realized that I was Black. My brother and I had gotten into a fight. It was like a little dumb fight. I am a lighter complexion, and my mom is white and my father is Black. So in my head, I am white and I am Black. And then my brother said, "Melissa, you're Black." And I remember looking at him just so confused. I looked at my skin I said, "No, I am brown mixed with yellow." Like I remember saying that, because I was looking at my skin literally, like my skin isn't Black. And then I kind of realized at that moment,  the way the world saw me was as a Black girl. And I think that was a defining moment. Because then I just remembered being so shocked that that's how people saw me. 

And I knew that there was negative connotations with the word Black. And I remember one of my friends growing up in Church, she would never want to be around my dad. And as a child, I knew it was because he had dark skin. And she thought he was scary because of his dark skin. And me being nine or eight as a children, we have no filter. So I asked her. I said, "Hey, are you afraid of my dad because he's Black?" And I remember her just nodding. And she said, "Yes." And that was the end of the conversation. 

When I was drawing as a child, I would often draw my family or me. It wasn't till maybe 12 and above, is when I started to notice that illustrations did not look like me, that I saw in school and at church. It affected me because I didn't really paint Black people, I didn't really paint people who look like me. So I would draw nature, paint nature and sometimes when I would attempt to draw people – which I didn't draw a lot of – they were white, because I noticed Blackness was not associated with pretty. It was more subconscious at that time period. 

Most of my awareness came at the end of high school, beginning of BYU. And then I think this world that I had been brushing aside or ignoring really, kind of blew up in my face in a way. I became more aware of racism. I think I felt a little betrayed in a way when I came because I was never taught about a lot of the racism that happened in the Church. And I was like, why was I purposely not taught about these things? Why are we sweeping the hard stuff under the rug instead of confronting it and talking about it? 

And once I learned more about history, whether it be church history, or African and European history, and colonization, colorism and internalized racism, that's when I was able to be more aware of myself and more aware of these harmful thoughts that I had about myself that pertained to the color of my skin, or to my ethnicity. And I realized that was damaging, because if I didn't see myself as divine or worthy, the way I was made, then how can I see other people that way as well? 

So when I finally got into the BYU illustration program, I was ecstatic because I had applied the first time and I hadn't gotten in, and I had worked my butt off and finally got in the second time. So with our art department, once you got into the BFA of illustration, you spent most of your time in the art lab working on your projects. And it's pretty, it's a pretty exclusive part, there's only around 28 to 30 people in it. And I happened to be the only person in that room who would paint people that were not white. And I, and I noticed it right away. And that was another fueling moment for me. 

I was used to being uncomfortable or having uncomfortable moments, whether it came to my friends saying inappropriate Black jokes, or just so many different things that were said that maybe stemmed from ignorance, or maybe because they didn't know better, and I wasn't in a confident headspace where I would, I could correct them, because I was afraid of making them uncomfortable. And so I sacrificed my own comfort for theirs. 

I was hesitant to talk to anybody who was white about ethnicity and race, and racism. Because I had a couple experiences when I kind of opened myself up and wanted to talk about these things, because I was ready, and I I understood that it was something that needed to be talked to, and like, "I can confide with some of my close friends, and I can talk to them about it, I'm going to try." And unfortunately, I had a couple of experiences where it was just completely shut down. 

They told me I wasn't spiritually in tune, or that I was just being too sensitive, and that my experiences weren't real and that they weren't valid. And I was just heartbroken, because I'm like, these were people who I thought had my back and who I thought . . .  knew me, and they completely invalidated my experiences when it came to like race and ethnicity. 

When I first got into BYU, I met one of my closest friends. And I didn't know she was going to be one of my closest friends at the time. But we ended up sitting right next to each other. And it was probably like one of the best experiences I could have had at BYU. And I just remember, just feeling like I didn't have to prove that my experiences regarding racism were true and valid. Like I felt like she saw me and she saw the issues. And she educated herself and I just . . . that anxiety that would sometimes come with having to prove that my experiences were valid or having to talk to someone about race kind of depleted because she literally was the first person who listened to me, she was like the first authentic friend I think I had at BYU. 

I was just kind of protective of myself, and I knew that I didn't . . . I just knew right away from her aura that I didn't have to be like that. She was just one of the best listeners I could have ever hoped for. And she still is. Anytime, anytime something inappropriate was said in that room, and if I didn't have the emotional stamina to talk about it or I felt anxiety, she would speak up for me and she would correct people if they said racist things or ignorant comments. And she would do it in like the most Christlike way too. And I felt because of that like I was in a safe space, and I felt like I could completely be myself. 

You know, I'm in a, I'm in an illustration department where we're always creating images. And of course, most of . . . 99.9% of those images were European images, or people who did not look like me. I remember walking through the MOA, that's the Museum of Art at BYU, and seeing this huge painting and depiction of heaven. And it was all white people in this heaven. And I'm like, this doesn't make sense. If God is only viewed as European, and angels are only seen as white then . . . when you don't see images that look like you, ever, especially in school, or in church and every aspect of your life, you automatically think that you're not worthy, or you're not . . . just meant to be shown or seen, and that you're not enough. 

It feels like you're not worthy of being in a divine space. And it feels like you're not seen. It's like, do they even know that they exist? Or that I have my own story? And that I matter? Like, does God not see me? If all we have are these one sided images, it just hurts, because it feels like you're not enough. 

So I decided that – and I knew and I felt my heart that I needed to make paintings of people who did not see themselves as divine, or as beautiful or as worthy of being seen. 

When I painted these images, I felt peaceful and I felt calm. Like, I felt like I was doing something, not for myself, but for others. And one of the first paintings I painted, was just simply named "Eve." And I purposely made this painting a dark skinned woman and I gave her an afro. I don't know if a lot of people are aware, but a lot of Black women struggle wearing their hair naturally. I have sisters who struggled wearing their hair naturally, so I remember I'm like I need to do this painting. I really felt like I needed to do it. 

And after I had made this painting, I had three different women – probably like the week after – reached out to me, and they were a Black women, and they had dark skin. And they had messaged me, and they had pretty much said, "Thank you for creating this. I've never seen a piece of art that has made me feel so beautiful. And I've never seen a artwork that has showed my skin tone as being divine." And it just like touched me, like I felt like I knew that I was meant to help people feel loved and seen and worthy. And their reactions just confirmed that for me. 

I think the more I painted people with skin tones similar to mine, I actually started to feel more confident and more beautiful because I felt like there was a truth in that. Being able to paint people outside of the norm, outside of our society's norm, being able to equally represent people of color has made me redefine in my mind what divinity is and how Christ sees me and all His children. 

It's shifted my perception of what God is and who Christ is, because I know God loves everyone the way that they are. I learned that you know, dark skin is divine, and is purposeful, and is beautiful. 

I think God sees me as divine, and as enough. And I feel like when I'm in the right mindset and I value myself I can truly value and love others and I can use my gift or talent – which I'm still learning and developing – to be used for good. I can use this talent God gave me to help redefine what divinity and redefine what beauty is.

KaRyn Lay  34:49   That was artist Melissa Tshikamba. I first met Melissa because of work. Deseret Book had just added one of her gorgeous paintings to our flagship store in downtown Salt Lake and I was so excited to have something so moving alongside all those other celebrated makers of sacred images. When I learned more about Melissa's journey as an artist in the sacred space, I was even more inspired by her. 

I feel really humbled and grateful to her for sharing her gifts with all of us. And I think it's so amazing that she was able to recognize that the ignorance and the silencing that she has encountered aren't fair, and still she chooses to be part of the body of Christ. I also really love that she followed that Spirit that led her to heal and be healed as she puts our brothers and sisters of color back in the pictures of a heaven that, frankly, I want to be a part of. 

From Melissa story, I think we all learn the truth that beauty is not actually in the eye of the beholder. It's really in the eye of the Creator. And that as disciples of Christ and Latter-day Saints, it's our privilege to seek out beauty from all corners of the earth, and in every person we meet as evidence of God's goodness. 

And if we can, as Melissa does with her talent, help to make space for a diverse representation of that beauty, so that everyone can see themselves in the picture. I really believe that that will be the means of healing for ourselves, and others. 

You know, as we've listened to these stories today, this line from the hymn, "Oh God, the Eternal Father" has been just popping up in my mind. "With no apparent beauty that man should him desire, he was the promised Savior to purify with fire." It's a reference to Isaiah chapter 53, verse 2, where he's foretelling the life and the work of Jesus Christ. 

I keep thinking about that phrase, "Apparent beauty," and what it means for those of us who are watching anxiously for the Savior today. When Christ came to the earth, the first time, those who were expecting a Savior who conformed to the standards of the day were deeply, deeply disappointed. He was neither obvious, nor clearly recognizable, as beautiful to the people who didn't look close enough. But that didn't stop His work. It didn't matter if people could see who He was and the beauty He possessed. He had a job to do. And His true beauty would soon be apparent across ages, and universes, and the quiet transformation of individuals. 

For those of us who seek to emulate the Savior, that's some really, really good news, because it means that like Him, we can let go of expectations of apparent beauty in our own lives right now. We can see ourselves as valuable and capable disciples ready to fulfill our mission without distraction. 

It means that we can raise our children to see their own possibility and purpose and we can put out fires and stoke new ones in hearts that have grown cold from feeling unseen, and unrepresented. So what's the big thing that I've learned from these stories today about beauty? It's this: I've got work to do. We've got work to do, and there is no time to let the pressures of Satan's half truths, his smoke and mirrors about beauty and worth stand in the way of accomplishing that mission. And for those of us watching for our beautiful Savior's return with a faithful spirit, it's an invitation to practice now to understand and see true beauty where it exists in others and ourselves. So that when He comes again – this time in full glory – we will recognize Him and His beauty without delay.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel" thank you to our storytellers, Wendy Cassidy and Melissa for sharing their stories and their true beauty. We'll have so much good stuff in the show notes this week, you guys, Melissa's paintings, Wendy's books, pictures and more info about each of these storytellers at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. 

You can also find more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook at @Thisisthegospel_podcast. A huge thank you to everyone who takes the time to write a review of this podcast not only do they offer us great feedback about what themes and types of stories have blessed you most, but they also really buoy us up when we work under these unusual circumstances. We love to hear how this podcast and specific stories that have stuck with you. You can leave a review of the podcast on Apple stitcher or whatever platform you listen on. 

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers, and we find a lot of our stories like Cassidy's through our pitchline. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and they'll have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179. 

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay with additional story production and editing by Erika Free and Davey Johnson. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and all the other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com slash podcasts.

 

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: A quest to solve the mystery of bees flying through cracks in their walls lead Kristen and Matt to discover important truths about God's laws of nature; Spencer’s childhood memories of catching bugs under yellow street lamps teaches him what it takes to recognize God’s hands in our lives.

To view shownotes for this episode, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT 

KaRyn Lay  0:03  

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

There is something that I have suspected about this podcast for a while now. And this week it was 100% confirmed to me that when we decide on a theme, heaven conspires to put that theme and all of its lessons in my face. 

So maybe you'll think I'm being melodramatic, and the reality might be that I just notice things more, but listen to this you guys. This week, our theme is about the way the natural world teaches us principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we have jokingly called it "the bug episode" for months now, because both of our stories somehow revolve around insects. 

So, not two days ago, my husband and I were coming home from a little jaunt – sometimes you just have to get out of the house when it's COVID times – and when we pulled into the carport, our headlights illuminate the biggest spider I've ever seen outside of a terrarium. 

It's just dangling there – suspended in midair as though it was hovering. And luckily, we saw it in enough time to roll the car in a little bit slower than we normally would so that we didn't hit it. I hate spiders. And I guess it would be more accurate to say that I "fear spiders" since hate is a secondary emotion. 

Ever since I saw a documentary about jumping spiders, I'm positive that every spider knows how to jump and they're just waiting to leap onto my body. So the added protection of the windshield of the car made it so that we could actually observe the spider without my anxiety taking over and we sat there for probably 10 minutes in total awe. 

As we watched that spiders body twist in eight legged arabesques while she worked her magic spinning silk, it seemed like she was creating it out of nothing at all. Also, I don't know why I keep saying "She," – I assume it's because of Charlotte's Web. 

Anyway. It was interesting to me that she was multitasking. That she was climbing the ropes and she was building them at the same time. And I thought, man, if that doesn't describe the work of discipleship, I really don't know what does. 

Because sometimes moving along the covenant path can feel like we're dangling in midair with eight busy legs trying to build something just so that we can put one foot in front of the next. 

But also – like my buddy, the spider – we can ignore the headlights trying to trip us up and the busy bodies staring us down through their car windshield, if we carefully focus on the task in front of us. Because as children of Christ, we've got it all in us. The tools, the spiritual DNA, the capacity to learn new patterns to harness the power of God here on earth to move his work forward. 

See what I mean? One giant spider in the carport at exactly the right moment for today's theme, I feel like it's a little wink from Heavenly Father that He's on the job. And don't you worry, I have not taken out the garbage since we saw that spider, because I am sure that the minute I walk into the carport, it's going to leap on me. 

But I also haven't forgotten that image of that spider, and the connection between us and the natural world. It's real. And I think it's a part of our gospel practice. And today's stories promised to give us just a little bit more insight into the ways that nature here on Earth brings us all just a little bit closer to heaven. 

Our first story in this episode comes from Kristin and Matt who tag-team their tale of a time when the outside world made its way inside. Here's Kristin and Matt.

 

Kristen  3:36  

Earlier this summer, our neighbor – we have a lovely, lovely neighbor next door who had been furloughed from her job, and so she would be outside all day every day working in her garden. 

And one day I just went to say hello to her. And she said, "Hey, Kristen, I think you have some bees. I think you have a beehive." And I went, "What?" 

She pointed out to me where some bees – and there wasn't a lot of them, it was just a couple, were walking in and out this little tiny crack in our siding. We have an older house, and it has brick and then it has some siding and it was just kind of this teeniest little space. 

 

Matt  4:18  

So we start to check every day, and sure enough, you can see little bees coming in and out of this crack, but I don't know. I don't know what's behind there, right? 

 

Kristen  4:25  

Yeah. And we weren't quite ready to peel off the siding or anything. By this time we are we're pretty sure – based on our oh-so-scientific knowledge, that they are indeed honeybees. Because they weren't trying to kill you they weren't wasp-y, they looked more like honey bees. 

 

Matt  4:42  

You know, the first reaction we had was, "Well maybe, let's call an exterminator and see what it would cost." And I was ambivalent about it because I really like bees. Bees do – bees do important work. They pollinate, they make honey. 

So we got – I think we had an estimate for an exterminator, and it was already a lot of money. So I was like, why not – let's let's pursue the avenue of maybe somebody who's a beekeeper, or who specializes in removing bees – 

 

Kristen  5:17  

 – What do you even call that bee guy, that would help remove a hive and find it a new home? And so we just kept googling like, "bee relocation," whatnot. And I stumbled on this guy, he finally comes out, and he busts out electronic tools like a little radar thing, a stethoscope, 

 

Matt  5:37  

Infrared like heat seeking like camera. 

 

Kristen  5:42  

He first starts using the infrared thing to kind of identify where the bees are, and how hard would it be to get to them. And then he uses a like a regular doctor's stethoscope to like listen in on their activity, and whatnot. And it was just fascinating. 

 

Matt  6:00  

As we were standing outside with him and looking at, you know, the one place where we knew that they were coming in and out, and I think he just kind of casually said, "Oh, I think you have a second one, too." And sure enough, like 10 feet to the left, there was another crack in the, in the sort of the older brick part of the house. 

 

Kristen  6:17  

Right by the fireplace. 

 

Matt  6:18  

Right by the fireplace where we saw bees coming in and out, and so then we're like, "Oh, great." 

 

Kristen  6:24  

So then he said, "Alright, well, let me think on it. And just watch it. You guys just watch it and let me know." And so for next few days, we're watching and I'm taking photos and videos and things. And one day, it was nuts. It was like the beehive . . .  the bee highway, like it was rush hour. And it was just swarms, thousands and thousands of bees. 

And we went, "Are you kidding me?" It was crazy how many there were, and we went outside and I'm filming it. And we couldn't believe our eyes. Like we had no idea there would be that many in there, or if they were all in there, or was it like a convention that they were suddenly coming? 

And so we thought, oh my gosh, what are we going to do now? Now, now it's getting serious, because we have just seen that many thousands of bees flying in and out different parts of our house. And that's when we did start getting a little nervous about it. 

We're thinking, oh no, like, this can be a lot of damage. This could be really serious. 

 

Matt  7:29  

Yeah. 

 

Kristen  7:29  

And so then as soon as I you know, stop the video, I text the bee guy the videos, and we hear nothing, nothing at all. He just ghosts us. We never hear back. 

I started looking again online, and I happened to tell a co-worker about it. My co-worker tells me about a friend who happens to have bees on the side just as a hobby. He happens to be a roofer by trade, so I call him and talk to him and he's like, "Nope, not what I do." He actually puts it out on a beekeeping group within Western New York. 

And somehow one of the guys that's on this Facebook group is interested. That he would like to come relocate it for us. He works with the public gardens that are around town that are trying to establish bees at these different community gardens. And he wants to do this. 

 

Matt  8:28  

Like urban, urban community gardens. 

 

Kristen  8:30  

Right. And so we thought this is outstanding, how great! These bees could be useful to our community, we'll be giving back, they'll have a purpose, but we still we had no idea what it would entail. 

And side note, this guy's like a hobbyist beekeeper person, like – 

 

Matt  8:49  

Yeah, it was clear that he was trying to break into this, profession, whatever you call it. 

 

Kristen  8:56  

So another interesting component is that this beekeeper that decided he wanted to come and help is deaf. And we don't know sign language, so mostly we're trying to explain the situation via text. 

Then we kind of decide a game plan on how we're going to do this. And he kind of talks us through it – texts us through it – you know, and kind of shows us, we're in our family room and he's kind of marking it out. And he says he's going to get all the supplies and he's going to come back another day and it should only take a little while. 

 

Matt  9:30  

I was a little bit hesitant, right? 

 

Kristen  9:32  

Yeah, well cause he was saying he's gonna cut open the ceiling. 

 

Matt  9:35  

Yeah. 

 

Kristen  9:36  

And Matt's going, "Are you kidding?" 

 

Matt  9:38  

Originally, when the first bee removal guy came, I was under the impression that, yeah, it would work like a Pied Piper. That he would set up a hive, a new hive, outside the house, he would do something to you know lure the bees out of the house and into this new hive, which – great! You know? The you know, minimal damage to the house.

I was never very clear, so you know, maybe that was always a completely naive idea of how it's gonna happen, but I thought – right? – that he'd explained it, something like that. So then when the second bee removal guy was here, and he was telling us, "Oh yeah, I'm just gonna cut your ceiling open," Yeah, that – trepidation would be the right way to describe what I was feeling at that point. 

 

Kristen  10:27  

But by this point, we were kinda like, what else do we do? 

 

Matt  10:30  

Yeah. And he – the other thing that, you know, sort of was setting up expectations, at least for the timing, is the second bee removal guy would send us these YouTube videos of people demonstrating how they remove bees, and the people in these videos, of course, we're very professional at it, and you know, from what it looked, at least to the way in the video, right? Looked like it was a – you know – maybe a three hour job or something, right? They come in, cut open the ceiling, vacuum the bees out, and then patch it up, too and that was it. 

So that also gave us the impression that – right? – It would just be a quick and dirty job.

 

Kristen  11:11  

It didn't happen that way. 

We set up a day and a time for him to come back, and he came with a bunch of plastic and duct tape and a shop vac and some really rough tools.

And just started going. He kind of taped up all of this plastic, he encased himself in this plastic, like a whole corner of the room – 

 

Matt  11:38  

Almost like it was a shower curtain or something 

 

Kristen  11:40  

Like uh – exactly, like a shower curtain taped to the ceiling, and draping down to the floor. And then he would get in there, and just started cutting open the ceiling.

And little by little he starts breaking it open, and we're watching. Like I'm sitting there in the family room outside of the plastic, because I can't turn away. And he cuts it open, and then kind of motions to us to come see. And sure enough, you can see these little bits of hive. 

 

Matt  12:12  

Like uh . . . almost like curtains of honeycomb, right. These layers. It's – I call them curtains because they're the – the honeycombs would sort of, they would hang down from the top of the the cavity, you know, like they were curtains or something, hanging down, but they were just like rows and rows of them. 

And they were very orderly. Yeah, it was kind of – to me, I thought the whole – I thought it was fascinating. And it was, there was a kind of beauty to it. 

 

Kristen  12:41  

Oh, yeah, for sure. 

 

Matt  12:42  

Just seeing all these, you know, almost these perfectly maid rows of honeycomb. And then they were just chock full of bees, right? I mean, it was just covered in bees, every – almost every square inch. 

 

Kristen  12:57  

Yeah. He texts us something like, "It's bigger than I thought." And so then he shows us that he's gonna have to cut a lot more, because it's a lot bigger. He's kind of showing us up in there. With his phone. 

He takes his phone up in there and takes some pictures and you can see how deep it is, and how big these hives are. And we're going, "Are you kidding me?" And this is just the part in the family room. 

These particular bees weren't super aggressive. They were just busy, busy, busy working.  Just like you jokingly hear – busy bees. They were doing their work and they just kept on trucking, but it was beautiful to watch. It was beautiful.

It was right in front of all these windows in our family room, and so the sunlight was coming in and you could see the intricacies of the beehives and you could see which ones had little babies, little eggs in some of the hives and you can see where there are honey pockets and you can see – I mean it was natural geographic, right in our family room. 

And then the beekeeper goes in with this shop-vac type thing, so he's inside the plastic, up in the ceiling, up above the bookcases, and he takes this shop–vac and just starts vacuuming up all the bees, and – 

 

Matt  14:18  

Yeah, he's got, he's got a long tube and sucks them through, and then it puts them in a big bucket, where then he can then carry to, you know, whatever place he wants to go. 

 

Kristen  14:28  

Yeah. And then – interestingly – so then he takes little by little, would break out really carefully the different curtains of honeycomb and put them in these wooden frames. And then once he got all of their hives back into these little bee boxes, and so he moves the whole bee box, all the new hives that are now in these screens and moves them all out, just outside that family room, so it's kind of right at the entrance to where the crack was.

Somehow he knew he had gotten the queen. He could identify the queen, and knew that she was in the new box and so that eventually all the others would come follow. Then he kept that bee box outside of our house for another 24 hours or so.

 

Matt  15:19  

So that process took, what? All day. 

 

Kristen  15:21  

All day. I mean, early in the morning till late that evening, and he was just drenched in sweat. And he – and it was just a long, extensive, very – was a lot more than he had anticipated. 

 

Matt  15:37  

It was dirty, too. Not gonna lie, right? There's, I mean, whatever, you know, was in that old ceiling, you know, and then, and the honey everywhere, dripping everywhere. 

 

Kristen  15:47  

Everywhere. And anything you touched, got it. I mean, we were cleaning bee guts and honey off things for a long time.

And so that was just one. And we kind of had to do the whole process again, with the bees that were in the living room.

Only this time, they were much more aggressive. The hives looked the same, but they were so distinctly different. Different temperaments, and different everything.

It was, it was a lot. And I kind of hit a breaking point, at one point where I was just like, "I can't do this again. Our house is gonna be a mess," it just takes so much work. So much time.

And so that process, it did take a lot longer. We spread it out over a couple of weeks trying to get those removed.

And then he was, a beekeeper was able to relocate it to one of the urban gardens in downtown Buffalo.

And hopefully, they're living happily ever after. He brought us some of the honey from it a few weeks later. 

 

Matt  17:00  

You know, we could have, we could have maybe actually paid a little bit more for an exterminator, but probably would have had the job done a lot quicker.

If we just, you know, just killed them, got rid of them. But I just, I just never felt comfortable doing that, you know. It seemed like if there was a way to keep these bees alive and just move them to some other location, that would be the better thing to do. Even though doing that ended up taking a lot more time, probably produced a lot more stress for Kristin.

But, you know, to treat life the way we do sometimes, you know, it's just an obstacle to our own sort of whatever goal we're trying to get out seems to be not compatible, not respectful with God's creations.

 

Kristen  17:54  

It was awe inspiring to see this happening because even as the beekeeper was cutting open the ceiling and tearing things apart and trying to get to the bees, they just kept on working and kept on doing their thing. You know, they kept producing, they kept building, they kept going for the good of their group. And they were so fascinating to watch. 

And I remember thinking, and I don't know where I've read this, I know several Church leaders have commented on this at some point, but that part of why we're so inspired by nature, or that we often will feel the Spirit when we're in nature is because nature obeys God's commands, period. And that's why we can feel so much of the Spirit in nature. Everything around you is obeying God's commands. 

And as we were watching this all unfold in our ceiling, I remember thinking about that, that these bees are doing exactly what they were put here on earth to do. And it was, it was remarkable to watch. 

Having lived in Utah for a little while, of course, you know, the Beehive State and the whole pioneer legacy with bees and the symbol and the working together and, and all of those things were really evident as we watch this unfold. It was you know, physically challenging, it was messy, it was inconvenient. It was everything. But it was also inspiring. It was nature at work. It was really remarkable to see the determination in those little bees, and just that they do what they were sent here to do.

 

KaRyn Lay  19:52  

That was Matt and Kristen, in Buffalo, New York, and their description of those curtains of honeycomb in the wall get me every time. And we're actually going to have pictures of that, this crazy phenomenon, in our show notes. 

I've been so curious about this. So I asked Kristin if they could hear the bees when they were trying to watch TV or smell the honey. And she disappointingly said that they literally had no idea what was happening behind that wall. But you know, the other thing that gets me is that reverence for all life that the Spirit brought into Matt's heart as he watched those creatures at work. There's a reason for that. In Moses, chapter six, verse 63, the Lord teaches us that, quote, "All things are created and made to bear record of me, both things which are temporal and things which are spiritual. Things which are in the heavens above, and things which are on the earth, and the things which are in the earth and things which are under the earth, both above and beneath, all things, bear record of me." 

Once you get past all the prepositions in that scripture, it's clear that every living thing has a purpose, a job to do, just like Krista mentioned about the bees. And that job is actually to bear record of the goodness and majesty and love of the Creator. So when Matt gets the chance to witness the earth, and all her parts, filling the measure of that creation in his family room, of course, the Spirit is going to be there to ratify that testimony, and to fill his heart with love for all of God's creation.

Our next story comes from Spencer.

 

Spencer  21:19  

One of my very first memories of moving to Texas, I was six years old, and my dad take me and some of my siblings, we walked down to the woods that were at the end of our street. And we went and looked at fireflies.

Coming from the Bay Area, I'd never ever seen fireflies and it was this magical moment. It was dark, and all of a sudden these lights popping up everywhere and they're around you. And if you've ever been around fireflies, you know that feeling. There's one right in your face and I'm sure we caught one and held our hands. And it was this amazing moment.

Where we moved, just outside of Houston in 1982, was very much frontier. Deep forests, subtropical, and there were bugs everywhere. My dad had been a fly fisherman and kind of grown up near the mountains. And when we moved, none of the fly fishing was available. And so his attention got turned to catching bugs. 

At this time, the streetlights were like these bright white streetlights, they're not like the yellow ones you see now because they've learned that those yellow ones don't attract bugs the same way. But these ones would attract bugs like crazy. And so under every streetlight, you've had this illuminated circle that was filled with thousands of crickets, June bugs, and then, of course, all these other like fiery chasers. And you'd get toads and frogs that were coming to eat all those and then you'd have bats flying around eating the moths and the butterflies. And then, of course, cars would be running over them. So every morning there'd be like flattened and crispy bugs, and that was life. 

So we'd just go and catch them. It didn't matter, school night, we'd be out till 10 o'clock. We'd go to the car lots that were close to the freeway because they just had these huge, powerful lights. And you had to wait till those closed and so after nine, we would show up. Security guards initially would question us, but then they got to know us, they became familiar with us. And we were walking around with a bunch of boxes and a big butterfly net. And we just kept some of the most amazing things. 

And then he went and bought the bug book: "The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders." It had these great color pictures, and really well made. And we would look through that and it would show the habitat and the range of every bug. And you'd be like, "Oh, they're here too." And we'd, kind of almost like birders do, where you're trying to make a list of, "Can we find this?"

One of our favorites were walking sticks. They're so cool. They look just like a stick. And we had like an 8-and-a-half inch, it wasn't a walking stick, it was like a walking branch, right? It was huge. As big around as your pinky and scared to death the first time you see it, and you realize these things, they don't bite, they don't do anything. They're just trying to hide.

My dad got really interested in preserving this. And so he went to the Container Store, which is like we had downtown, bought these clear boxes of different sizes. And he'd carry them around in his car, actually. We'd always have some in the glove box because you never know what you're gonna see. And we would just start catching things. And if we didn't have it, we would collect it and we'd bring it home and we put it into this little display cases that he bought, mounted on the styrofoam, male and female of everyone. Our little Noah's, little bug ark, right? But they're dead, sorry. And we just started growing this collection.

So this became kind of the thing and I was 9, 10 years old. And my older siblings were not super interested in this. You know, they were too cool.

So in seventh grade, we had to do our life science bug collecting project. And you're supposed to try and find 50 bugs. Almost every case, kids would come in with like 15 to 20. And I remember bringing my whole collection and we had hundreds, probably 250 to 300 different things like longhorn beetles, click beetles, large eye, small eye, all the different types of moth, polyphemus, IO. And people couldn't believe that we had caught these right around us. And it was always like, "How come nobody else can see these?" In part, it's because maybe they didn't know where to look, or they weren't really trying. Or you also got things that totally camouflaged in. But if you're not looking, if you don't recognize it, then you won't see it.

As a kid, as a dad, I feel bad like these are beautiful, why are we killing them? He always said, "Look, most bugs don't live more than maybe a few weeks, a few months, especially when you think about a butterfly or a moth like after they come out of their cocoon, they don't live long in that form. So our preserving them, meant other people could appreciate them and be aware of them."

Ever since then, I realizee that we have this all around us. And we can get so stuck up in our own heads, or we can start to see things.

When I learned to speak another language I'd have those moments where you'd learn a new word and all of a sudden, you would hear it everywhere. And it wasn't that that word hadn't been said, every single day. And actually it had been hitting your ears, but until you recognize that knew what it was, your brain didn't process it. And in some ways, the same is true with the bugs. 

When you learn to recognize a moth, you would learn to see it and all of a sudden, you would see it everywhere.

And so with spiritual things, they're there. Once we learn to see how much the Lord is trying to bless us and it's constantly blessing us, once we see that pattern and learn it, we'll recognize it all the time, and we'll recognize that it was always happening. But if we don't pay attention to it, or if we don't learn to appreciate it, we'll miss it. And it's not because it's not happening. It's just that because we are failing to see it.

That's why I believe one of the principal values of a journal is even learning to recognize the hand of the Lord in our own lives on a consistent, daily basis. Not just the big, one time this happened, but every day. How do I wake up and learn to have an eye of gratitude and see those things?

When I go back to Texas now, on the same street that I grew up, and if you stand there at night, you don't see a single bug under a streetlight anymore. It makes me sound like a million years old because like how could it have changed so quickly. And it really, this has been true probably for the last 20 years, it's pretty rare to see any of the things that I saw. And I'm worried that some of them are gone forever. 

And I realized that the amount of time that I'm going to spend with my dad who's now 76 years old, is probably measured in a number of days. We live in separate states, I might spend less than three weeks of cumulative time with my dad, person to person. That kind of thought is sobering. And so all the more I appreciate every moment we have. Even after he is gone, when I see a bug, it will always connect me back to those moments. And it keeps us strong in its own interesting way.

I think a lot of times as parents, we're told we're a generation apart. And we're just in different places and trying to communicate directly sometimes with a kid is hard. Now that I've got six, and various ages, but in this, my dad and I had a common bond. I know my other siblings like bugs, but my dad and I are the ones that shared this. You know when you're not actually catching the butterfly, like sure that was exciting, but it was 45 minutes of just banter and just conversation where we built that relationship.

We need to have these binding moments with our kids. It's not enough to just be blood anymore. There's so much more things that are more entertaining, more exciting. And so finding ways that we can be in not just proximity, but that emotionally or intellectually, or spiritually, of course, we are teamed up and we are working on something together. I have to find opportunities to create with my kids because that will reinforce who they truly are, and then bind us all together.

These kinds of activities, it's something that we do that becomes part of the fabric of who we are that will always keep us close. It lifts our eyes from the mundane to the more divine. It's pretty cool.

KaRyn Lay  30:08  

That was Spencer. If you have been a longtime listener to "This Is the Gospel," you might recognize Spencer from one of our very first episodes. In fact, he was one of the first people that I called when I needed a good story for the pilot of the podcasts because I knew that he'd be able to spin a good yarn and make some really beautiful gospel connections. 

Spencer's story and all the many lessons he learned about the world from his enthusiastic study of bugs with his dad made me think that some of the most powerful spiritual teachers come in all shapes and sizes. And some of them might have wings and too many legs, but it's up to us to open our eyes to the wonder of the natural world if we want to learn from them. 

There's a little scriptural passage in Job in chapter 12 that kind of sums it up for me. It starts in verse seven, "But ask now the bees, and they shall teach thee. And the fowls of the air and they shall teach thee. Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee. And the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee." And then it skips to verse 10, "In whose hand is the soul of every living thing and the breath of all mankind?" 

Job was in the depths of his despair when he spoke these words. More trouble was coming for him and, and somehow, he understood that turning his heart to reflect on the natural world could actually bring healing and hope and connection in the midst of his pain. 

And I'm not sure if this understanding is what motivated Spencer's dad to turn to spending time in the parking lots under the lamplight with his 10-year-old son after a really big move. But it almost doesn't matter. From those hours that they spent collecting their Noah's ark of bugs, Spencer and his dad internalize the lesson that the earth is trying to teach us all. Life is fragile and fleeting and precious. And we are all, great and small, buggin man, father and son, connected by the truth that we were created by the same master. 

I'm a huge fan of the word stewardship. It comes from the Old English and it means keeper of the house or guardian of the hall. It's so interesting to me that the Lord uses this word steward and stewardship throughout the scripture to describe our relationship to the earth and all the things in it. In fact, in Doctrine and Covenants, section 104, verses 13 and 14, he reveals to Joseph Smith, "For it is expedient that I the Lord should make every man accountable as a steward over earthly blessings, which I've made and prepared for my creatures. I the Lord stretched out the heavens and built the earth, my very handiwork and all things there in our mind."

I've been thinking about what it would look like if my gospel gig was to be a guardian of the halls of God's house. If we think about it as a literal house, I can imagine walking some great marble halls filled with God's treasures, and I'd like to think that I'd be a decent steward. I'd like to think that I could be really attentive to the things around me, always looking for ways to protect them. Maybe I'd wear white gloves and check for dust a little bit more often than I do at my own house, or drink a little more caffeine so that I'd stay alert to anything that might be a miss. 

Certainly because I love the master of that house I would care for and honor the things that he made because they're a part of him. But I also suspect that like most things that become routine, after a while, I'd probably get used to all that greatness all around me in those halls and I might lose the sense of wonder and awe that would keep me hustling to be good at my job. 

If the Lord's house is this earth, then today's stories are a wake up call for me and I hope for you that while we're in the midst of facing uncertainty and certain difficulty, maybe even as certain as Job's, we can still find solace and spirit and God's creation. It's a reminder to go outside and seek wonder and to pray for new eyes so that we can see the spiders dangling in our headlights or be awed by the bees in our walls. It's a reminder to spend time with people you love in places that testify of God by virtue of their very existence. I really believe that this will invite the Spirit who testifies of Christ into our lives more and it will reawaken our desire to be good stewards, keepers of the house and guardians of the halls of this earth. And it will give us more reverence for every living thing created by a loving father for our benefit.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Kristin, Matt and Spencer for sharing their stories and their innate enthusiasm for all the creepy crawly things. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers including a picture of those honey hive curtains in our show notes at ldsiving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll also link to the gospel topics from the Church about stewardship. It's a really good read and there's some great things in there that you can learn. Some of my favorite quotes and thoughts about nature are found there. 

You can also get more great stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. A huge thank you to every one of you who takes the time to write a review of this podcast on whatever platform you listen, we love to hear how the podcast and specific episodes and stories have stuck with you and helped you on your discipleship journey. 

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers and we find a lot of those stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179. 

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with additional story production from Sarah Blake. It was edited by Erika Free and Kelly Campbell and scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Anna’s teen years are spent in anger and frustration at God for not saving her mom until an unwelcome opportunity sparks a new perspective; Juan is stopped in his tracks on his way into a fast-food restaurant when a sign from heaven sheds new light on an unanswered prayer that haunted him for years.

To see our show notes for this episode, go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT: 

KaRyn  0:04  

Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. 

I wouldn't say I am a huge modern country music fan – I tend to like my country a little bit more dusty, but when I put today's theme into Google, just to see what I could see, only one thing popped up in the search results. 

The 1990 Country Music juggernaut of a song from Garth Brooks called, "Unanswered Prayers." It immediately triggered a series of flashbacks to those awkward dances at Rockland Junior High where the only thing bigger than my hairsprayed bangs was all of my anxiety about being asked by an actual boy to dance to a slow song. 

And if you're unfamiliar with this particular slow song, let me give you a quick synopsis. It's a story about a teenager begging God for something that he thought he wanted, only to realize as an adult that getting that thing that he wanted, would have precluded him from the gift of his current family and life. The song has all the country feelings – regret, longing, a high school football game, and a nod to a loving Heavenly Father. And it ends with a super catchy chorus. 

So if you want to jaunt down American Memory Lane, hit the YouTube give it a listen. But here's the thing, Garth song and its catchphrase, "Thank God for unanswered prayers," is a little overly simplistic for my taste. 

It might make for a really great t-shirt at the merch table, but I think that understanding and making sense of our own unanswered prayers can feel a little bit more confusing and even devastating when you're in the middle of the asking and the not getting 

Getting to gratitude and thanking God for saying no is sometimes a really long and perilous journey. So today, we're going to dig into the complexity of the spiritual phenomenon with two stories from people whose righteous desires didn't end in easy yes's. 

First, we'll hear from Anna, who's wrestle with prayer began pretty early on in her life. Here's Anna.

 

Anna  2:11  

Growing up in primary, I was always taught that if you had a good desire, and if it was a righteous desire, then Heavenly Father was going to answer your prayer, and He was going to give you what you wanted. And I was always taught about the miracles that happened, you would read about it in the scriptures, and I would, you know, hear people bear testimony about the miracles in their own life.

So when I was nine years old – I had just turned nine – we found out that my mom's cancer had come back. She was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was five, and then had been in remission. and it had come back. And this time, they told us that it was terminal, and that she was probably going to not survive it because it had spread so rapidly throughout her body. 

But as a nine year old girl I had, you know, all the faith in the world. And I knew that – I knew that it was gonna be okay. I was like, "No worries. I'll just, I'll just pray" – because I felt that praying for my mom to live and to not die was a very righteous desire. 

And so I prayed so hard that she wouldn't die because I didn't want her to, and I really believe that if I prayed that she wouldn't die, that that she wouldn't. That she would survive, that this would be, you know, one of those miracle stories. 

But on October 13 2005, I remember waking up and I looked at the clock and it – I shared a room with my little sister – and it was nine in the morning. And I thought, "This is the greatest day of my life, my parents have forgotten to wake me up for school. I don't have to go to school." 

And so my little sister woke up and she started making noises and trying to talk to me and I was like, "No, no, go back to bed. Mom and Dad won't take us to school if we don't wake up." But my dad heard us, and he asked us to come out and we went out into our living room and he was there with his mom and his sister, and they told us that she passed away earlier that morning. And that the cancer had taken her life and . . . I was nine and my little sister had just barely turned seven. 

And I mean I was just bawling. And I was like, "What?" I was like "No!" like, "My mom can't be gone." And I can remember telling my dad, you know, I said I was like, "You know Dad, I'm not gonna pray anymore." Because I said, "God didn't answer my prayer. So obviously God doesn't love me. And God doesn't answer prayers because I prayed so hard and so many people were praying that she wouldn't die." And yet, here I was without a mom here on earth and I was just so upset and I was so angry. And I held on to that anger. 

Anger was like this blanket for me where I would just like wrap it around myself, and anytime I started to not feel angry, I was like, "Whoa, this feels weird, bring it back." And my prayers definitely changed after that, where, when I would pray, it would be very routine, it would be, you know, the "Please bless that I'll be able to sleep tonight. And I'll be able to wake up and go to school tomorrow and do good things."

It wasn't very, it wasn't very heartfelt. I didn't want . . .  I didn't want to pray. And I didn't really pray on my own. I would pray in like family settings and stuff. But I just really didn't believe that God answered prayers, because he hadn't answered mine. And that was a pretty big prayer that I wanted to have answered.

My dad got remarried to my stepmom, and I did not like her, um, because I was just so angry. I was like, "No, you don't get to come in here and like pretend to be my mom, I've been raised one way for nine years." "You don't just get to kind of like come in here and try and you know, tell me what to do." And I would always tell her that anytime she would say something to me, I would be like, "You're not my mom." That was like my card that I would pull out all the time. 

And I was just so angry. And I really took it out on her, because I felt that if I loved her – if I loved my stepmom – then I would be forgetting my mom. But I was lucky enough to have a dad who, you know, when I told him that I was done praying, he didn't just go, "Okay, sounds good." Like, "You're right. He didn't answer my prayer, either. Let's just like stop going to church and stop doing things." 

But he taught me of the plan of salvation and of eternal families. And it was, it was those truths, that kept me going. I had to hold on to that hope that I was going to see my mom again, and that families are eternal, and that the plan of salvation is this wonderful plan that our Heavenly Father has given us. And that's what really kept me going. 

Even though I didn't feel like I could ask Heavenly Father for important things at that time. So I would only ask them for like little things like, "Can you help us find this lost toy?" Or, "Can you, you know, help me on this test?" It would just be like, very little things, and I wouldn't put a lot of faith in Him to, like, fulfill it. 

Like, I'd be like, I mean, I don't really know if he's, you know, I don't know if he's actually going to help us find this toy, I don't . . . you know, like, I didn't really have a lot of faith during that time that he would actually answer those prayers. But I kind of started to ask him for little things here and there to kind of, I guess, see what would happen. 

All of this kind of started to change when I was in my first year of college, and I was praying to tell God, that I was not going to be serving a mission, that that was not part of what I was going to do in my life. I was literally – I was like, "Heavenly Father, I'm not going to serve a mission. I hope that's okay with you. Thank you, amen." 

And then I felt that I needed to open my scriptures. So I just like grab my scriptures, opened it up to a random chapter – to this day, still can't even find that chapter in D&C – and I just read a little bit of the headline, and it just talks about missionary work. And I shut that book so quickly. And I shoved it back and I was like, "Nope. Nuh uh."  

And I felt so like, deep within me, like, I've never had an experience like that, where it was just instant, like, "No, you need to serve a mission Anna." And I was like, "Yeah, no, that's not gonna happen." And I was so anxious. 

But then I went to the temple, and I prayed, and I, and I just had this overwhelming feeling of peace. It was like, "Anna, you need to go on a mission." And like, "Everything's going to be okay. If I'm asking you to do this, I'm gonna help you through it." And I was like, "Alright, I'm going on a mission." And from that moment forward, I didn't ever look back. 

On my mission, it kind of came to this point where I was miserable on my mission for the first little bit because I just like, didn't want to be there – that I had to make a choice. Whether I was going to let misery rule my life, or if I was going to choose happiness, and if I was going to choose goodness, and if I was going to choose Christ. 

And I decided I'd rather be happy. And so I really allowed the Savior to enter into my heart. And that's really – I know, and I believe that that's really what what healed me was letting him come into my heart. 

It took, like the entire 18 months, pretty much where I think it was close to the end of my mission where I could remember just thinking I was like, "Wow," like, I don't feel that literal . . .  like it just kind of felt like a very heavy burden that had been on me for all those years because I was so angry and upset at God for not answering my prayer. 

And I think it was was just the process of, you know, on the mission and missions aren't for everyone, but I do believe that I, I had to serve a mission in order to heal, because I needed to get out of the environment that I was in at home, and I just needed to get like completely thrown out in a new place. And I needed . . . like in a mission like you really have to rely on the Savior, like you can't do it on your own. And so I really had to learn to really trust the Savior, and to trust Heavenly Father.

That unanswered prayer of my mom passing away hasn't been resolved, in the sense that, like, my mom isn't alive, you know, she hasn't come back to life miraculously. And there's still been, you know, other prayers, maybe not as big as that in the grand scheme of things that have gone unanswered. And I still don't fully understand why my mom had to be taken from me and my little sister when we were so young. And I don't know if that's something that I'll ever fully understand in this life. 

But I just know that He hears the unanswered prayers. And He is there for us. And it may just not be in the way that we want, or the way that we recognize. And it may take years to look back and recognize that God was there for that unanswered prayer. 

What changed for me was the perspective. That instead of focusing on everything that went wrong, I just started to focus on the things that went right. 

And I started to focus on the fact that, you know, my dad got remarried, like, nine months after my mom had passed away. And he married a wonderful woman, who is incredible, and loves me and my little sister with everything. And then together, they had my two littlest sisters who I love, and who I could not imagine life without. 

And that I realized that, you know, I had such a great support group around me. Neighbors and family and friends, who were there to help me. And so I think what changed is that I, I learned that I could ask for help from Heavenly Father, during the midst of trials and after them, and that he would be there to help me, and that he would, you know, lift that burden. 

You know, Heavenly Father knew that my mom wasn't going to survive, and I know that he heard that little nine year old prayer. And I think when I was younger, I, I think I had more so of an image of God, kind of just being this kind of ruthless, like hard person who, you know, didn't like me very much, and so He didn't answer that prayer, and He was okay watching me struggle. 

But as I got older, I started to recognize and realize that, you know, I'm sure that Heavenly Father wasn't sitting around going, "Oh, I'm so happy that, you know, sweet Anna's mom's gonna die," or watching my mom suffer through cancer . .  I know that He was probably weeping with us, and that He was probably really sad about it too, but that He knew that it was gonna happen, and so He put things in place that He knew were gonna help me and my family after that trial. 

And during that trial, I mean, just the incredible amount of tender mercies, and so that specific prayer of like, "Please don't let my mom die," wasn't answered, but then He puts things in my life to help me so that I would be able to overcome it. 

 

KaRyn  13:51  

That was Anna.

I think we might all be able to relate to that feeling she had, I know I can when she ran headfirst into the dissonance of what she had learned about prayer in primary, and what she learned about prayer while living it. 

So many things in our spiritual life can feel like a betrayal when the rubber hits the road of discipleship, and we recognize that there's a little bit more variation in the stories than what we were told in primary. 

And anger. Anger is a really normal response to this kind of betrayal, whether it's real or perceived. It's what we decide to do with that anger in the long run that really matters. 

I happen to know Anna's stepmother, and I know that while Anna's childhood anger response was anything but pleasant. She was really lucky to have two adults in her life who saw it for what it was and held her more closely during her bouts of rage. 

And I think while it might not feel like it – that that's what our Father in Heaven is doing for us. For each of us. He's doing that same thing, drawing us closer during our raging as we learn to manage our expectations against the reality of growth in the Gospel. 

Anna's story is a lesson to all of us. She didn't stop praying despite the challenge to her belief about prayer. And that eventually led her to an open heart about serving a mission, which is where her healing was prepared all along. 

And though parts of her understanding about that unanswered prayer remain totally unresolved, that's the part of her story that gives me the most hope. It's a testament to humanity's unflagging capacity, to thrive in the in-between spaces. To sit with the pain of the unknown, and still have gratitude for what we do know. To feel the rage of that dissonance and still call out to a father we can only hope is hearing us. To experience the loss of a beloved mother and discover a new love in our little sisters. I really think that unanswered prayers magnified this hopeful truth about each of us. 

Our next story about prayers unanswered comes from Juan. 

 

Juan  15:57  

Way back when I was a much younger man and full of more energy, my wife and I had decided that at some point in the future, we wanted to own a restaurant. But the big problem here in West Palm Beach, Florida is that most of our restaurants business is done on Saturday and Sunday. 

Especially with – ironically – the church crowds. Obviously, we couldn't have a business that works on Sunday because of our own religious beliefs, but we found that Chick-fil-A doesn't open on Sundays, so it seemed to me that would be the perfect franchise to get. 

You work six days a week like the Lord commanded, and you're off resting on a seventh day. Win-win for everybody. So we decided that's what we wanted to do. And so we prayed about it. We got great feelings about Chick-fil-A, that was it. That was the answer to our prayers. 

Early on in our marriage, we made the commitment to be full tithe payers, because the Lord has distinctly said, "If you give your tithing God will bless you." And we knew that that was the way it is, because we've seen it in other aspects of our life. 

So as we were paying our tithing, we were expecting that this is what would happen. You pay your tithing, you get blessings, and one of the blessings that we wanted was a Chick-fil-A. 

So we contacted the corporate Chick-Fil-A offices and the franchise department and so forth and we were talking to them, and they told us they had no interest at all in opening here in West Palm Beach, because a few years before that, the one that they had here, there was a robbery, and it resulted in a fatality. 

It was a real blow, honestly, you know, because we knew that this was what was supposed to happen. How could it possibly not happen? 

Two years later, the news opens up that some entrepreneur guy who's already worth millions of dollars really loved Chick-fil-A. So he bought a lot here in the middle of town and told Chick-fil-A, "Hey, I'm going to build a restaurant, would you like franchise fees?" Instead, he decided having a Chick-fil-A in West Palm Beach would be amazing. You could imagine what I'm thinking, right? He doesn't need any more money. Or at least I didn't think he needed any more money because that's what's supposed to be my money. So it hurt. I mean, I was crushed. 

And caused me to question several things. I questioned my own thought process about tithing and about how God could be so unfair when I had been so good. I mean, I see other people around me very successful. And I knew a lot about them that they were not, quote, "churchy people." So I struggled a lot to resolve their success with their lifestyle versus my lack of success with my lifestyle, which I thought was better because I was following the commandments that God wanted, and he's not blessing me the way I want. 

It just changed my entire outlook. And it changed my relationship with God and with the Church. I stopped asking for things. And instead of asking for very specific things, you asked for the general things in hopes of not being disappointed. 

So it was about two years that I just had this horrible bitterness and then our daughter Zoe was born. A couple years went by, and her pre-k daycare gave out bagels with peanut butter on and she reacted badly. It wasn't threatening her life, but it was close. 

And that's when we discovered that she had peanut allergies. And so after that, it was all hands on deck. We scrubbed our house of all things peanut, egg, and milk related because egg and milk are two other allergies she had. We didn't go to birthday parties because we don't know what would be in the cake or where it was made or what instruments they might have used to make it that might have come in contact with everything she was allergic to. And we cut our lives down to one restaurant, a barbecue joint that we were made sure had none of her allergies. 

We really cut a lot of things out of our life to make sure that she, honestly, that she didn't die. And it was rough on the other two kids, but they eventually got used to it. It was a sacrifice we were willing to make to keep her with us. 

Time passed, and I had mostly accepted that I was not going to be a restaurant owner and I was not going to be a Chick-fil-A owner. But I travel a lot around town for work. My job keeps me out of the office in a work truck. And I would pass by that stupid Chick-fil-A three times a week.

And if you've ever been by a Chick-fil-A, there's never a time when there isn't six, seven cars in the drive thru. It's just horribly poppin' and horribly busy. And I was just thinking about all that money that millionaire is getting that I wasn't getting. 

So every couple times a week I get a little jab in the side, and I'd move on and try to forget it and then I go past it again. I had mostly let it go, but every now and then it would just get to me a little bit. 

One day, I was out in my work truck. And I was driving past Chick-fil-A and my stomach decided to forgive the millionaire guy and go get a Chick-fil-A sandwich. But as usual, there's like 20 cars in the drive thru. And I didn't feel like being in line. So I parked the truck and I went inside. And as I go inside, there's this giant banner across the front. It says, "Celebrating 40 years of cooking with peanut oil." 

And I stopped. Everything kind of went blank except for the sign. I stopped breathing. I just felt stunned beyond all belief and just turned to walk back out because going through my head was if I had owned this franchise when my child was born, then possibly the first time I ever held my daughter, my newborn daughter in my arms, having come home from work, a hard day at the franchise. And if anybody's ever worked in a restaurant, you know, you carry the restaurant home in your clothes, it just seeps into you. So I would have carried all that peanut home with me and possibly killed my daughter the first time I held her after work. And that's the moment that I realized that I was being the worst possible son ever. I'd literally been looking at my dad and yelling at him because he wouldn't let me touch the stove, in love.

It made me think about all the other times that I didn't do something because I wasn't sure. Or I didn't get that answer I wanted to the prayer. I prayed and prayed and prayed to get that Chick-fil-A.. And if I had gotten that Chick-fil-A, I would have lost my daughter. 

Now, speaking from the future, the science has come out that supposedly peanut oil is processed in a way that it removes the proteins that create allergens. But it has the word peanut in it and I'm not taking the chance. It's one of those things you don't want to "if" about. 

And so I was angry at my dad for not letting me touch the hot stove. And all he had to do was let me touch the hot stove and I would have been happy, or so I thought. Instead, he didn't let me touch the hot stove. And my daughter just turned 16 two days ago. So, that was a really hard moment because I realized I was being a complete idiot for the past four years. I was actually upset at God for getting a blessing because sometimes the blessing is not getting what you want. 

This experience changed the way I think about tithing and prayer. Tithing, and the blessings you get from tithing, doesn't necessarily mean, "Hey, if I pay 10%, God's gonna make me a millionaire." No, that means that, you know, things don't break as often. Friends help you out. You find sales on items that normally don't go on sale, things like that those are robust, and they're tiny. They're small blessings that add up. And that's what that scripture means: but I will pour out blessings upon you until you can handle them anymore. It's the little blessings that add up, not the great big blessing. 

Prayer, for me, and I think for our entire family, has become more of a thank you note. We don't really pray for the giant things anymore. We give more thanks. And then we asked for, we asked for protection for our family, we asked for health for everyone, especially right now. 

I used to ask God for things and I quit asking God for the big things when all this happened because I was angry. He's, I'm gonna ask him and he's gonna say no anyway. I mean, how many kids have done that? You know, I asked, and asked and asked, and dad always says no. Okay, fine, then I won't ask anymore. But now it's sort of developed into I don't need those big things because he has given me so many smaller things that actually have ended up being a small part of being greater than the sum of the whole. 

It sounds strange, but I know that I'm not destined to be that world changer. There are certain people that come into the world that are destined to change the world. Our family is the family of worker bees in the hive. And we know this, and we don't necessarily look for the big things, but we do appreciate the daily comforts that we have. We're the disciples that weren't mentioned in the Bible, the crowds that follow Jesus and follow His commandments but didn't get the spotlight, that's us. And we're okay with that now. And we're happy with the things that we have. We have three healthy children, we have enough for our needs. And enough for an occasional want, and then it's good enough for us. And we love each other as a family and we will do anything for each other. And we know that we're there for each other every day. And then God has our backs. That is a lesson I got from the unanswered prayer.

 

KaRyn  27:28  

That was Juan. 

We first featured Juan's story in our "This Is the Gospel" video series back in 2017, I think. And it was really fun to revisit the details and learn more about how he came to understand the gift of his unanswered prayer. 

History demonstrates a really cool trick that many of us already kind of do unconsciously as we hit new roadblocks in our journey towards eternity. It's called cognitive reframing, and let me give you a little crash course. In the same way that buildings have a frame that determines the shape of the rooms we live in, many of our beliefs and attitudes act as the frames that determine the shape of our testimony. So when we choose to renovate our homes or reshape our testimony, sometimes we have to make adjustments to that frame. And how we do that might look different for each of us. But in all cases, it's a choice, a gift of our agency. 

For Juan, the remodel started with the idea that God doesn't keep his promises and all that bitterness that seeped into his heart every time he drove by that Chick-fil-A. But then with time and a gentle nudge from heaven in the form of a vinyl sign that showed him that maybe his perspective could use some adjustments, he chose to review, to repent, and to take stock of his framework about tithing and about prayer. The result was a totally new perspective, a reframing of, "God doesn't keep his promises," into, "The promise was not to grant my wishes, the promises to pour out blessings that he knows I need." 

You know this reframing, this is hard spiritual work, my friends. Some of us are naturally gifted at it, and it just flows from us. But the rest of us, like me, well, reframing takes time. And it takes humility, and it takes practice and sometimes a lot of help from above. But the good news that we saw in Juan's story is that reframing is a skill that can be learned and mastered in this life. And it's a skill that will help us to draw closer to our Father in Heaven, even in the midst of our trials. 

This idea of reframing reminds me of one of my favorite lessons from one of my favorite gospel teachers. S. Michael Wilcox wrote a book called, "When Your Prayers Seem to Go Unanswered," and it's a short little gem from the Time Out for Women classics. So some of you actually may even remember this TOFW presentation. 

In this book, he masterfully shows us so many ways that we can reframe our belief about God's seeming silence. And I don't have time to tell you the whole book. It's so good, but the part of his message that has been rolling around in my heart today is this, quote, "Occasionally answers aren't given, or the blessings we desire don't come, or the trials we bear continue because there is no place in our hearts for God to put the answer we need. Life must carve or hollow out this place. The very experiences we are going through helped to create these holding places, yet he still hears our prayers and promises the resolution will come in time." 

This concept of time and experience carving out the holding place is so beautiful to me. I often think that if the Lord had granted my petitions and shown me the reasons and purpose for some of the most painful unanswered prayers when I was in the middle of begging for understanding, my heart might have been too smooth, to free of the friction necessary to hold the truth in its place. I needed that time, and, frankly, I needed the heartbreak to crack open space for that new perspective. And when the time was just right so that I could see the answer from all sides in its new home in my renovated heart, that's when the understanding came. And isn't it so amazing to see the creation of that holding place in both of the stories that we heard today? 

Beyond the anger and the fear, the resentment, that feeling of unfairness and blame, beyond that lay a new way of seeing the world and God's goodness. But first, Anna had to step out of her comfort zone and into her mission to teach others about the power of prayer and the plan of salvation. And Juan had to step into fatherhood and out of his truck to witness what Brother Wilcox calls the given good from God instead of the expected good. With each step, the holding place was being hollowed out of the studs of their hearts, so that they could reframe their experience with God and His love for them. And if like Anna, the full answer to our heartfelt prayers have not yet found their way to us, well, I have to quote Brother Wilcox again, "May we have the patience to wait for life, measured by the wisdom of God, to carve the holding places in our hearts." 

Today, I wish you patience, my friends. There are so many questions that God has yet to answer, but the promise is that he will answer them.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Anna and Juan, for sharing their stories and their wisdom. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers, including a link to Juan's original "This Is the Gospel" video and Michael Wilcox's his book "When Your Prayers Seem to Go Unanswered" in our show notes at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. 

You can find more of the good stuff by joining us over at Instagram and Facebook at thisisthegospel_podcast. All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. 

If you'd like to become one of our storytellers, the best way to throw your hat in the ring is through our pitch line. We find so many of our stories like Anna's from the pitch line. We listen to every pitch and we love to hear how the gospel of Jesus Christ is transforming your lives. The best pitches are going to be short, sweet, and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch it when you call 515-519-6179. So come prepared.

And listen, while we can't get back to everyone who calls the pitch line, please don't give up hope. If you haven't heard from us yet, it can sometimes take months and even years to develop just the right theme for your story. 

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

 

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: A new Christmas tradition challenges Matt to put into writing all the things he has trouble saying; Gracie, Cescily, Paul, & Sheradon call the pitchline with stories of what "getting it right" looks like for them; Leslie's attempt to skip the holidays is thwarted by a wise dad with three poinsettias and a plan. 

Find the Pearl S. Buck story "Christmas Day in the Morning" here.

For complete show notes for this episode, please visit ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

We'll be back with weekly episodes starting JANUARY 11th. Merry Christmas!

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn  0:03 

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

Don't even say it. I already know that today's theme is a little bit controversial because what does it even mean to get it right? If we take the philosophical route, we'd probably determine that absolute rightness is a construct that it doesn't actually exist because of the sheer number of relative interpretations, depending on our lived experiences, belief systems, cultural norms, and more. And we might determine that it's impossible to ever actually get anything truly, and purely right.

And now that we've collectively had an existential crisis together, maybe we can decide to be a little more generous with the imperfections and inaccuracies of the English language, a little more poetic, maybe, as we tackle this idea of getting it right.

I think if we look at it through the lens of the restored gospel, we might be reminded that our God is eternally interested in us getting it right. And he's been really generous with us as we play the long game of perfection. I mean, that's the whole purpose of the plan of salvation and the Atonement. We do our best with faith and humility and he makes it right.

And of course, when we apply getting it right to this beautiful season of Christmas, that's a celebration of that perfect act of selflessness. I don't think it takes a PhD in philosophy to recognize our own efforts towards true discipleship, and the efforts of others. Christmas is the perfect time to internalize this truth: that we are all on different paths that lead to the same place when our hearts are turned in the right direction.

And today, we've got six really short stories about holiday hearts turned right. These right turns might look a little bit different than your right turns, but that's what's so exciting about storytelling: we get to witness one another's uniquely drawn paths and celebrate both the heartaches and the wins together.

Our first short story comes from Matt, a father who found himself wondering if he could be the change he saw his family needed at the holidays. Here's Matt.

 

Matt  2:14 

I don't remember exactly what year it was how it started. It was a while ago, the kids were teenagers. And I remember, though, that we were kind of getting to that point where you're in the arms race of Christmas, as your kids get older. And so you kind of have to, you know, up it each year to try and make sure that they're excited as they get older because the things that they they need kind of get more and more expensive.

We're going around fighting the battle to try and get presents and I asked the kids about what they had gotten the previous year. And they didn't even remember. And so I was sitting here in the middle of this battle, trying to get all the presents and go into the different stores and they don't have what you want and whatnot. And then to hear that they didn't really remember what they got the year before. It kind of hit me like, "Well, then what's the point? What are we doing this for?"

This is nothing on the kids. They're great kids. But I had, even myself, tried to think back to what gifts I had got the year before. And you just you don't really remember those things, you remember experiences. And so I thought, "Well, maybe this is something that that needs to change."

And to understand, I'm not a very empathetic person. I'm not very good at you know, I mean, I try and understand people's feelings, but I'm not, I'm not very good at it. And I'm especially not good at expressing any feelings. And my wife is very good at pointing that out to me as something that I need to improve on. And she had mentioned before, that – I don't know if it was for a birthday or anniversary but – she said, "You know, you don't need to get me a present, I just want to letter. I just want to know how you feel."

So with that background, in the midst of this Christmas time and the hecticness and not remembering the presents and my wife saying that, I thought maybe this is a good thing that we can do, is to cut back on the presents, the monetary, actual physical gifts, and we can give letters about how we feel for each other.

There was no pushback from the kids, and we didn't cut out presents at all, because it was kind of fun, so what we did is we said – so there's five of us, you know, the parents and three kids – and we said, you know, "Give each other a gift but keep it less than $20." So we still went and found something but because we set that $20 limit, you kind of had to think a little bit about you know, "I don't want to just give him some junk." So I actually got some really thoughtful gifts, and so still kind of fun because we had things to open, but the focus was the letters.

So I'd like to say that, you know, I prepared the whole year and took notes and wrote in my journal about all the wonderful things they did, but I wasn't that good. So it would kind of come down to December. And I knew as it was looming, then you start thinking about, okay, what are some of the things that have maybe gone on this year that I can talk about in that letter? And what are some things that I can say that are meaningful, that maybe I didn't say last year? So that it does doesn't become repetitive, you know, saying the same thing each year. And truly, what is it about them that I love and appreciate?

As I started to think about my family, it took that focus off of me and onto them, and I start to feel maybe even just a teeny little bit, that true meaning of Christmas, which is the gift that our Savior gave us. And it allowed me to then focus on giving a little bit of myself, to them.

You know, each Christmas we hear about, you know, at Christmas, we are the people that we should be all year. Well, I don't even think at Christmas I was the person I should have been all year round, because of this, you know, not being able to express my feelings or not taking the chance. It's something that was always really tough for me to express those feelings. But because it was written, it was easier for me.

And the surprising thing was that once we started doing it, how awkward it wasn't. Knowing that it was expected, and that they were expecting this letter from me, helped me to kind of overcome that. And so I guess the surprising thing to me was how easy it was to get into it. And to be able to write those letters, which before felt like such a difficult, awkward, embarrassing thing that I didn't want to do.

Hopefully, it's been able to help my kids get better at expressing themselves, to do that. I know it's helped me, and I know that now – I actually, not that I didn't look forward to Christmas before, but I look forward to it with a new – I just I look forward to those letters, and I have them all my journal.

I don't know if my kids keep all of their letters, I'm assuming they do. But I know my wife and I keep ours. And it's kind of nice to actually get out and read them sometimes, especially when you're, you know, we all have struggles. And there's times when you feel like you're kind of – "Ah, I made the wrong decisions. And I'm kind of feeling beat down." And you can pull those letters out. And you can look at them and say, "Well, at least there's four people in the world who appreciate me. And I've got proof in these letters."

This isn't something that has turned our family into some super holy family that's ready to be translated or anything like that. We still have arguments as a family, it's just something that's helped us to take some of that negative and commercialism of Christmas out of our house and to make it more peaceful, and it's helped us to get closer to each other and I think in that respect, closer to our Savior.

 

KaRyn  8:29 

That was Matt. I first learned about his adventure and Christmas letter writing from his daughter our story producer Erika. We were talking about the story from Pearl S. Buck that they retold at last year's Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert called, "Christmas Day in the Morning," and it's a story all about getting it right.

If you haven't seen the concert or read this story, I'll give you a really quick synopsis. It's all about an empty nester named Robert who is grappling with the changes in his life at Christmas time. Now that there are no little children to surprise and delight, it seems like the spark of Christmas has gone out for both him and his wife, and he's not really sure how to get it back.

So he remembers a Christmas as a youth when he surprised his father by getting up before him and milking the cows so that his dad wouldn't have to work on Christmas Day. He remembered that that work wasn't a chore anymore, because he loved his father and his father loved him, it was the most joyful cow milking he'd ever done. And that memory awakens in him this truth about getting it right. That when we harness the love that's already been given to us by our Savior, whatever we offer to others with that love will be a joyful, joyful gift. The right gift.

And so, Robert is reawakened to the joy of Christmas and he decides to write a letter of love and gratitude to his wife as a gift to her. It seems almost ridiculous how relevant that 80 year old story is right now in the middle of Christmas 2020.

Change, grief, disruption, those might define our Christmas season this year, and that's hard. And it's worth grieving. But Pearl's fictional story and Matt's real story remind us that even in the midst of all of these hard things, the right gifts will do more than show love to those who receive them. They're going to transform the giver through the atoning power of Jesus Christ. Those gifts given in His pure love will re-animate the light in us that shines in every direction.

Next, we've got four stories straight from the pitch-line from four different storytellers, a high schooler, a missionary, a hiker, and a mom. All with one big thing in common, a desire to get it right at Christmas.

 

Gracie  10:43 

My name is Gracie and I am 17 years old. Christmas time for me is usually very busy. And I remember last year that it was especially busy.

I'm a musician. And so I'm involved in a lot of orchestras in my community, as well as just different music groups with friends and family, and I actually teach private music students. So at the time, I had about 20 private music students that I was trying to teach on top of school and everything else. It seemed like I had a performance for Christmas about every single night.

And so towards the end of the season last year, I was feeling really pretty burnt out. And I just really wanted a break. And at the same time, I kept having a prompting that I needed to go play music for a man in my ward who was suffering from some pretty severe health problems at the time, and I just kind of pushed it aside because I felt like I was too busy. But I have a really good connection with this man, we actually share the exact same birthday, and I just felt like I needed to.

So I talked to my mom about it and we chose one of the only nights that I didn't have anything else going on, it seemed like to go over and played the couple songs for him. And we got there. And the very first song that I played was Jingle Bells. And I remember as soon as I started playing, I looked over at him and he had tears streaming down his face.

I thought, why is he crying? You know, this is Jingle Bells. It's not even like a spiritual, pretty song. But by the end of the night, we all were in tears, because we realized how much this simple little concert meant to him, and it really made me reflect on the Savior. Because when I picture the birth of the Savior, I don't picture a town of busy streets full of people and commotion, I picture a sacred, silent night when a King was born.

And that's really what I felt that night as I played for this man, because it made me realize that during a season that's meant to celebrate the Savior, I should be focusing on these still peaceful moments made while serving others, instead of everything else that I had going on in my life at the time.

And I am especially grateful that I followed this prompting to play for this man that night because it actually ended up being his last Christmas. And so ever since this experience, I really tried to take time out of my busy schedule, to do just simple things, to try to improve the lives of those around me even if they're just really small, because you never know the impact that they will have. And I found that this has brought me so much closer to my Savior than I ever thought that it could, because it's helped me to really forget about myself and my own problems and help those around me and really find out what the true meaning of Christmas is.

Thank you.

 

Cescily  13:40 

Hello, my name is Cescily. And my story is on Christmas 3 years ago. I was six months into my mission in New York City, and I felt like I was thriving. I had the best companion, I have the best district, I was in an area that I was close to the members and I was close to the people that we were teaching. And it was just such a happy time of my life.

Well a week before Christmas, transfer calls came in. And I found out I was the only one in the district that was leaving, and my heart broke. And when I found out where I was going my heart broke even more because I was going to an area with a companion who was also new to the area – we were getting blinded in – neither of us had had been there ever, and I learned the history of the area to know that the members and the missionaries didn't have the best of relationships and there was nobody in the teaching pool – I  could sense trial ahead of me, for sure.

Well fast forward, I get to the area, it was about as hard as I expected, if not more. And Christmas Eve comes and we had nowhere to go for Christmas, because like I said the members and the missionaries didn't have the best of relationships and we could just – we only had like five days to mend that and we couldn't do it.

And so we're sitting on our, on our kitchen floor because we didn't have a table at the time. We just had our study desk. And so we're sitting on our kitchen floor, I'm eating mac and cheese, my companions eating tuna fish out of a bowl, because we didn't have time to go to get groceries and I was just feeling so sorry for myself, eating my mac and cheese and just crying.

And then after we were done eating, we were just like, "You know what? Let's make this day better. Let's go and do something about it." And so we went and we got on the train, and we just subway surfed. We got our district together and we just sat on the train and we decided to sing hymns.

We – it was Christmas Eve and we're just all standing together as missionaries, just standing and just singing, singing Christmas hymns. While we're doing that, I pulled out my little tablet and played the "Light the World" Christ just illuminated the screen. And I could just feel the Spirit so strongly in that subway car. I could feel that people in New York City in the subway car, who looked as if – that Christmas had only ever been a getting a gift for them, and as we all sat in that subway and sing Hymns I could feel the lives of them being touched, and that was the moment that Christmas changed for me. It didn't matter that I was 2000 miles away from my family, it didn't matter that I didn't have a place to go for Christmas. What mattered was that the Savior was born, and other people were learning that too.

 

Paul  16:41 

Hi, my name is Paul. In late 2018 after a snowy day, I decided to go for a hike up a local Canyon. I was listening to conference – had been listening to conference on my hikes before and so I started, I was listening to the about the middle of the morning session, Sunday morning session.

The trail up the canyon ends after about two and a half miles. And I didn't want to go back down that same trail. And so I decided to hike up the slope to another trail that came along the ridge. It was a very difficult hike, but I knew that if I got up there by the time of sundown, that there would probably be enough light for me to make my way down that easier ridge trail and make it home.

As I was following that ridge trail, conference was concluding, and President Nelson was talking about temples and I thought about how much I love the temple. And as I did this, he announced locations. There was cheering. And it was as if I was one of those people in those, in those places. And my heart just melted. I felt such love and gratitude for my Heavenly Father.

So I continued to hike along, reveling in those feelings. The lights of the city indeed began to illuminate my snowy, snowy path. And then I noticed that not only were those normal lights, but there were the many colored Christmas lights.

I thought about the shepherd's going to see the Christ child and about the gratitude that they would feel for him. And so I did that, and I was thinking about all of this and looking down this beautiful scene, peaceful scene below me, I realized that this was Christmas Eve. And my heart just burst with love and gratitude and peace and all the blessings of the gospel. And I found a little bare spot under a cedar tree and knelt and gave my Heavenly Father heartfelt thanks for His son and His birth. And then I heard hurried home. Thanks.

 

Sheradon  19:04 

Hi, my name is Sheradon. And a few years ago we had just moved to Dubai and our first Christmas here we decided to take a trip to Jerusalem. We had planned to stay outside of Jerusalem and then over Christmas Eve into Christmas we were going to spend a night in Jerusalem and kind of check out all of the Old City. And so we get into Jerusalem on the 24th. We see – you know – the Old City, we see the Wailing Wall, and the Temple Mount and then we head over to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Now it was kind of a shock to me because there were so many people there. So many. And it was just right by this busy road, and honking and driving and it was quite sad to me. I wanted to have this place by myself and have my kids experience this. You know have their own testimony building or I don't even know – just something, but it just was so crowded and loud and, and I was kind of disappointed.

So I tried to feel the Spirit as much as I could and teach my boys of the sacred spot. On our way back, we got to our Airbnb, and we were locked out. We couldn't get in the building. So we tried to go and talk to the tour manager that was down in front, and he had no idea what we were saying, no one spoke English, we were getting really worried and frustrated, my husband didn't have any way to contact the person that he rented from. And so we were kind of lost.

We finally were able to have someone let us in, we get to our room, and we couldn't get into our room. But it was kind of a fun experience, I was telling my kids that it was kind of like Jesus, not being let in the inn, and so we kind of had fun talking about that. That night, it was cold, the heating wasn't working, but we all kind of snuggled in our blankets and slept.

And in the morning, my husband and I had decided not to do any presents, but the kids woke up and they were so excited it was Christmas. We didn't have any decorations or anything, but they're like, "It's Christmas!" Finally, we headed over to the Garden Tomb.

We were so excited because it was Christmas, it was just a great time to go, perfect day, we get over there and it's closed, even though we had checked that it would be open. So we waited just a little bit, ringing the doorbell, and then people started coming out. And we we're asking them it, "Is this open? Can we come in?" And they said, "No, we're going to, you know, breakfast brunch, and it's not open today." And we were like,  "Please. We came all this way. This was our big thing that we were going to do on Christmas." And they're just like, "No, no, no." Finally, this one guy, his name was Glenn, and he was from the Foursquare church in California. And he said, "Oh, I'll take them around." And they said, "Oh, but you won't be able to find where we're going to be, you'll be late, you'll miss out," trying to get him to come and not take us around. He said, "Oh no, it's fine. I can make it, I'll be there."

And so he went and took us around on a personal tour of the Garden Tomb. And it was beautiful. It was quiet and wonderful. And he didn't rush us at all, he walked us through and let us have our time. It was just such a wonderful gift and tender mercy that we were able to have this time as a family and to spend it alone in this beautiful, quiet garden. It just made the Christmas so much more meaningful, and all about what it's supposed to be, which is our Savior, Jesus Christ and His birth and His life and sacrifice. And I'm just so grateful for that opportunity, and it'll be a Christmas that I will never forget.

 

KaRyn  23:05 

That was Gracie, Cescily, Paul and Sheradon. I love when we can feature so many stories in one episode, because it very quickly demonstrates both the depth and the breadth of the way that God is tailoring our individual spiritual curriculums, and what Gracie needs in order to get Christmas right is different than what Paul needs to get it right. And what getting it right look like for Sister Cecily, three years ago in New York City is going to be different than what it looks like for RM Cescily in December of 2020.

So here are some of the questions that I'm asking myself during this strange and beautiful season. How has getting it right changed for me over the years and what is unique to me and the ways that I'm being asked to stretch right now? I'm a little worried because I think that pondering and answering these questions might just be setting me up for some really lofty New Year's resolutions. We'll see. But I still think it's worth doing.

Our final short story comes from Leslie who's experience at Thanksgiving helped her to understand what getting it right could look like year round. Here's Leslie.

 

Leslie  24:10 

Every time I come into a holiday season that's been challenging for me in some kind of way or for others, my heart and my mind go back to one of my most difficult holidays, and really what became the miracle of that holiday season in my life and in my heart.

I'm a single mom, I have three children and I've been divorced for about 15 years and this was the very first holiday after my separation from my ex-husband. And it was my first Thanksgiving without my kids. You know, you don't go into parenting and into thinking about holidays and seasons sort of planning, "What's going to be my strategy if I ever find myself going from one year were my whole world and holidays revolving around my family and my kids, to suddenly finding myself completely alone?"

And I had extended family who live really close, and of course, wanted me to come and invited me to be part of all of the normal holiday activities that our family would do typically on a Thanksgiving. But I just couldn't go. I couldn't join, I didn't want to be around reminders of family. I didn't know how to show up in a way that wouldn't be sad. Because I was just sad. I was depressed, I didn't want to have to pretend. I just didn't feel like I could put a smile on my face.

And I'm kind of by nature a positive person, and I, you know, like to try to bring joy and light to a room and a family and an experience and home setting, and I felt like I had nothing to give. And so I just really respectfully said, "I'm just not going to be able to join," and I turned out the lights – which is not like me to do this – and I crawled into bed, and I decided I'm going to sleep away this Thanksgiving Day.

Holidays, laughter, family, everything that revolves around that was a reminder of what I was missing, and the pain I was going through. And I remember that afternoon, after my dad had hosted our family dinner that day with my extended family, he came over to my house. And what I remember is him knocking at the door, and my not going down to get the door, and getting a text from him saying, "I'm here. I want you to come down and open the door." Which I did. And he said, "I want you to go get dressed. We're going to go get something to eat."

 And he told me that he was going to pick up my sister who was also single at the time. And he said, "I'm going to take you guys to dinner. It'll be just the two of you. You need to get out and you need to be with somebody right now." My sister later told me that he had invited her to come so that you know, I wouldn't be completely alone, that I would have some sense of family, but that she also was single, and they could hold space for me.

And so he picked me up, we went and got my sister and we drove to a restaurant. I wasn't dressed up, I didn't have to have a smile on my face. I could grieve. We talked. What ended up with just sadness and no pressure for me to have to answer questions or say anything for things I couldn't yet process. And my dad was also a single dad and divorced at the time. And I think he just knew.

By the end of that dinner time, we were laughing and joking and eating and I was already feeling better. We left, and my dad drove to a grocery store. He left my sister and I in the car and he said had to go in and get something. So he went inside. And he came back out with three poinsettias. He didn't say anything yet, he just came back in.

I didn't know if the three poinsettias were for us or who they were for, and he drove from there to a rest home. I'd never been there, apparently he knew where it was because at one point we'd had a great aunt who had had a stay at the facility that he had visited. He told us to each get one of the poinsettias, so we did and the three of us walked in. And my dad went up to the front desk and he said, "Could we have the names of three people who haven't had any visitors today?"

At that point, I'm starting to realize what we're just about to do. And we went in and we visited with three residents who, on that Thanksgiving Day had had no family. And no one come to visit them. There was a woman and she was lying in bed, I don't know her circumstances, I don't know her condition, she didn't or couldn't sit up. But she was able to turn her head – and her smile. I think that's when something for me shifted, because I completely forgot about everything that I was going through.

I forgot about everything I had lost. And suddenly I was just wrapped up in the Spirit and wrapped up in the miracle of the moment of how happy she was to have you sit and visit with her for a few minutes and to set that beautiful vibrant poinsettia by her and to hold her hand and to just look into her eyes and have that moment of sweetness and Spirit and connection. And it was at that moment that I realized that this was so much less about what I was able to share and give to her and suddenly it was so much more about what I was receiving, and the feeling of hope, the love that was starting to flow inside of my heart.

As I thought and reflected back often on that experience, I'm so grateful that my dad first held space for the pain that I was in, and he held space for my grief. And he didn't make me show up in some certain way, he didn't force that or push that. He kind of honored the place that I was at, and that was really important. I needed to be listened to, and he was so good at listening. He was so good at caring.

I've often said that, you know, I came to know, my Father in Heaven because of how my dad serves. Ever since that moment, I have made sure that I build service into whatever the holiday looks like. Because there is always someone who hasn't had visitors that day. There's always someone who hasn't had a carol or hasn't received a gift or can't afford a Christmas tree. And there are so many ways that we can reach out and bless lives and take a poinsettia to visit someone.

I've often felt that I  feel closest to Him when I am in His service. I know that the Lord on Christmas would be seeking to feed the hungry and lift the hands that hang low. You know, He would be putting coats on those who are cold. He doesn't ask questions, He doesn't ask why. He doesn't have to be fancy, He doesn't care what it's gift wrapped in, but He is just constantly seeking to love. And when I have moments where I can choose to go, "Okay Father who needs thy love?" You know, those are the moments I feel closest to Him, to my Savior. And I'm so grateful for the invitation during Christmas time to in fact, seek to be like Him, and for me is that great power and miracle of charity and love, that there literally is no limit to the endless ways in which we can share and give love and bless lives.

 

KaRyn  32:36 

That was Leslie. I learned two things about getting it right from this story. First from Leslie's dad, before we can offer our own life experiences to another person before they can truly feel the balm of our love, and our hope for them, we have to meet them where they are. He didn't lecture, he didn't give advice, even though he was uniquely qualified to do that as both her parent and someone who had experience with being a single parent.

Instead, he came to where she was – he literally came to where she was – and got her. And then he sat with her and her sister at that dinner and he let her cry, then and only then was he able to tend to her wounds by offering his example.

The second thing I learned is that I want to be more intentional about building meaningful service into my holiday plans. In the same way that I obsess over my Christmas baking spreadsheet and plan months in advance for some of the family experiences that we have. I really want the act of asking Heavenly Father where He wants and needs my heart and energy this season built into that initial planning. And I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do that, I have a few pieces of inspiration from today's stories, but I know that I felt the call to do better at this from listening to Leslie's story.

And that's not to say that how I've been doing Christmas all along is bad or wrong or not enough. I really think that it was exactly what it was supposed to be, and that choosing to make some turns in my discipleship journey when I feel that tug of the Spirit doesn't cancel out all the good that was happening before.

Listen, I'm going to sound like a total hippie right now. But it's the only way that I can describe what I mean. And I may have picked up this concept from Marie Kondo and "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up." As we figure out what getting it right looks like for us right now, and as we follow the Spirit into this new, stretching territory, it's not a terrible idea to take a little bit of time to reflect and to offer thanks and gratitude to the years before, in the same way that Mari might invite us to thank a worn out sock for keeping our feet warm before we send them off into the sock drawer in the sky.

We could spend some time honoring the work and the effort that brought us such joy and such movement before we got this new call. Celebrating what was, so that we can be fully engaged in what is, right before us – right now.

I don't know exactly what it's going to look like for you to get it right this Christmas. To bring it back to that PhD in philosophy, there are literally a million ways that rightness can be expressed in your family culture and your country and your discipleship experience. But I do know that making a right turn is required. And it's possible for us as we look toward the right source of all that is holy, and hopeful and good in this world.

As we focus on the Savior who was so much more than just a baby in a manger, we'll know what we need to do. And whether that's climbing a new mountain for some quiet reflection, or slowing down to play the violin for a friend and staying just a little bit longer than you plan to, or persisting at the door of the garden, until you find your way in. Whatever that next right thing is for your growth and the strengthening of your devotion to Him, you'll get it just right. If you let yourself be filled with His love.

That's it for this episode of This Is the Gospel. Thank you so much to all of our storytellers. We are so grateful for your willingness to share your hearts with us. We'll have more information including some links and pictures on our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. This is the last episode until the New Year. We're taking a tiny break so that we can try to catch up and be ahead of the game in the new year.

We'll be back with weekly episodes January 11, and in the meantime, you can find us on Instagram or Facebook at @ThisIstheGospel_podcast to get your fix during the holidays. And this is a great time for you to go back and catch up on old episodes you might have missed or revisit some favorites that you have been thinking about.

A huge thank you to everyone who shared your reviews of the podcast, we love to hear from you. You can leave a review on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen to. Reviews are super helpful in pushing us up in the recommended section of so many platforms, and that means more people can find us.

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. And as you saw today, we find lots of our stories through our pitch line. So if you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learned something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you.

The best pitches will be short. They'll be focused on the story and not the takeaway, and they'll have a clear sense of focus. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story when you call 515-519-6179.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay with story production and editing from Erika free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios, and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find all of the past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS Living.com/podcasts.

Merry Christmas.

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Adam is all set for a safe career in engineering when a chance encounter leads him to embrace his true creative calling as an animator; When faced with upheaval and contention in her community, peace-loving Bryn finds solace in repentance and a prompting to fold 1,000 origami cranes.

To see our show notes for this episode (transcript, pictures, links, & more!) go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn  0:03  

Welcome to "This Is the Gospel," an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay. 

You're gonna have to be a little bit patient with me this week as I geek out over our theme. You know how some people have seen every episode of "Star Trek" and they love it so much that they collect "Star Trek" Christmas tree ornaments and own a dictionary of Klingon phrases? (Is that not a thing? Just something my dad does?) Whatever that thing is that you love as much as a Trekkie loves "Star Trek," that's how I feel about the pursuit of a creative life. 

I've read like a million how-to books. I collect quotes about the value and purpose of creativity. And when I can't even make time to do my dishes, I make time and space for my creative hobbies and making things. More importantly, when I think about what makes me feel the very most like who I was always meant to be in this life, the thing that comes to mind is the practice of creativity. And it's not just art, or poetry, or music, or even whipping up a really great chocolate babka a la the Great British Bake Off. 

I firmly believe that the pursuit of that creative life is the pursuit of a spiritually connected life. I mean, think about it, as disciples of Jesus Christ, who are practicing to be more and more like Him, the creator of universes and the author of salvation, we are actively and regularly engaged in efforts to create. Deeper relationships, light, connection to heaven, binding covenants, every part of who we are as children of our Heavenly Father requires an amount of creativity. 

And we have two stories for you about the way the practice of creativity and that nurturing of our divine creative spark can open up worlds of possibility and power for the forward movement of God's work here on the earth. 

Our first story comes from Adam an illustrator who accidentally discovered his passion for creativity when he decided to think outside the box at school. Here's Adam.

Adam  2:03  

In 1999, I had the pivotal moment in my life where I had to decide what classes I was going to take fall semester. And so I was sitting there, looking through a newsprint catalog of classes, trying to decide what major I would become when I returned to BYU and therefore determine the course of my entire life and career. 

And so as I dialed up on the touchtone phone, I looked over the classes and I said, "Hmm, this one's interesting, something called 'industrial design.'" But I chose the safe route. I was going to be an engineer. And so I signed up for all those classes. And at the end of the summer, when I returned to BYU two weeks after my mission, I started in the mechanical engineering program. 

It was a safe bet. That's what good members of the church did, like they had safe and sensible careers. And that seemed like what I was supposed to do. So in that first week, back at BYU, I was fresh, home from my mission, the sky was the limit. 

And I had a bit of a moment where I took the time to explore some options. And I looked into this industrial design major, I thought, okay, let me just check this out. And I went through the classes and went through a tour. 

And there were three divisions in the industrial design major. There was a automotive design, which I thought was really cool, I always used to draw cars. Product design, where you design shoes and toasters and things. And then I found this strange little division that was so obscure and didn't quite fit, which was called digital design. 

And I was told that there was a computer lab going on with one of the professor's teaching. His name was Brent Adams. And he had started this portion of industrial design called digital design. And I walked in and I saw him using a software package called Maya and he was rotating a sphere up on the big screen. And I thought, "This is it. This is what I want to do for a living. And this is your chance, Adam Sidwell, to make velociraptors and dinosaurs for a living." 

I signed up for the major. I got so excited about this. This was what I wanted to do. And I left engineering behind and I didn't look back for one second. 

There were no teachers besides Brent Adams, so what that meant is that we took a lot of illustration classes, and then we'd have this one big long class that was about three to four hours, three times a week, where we would sit in the class and just learn hands on how to use this software and how to dive into animation. And it was hard. And especially in a world where the internet had hardly any content on it. 

And, you know, I was the best artist in high school. My art teachers loved me. But for the first time in my life, I was with artists who were way more talented than I was. And I would put my work up against theirs, and it just paled in comparison. And had my art looked at and somebody would say, "This isn't good." "This is the problem here, here and here."

 And I had many, many moments of doubt of if this was something I could do. And I just wasn't sure if I was learning enough. Because we never had known anyone who had actually graduated from BYU, and gotten a job working in the movie industry. The chances of making it in a creative career are really, really slim in a lot of those careers, because you're up against a lot of competition, and some of it is just pure luck. 

There was a lot of prayer involved, there was a lot of soul searching, and usually not about "if," but "how." And my antidote to the discouragement and to the feelings of "Wow, this is really hard," – my antidote to that and my answer was, more work. Work harder.

And I remember spending five hour chunks of time in the laboratory. And in the Snell building at BYU was locked away in a room without windows, a computer lab. And they would close the doors to the Snell building at 10pm at night. But that was – for us –  the time when we were just getting started, after having already done our other schoolwork and having already had a computer lab session earlier that day. 

And so sometimes, if we had forgotten, or we hadn't made it in time to the doors being closed, there was a second story window, that if you climbed up a pillar, and someone gave you a boost, you could heave yourself onto a ledge and shimmy through a window – that was just about as wide as I was – into another computer lab classroom. 

Which, funnily enough, was often occupied at 10pm, and then suddenly, a couple of animation majors would come plopping through a second story window, much to the surprise of the professor or students who were then engaged in the class. And we'd walk through nonchalantly waving "Hello" and moving over to our computer lab so that we could get more work done. 

It was nights like that where I often found myself emerging as the sun was coming up, having worked all night, and walking back home to catch a few hours of sleep – or a few minutes of sleep – before my next day of classes started. 

And I remember just feeling incredibly happy because of the work that I was doing. 

There's something remarkable about having an idea, that goes something like this: "Wouldn't it be amazing if –?" and then you go through a process of sketching it, then modeling it and putting it into computer software, and rendering it until you have something that you can put up on your screen, and you can look at and go "Woh." 

And as I dove further and further into computer graphics and animation, and I learned the math and the physics – I got this feeling that we were trying to recreate on screen, the process of creation. 

We have to study and understand that there is math and equations behind how water flows. We have to understand, you know, how the anatomy of a human being helps us to move the way that we do. We have to examine the physics and the math behind how light bounces off of surfaces and reacts such that the colors come to our eye and we see things like glass and water. And we get a little glimpse into how God created the world. 

And I think God wants us to create because that is the divine mission of all of us. We create life. we are destined to become like Him and be co-creators and heirs to all the He has, and to create worlds to come. 

And so I didn't know how everything would turn out. But I hoped. And even if I didn't find success in what I'm doing, there was joy in the creation, and the building of a skill that I knew I could take with me into the next life. 

And so here I am in year five at BYU, most of my friends from high school had long since graduated and started their careers. And I was starting to become what felt like to the outside world an old guy in college. As were many of the other animation majors with me. 

And I came home one day to find that there was something written on the whiteboard by one of my roommates in the living room, and it said, "Pixar called." With a return phone number. And I thought this must be the biggest joke that they were playing on me. 

Because I had sent off a little VHS tape with a couple of blue lemmings with – that didn't even have eyeballs bouncing around on a screen that I had created this crowd simulation algorithm and sent off this VHS. 

And it turns out that that was a real phone number. And I called and I had what I think was the first interview of a BYU student with Pixar. 

And I remember sitting in the basement of my apartment, and I was talking through what I had created with two of the technical leads from Pixar Animation Studios. And this was the coolest moment. And I completely botched the interview. 

I tripped all over my words. I didn't know what I was saying. I was too afraid to take credit for my work and be bold in explaining to them the technical aspects of how it worked. And I never got that job. 

But I thought for a second, maybe I'm onto something. So I kept working and a few short months later, I showed a similar videotape, with the same lemmings, but this time they walked and they had fur and they had eyeballs and they had very cool animation. 

I showed it to the movie studio that did visual effects and animation called Digital Domain. And right there on the phone call – this was a few days after I graduated and I was still in my apartment at BYU – on that phone call I heard the interviewer pause for a second. He said, "Hold on a second" and he covered the phone but I could still hear him and he said, "So do we want to hire this guy?" And they go, "Yeah, let's hire him." And right then and there. They offered me a job. 

I was ready to jump in and do it for free. But they'd offered me a year contract. It was an actual paying job, $13.64 an hour. This was the year 2003. And I jumped in my minivan. I drove away from BYU with everything packed up in it. And with the short stop to my counselor and who said, "Yes, you have enough requirements to graduate. You're out of here, buddy." 

And 10 days later, I was in Los Angeles seeking my fortune, working on the movie "iRobot."

And since then, animation has taken me all over the world. You know, I got to go work for Peter Jackson for a year in New Zealand, I got to work on some of my favorite films with favorite characters like "Tron" and "Transformers" and "Ninja Turtles."

I even got to work for Industrial Light and Magic, which is just surrounded by all the coolest Star Wars memorabilia, and I loved it. And it was like this dream that came true. And I came to this moment where I realized that wow, sometimes things do work out. Sometimes our hard work does pay off. 

Each creation that we make is part of telling the story. And for me, you know at the root of it all is the fact that I like to tell stories. 

In many ways I think of God as the master storyteller and novelist and creator. He knows the end from the beginning. And there are moments of doubt and despair in the characters lives. And we as the characters don't always know how it's going to turn out. And in fact, sometimes it doesn't turn out. Even in this life. But in the end, when it's all said and done, justice will be served. All wrongs will be righted. 

There was one moment when a reporter asked President Hinckley, "How is it that you're so optimistic all the time?" and he said, "Because I know how it's all going to turn out." 

And to me, that's what's amazing, is God has written the story. And so He knows how it's all going to turn out, and the story is going to have a happy ending.

 

KaRyn  16:07  

That was Adam. 

My favorite part of his story might be the moment when he realized that becoming an animator could be his one chance to make a velociraptor. I've never really wished I could make a dinosaur. I guess I've seen the movie "Jurassic Park" one too many times, but I do love the connection that Adam made between our divine creative spark and our entire purpose here on Earth. 

Though his story on the surface was about creating art, it was also about the call to create everything. To gather the elements of godliness and shape them into a life of meaning. I mean, we birth children, we build ministries, we craft family cultures that can sustain our faith. 

Sometimes we even make little blue lemmings that dance and twist and run when we harness an understanding of physics and computers. It is so cool. 

Our next story from Bryn is a little like an exciting puzzle that unfolds as she tells it. Here's Bryn.

 

Bryn  17:02  

In order to understand my story, and why I'm so passionate about peace, it's important to know that I came from a family that endured the excruciating effects of divorce. It was difficult to feel peace in our home because of it, as hard as my parents tried. And I became very determined to create a different type of environment in my own home and with my own children. 

So the summer of 2020 was very difficult for me. I'm very sensitive to conflict. And it was just everywhere. It was online, it was in conversations. And the conversations around racism in particular felt really personal to me.

I am a white woman, married to a person of color, and I have biracial children. I met my husband in a very unexpected way. A dear friend of ours set us up. And early on while we were dating, I was just amazed by his light and his ability to love and connect with people in a very genuine way. And as a person that longed for connection, he made me feel loved and safe and important. 

And so I quickly fell in love with him, and miraculously, he fell in love with me. But because of my fear of divorce, I was really sensitive to a lot of things that I had heard growing up about what can make a strong marriage. 

And I took some of these concerns to the Lord. And I said, "He comes from a developing country. And I just had always heard that it's best to marry someone from your same socioeconomic class. He didn't come from an LDS home, and so I was worried that an interfaith family would be harder. He's a person of color. And I had heard that interracial marriages are harder. The children that I had always dreamt of having my whole life were blond haired and blue eyes. And if I were to have children with him, I thought that my kids wouldn't even look like me."

As I was praying about these concerns, I just had this strong feeling of peace and I remembered this moment of personal revelation where I knew he would be my husband and that it would be okay. 

And so I went forward with faith and he is without a doubt the greatest gift of my life. We have four kids, three girls and one baby boy. And they're a beautiful spectrum of color and personality. And they carry so much of their father and so much of me in them. 

So as I was observing the events of the summer, and watching the way that people were interacting online, as they were discussing issues of race, it brought to light some realities about myself that I had never considered. I became very aware that list of concerns that I took to the Lord – that they were racist. And I felt a lot of shame. Because my life had become so blessed by my husband, and everything that he is. 

I also, for the first time realized that because my children are biracial that they were vulnerable to racism, which is something I had never considered before. I don't know why I just hadn't ever thought about that. 

As the protests escalated, I spent a lot of time praying, a lot of time crying. I saw so much suffering, and I saw the problems, and I deeply wanted solutions. But I was too scared to really engage much because I didn't want to make any mistakes. I didn't want to offend anyone. 

You know, we all have blind spots. And I know that I have them. I had had racist ideas. In my mind. I didn't even know it. I didn't self-identify that way. And so I just was scared to really engage. 

I remember one night, I knelt down, and I don't even think I was able to say anything. I just felt so many things. And I just gave the Lord my heart. I asked him to please help me see it the way that He seems to discern to understand because everything felt so messy, and confusing. And all of the feelings were so heavy. I really wanted to believe that there are solutions, I really wanted to believe that I couldn't be part of it. That I could give him my repentant heart. He could do something with that. 

I started having a recurring image in my mind of an origami peace crane. And it was functioning as a sort of prism where a beam of white light entered into the cranes triangular shaped wings and fragmented and then dispersed out the other side in the spectrum of human skin tones from light to dark. And I really didn't understand it, but I wouldn't leave my mind. 

One of the ways that God speaks to me is through images and vision. And so when I had this lingering picture in my mind, I knew it was from Him. And it made me curious to really try to understand it. So I started to research the peace crane, and I vaguely remembered something about it, but it was all pretty new to me. There is an ancient Japanese belief that healing can come to those that fold a paper crane, and that folding 1,000 cranes will actually grant you a wish. But it wasn't until after World War II that the origami crane became an international symbol of world peace. 

There was a young Japanese girl. Her name was Sadako Sasaki, and she was exposed to radiation as a result of the Hiroshima bomb. And she developed terminal cancer at the age of 11. While she was in the hospital, her father told her this legend and so Sadako enthusiastically began to fold cranes from whatever scraps of paper she could find. When folding a crane, she would say, "I shall write peace on your wings and you shall fly all over the world." She wanted to earn the wish to be healed, but as she folded, her wish actually expanded to world peace. 

Sadako died three months before she turned 13. And as I learned about her story, I just, I wanted that peace. I really wanted it to fly all over our world, all over our country. So as I learned about this story, I wanted to give it a try, I wanted to try folding a peace crane and see if it would help bring some peace and healing to my heart. And I pulled out a piece of printer paper, watched a tutorial on how to fold a crane, and started folding. 

As I held the finished white crane in my hand, I wondered, what is the color of a peace, you know, white has always been the symbolic color of peace. And so I really sat with that question. And it was at this point, that image of the crane as a prism started to make a little more sense. I thought about how Christ is the light of the world. And we are created in the image of God, which is an image of light, then it is an image that is completely inclusive of all colors, and therefore all races. And it made me think that perhaps the color of peace is something more expansive. 

And so I ran to the paper store. And I bought paper in as many skin tones as I could find, which weren't very many. There's not a very expensive collection of skin tone colors that the paper store. And so when I got home, I pulled out a piece of black paper. And I folded and I had never seen a black peace crane before. But it was beautiful. And then I folded a brown one, which is the color of my husband, a sandy beige color that is a lot like my children. A yellowish cream, and a white. And they put them all together. And I thought, That is the color piece."

At this point, this made me really curious about peace. And it gave me a different perspective on it. And so I started to study with a new curiosity. I wondered why Christ is called the Prince of Peace. Why is He not called the Prince of Love? 

I studied the etymology of the word peace. And it actually comes from the root "to bind or to fasten." And this was really curious to me because it sounds a lot like a covenant. And it made me think about how God's kingdom is a kingdom of peace. It's a kingdom in which we are bound to Him and to one another in unity. And that he sent his Son, the Prince of Peace, to reconcile us to both Him and to each other through the power of the Atonement. I thought about how Christ offers the gift of peace, that passeth all understanding to help us and to sustain us through the trials and pains of life. 

As I really internalize these thoughts, I started thinking about how being a Christian is actually being a person that pursues peace. And that service and forgiveness and repentance, all of these are acts of helping us to feel connected with God and connected with others. 

At about this time, when I was studying all these things, I saw an image circulating on social media of a sculpture of two massive colossal hands that are making the sign language gesture for to serve, and it's located outside the Salt Lake City Public Safety building. It had been vandalized during the riots with red paint, it was spilled across them and dripping down the sides. And for me, the image was heartbreaking. It made me think, for the first time about the difference between peacekeeping and peacemaking.

And as I pondered these things, I thought, "Those hands need peace. They need to make peace." And so it was at this point where I got the crazy idea to fold 1,000 peace cranes to put in those hands so that they could hold peace, as a symbolic gesture. The work that I believe we all need to do. And for me, it would be a visualization of this wish that was growing in my heart, which was peace for everyone. 

I told some friends about the idea, and soon we had families around Utah helping to fold these cranes, and it was going to be a collective wish. Soon I had these cranes all over my house. They were these little symbols of peace that are there started making a really big difference on my behavior. They completely amplified my conscience. Nothing will call out your hypocrisy like pursuing peace. If I felt like yelling at my kids, I'd find in me this restraint to hold my tongue. And if not the restraint, the desire to hold my tongue. And if I saw something that was upsetting on social media, I would really try to understand. When I'd feel anxious, those little cranes reminded me to turn to the Lord more often in prayer. It was as if the symbol had embedded itself into my mind and was literally influencing my behavior. It was really powerful and I started to feel like it could maybe help other people as well. If we could spread symbols of peace, maybe it would help all of us to believe in it, and to strive for it more. 

And so at the end of the summer, my husband and I decided to start a grassroots peace campaign, and we called it Let's Make Peace. And shortly after we announced it, my brother actually reached out to me and had downloaded this origami crane stencil that we offered on the website and was making tons of stencils to hand out to people in the park with chalk to do chalk art. His enthusiasm first was really surprising to me, but then I understood. He was a small business owner who lost everything as a result of COVID-19. And I think he just really needed to believe in peace. 

My brother, his excitement was really encouraging to me because I had had so little interest from other people. And I had told the Lord, "If this is something that you think could help people I need to know. I don't want to invest all my time into something if it's not going to do any good." And so when my brother was just so excited about the project, it made me think, "Okay, maybe there's something to this." So I kept going with the idea and I kept trying to publish peace. 

As tensions were starting to rise around the election, it seemed like the perfect time to place those 1,000 cranes. And so we finished them up and took them up to Salt Lake City and a couple of friends helped me to carefully place them in the hands of that sculpture. And I think we were all filled with hope and with the belief that we could unite in establishing and building peace. 

So I had written a few press releases, I hoped that someone would pick up on the story and nobody did. And it was a little bit disappointing because I just wanted so much for people to really start talking about peace instead of all the problems. But as I was editing the pictures that I had taken, I put one side by side with image of the hands covered in red paint. And it was a really powerful moment for me as I looked at those side by side, because the hands painted red reminded me so much of the hands of our Savior in the blood that He spilled. And then the picture of those hands that were now clean and filled with these symbols of hope and peace and transformation, made me think of the healing and redemption that we all need can only come through Him. It also became really clear to me that we cannot establish peace without Christ, that we need Him to transform our stony hearts and then our stiff necks and focus our wandering eyes so that we can love Him and we can love His children. And it's in peacemaking that we can do this. 

I recently read a memoir about a female peace activists in Africa. During the Liberian Civil War, she had a dream in which she was told to gather the women to pray for peace. This effort eventually became the force that would stop one of the most violent wars of the modern era. And I thought if a group of women could end a war by poaching peaks, I wonder what that means for me? I wonder what it means for the quiet battles that I face? I wonder what it means for my family? I wonder what it means for our country?

I feel so strongly that through us the Savior can do His mighty work of establishing peace. Because I've seen it, I've seen it in myself.

 

KaRyn  37:17  

That was Bryn. 

There are so many layers to Bryn's story. It's about a woman and her community creating an art installation of 1,000 origami cranes with the hope that it will spark a desire for peace. And it's about a mother learning to be present to the way she creates harmony and intentionality in our parenting. And it's about a daughter of God who is practicing that imperative part of the spiritual creative process, the one that requires us to break down our old heart through acceptance and repentance, and then hand it over to Christ so we can create a totally new one together with him. 

Bryn's story is about the way we take that creative spark all the way down to our core and allow it to change us. It's about being peacekeepers and world makers on every level, and also inviting others to step into their creative powers with us and the Creator of the universe. 

Maybe you're listening to all of this right now and thinking, "Yeah, yeah, that's nice, KaRyn. I think it's super impressive when people are creative. But I'm a data entry clerk who does science in spreadsheets and other left-brained activities in my spare time, creativity is just not my thing." 

First of all, even though I just got done saying science and spreadsheets are not creative, that's a total lie. Everything at its core is creative if we just expand that narrow definition of creativity to include organization and building and making anything. But I get it, my data entry in the left-brain friend, I totally get it. Admitting that we have a creative spark in us is a daunting and even vulnerable thing because there's a risk in that. If you make things then people cannot like the things you made. Or maybe you're really tired right now and the idea of making one more thing so that you can live up to your divine potential feels particularly exhausting. And maybe acknowledging that inherent creativity is just one more thing to feel inadequate about. 

But here's a little quote I've collected about the creative spark from Elder Uchtdorf. He said, "Creation brings deep satisfaction and fulfillment. We develop ourselves and others when we take unorganized matter into our hands and mold it into something beautiful. The more you trust and rely upon the Spirit, the greater your capacity to create. That is your opportunity in this life and your destiny in the life to come."

Every time I read that it feels like a mic drop for two reasons. First, it's clear that we are all born with an inherent creative spark by virtue of our divine parentage, and that our opportunity to practice it in this life is a gift from God to get us ready for what's coming next. And secondly, it's also clear that we aren't in this sometimes daunting practice without help or guidance. The Spirit is our master teacher when it comes to nurturing our creativity from a spark into a fully realized flame. And as President Uchtdofr pointed out, as you rely on the Spirit to guide you, you'll have enough capacity to handle the concerns that you have about rejection, exhaustion, motivation, or self doubt. 

So here's the challenge. Think about what you've already created. Write it down, I think you'll be surprised at the many ways that you're already fanning the flames of creation in your life. And then take that growing spark to the Lord. Ask him what He wants you to create right now. And listen, who knows, you might be asked to set aside the sensible career choice and dive into classes about the physics of water and how to recreate a wall of running blue lemmings on a computer screen. You might be invited to start folding origami cranes or gathering people to move towards peace. Or you might be invited to create a new heart with Christ, to repent, to burn down and then to rebuild, to create movement in your own life, to take an organized matter, and shape it into something of beauty. And we can face that invitation with excitement because we know that the Spirit is going to guide us in whatever steps to take next, and the power of God here on the earth will support us as we take those steps will grow in our confidence as creators and followers of Christ to create some really, really beautiful things in His name, with His help.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to our storytellers, Adam and Bryn, for sharing their stories and their creative spark. We'll have more info about each of these storytellers including a link to Brian's peace project Let's Make Peace and some of Adam's cool work in our show notes at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. And watch for a shareable version of that Elder Uchtdorf quote this week on our Instagram and Facebook. We'd love to hear what the Spirit spoke to you as you participated in the challenge. Find us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. 

A huge thank you to every one of you who shared your reviews of the podcast this past week and always, we love to hear from you. You can leave a review about the podcast or a specific episode on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen to. Reviews really do help more people to find us. 

All the stories in this episode are true and accurate as a firm by our storytellers, and we find so many of our stories through our pitch line. If you have a story to share about a time in your life when you learn something new by practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch the story when you call 515-519-6179. This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free and Kelly Campbell. It was scored, mixed, and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find all 63 of the past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: When her dreams for a picture perfect senior year of High School get disrupted by Covid, Meg finds comfort and clarity at an imperfect football game; Sue learns an important lesson about what it means to truly trust God as she faces a mountain of boxes and an even bigger mountain of troubles. 

To see our show notes for this episode (transcript, pictures, links, & more!) go to ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

Find Elder Rasband's book, Be Not Troubled, here. 

TRANSCRIPT 

KaRyn  0:03  

Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. 

Today, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be troubled. I know what it means to be "In trouble." I mean, that's basically my entire early childhood. But I just don't think that we use the word "troubled" anymore the same way we used to. I think we regularly describe the times as "troubling" or "troubled," for sure, but it's pretty rare that I text my friend to tell her, "I feel troubled," unless I'm reenacting a scene from some 1950s movie set in the deep south. 

It feels kind of antiquated, right? I think it's because we often associate feeling troubled with being afraid. And as we've grown in our understanding of mental and emotional health, we just have more focused language to describe exactly what we're feeling. 

And while I think it's a blessing that we can more accurately pinpoint our feelings –because that makes it easier to figure out what the right kind of relief looks like – I'm sort of on a little mission to bring the word troubled back to describe our state of being.

Merriam Webster defines it as, "A state of being agitated mentally or spiritually." And I just don't know that there's a better word to describe spiritual agitation. I also think that while there are medicines for our anxieties and our panic, the only real medicine for our spiritual agitation is the peace of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And we need a word for that, especially right now, in the midst of these times. 

So today, we have two stories about what it looks like to be troubled and agitated in our spirits, and how the gospel of Jesus Christ, the good news of the gospel, can bring us to a place of hope, and calmness. 

Our first story comes from Meg, a high school senior here in the US who had high hopes for a picture perfect end to her final year of school, only to find herself troubled by the disruptions of a worldwide pandemic. Here's Meg.

 

Meg  2:06  

I have always loved independence and like autonomy and stuff, and so thinking about senior year, I was so excited. And I remember junior year talking with my friends about all our plans, and in my head, I have like this daydream of our first football game together, because that's like the first activity that you do together. 

We would win the game, obviously, and then we would run down on the field and congratulate the team, and then we would take like, this perfect picture that would just be a good memory. 

And then COVID hit, and I'm seeing all of my senior friends lose the last third of their senior year, and then the summer goes by, and it just keeps getting worse. And I'm realizing, oh, I have no idea what its gonna look like. This picture is just slowly disappearing. And at first, I felt like, it's not even that big of a deal, like I've so much more in my life, but like, the summer was full of a lot of disappointments. And they were all kind of building up. And I just wanted something small and good to happen. Like, at least I just have this small time with my friends that we can go to the football game.

 

Fast forwarding to the first football game, it's a week before school starting. I'm walking up late, because I was debating on even going. And I'm just really sad because everyone is spread out and far away from each other. It was good to keep everyone safe, but it was also sad because there was no more room in the student section. And looking around to everyone, no one seems very happy. 

The whole time I was just like, "Oh, why did I even come here? This is not a good idea." I was just really sad because this perfect picture I had in my head was – it was impossible for it to happen. I looked over at my friend I was like, "I'm gonna go to the bathroom and I'll come back." When in reality, I was just gonna go to my car and drive home. 

And so I walked over to my car. And then I get a text message from one of my other friends and he was like, "Where are you?" He obviously knew something was up because I don't usually act like this. And he was just texting me, he was like, "Where are you? Are you like, are you okay?" 

I was like, "Oh no, like, I'm safe. I'm good. Don't worry about me. But I'm just gonna take a breather in my car and I'll be back." Throughout my whole life – my mom's always like, "What? Like, you had this huge cut on your foot!" And I was like, "Oh, I took care of myself. It's okay. I've got it. You don't need to worry about me." I don't like bothering people with that. 

So I was like, "You should enjoy the football game. You don't have to come down." And he said, "I'm gonna come down and talk to you because you don't sound like yourself." He came down and it was kind of like, awkward at first because he's like, "What's wrong?" And I was like, "I don't know." He's like, "Well, you gotta say something." 

And I was like, "I guess I just I can't be happy right now. It's just too hard. And I don't want to bother anyone with that right now though, because everyone else is sad. And so it doesn't really matter that I'm sad because everyone else is." And he was like, "Ehmm... no, it's important." 

And then, slowly, as I realized he wasn't angry with me, and I wasn't burdening him in any way, I was able to just talk with him about what was going on and empathize with each other. And I realized that I needed to acknowledge that I was disappointed about not having this football game, because that meant that everything else is going be gone that I wanted. 

And so I decided, okay. I think I should just stay through this. So we walked back up just in time for the game to end. And we won, just like in my little daydream. But we couldn't go on the football field, but we still got a picture. 

And as we took that picture, I was like, "Wow, this is a lot better than I thought." Which sounds kind of weird, but I now know that my friends care enough about me to check on me. And I know that we're resilient, and we're a lot stronger than we think we are. And so I look back at that when I want to feel better about what's going on and know that like, God has like a masterpiece, and I have some stock photo from Google that I think looks perfect, but really, it's just so fake.

This perfect picture is something that I put in all of my life. I struggle asleep, insomnia, and having like horrible, horrible dreams, where I feel very awake. Night terrors and stuff like that. And they feel so real. 

And some nights I'm like, "Okay, God, I can handle it." I always say – I say a prayer on my knees, and then I get in my bed and turn off the lights and I say another one to be able to sleep. 

But there was one night when I just couldn't sleep at all. And I was just feeling so much fear. I usually go to my little sister's room and just meekly ask my sisters to come sleep by me. But it was a school night so I don't want to wake them up, so I just thought, "Okay, well, I can just grit my teeth and get through this." 

And it's been like another hour. I'm like, "No, I can't handle this anymore. And I just want to go to sleep. But I don't want any bad dreams. I just want to sleep." So I said, Heavenly Father, like, I need you to hold my hand through this. I need you to be right next to me right now. Like, I can't do this alone. I really can't. I'm not strong enough. I don't ask for a lot. Just please give me this."

And I was drifting off to sleep and I look over and I see my sister sleeping next to me. And then she grabbed my hand. In that moment, I realized that I was dreaming, and I fell asleep. I wake up the next day I was like, "No, like, that felt really real." And my sister wasn't next to me. She was in her room. And I realized that the Savior used the dreams that usually scare me, as a gift to remind me that He's always there. 

And He held my hand through the night, literally. Which is so beautiful, and so much better than my perfect picture of just going straight to bed, not being scared at all, and just making it through the night. It's so much better. 

The Savior cares about the smallest things. He isn't asking for me to walk through life and just grit my teeth through everything like "Oh, it's fine. I'm here to grow and I'm here to learn and it's fine and I'm just gonna keep going." He wants me to talk to Him and learn through Him.

I think when the Savior says, "Be not troubled" He means, "It's okay to be afraid or it's okay to be sad. But you also don't need to worry about it because I've got you covered. And I've got you covered in the most individual way."

Because of these experiences, I look and pause to see the Savior there more, even if it's just three seconds, pausing and like closing my eyes and just imagining Him right there. And just knowing that one small picture of the football game or the dream of my sister right next to me, that didn't cure my depression, or anxieties about life. 

It didn't fix anything, but it was like a pause in a marathon – like a glass of water. It was a good break, and a good realization to keep going and to be strong.

 

KaRyn  11:06  

That was Meg. We found Meg's story through our pitch line and really loved the opportunity to help a young storyteller develop her voice and her story about her faith. 

I think it's so exciting to see the way these two moments in Meg's life have already weaved themselves throughout her testimony of Heavenly Father and His goodness. 

This is something that I'm personally really, really passionate about, especially when it comes to our youth. As we make space for the exploration of their faith stories and help them to see and tell them often at the beginning of their adult life, it's going to make it so much easier for them to recall those moments in troubling times ahead. 

The anchor of her story will be invaluable to Meg as she navigates coronavirus right now, and in whatever comes next for her. And I truly hope she keeps finding and telling her stories whenever she gets the chance. 

Our next storyteller, Sue, learned that finding calm in the storm sometimes means letting someone else steer the boat. Here's Sue.

 

Sue  12:06  

Order has been important to me my whole life. Even when I was a young girl, I would clean my mother's kitchen while she was away and surprise her when she came home. 

I was a housekeeper for 25 years and I was able to go into people's homes and clean it and organize and I just loved it. I really love taking a mess and making it better. 

So 2020 found me in a pickle because I was not organized. I wasn't organized because we had been living with my mother-in-law for the past five years caring for her. We had just lost her, and now had to sort through all of her belongings to get the house ready for sale. And it was a very daunting task for one person. 

The lion's share of what had to be done fell in my lap. My husband, Mike, still have to work, and his two sisters lived on the West Coast. So I was left with the task. 

So in addition to all of that, we were on a time schedule because my husband had to have major surgery on March 16, and everything had to be done before he had that surgery, because it was a very serious surgery. And to be honest, we weren't really sure if he was going to survive it. 

The surgery that he was having was a pancreatic surgery, which involved a lot of organs and it was going to take many hours so it was very intense. And adding to my stress was the fact that my parents were in a nursing home in Pennsylvania and we were in South Carolina. 

I did still visit them but not as often as I wanted because of the distance. There have been lots of times when I've had to manage a lot of things all at one time. Like raising seven children and running a full time housekeeping business. And there are very few times in my life when I have felt that I was not capable to handle a situation. 

So that's what made Coronavirus entering the picture so hard and everything that came with it in my life so hard because I wasn't able to control it. It was controlling me, or it felt like it was controlling me. The first time I heard about Coronavirus I didn't think that it was going to be such a worldwide problem. 

It seemed like maybe it was played down a little bit and we really didn't think that it was going to affect our lives in the way that it has. So the day that my husband went into the hospital, COVID It wasn't a big deal. There were no masks being worn and there were no people being kept out of the hospital. Business was, as usual. 

The surgery took seven and a half hours. And I was invited to come back to see him afterwards, because he made it through the surgery, which I was so grateful for. And they told me though, that I could only be there for just a very short time, after sitting for seven and a half hours, I wanted to spend more time with him. But he had very high blood pressure. And they were trying to get his blood pressure down so that they could administer pain meds, and he was in a lot of pain. And so they asked me not to stay long. 

It was very hard for me, in fact, I went to the car, and I wept. Because I had no control over it. And seldom do things cause me to weep. 

So I texted my children and told them that their dad had gotten through the surgery, and that he needed their prayers, so that his blood pressure could go down, and he could get the much needed pain medicine. And then I got a phone call from my oldest daughter. And we had talked about how I was feeling and what she could do to help me. And then she reminded me that as covenant keeping women, we have the power to call down blessings from heaven, for ourselves and for those that we love. 

So actually, when I heard that, and we hung up from the phone, I immediately said a prayer and called down those blessings from heaven.

And that was such a relief to me to be able to do that. My drive to home was about a 30 minute drive. And as soon as I got home, I called the nurse's station and checked on my husband. And miraculously in those 30 minutes, his blood pressure had reduced and they were able to give him pain medicine, and he was sleeping comfortably. 

I was standing in my kitchen, on the phone. And as soon as I hung up, I knelt down on the kitchen floor and I said a prayer of gratitude to Heavenly Father that He was able to give that relief to my husband. And I felt His love for me.

It would have been nice to think that that was the end of the troubles for us. But then the next day when I went to visit him at the hospital, I showed up at the door. And they said, "Where are you going?" And I said, "To visit my husband who just had surgery yesterday." And they said, there are no visitors allowed at the hospital. 

And I said, "But I was just there yesterday, he just had surgery. Please, I need to go see him and make sure he's okay." And they said, "No, I'm so sorry. We can't let you in because of COVID."

So I was really very unprepared to have them tell me that I could not go in and see my husband. And at first I was just angry. When things like that happen, your first response is the anger response. And I know it wasn't their fault that I couldn't go in. And this was really the first experience with COVID that I knew this wasn't just some little thing that was gonna pass by quickly. 

And so I handed them his phone and his plug and I said, "Please get these to him so that I can at least talk to him." And from that point on the only contact we had with each other was our cell phones and thank goodness that we had FaceTime because that at least allowed me to look at him while I talked to him. 

My husband's surgery was March the 16th, and he was in the hospital for three weeks. He was having many complications, infections and other things that kept him from being able to eat and being able to come home. And during that time, they would not even allow clergy to come in to give him a blessing, and that just filled my heart with sorrow and just made me worry even more. But there was one tender mercy through this whole three weeks, and that was that my son's ministering brother learned that my husband was in the hospital. He happened to work at the hospital and he offered to go to his room and offer him a priesthood blessing, and he finally got that blessing and he was able to start to improve. 

I do have a strong testimony of the power of the priesthood and what it can do for us in our lives. I know that Father in Heaven is aware of us personally, and that He provided that way when there was no other way for him to receive that blessing. 

So on March the 30th, it was my father's birthday. And the celebration was very different this year because no one was able to go into the nursing home to spend his birthday with him. And so my brothers and sisters who live in Pennsylvania gathered around his window and celebrated his birthday with him. But at the end of that evening, my mother's heart started to fail. And so she was taken to the emergency room where she, it was determined that she needed to have a pacemaker. But she was too weak and too frail, and they decided that they would send her home with hospice care. 

So I heard about my mother and what was going on from my sister who called me and was crying. And of course, then I started to cry. And even though we had been praying that my mother could be released from the trial of Alzheimers that she had been suffering for many years, and even though it was something that we had been praying for, here it was suddenly. I was very torn because my husband was still in the hospital, and still trying to recover, and my mother was dying. And I couldn't be there with her to say goodbye to her, to thank her for being such a good mother. 

That was very hard because, once again, I'm not in control. And I was alone in my mother-in-law's very large house by myself. And it was mostly bad at night when I'm left alone with just my thoughts. You know, it's dark, and you hear noises that you think maybe somebody is trying to get in. 

My sons and daughter who lived in the area were coming over to be with me. But they had to wear their masks and we tried to keep social distance from each other. My dear friends in the Church who would have been there for me could only text me or call me, they couldn't come and give me a hug. Though some of them stopped by and put flowers on my front porch, and then rushed away in their cars, I knew they were thinking about me. But it just seemed very difficult. 

My biggest concern during that time was not for my mother because I felt happy that she was no longer suffering. But it was for my dad because they've been married for so long and I knew it was going to be hard for him. He was in the nursing home, not because he needed to be there, but because my mom needed to be there and he didn't want to be separated from her. And now she was gone. And I couldn't be there to comfort him. 

We weren't really allowed to have a funeral for my mother, and that just felt so wrong. And it did make me somewhat angry that we couldn't do it. The only provisions they made for people whose family members died during COVID was that you could have a gathering at the grave site, but they limited it to about anywhere from 12 to 15 people. And I am from a very large family. My parents had eight children, and all of the extended family all live in Pennsylvania. I'm the only one who lives distant from them. And it was very hard because not everybody could be at the grave site even. But I had a nephew who was able to stream the services so that those of us who couldn't be there could at least participate in that way. 

So finally after three weeks of being in the hospital, my husband was able to come home. And I was so happy to have him there. Even if it meant that I had to change his feeding tube and, and things like that. He was home, and he was alive. But he only was able to stay home for two days because he got an infection and had to go back to the hospital. 

Of course, I'm a big worrier, so all of the thoughts that he may not survive this had come back and many of my friends were concerned that that might truly be the case also. And we would have conversations about it. I had to try and get myself to a place where if that was what happened, that I would be able to get through it because that's, that's the way I live my life. I try to think of ways to make bad things be okay. I was thinking about, "Is everything in line?  Do I have it all together? Am I prepared if the worst happens?"  and the thought came to me that I had no idea where our life insurance policy was. And so I went down to the basement, where all of our belongings were packed away and ready for us to move to our own home. And I had a stack of boxes that was there was probably a good five feet tall. And so my task that day was to try and locate it. 

So I lifted so many boxes, and none of them were the right one. I have a heart condition myself and I'm really not supposed to be lifting too many heavy things, but I just kept pressing forward. And I was so stressed and worried, and I felt that the task was too much for me. And as I was sitting there, thinking about how I couldn't do any more, I realized just how much I've been through the past three months—January, February, March. And I, it all just came crashing down on me. I just had felt overloaded and unable to go forward anymore. And it was interesting, because at that very moment, I got a phone call from my daughter. She had prayed that morning to be able to help someone, that the Lord would guide her to help someone. And she was on her way to work and, and she felt that she should call me. 

She reminded me of the last conversation that she and I had had, that I had power to  call down help from heaven in my emptiness and my loneliness. And so after we hung up, I once again prayed for God's help that he would send angels to help me lift these boxes. After that prayer, I could feel heavenly help as I did this overwhelming task. And I was reminded of that, that painting of the woman in prayer and the angels surrounding her. And that's exactly how I felt, that they were there assisting me. I was even able to put those boxes back in the pile when I was finished. They weren't as heavy as they were the first time. 

And inspiration came to me to look in a specific box and that is where I found the life insurance policy. And interestingly enough, it would have been so much easier if I'd checked that box first because it was very close to the front of the boxes. And maybe prayer should have been the first thing that I did before I started digging through there. 

In my stress, I tend to feel that I have the strength to do, do things and get them done. And what the real truth is, is that even though I do have strength, my strength is much greater when I ask the Lord for help. And I find that many times in my life, I have to be reminded of this, I wish I could just get it in my head and not keep making the same mistakes over and over again. But I also know that through the Atonement, many times we will have to be reminded and will have to repent and try again and that His arms are always open and that He's willing to do that for us as the human part of us takes over and we try to remember to be heavenly creatures here on this earth. 

COVID is still around and still making things difficult. And even my dad in the nursing home got COVID. We made a trip up there to visit him and say our goodbyes through the window. Surprisingly, my father was able to get over the COVID. And out of the four men who were in that unit in the nursing home, he's the only one who survived. 

My husband came home from the hospital after another weekend there, and he still has more complications and COVID-19 has made his recovery more difficult than it would have been without it. 

Even though this has been the hardest experience of my life, and I've had moments of anger, and moments of worry, I've also had moments of peace and calm and assurance that everything is going to be okay. And it's helped me to learn that even though I can't control everything, that if I turn things over to Him, what He has planned for me is what is best, that it all will work out in the end. And I know that that came from Father in Heaven and our Savior, Jesus Christ. And I am so grateful for the knowledge that I have that they are there and that they love us.

 

KaRyn  31:24  

That was Sue. 

And I guess now would be the right time to tell you that Sue is my mom and I'm the lucky kid that gets to talk to her on the phone regularly. And even though I haven't been able to see her in person in over a year because we're really trying to protect my dad's health, I am blessed by my mother. And now you all know where I get my constant tears from. 

I remember how she sounded on the phone that day in the garage with all those boxes. I've never, ever heard my mother so deeply troubled, truly agitated, in her mind and her spirit. And I also remember hanging up the phone and knowing that she wasn't actually alone in that house in a good way. 

 

What I didn't know until we recorded this story was just how deeply and profoundly heartbreaking it was for my mom to not be able to fix things for those she loved. But isn't that exactly how God invites us to the adventure of our growth? A little bit of heartbreak, some really troubled days, and then that gentle call to stop holding on so tightly so He can pick up where we are weakest, and send in those angels who are waiting and at the ready. Oh, it is so hard to let go and let God, but I know one other thing, that when we do, that's when we get to see the heavens open. 

The phrase "Be Not Troubled" obviously comes from the scriptures—the New Testament to be exact, but we were inspired to use it for the theme of this episode because of Elder Rasband's new book with the same name. It's filled with beautiful reminders of what we can do right now to begin to feel the calm of the Savior's promise even in our troubled times. 

Elder Rasband wrote this, quote, "When Jesus Christ says, 'Be still, and know that I am God,' in Psalms 46:10, His words reflect the promise, 'Be not troubled.' He who calms the seas will calm our hearts, shelter us in His arms, comfort us on our very bad days and heal our wounds. Mormon's words to his son Moroni are important for us all, 'May Christ lift thee up, and may his sufferings and death and the showing his body unto our fathers and the hope of His glory and of eternal life rest in your mind forever, and abide with you forever.' With the Atonement of Jesus Christ, His Church, His gospel, and our connection to Him in the heavens, we may always have hope for better days," end quote.

Elder Rasband reiterates what these stories have taught me today. First, that Christ's command to "be not troubled" is also a promise. He can tell us to let go of our spiritual and mental agitation. To hand Him our anxieties and our heartache because He's already paid the price of that turmoil. In Gethsemane, He took our troubles upon Him, He held them in His body, in His heart, and His mind, until they were transformed into eternal peace, love and hope. And because of that act of integrity, we can lay it all down at His feet and trust that He can handle all of it, every single bit of it. 

And then, as we access the power of our covenants through prayer, through fasting, through blessings, and calling upon the power of the priesthood, through all the tools that God has placed on this earth and the restoration of the fullness of troubled times, we'll find joy, and we will find stillness. We'll recognize that the football game in the time of COVID can offer up just as many sweet memories as it would have in the before times, and we will sleep easily. We'll see that there are mercies and grace present as we lift the mountain of boxes heavy with sorrow, our regret, and fear. We will not be left alone upon the tumultuous waters of this earth life, and its attendant troubles because we will know that He was with us all along.

That's it for this episode of This Is the Gospel. Thank you to our storytellers, Meg and Sue, for sharing their stories and their hope for a brighter future. We'll have more information about the storytellers, including pictures and a link to Elder Rasband new book, "Be Not Troubled," in our shownotes at ldsliving.com/thisisthe gospel. You can also get more good stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook at thisisthe gospel_podcast. 

I mentioned this before, but if you have just a minute to help us out, we love to hear what you're learning as you listen to these stories. You can leave a review of the podcast on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you listen to. Reviews are so helpful in pushing us up in the recommended section of a lot of platforms so that more people can find us and can hear these stories. 

All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers and we find a lot of our stories through our pitch line. So if you have a story to share about a time in your life when maybe you learned something new as you were practicing the gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you. The best pitches are going to be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. You'll have three minutes to pitch your story so come prepared when you call 515-519-6179. This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story production and editing from Erika Free. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at 6 Studios, our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom, and you can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts.

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

KaRyn chats with Emily from episode 34 about her life after Mac’s passing, and how she kept their promise to bring joy to others through music, even after a brain surgery; Sarah learns from legendary Stacy Taniguchi from episode 37 about his life philosophy of thriving, and where it all began for him.

Show Notes: 

To see pictures and links for this episode, go to Living.com/thisisthegospel

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: A journey to learn more about his grandparents leads Jeff across the world to old chapels, monasteries and hidden towns only to find dead ends––until a chance encounter on a remote mountain side; KC’s inherited pocket watch had long since become a plaything for his kids, until a close inspection of the watch yields an inscription that broadens his definition of “family.”

Show Notes: 

To see pictures and links for this episode, go to LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

Transcript: 

Sarah Blake  0:03 

Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm Sarah Blake hosting today in place of KaRyn Lay. I'm happy to report that KaRyn is on the mend after a rough week recovering from COVID-19.

Our theme today is "Family Ties." But before I get into that, I want to talk about rock climbing. I am not a cool rock climber, but I have seen some movies. So I happen to know that most of the time rock climbers are clipped in to a whole coordinated system of ropes that are connected to secure anchor points. And then the other end of the rope is held and watched over by other climbers.

But there is also this insanely dangerous thing called free soloing where you climb without any ropes. You may have seen or heard about the documentary about climber Alex Honnold's record-breaking, totally legendary, free solo ascent of the El Capitan cliff face in Yosemite National Park in 2017. My husband and I watched that movie at an IMAX movie theater so the screen was several stories tall and the heights were dizzying.

I was clutching the edge of my seat and my heart was pounding like I was actually attempting the climb myself. And I felt like I lost about a pound in just hand sweat despite the fact that I already knew how it ended with Alex Honnold surviving the climb. And again, and again, I found myself kind of absent mindedly reaching down to find a seat belt in my movie theater chair, just so you know, I couldn't fall off El Capitan.

So this brings us back to the concept of family ties. Family ties is a phrase that we use in English to describe the connections that bind us to our families. For some people, these connections are biological. For some people, when they hear the phrase family ties, they think about the obligations and duties that we owe to each other. For some people, these ties have a lot to do with your shared family culture and expectations about how you live and make choices. And hopefully, for most of us, these family ties are also just about plain love and enjoyment of one another.

But I want to say that these family ties, whatever they look like, are part of the coordinated system of ropes that we need while we climb through life. In our spiritual and emotional lives, we all deeply deeply crave to be clipped into reliable ropes with somebody we trust on the other end. And I think that feeling that I had, as I reached for the imaginary seatbelt in the movie theater, I think that's how we feel if we imagine a life without any of those family ties or connections to other people. It makes your emotional palms sweat. Think of climbing through life ropeless, just one slippery handhold away from falling through space.

To know where we fit in a web of other people, and how we are tied into the past and connected in the present, and how our connections might last into the future, I think that's a very basic human need and it's part of our eternal and our spiritual DNA. And this week, we have two storytellers exploring these ideas with tales of family ties, and the lengths that we go to find them and the ways that they find us. First, we will hear from Jeff.

Jeff  3:23 

I think, I think this story really begins with my curiosity about my grandfather because we were so close growing up. He actually wanted me to be a professional golfer so he put a golf club in my hands at age two. But that gave us a lot of time on the golf course and in a golf cart talking and, and sharing stories and things like that. However, he would never tell me where he was from or about his childhood or about his parents or anything like that.

Both he and my grandmother would refuse to give me any more information than three points. And that was number one: He was born in the former Yugoslavia. Number two: he was raised in Worland, Wyoming. And number three: he changed his name from Mijušković to Marks. I didn't know anything about his family. I didn't know where he was from. I didn't know what his childhood was like. And if I ever asked any questions, he would always put his fingers to his lips and tell me to shish.

My dad, he never even knew anything about his parents. And if I ever asked him about it, he didn't know any more than those three things either. And both of his siblings have since passed away. So I don't have any other way of knowing anything about my grandparents. And it kind of made me sad when he did pass away in 2000 that I just didn't know enough about him because of how special he was to me.

Well, in my career, I've spent many years as a pediatric dentist as a remote EMT, spending time in humanitarian clinics all around the world. So I'm used to traveling into remote areas and kind of booking crazy flights and going from place to place.

Well 10 years ago, right after the Haiti earthquake, I got called to serve as a volunteer as a first responder there to help with the devastation from that tragedy. And on the flight, there was a gentleman sitting next to me, another volunteer, we were all in scrubs. And he was wearing scrubs with a University of Wyoming logo on them. And I turned over to him and just out of curiosity, I just asked him about his scrubs. And he said that he was a Wyoming fan because he came from a small town in Wyoming that I would have never heard of. And when I asked him about what that town's name was, he said that it was Worland, Wyoming, of all the places and I said, "That is crazy because my grandfather was raised in Worland, Wyoming."

He said, he asked me a little bit more about me and where I'm from and also about my name. And he said, "Tell me your last name again?" And when I told him it was Marks, he said, "You wouldn't happen to be related to the Mijušković, are you?" Out of all the things. that most random thing. And I just was completely blown away and he even told me on this trip, that if we make it through this trip, it was kind of a it was kind of a crazy humanitarian aid adventure he, he said, "If we make it through this, I want to meet back in Wyoming so I can show you all about your family show you everything about your family."

And so we went back there and he took us straight to the cemetery and I saw  Mijušković gravestone. I saw the two gravestones of my great-grandparents. So these are the parents of my grandpa George. So my great-grandfather, Joseph, who died in 1951. And my great-grandmother, Meliva, who died in 1983. And this I was fairly emotional about this because, again, not knowing anything about my family, seeing the gravestones where my, my ancestors were buried was very special to me. And I had never done anything with family history work, genealogy, anything, my entire life.

This sparked kind of this spirit inside me not only of curiosity, but of really, something deeper. Something kind of more organic of who I am and where I come from. And finding my own identity through my grandfather was was kind of a fun adventure.

At this point, I came home and spoke to our family history consultant to have her direct me to a 1920 census. And I saw my great-grandfather's name on there, my great-grandfather Joe and his family on this census coming from the former Yugoslavia in a country called Montenegro. So, again, now I have dates. I have names of family members, I even have a country in the former Yugoslavia, which is again, nothing that I ever had before.

I was then told that if I was going to find out any more information, she even tried to do some research for me and couldn't find anything else, but I was going to really need a death certificate for my great-grandpa Joe. So I sent a fax over to the Department of Vital Statistics in the state of Wyoming to try to request my great-grandfather's death certificate. And after sending that fax at work, I went and saw a patient that day. And that patient's name, the mom's name, I see kids. And so like the mom's name was Maria, Danlavich. And that of curiosity, and this is literally five minutes after I sent this fax, I went to her and said, "You know, I've seen your kids for years and I've never even put two-and-two together. But I've been doing this family history work and I just sent this fax, and your last name looks an awful lot like my grandfather's last name. And I just wondered what country you're from your family's from?"

And she said that she's from the former Yugoslavia in a country called Montenegro. She told me she said, "If you ever wanted any help, you know I'm more than happy to help you with anything but you might want to start with some emails or some letters to the government, if you want to try to find out anything about your family since you're kind of at a dead end here with that trip to Wyoming." And, and since she spoke Montenegrin, which is like a dialect of Serbian, she offered to translate a letter for me saying, you know, "These are my great grandparents, this is my grandfather I'm trying to find any information I can about my family, this is their information, their birth dates, their death dates, where they're buried, is there any information you can provide for me?"

And months went by and I never heard anything. So I got on my phone or even on my computer and started doing a little bit of research on how – what it would take to get from Seattle to Montenegro. Just for kicks, if I were to take that letter that she translated for me, go to Montenegro, and even if I had to go door to door to try to find anything more about my family, again, the spirit was burning inside of me to really find out more and it just wasn't enough. I wasn't satisfied with my trip to Wyoming and with this other stuff.

And there had to have been something that I can maybe relate to or connect with, on a deeper level that would be meaningful for me and for my family. And I guess after having children, I kind of – I've got two boys now, and I just, you know, I want them to know where they come from. I want them to be able to connect with their past as well. So I went and looked at roundtrip ticket from Seattle to Montenegro – kind of going more directly – was over $6,000. And so of course, I'm not going to be going to Montenegro. I thought well, it's just that's discouraging. I'm not doing this. I guess the Wyoming information is all I'm ever going to get.

And then right around that same time, Iceland air established service SeaTac airport where I live, and because I had served my mission there, I was a little bit more excited about the fact that they were running some free stopovers in Iceland on the way to Europe. Doing a little bit more research, if I were to go from Seattle to Montenegro through Iceland, the entire flight with that free stopover was $780. And so I immediately hit the enter button, bought the ticket and then told my wife that I was going on this trip.

The only thing that I had with me on this flight over to Montenegro was a few things in my bag. And then these letters that were translated by this patient of mine, spelling out that I'm looking for my great grandparents, and if there's any information they can offer, that would be amazing.

So I took these letters over there and I got off the plane and felt immediately a little overwhelmed. I mean, I couldn't read any of the signs, the people didn't speak English, I just didn't know what I had gotten myself into.

I got transportation up to the town of Niksic, Yugoslavia, which I discovered was the town where my grandfather came from on that death certificate that came back to me from the department of vital statistics in Wyoming. And driving along this kind of main – it's not really a highway, but this this road that kind of heads up towards Niksic is on kind of a mountain ridge.

And there was an adjacent or a parallel ridge on the other side, that just looked pitch black. And all of a sudden that kind of goes really steeply down into the valley where Nicksic – or the city – is. And there was quite a bit of snow on the ground. And for some reason, that was kind of fun to picture my grandfather coming from this place. Because I guess after serving my mission in Iceland, I prefer colder climates. It was really fun for me to kind of see where he came from. And it kind of, I don't know, for some reason, it just brought a smile to my face, knowing that that's where that's the town where he grew up.

So I get into Niksic, and I didn't know where I was going to start, but I saw a church or a cross up at the top of the skyline, and knew that I would maybe get more information at a church then maybe even looking in a phone book where I couldn't read the language, I couldn't even navigate any of anything.

And surrounding this church was a cemetery, almost surrounding the entire thing. And so I went from gravestone to gravestone with the little tablet that I had trying to kind of translate, trying to figure out which one was a Mijušković gravestone, and it took me hours, and I couldn't find one. I mean, and in all of my stuff, I'm tromping through the snow, nothing's happening.

I was a little bit discouraged until I walked around the front of the cemetery, past the church to a funeral home, which I assumed was a funeral home, there was flowers out front, and a nice little lady that was just standing out in front. And I went up to her – because she was smiling – and I went and unzipped my backpack, I handed her one of my letters, and she was nice enough to read it. She called somebody and read it to them, and then she went inside, and I could hear some beeping sounds almost like a fax machine, and then she brought it back out and handed it back to me and blew me a kiss. And that was day one.

So nothing had happened. I was obviously frustrated because she didn't have any information for me. She didn't tell me what the person on the phone said, nothing ever happened with that.

The next day I started going around to the maybe, the government offices in Podgorica, in the capital city. I thought, well, what if I just went to some of the kind of the more government offices and the bigger buildings there just to see if there's somebody that could point me in the right direction. And I ran into this guy named Gordon Stojovic who was a ministry official. And so he invited me into his office, I gave him the letter and he read the letter, but didn't read it all the way. He kind of just read a few of the words and then asked me if I wanted to go and look around the town. In kind of broken English, as best he could, he at least invited me to get into his car. And we went from coffee shop to coffee shop, while he smoked cigars the whole time and telling me all about his beautiful country, and the architecture and everything about this place.

And it was really fun to just kind of hang out with him and to see the city. But I was kind of on a time crunch, and I really needed to find out stuff about my family. So at the end of the day, I said to him, I said, "Gordon, I really love this and thank you so much for inviting me and, and showing me around your town, but I'm really looking for something to do with my family here. If there's any kind of help you can give me." And he goes, "What you look for is miracle." I said "That's exactly what I'm looking for!" And he said, "Well," he said and quote, "The Serbian Orthodox monastery of Ostrog is the most frequently visited pilgrimage site in the Balkans." He said, "Miracles come to those who visit the upper level."

So I thought, "Well, that's exactly what I need to do then. I need to go to this monastery, I need to go to the upper level, maybe my whole family will be waiting for me or there will be open books. It'll all be ready for me and I'll have my entire family history right there and this will be amazing."

So I took a big long journey the next day up to this monastery and it was up closer to wear Niksic was, just at the kind of on the other side of the mountain there. And driving up this road was crazy. If you google this monastery, it's one of the most, I mean, beautiful monasteries you've ever seen. But the road that goes up to it is this crazy, long, windy road, that takes quite a bit of time to get there. There's no railings on the side, the road is cut through the mountain, like through tunnels. And it is, it's quite a journey.

And so I finally get up to the top of this road and get to the monastery, and again, it was almost breathtaking, the way that it's carved out of the mountain, it's painted white, but it literally is carved out of the mountain really high up on this cliff. Again, people come from all over the Balkans to worship their patron saints here. And I was, I was very impressed almost from a, you know, I know when we see our temples, we have that same kind of feeling of awe and beauty, and that's, that's what this felt like to me.

And so I went up there, I knew that I had to get to the highest point of this middle tower, and there wasn't anything there other than there was a candelabra and a couple of photos of Christ on the wall. And that was it. And I thought, "Well, that was not exactly what I was looking for here."

But looking out the window from this perch I, I prayed. And I prayed hard to see if maybe this miracle could really come that I could find something out about my family.

And after about an hour or so it just didn't happen. Nobody came in, nobody talked to me, I didn't see anybody, I didn't see anything else that would indicate anything about my family. So again, once again, discouraged, I went down and got in the car and went to a little coffee shop kind of at the base of the main windy road there in a town called Povija.

And I went into this coffee shop and from the coffee shop, there were three roads that kind of branched out from this coffee shop. One that went up to the Ostrog Monastery, one that went back down to the capital city of Podgorica from whence I came, and then there was another road that went around the back and kind of up – just randomly up the mountain. And it was kind of more of a dirt road, a smaller road. And there was obviously nothing up there.

But for some reason, I decided to go ahead and travel that road. So I drove around the backside of this coffee shop and started going up this dirt road, not knowing where it was going to go. And then it branched off, it went a little bit, there was kind of more of a main road, and then even a smaller dirt road off to the left. And of course I went off to the left.

So I started driving up the smaller dirt road until I run into a guy just standing there in the middle of the road.

And he looked ironically, a little bit like me, he was a little bit bigger guy, he didn't have any hair on his head, he was wearing a big, puffy, blue parka. And, but there was nothing around. There was no car, no bicycle, no motorcycle, I don't know how he even got there. There was no homes, no telephone wires, I just it just looked a little strange having him just standing out there in the middle of the road.

And I did the exact same thing that I did with the lady at the funeral home, I got out of the car, I smiled at him, I handed him a letter. And he read it and did the exact same thing. He turned and grabbed the phone out of his pocket and started calling somebody and reading the letter to them. Halfway through the letter, he points to the letter and says "Mijušković?" And then he pointed to me and said "Mijušković?"

And I started jumping up and down saying, "Mijušković!" pointing to myself thinking that maybe this is it. He understood Mijušković, and maybe he knows something about this. And so he pointed for me to get in my car and to follow him and he started running up this dirt path. So I drive up to a long side of him and point into the passenger side kind of saying, "Hey, you know, would you like a ride?" And he shook his head and kept on waiting for me to follow him. And so I go up this dirt road, he finally tells me to stop. And then to go up even a smaller little path. I mean, this is literally like a little hiking trail up through the brush. And to follow him up into here.

Now, this sounds a little creepy, right? I'm up in the middle of Montenegro and this guy is having me go up into this little trail up into the bushes. And who knows what's gonna happen here, but he just didn't seem like a scary guy. I mean, for crying out loud, he had a good look and haircut, I could trust him. So I get out of the car and follow him up this path. And he points to an old old house. And I mean, I don't even know if you could call it a house because all it really was is rocks and a couple of little partial walls almost really broken down and dilapidated. So he pointed to it and said "Mijušković," and then he pointed to another house on the other side of the trail and said, "Mijušković" and kept pointing to both of these houses saying, "Mijušković, Mijušković, Mijušković." And he almost started kind of hitting his head a little bit and smiling kind of just frustrated that I couldn't understand what he was saying. But he was clearly telling me that these two houses had something to do with the last name or the name of Mijušković.

So we got done with that. He didn't want to keep the letter he handed it back to me and so I drove off and that was the next day. And so that was all that I had come up with. I now just have two photos of these two houses and obviously not a lot of other information.

I get done with this day and I go again through government offices and finally run into the President of the Historical Society in Montenegro. So I thought, "Okay, this guy's got to have something for me, right?" I mean, this guy knows the history of Montenegro. He maybe knows the history of that area, and maybe can tell me a little bit about my grandpa and his family. So his name was Bronco Bondović. And so I go into his office and his secretary was there as well. And then a young girl, she spoke like better English than anybody in the whole country put together this far. So she told me that she was home from school that day and meeting her mom at work, who was the secretary of this Bronco Bondović. So I thought I'd go through her since they didn't speak any English. And she was amazing to just say to them that I was looking for my family, and they read the letter.

And then I showed this Bronco my phone where it had the two photos of these two houses. And he went over and grabbed a book out of a bookshelf and brought it over to me and said to me, that all Mijušković descendants in the world come from two brothers in the late 1600s. And remnants of their home still stand on the Kunak mountainside in the town, or above the town of Povija. And this just completely blew me away. So I assumed that the Kunak mountainside was that road that I had gone up behind the, you know, coffee shop where I was. And that all Mijušković descendants, including me and my grandfather, came from one of those two houses where these two brothers lived. And I just, I can't even explain what this felt like. I was grateful more than anything. I was very grateful at that moment that he knew something about the Mijuškovićs and that I came from one of those two houses.

I was also curious because I have one brother, and I also have two boys. And so there was just that connection, there was the two brothers and I was one of two brothers. And my kids are two brothers. And I don't know, for some reason, this was just a, it almost felt like a family reunion. I almost wanted to hug this guy and I just, but that would have been awkward for him. But I was so excited about all of this and just knowing that maybe I was on the right path here.

And so after meeting with Bronco, the president of the Historical Society, I finally heard back from my patient that had translated the letter for me saying that she had a contact who could maybe help me since he was a UN translator in Montenegro. And he met me in that same building where I was going from door to door trying to find government officials. And when I finally met up with Oliver, it was such a treat because he told me all about Montenegro and the people of Montenegro and the geography and the history. And I was able to understand a little bit better about a little bit more about the country and about my ancestors even and so he offered to make some phone calls for me. And he started with the town that was on that death certificate of Niksić, Yugoslavia, or Niksić, Montenegro.

First one that picked up the phone was a gentleman named Ilija Mijušković. And his name is spelled I-L-I-J-A, which ironically looks a little bit like Elijah, but it is IIija. So we met with him at this Povija coffee shop, the one that I had gone to before at the base of the Ostrog Monastery and Ilija asked if he could question me about a few things about my childhood and about my upbringing. And it was good that we had Oliver there, the UN translator, because Ilijia spoke zero English at all, like he couldn't even say hello. But it really was a fun meeting. And Ilija asked me questions that I just was a little surprised to answer.

He said, he would ask me things like my upbringing and my, my brother, my parents, their birth dates, what I did for a career and what my education was in what classes I took in college, and in my graduate training, I mean, really took to an incredible amount of detail. And after about an hour of this, I said, "Listen, this is amazing." And I asked Oliver to tell him, I really appreciate meeting with him. And it's so fun to meet an actual Mijušković. But I'm really trying to find out more stuff about my family. But then he said, his eyes kind of lit up a little bit and he was not known, he did not smile at all. He had a big furry mustache. And you can tell he was very stern and stuff, but his eyes kind of lit up and said, "Well, let's go down to the cemetery so I can show you some things."

And on the way to the cemetery, he said in these words. He said in the late 1600s, and again about the time that those two brothers were there in those homes, an Ottoman Turkish army executed 72 members of the Mijušković tribe inside a cave fire in the town of Povija and to Mijušković brothers survived. And I just thought, "You know what an incredible story." And Ilija took me to the gravestones and showed me a few things and said that most of the gravestones from my family weren't going to be there because they were all destroyed during these wars. But he said, specifically, "I want to show you this one over here." So we walked me over next to the little chapel that was there.

And this chapel was just tiny. I mean, maybe two people could fit in this chapel. But the gravestone next to it, he pointed to this. And I looked up there and Oliver translated for me, and it said at the very top, "Here rest Marco Mijušković." I looked at the death certificate that I had with me and showed Ilia. And it did indeed show that Joseph's dad, father, was Marco Mijušković. So he told me that this was my great, great-grandfather.

This was really amazing for me to see this, because, you know, obviously not having any other information Besides this, he had passed away in 1912, and was buried in this spot. And to see this was, was very special for me, and to even feel that the DNA inside this cemetery, or inside this grave, was the same DNA that runs through my blood. And I just, that was special for me to kind of be able to connect with my great, great-grandfather in that way, knowing that my grandfather came from this line in this town. And I just felt something really special there.

So then I was about to kind of finish things up, I had taken my photos and I basically had spent $780 to go to Montenegro and find my great, great-grandfather, and it was worth every penny for me to see where he was from, I was kind of ready to go. I mean, I had told Oliver and Ilija, I said, "Gosh, this has been great. Thank you so much. I've got to get going here pretty soon. And I really appreciate all this information." And then Ilija was writing some stuff down on a piece of paper, and Oliver said to me said, "Hey, Jeff, you might want to come over here and take a look at this." And I looked down at the piece of paper that Ilija is scribbling on, and it was a family tree, a handwritten family tree of over 1,800, 1,900 names. And it was a pretty large piece of paper.

And I saw, I noticed on this family tree that there was one single track of names that went up, and then branched off with two names, and then huge tree branches off of those two names. And what Ilija explained to me is that the two brothers that lived in those two homes are the two brothers that branch off into these two big trees. Ilija went on to tell me that he has been doing research on the Mijušković family line for 47 years, and that he had put all of this information together on this family tree so that he can eventually publish a book about the Mijušković family name and about all the Mijušković ancestors from the 1200s all the way up until now. What was amazing to me is that he pointed out that one of the brothers was a farmer, one of them was a priest, and that I come from the farmer side of the line.

My heart was exploding, I just I couldn't believe that I had found all of this information, my whole ancestry line from the 1200s all the way up until my my great-grandfather Joseph. He then pointed out that there was a little squiggly line at the end of Joseph's line. And it was the only one on the entire page of 1,900 names. Oliver explained to me that Ilija had been looking for my grandfather all of these years that that was the one link that he didn't have on this family tree because my grandfather had changed his name from Mijušković, to Marks. And that was the one name that he didn't have. And he couldn't complete his book until he knew what happened with Joseph's line. And that's why he asked me all of those questions and wanted to write this book.

We go back to the coffee shop. And he said to me, that he really wants to write this book, but he doesn't have enough money to publish a book. And so I asked him how much it cost to publish a book there in Montenegro. And he said it would be about 100 Euros. So I gave him 100 Euros, which at the time, I think was about $120. And you can tell his eyes got watery. And he said that he was going to dedicate the book to me and wrote down right there and all over translated this. He said, "My brother Jeff Marks gave me 100 Euros to publish the 47-year history of the Mijušković tribe. He came from America to find his family. And we finally found each other."

And this is where it all came true for me where I got to connect with him on a completely different level and that he was looking for me as much as I was looking for him. He had been doing this research for 47 years and was 86 years old at the time. So he wanted to give me these 1,900 names so that I knew where I came from. And in Montenegro, he says that they don't hug but he says that because we're brothers now that we can hug at the end. And so we hugged and now we're family and that was really special. He started calling me his brother, no longer just my name because he says that, and, and Oliver even told me that in their country, brother is a term of endearment And I can only relate to this too because we're members of the Church, but that they call each other brother or sister, even if they're an aunt or an uncle or a distant relative, because they feel a kinship with them. And they share the same DNA, they share the same family stories, the same history. He felt like we are, we're connected in a totally different way. And I was able to really understand him. And he was able to understand me on a totally different level.

But I think his looking for me, for this many years, or at least for my grandfather was very special to him because I came to him, you know, he would have never gone to America to find my family or to find George or his gravestone. But Oliver told me how emotional Ilija was about me connecting to him and now making this whole book happen and his whole story happened and that he was just so grateful that we were able to connect. He wrote me another letter, an email, and I could tell it was done with Google Translate. But it said, "Please come back to our homeland very soon so that we can read, so we can write the history of our brotherhood together. I have your book."

My son, Max, and I went and traveled over to Montenegro to go pick up this book. We met with Ilija and Ilija really sat down with Max and and wanted to tell him about his family's legacy and the legacy of his last name. And not only handed him this beautiful hardbound family history book of not only the 1,900 male names that were on the handwritten family tree that he had. But now we've got women and children in this book, and we're over 3,000-something names. And each one of the members of this family on this family tree have a paragraph inside this book, including me now, because that's why he asked me all those questions.

He also gave Max another book that was just titled "Mijušković" And it was hard bound as well, a little bit thinner. On the inside of this was a picture of the Ostrog Monastery. He told me that my family, specifically my family line, were the protectors of the ostrog Monastery. And this monastery is famous I mean in, in, especially in Eastern Orthodoxy. And so for, for him to say this was really amazing to me. And so he told me a little bit more about the Ostrog Monastery and how our family protected it. And most of our family members died protecting it through these, you know, Turkish invasions all throughout the centuries.

Also, he took Max and me down to the cemetery, again, wherein a monument was erected a Mijušković monument, talking about the people the Mijušković that actually protected the Ostrog Monastery. And that that is their legacy. And so he wanted to do a family picture down there. And so I've got this great shot of Ilija and Max and me sitting at the base of this, this monument.

And I still talk to Ilija, I'm constantly looking for a way to go back and be with him as my family now because with George gone, he's my new brother.

 

Sarah Blake  33:12 

That was Jeff. I hope Jeff doesn't mind if I share that one of the challenges we had in editing his story was that every single detail was important. I would think we can cut this bit about the coffee shop, right? Just for time. But then, nope, that detail and connection were important because they led to the next connection, and the next one and the next one until finally, it led to the connection with Ilija and through him a connection to thousands of his ancestors and relatives.

It is mind boggling to think how Jeff's sort of impulsive decision to go to Montenegro was actually an answer to Ilijas prayers after 47 years of work on his family history. And it is amazing to see how they both were led every step of the way, even in the seemingly random steps by a loving Father who wanted to give them this connection they needed.

Jeff also talked about how in this family history search, he felt like he was working with God to do something that needed to be done. I liked that a lot. And I'm going to keep thinking about it, what it means to be working with God to take the actions that make the connections that tie us closer to our families.

Our next storyteller is KC. You might recognize KC as a previous storyteller, and also he is my husband. His story is about a different kind of family tie that he found closer to home. Here's KC.

 

KC  34:37 

In 1969, my parents built a house in the foothills of South San Jose, California. And about a year later, another couple built a house next door, the Rudd's.

My parents took a plate of cookies over to their house to introduce themselves. And there was an instant connection when it was realized that my dad had been the flight instructor for their son in the Navy. My dad had taught their son Charles to fly fighter jets and trained him to go fight in the Vietnam War. So there was an instant bond between our families. And that bond would grow over the years both through good times and also through a lot of tribulations.

The first of those being that Charles was killed in an airplane crash in Vietnam trying to land on an aircraft carrier in very rough seas in the dark of night. In fact, I'm named after Charles. I was born two years after his death and my parents named me Kevin Charles Blake, in memory of Charles Rudd.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the end of tragedy. A couple years later, Harriet's husband died of a heart attack. My father was the first one over there, helped to move him and administer CPR until the paramedics arrived, but unfortunately he passed. And my mom was there to comfort Harriet during that time.

And then in 1983, my father was killed in airplane crash in Angola, Africa. And Harriet became a listening ear and a source of comfort for my mom as she navigated being newly widowed.

My brothers and I always had a very close relationship with Harriet. In fact, we didn't call her Harriet, we called her Hottie Dot. I think we call her Hottie Dot because our little mouths can't pronounce Harriet at the time and Hottie Dot was what came out. And that stuck. And Hottie Dot was like a grandma to me and my brothers. She was just a warm, loving, and extremely caring person.

I remember going over to her house and she would always have Jazz music playing at her house and she would always have a bowl of cashews sitting on the counter and we eat cashews and listen to Jazz music.

And Harriet came from a rich Italian heritage. And she was always making Italian food and trying to feed us. I remember a frittatas. I remember, rich Bolinas meat sauce over pasta. And it was like having an Italian grandma.

And she was also the person that I ran to when I cut my finger really badly on my Scout knife when I was seven years old and my mom wasn't home. I remember running over there and she was able to bandage it up until my mom could get home and we could go to the doctor and get stitches. And later, Harriet traveled with us to England and toured all over England with my, my brothers and I and my mom. And she just was part of the family.

Harriet was an extremely positive person, she just always was full of hope and happiness. And even in the toughest of times, I remember her saying, "This too shall pass." She just had hope in the future.

And even, even when she contracted lung cancer in 1993. And that year, I remember her, just watching her deteriorate and being a lot of pain. And I would go over to help her with things around her house. And I just remember her still smiling and saying, "This too shall pass."

Harriet didn't have any close living relatives when she died. And so because of this, my mom became the executor of her will and estate. And she had given almost all of her assets to charity. But my mom was in charge of getting her house ready for sale, cleaning everything out and, and just dealing with all of her stuff. And a lot of that stuff just ended up sitting in our garage for years and years. And about eight years ago, I was helping my mom clean out her garage, and I found this old jewelry box. It was locked and I thought it was really intriguing, of course. So I picked the lock and opened it up and it was full of costume jewelry, nothing, nothing valuable. Most of it was really fun 70s broaches and, you know pretty, pretty out of date stuff, but really fun stuff. Anything of value that had been metal or precious stones had been sold before Harriet's death, but there was one item in there and it was a beautiful old pocket watch.

So I was able to do some research on the internet and I found out that this pocket watch made in 1925 was worth a total of about $18 nowadays, which is a real shame when you think of all the craftsmanship and the just the beauty of this piece. But because of that we stuffed everything back in the box and my mom said, "Why don't you take this and your kids can play with it someday?" So I took the box and several years later my daughter became interested in the jewelry box and started pulling out the jewelry and playing with it.

Over the years, that pocketwatch came out dozens of times and we would play with it,  but nothing too interesting about it. And then one day, I was looking at it and I realized that the back panel of the watch would pop open. And I'd never realized this before. And inside, you can see all the gears and inner workings and it was beautiful. And then I realized that there was an engraving on the back of that, and it says, "Presented to H.A Cavassa by the employees of Peninsula Drug, December 25, 1925."

Now, I don't think I'd ever heard the name "Cavassa," really before if I had I was younger, but I figured this this must have been Harriet's father. So this was really intriguing. And so we started doing some family history research on on H.A. Cavassa, and we were able to find out that it was Harry A, Cavassa, Harriet's father, and he immigrated from Bologna, Italy around 1895. And he had gone to the University of California, Berkeley and graduated from pharmacology school there.

And in 1904, he started the first pharmacy in South San Francisco. And remember, this is right before the 1906 earthquake, so he would have been there during the earthquake and subsequent destruction of most of actual San Francisco. Now south San Francisco's its own city, but I'm sure that the whole community was affected by that.

And so that drugstore turned into a chain of drugstores called Peninsula Drug, and eventually he married a nurse, Lillian Heifers, who worked for the doctor with whom he shared a building with and they had three daughters. The youngest of which was Harriet. And Harriet, is named after her father Harry, I'm sure that Harry was hoping he'd have a son and he could name that son Harry Jr., but he only had daughters so he had to name one of them after him. And so that's where Harriet comes from.

And Harriet had two children, Charles and another daughter lost to sickness in childhood. And none of Harriet's sisters had children either. And so with the death of Harriet's sister, Marianne in 2001, there was no other living member of this family line.

Since discovering the inscription on the pocketwatch, it really sparked our family's interest in family history, as we've done some of the work for Harriet and her family, and learned more about them, and thought about how our families have been interconnected through the years, and now how our families will be connected through eternity because of, of this bond that we're forming by doing their work.

It's really made me appreciate how important these relationships are. The relationships we have with our family members and those who we choose to make our family members. I know that part of who I am today is definitely because of, I had Harriet in my life and her example. And I love that God chose to create a small miracle by putting that pocketwatch in our way so that we would rediscover that connection with Harriet and her family. I see it as a small miracle in my life to be a part of that.

Sarah Blake  43:14

I am holding Harriet's pocket watch right now. I find it so beautiful. And it also feels a little magical how it just kept showing up until we finally really looked at it and let it lead us to their family.

Someday we will get their temple work done, but for now I have a feeling that it is good just that we remember them – that they're not forgotten. These were people who made connections that mattered all through their lives. Harry A. Cavassa was so beloved by his employees that they chipped in to buy him a nice watch for Christmas in 1925. And Harriet was the one that little Casey ran to with a cut finger, and the one who taught my mother in law how to cook Italian food and to survive as a new widow. In all of these actions, all these connections are the ropes that made them family and that keep us family.

This feels especially poignant to me right now, because here in the United States, it's the week of Thanksgiving, and the Covid–19 pandemic is raging worse than ever. This year, what we thought of as family or traditions or connections are not feeling very normal.

This year, your Thanksgiving dinner might be you eating alone and doing puzzles over zoom. There are thousands of families with loved ones in the hospital who they can't visit or even speak to. So many people are showing love in the most counterintuitive ways this year. By canceling travel plans as my sister just did, or by isolating in a bedroom as my other sister has been doing for the past two weeks, or sleeping in the garage as we hear of health care workers doing so their families won't get sick. And let us never forget the families this year who are coming to terms with a more permanent separation.

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has said, "Whatever problems your family is facing, whatever you must do to solve them, the beginning and the end of the solution is charity, the pure love of Christ. Without this love even seemingly perfect families struggle. With it, even families with great challenges succeed."

The tie that really binds our families and the rope that anchors and protects us, no matter what our family looks like, is this pure love of Christ. His pure love for us, and his transformative ability to help us love one another. Christ's pure love is strong enough to transform our strange virtual gatherings into holy and happy Places. And I know it is strong enough to turn strangers into family. And it is strong enough to envelop us in the arms of his comfort, even when we feel completely alone.

When I visualize what a family tie looks like, for me, it is a lot more than a shoelace, or an apron string, or even more than a climbing rope. I personally find comfort envisioning a sturdy net made of the kind of crazy knots my little kids tie, quadruple gazillion knotted into a tacky grandma's macro, a hanging plant basket sort of thing.

And I like to imagine that each of the little actions we take makes one more knot in that net, tying us all safely together so that no one has to free solo up these crazy cliffs of 2020.

Whatever your holidays are looking like this year, I hope that you find ways to tie lots of messy little knots between you and all your people. Your biological family who's in the house with you, your church family in their separate homes, the colleagues on your screen and your zoom call, your neighbors and friends and delivery guys and grocery store cashiers – all the people who connect and hold us and give us a sense of place.

This year, I think it's going to take all of our best creativity and positivity and just plain hard work, to feel the connectedness that we crave. And I also think it's going to take a lot of help from our Savior. But I know that we can do it because ultimately whatever our families on earth might look like, we are all children of our heavenly parents and part of their family and being connected to others is what we were made for.

That's it for his episode of This Is the Gospel. Thank you to our storytellers, Jeff and Casey. You can see Jeff's pictures with his son Max and his new brother Ilija at the Ostrog Monastery and pictures of Harriet's pocket watch in our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel.

You can also get more good stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. All of the stories in this episode are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers.

And of course, if you have a story to share about living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, please call our pitch line and leave us a story pitch. The best pitches will be short and sweet and have a clear sense of the focus of your story. Call 515-519-6179 to leave us a message. Finally, if today's stories have touched you or made you think about your discipleship a little more deeply, please share that with us. You can leave a review of the podcast on Apple, Stitcher, or whatever platform you use. And if you can't figure out how to leave a review we even have a little highlight on our Instagram page that can help show you how. Every review helps the podcast show up for more people who need this kind of light in their lives.

This episode was produced by me Sarah Blake, with story production and editing from Erika Free, Katie Lambert, and Casey Blake. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios. Our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDS living.com/podcast.

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the demand for potatoes plummeted during the outbreak of COVID-19, Ryan did something unthinkable. He dumped 2 million pounds of potatoes on his farm and, through a Facebook post, invited anyone to take what they needed. Little did he know that this post would reach a single mother in Kenya and give him the opportunity to act on the Savior's invitation to feed His sheep both physically and spiritually.

Show Notes: 

To see pictures and links for this episode, go to LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel

Transcript: 

KaRyn  0:03 

Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay.

At the time of this recording, I am currently in quarantine waiting for the results of my COVID-19 test. I'm okay. It's okay. But it is amazing how quickly a little under-the-weather feeling sends us into a downward spiral of brain frenzy. Where have I been? Who was I with? Did I take off my mask somewhere forget to wash my hands that one time? Who did I give this to? It's enough to drive you crazy, whether it's COVID or not.

But it also has me thinking about this week's theme and story because in the midst of all the uncertainty and exhaustion I have been fed, literally and figuratively, a simple warm bowl of soup from Chick-fil-A on the porch from a neighbor, a just-checking-in text from a friend, an offer to take things off my work plate, bless you. And a well-timed scripture in my "Come, Follow Me" study that's bringing me a lot of hope. All of these things have helped me to know that I am not alone, even when I'm feeling really vulnerable. And they bring me a sense of safety of peace, and, like I said, hope.

I think that regardless how we interpret or act on the Savior's charge after His resurrection to feed His sheep, the end result for those that we care about will be the same—a sense of safety, of peace, of fullness, and of hope. And in today's episode, we have one story from Ryan, a farmer in Idaho who thought he was being prompted to do what farmers do: feed people from the land. But it wasn't the potatoes that ultimately made the biggest difference. Here's Ryan.

Ryan  1:47 

We farm about 20,000 acres. We do a lot of potatoes and sugar beets, and a lot of other crops as well as cattle.

We grow potatoes for both the process industry, which is companies that make french fries, that's our biggest customers is the french fry. And then we also do fresh pack where we're part-owners in the company that packs potatoes into boxes and bags that go to grocery stores and restaurants.

This last year, was in 2019, was a great year. We were super excited at the end of the harvest, we had a great crop, things are looking very good and the economy was doing well. People were out in about, you know, eating and restaurants. And there actually was a really good demand for potatoes, specifically. And there also was a little bit of a tight supply of potatoes and so potato prices looked like they were going to be at record levels. So we were really excited about how things look for us. And so a lot of optimism going into the first part of 2020.

And then, you know, sometime around, you know, the end of January, in the very first part of February, I started to hear a little bit about this virus. I remember, right at the very beginning having kind of a sick feeling in my gut, you know, this could be something very serious, both for the world but also for our company. And then we started talking about how are we going to control this, we're going to do shut downs and things like that, then the reality really start setting.

So the first thing that we saw here was the food service side, the restaurants really took a beating as they began to close down. And so we saw our customers' demand go from very strong to almost a complete stop. I felt a sense of almost panic at the time. I felt like that, you know, we could be in financial jeopardy, that potentially it could take farms out of business.

At this time, we were praying as a family that we would be able to sustain through this difficult time, asking for Heavenly Father's help to get through it. I also asked many times, "What is it we need to learn from this experience? What are the correct decisions might be that we continue to support our family here for generations to come?"

So I guess April time is planting time, but it's also the time of the year where we have still have potatoes in storage from the previous year's harvest. Usually, we can either sell those to other farmers or we can take those to the dehydrated market make dehydrated flakes. And so I made the usual phone calls to the dehydrating companies. They just laughed at me, they're like, "We're not buying anything right now. We don't see anything opening up." You know, farmers were cutting back because of their contracts and what they were going to plant so there was no one to sell the potatoes to.

They were beautiful potatoes. You know, I really struggled with what to do with them. And the other only option that we had was to be to feed them to cattle as we have some of our own cattle. So that's kind of what our initial intent would be to dump them on the ground, we could feed them later to our own cows.

But as a as a dumped them there looked at how pretty the potatoes were. And when we were all said and done, we had about 2 million pounds of potatoes. And if you figure about, you know, a half pound is a potato, there's probably 4 million potatoes there. I'm like surely there's got to be something that would be a better use than cattle feed. So I pondered that over for a part of a day. And I had the distinct impression to give some of them away.

I knew that people were, some people lost their jobs, maybe struggling financially. So I just made a post on Facebook or something along the lines of, "Due to COVID, we're gonna have to dump some potatoes, you're welcome to come get some if you'd like some." Really, I had no idea that people will take that as seriously as they did. I thought maybe a few friends, neighbors would come gather a few up and the rest would go to cattle feed. But I was wrong majorly wrong.

The first day, people started to show up, you know, friends, neighbors, just car after car after car. And I would say hundreds of people the first day came. We were just blown away. We couldn't believe the amount of traffic and it was like a almost like a highway.

So then, the next day, I thought things would be over and it would quiet down. But by early morning, this traffic started up again. And same thing, steady stream of traffic going by. And so during this whole time, the Facebook posts started to spread. And I started to get a lot of comments, but a lot of shares, ended up with over 10,000 shares when it was all said and done.

So we started to see, after the first few days, people come from far away into you know, Utah, up into the Boise Valley, both a three, four hour drives. Then even brass even farther and I saw people come in from down into Nevada and Elko and Wells, you're starting to talk no more like a five or six hour drive. And then as far as way as Las Vegas and Moscow, Idaho, straight, you know, 10-hour drives. One lady called from Kansas, which is like an 18 hour drive.

And after a day or two what really started to stand out to me was the reason why people were coming to get the potatoes. The gas money was way more than what the potatoes were worth in, all circumstances. But I started to get a glimpse of the people just wanted to come and do something good for somebody else. It was the beginning of the lockdown, they been locked in their home. And I think it was just a great way for people to have an opportunity to get a glimpse of something they could do, something kind for other people. And that's really what amazed me. I would say 95% of everyone that came came in for somebody else.

You know, I made a connection with a man out of New York City and we shipped a full semi load of boxed potatoes to the Bronx. And they were just trying to do something good for their community. And that was really the story of what I saw.

As people reached out, many people wanted to help. We'd get anonymous donations from as far away as New York and Canada. And they felt like, you know, with the potatoes that we were giving away, that was, you know, going to bankrupt us. That really wasn't the case.

Initially, I refused that. I didn't want to take money for this. This was something we kind of talked about as a company that we would continue to just give them away. Somebody tried to slip envelopes here and there, but we'd give them back. But I really couldn't stop the money that was coming in from distant lands and anonymous money.

So as the Facebook posts expanded, I started to hear from some news agencies. I did interviews with CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC, I do a little podcast with NPR. And then some of those stories ended up into the national or the world media.

And so I started to have messages and comments and emails from people from all over the world. And one of the people that I noticed on one of the Facebook comments, was a lady named Susan. She's from Kenya, and, for whatever reason, I'll just remember, seeing her picture and this impression that I wanted to just see what she had to say. And so I clicked on her comment. And the comment was something along the lines, "I wish you could send some of those potatoes to me." But just, you know, shipping potatoes to Kenya or even other parts of countries, you know, it's cost prohibitive so it's not going to work.

So I responded, "Well, I wish I could. What is it like in Kenya with COVID?" She just commented that she lived in Nairobi, Kenya, and it's a city of about 4 million people. We're talking dirt floor, tin shack, cardboard-type homes, and she just explained how they were living hand to mouth as it was, you know, trying to feed her family. She's a single mother of three children. And then with the lockdowns that the government had put on, imposed upon them in Kenya, you know, they really didn't have an opportunity to go into work and, you know, bring food home to the family.

And so as I thought about a little bit, I come back and asked her a little bit later, you know, if there's nothing I can do to help? She really says, "Well, I don't think there's much you can do to help. But we just need something to eat."

So I think I thought about that a little bit and in my pickup, I've had $100 bill that had been floating around in the center console of my truck for almost a year. And I'm like, "I'll just, I'm just gonna send her this money."

And it's really not that easy to send money to Kenya. We finally figured out how to do it. And so I ended up sending the money over there to Susan. And a couple days later, I think it was over the weekend, so I think on Monday, she sent me a little picture of her family as they come back from the store with their groceries. And she brought back, you know, a big bag of flour, rice, and cooking oil and sugar, and just the staples, beans. And right on the very top a little there's one little teeny pack of cookies.

It just struck me funny as we eat here in our country and go shopping, you know, you bring home for frozen pizzas and Snickers bars and ice cream and just things that didn't even cross her mind. And she wrote me back and she sent a picture and just saying, "Thank you. This will fit our family for months."

So I continue to have money come into the company to help us. I've been thinking about you know, "Is there something I could do with this money, or something I could leverage to make this something bigger?" And in one of my conversations with Susan, she said, "My dream and prayer is to educate my children and to see them go to the university. I don't want them to raise their children in the ghetto like I have raised them."

I don't know, there's something that really struck a chord with me on that. And so almost immediately, I had an idea, I'm like, "That's what I want to do. I'm gonna, I'm gonna help her children receive an education." And so I had the thought, "Okay, I'm gonna take the money that have already been given and put that toward the cause. I'm going to do a GoFundMe and I'll send this out to everyone that was wrote these nice comments and things on my Facebook page, I linked that to it.

And so I pondered over it on a Sunday, all day. I started to do a little video to put that out and asking people for help. And I thought people responded really well to it. So we were able to raise more than enough, I think, to put most her kids through college.

I think some people felt like maybe it could be a scam, or something like that. But I really felt in my heart, I knew that it was not. I had big, long conversations with Susan. I knew her heart. And so I was so excited about it. I'd share it with the family every day, we sit around the dinner table discussing where we're at what to do, and we've decided that even if we come up short, we as a family, we're gonna pitch in and make the dream happen for them one way or the other.

And about then I kind of lost contact with Susan. At first, I was, I was a little bit wary. I'm like, okay, you know, what if something happened to her or. . .  But then I saw a post, and I think she had maybe even posted it herself, on Facebook and of like bulldozers bulldozing buildings and stuff down. And so I clicked on it and it was following that a little bit. And so I looked it up on the news and there was an article on it in the Kenyan news about how the goverment was working on a big waterworks project and this sewer plan, so they decided to knock those homes down. And, and so, as that was all demolished and twisted up in the metal and some of the belongings, and that, you know, I know that it was probably very devastating for, for her. And so the excitement of raising, you know, the money to help her children was kind of overcome with, we just needed to survive the next while. I was very nervous about how they were.

Prior to and during this process, I made another friend in Kenya in Nairobi, his name was Titus. And he's a member of the Church there was in the bishopric in one of the wards and he seen an article on LDS Living that had been done about the story. So he reached out to me and just asked if there's something you could do to help. So I asked him if he'd go see if you could find Susan. And I had her phone number, but he was able to track her down and to check in on her.

She found some shelter in a church, somewhere in the city for a few nights. And she had family nearby. And so her one sister let her stay with her for a shorter period of time while she got her feet back under underneath her.

And so eventually, I heard back from her, and she, you know, she told me what had happened. They were safe. They were sound, they just needed somewhere to stay. She's was very discouraged, and in quite a bit of despair, I would say.

So it was about this time that we started to have a little bits of discussions on occasion about God, talking about faith. And I asked her if she'd be willing to meet with the missionaries from my church, and that they would have a message that they would share with her that potentially changed her life, for the better – forever. She willingly accepted. And said she'd be happy to meet with the missionaries.

So how do you get in contact with missionaries in a foreign country? Our friend, good friend, Titus, connected us with the missionaries and was able to get her phone number, make the connection, and so the missionaries like right away, they started to teach the first discussion.

She'd come over to the church where they met and did a discussion and gave her a little tour of the church, and  . . . But as I've seen before, as I served on my own mission is, you know, sometimes as people start to learn and hear about the gospel, life can get really complicated for them pretty fast. And so, again, I couldn't make contact with Susan for quite some time.

Finally, Titus, I think was able to track her down, and she's been robbed, and had been her – had her phone stolen. And I just thought, Well, yeah, this is – she's starting to learn about something that really can have life changing meaning in her life as she prepares to learn about the Savior and the Gospel. And then she's robbed. Like, what else could possibly go wrong?

Again, an impression come to me that, you know, sometimes during our darkest hour comes – next comes the light.

I really felt like that was going to be the case that Susan would soon see light in her life. And I didn't know exactly what that meant. I really wasn't that optimistic that things would go far with the missionaries, but I knew that there was going to be something good that happened in her life.

In all our discussions with Susan, she never asked me for a single thing, and one day, she sent me a little message. And she said, "I feel like that I'm becoming a burden to you." She wanted to become more self–reliant and to be able to take care of her family. She expressed her concern in doing that. She didn't want to be a burden to others.

She said that her doctor had told her that she needed to quit doing what she has done for an occupation to help feed her family, and that was doing construction. I have pictures of her packing these huge concrete blocks on her shoulders into the construction sites. And she talked about how how little money that paid how hard it was, and it had done damage to her back. Many times the women over there were taken advantage of and sometimes not even paid for their work.

She said that she has an opportunity, that something she knows, to start her own business. And so she asked me the first time for something, and that was "Would you loan me some money so that I'll be able to start this business?" It was just a few hundred dollars, a very small amount.

So I told her, "Yeah, I'd be, I'd be thrilled to help you start your own business." And so it had come to me the thought about the self–reliance course on how to start your business. And so I reached out to Titus and asked him if he could come up with the manuals and the books. And he did. And he took them to Susan and gave it to her.

And so a week or so later, I asked her, "How's the business start–up going?" And she says, "No, I'm not, I'm not doing any of that, I  want to finish reading the self-reliance manual first." And so she was like, really into it, you know, reading the self-reliance program and how it can help her, and then Susan was able to start her own fruit stand business.

So it's about this time that she was pretty quiet about things. And Titus actually told me first that she made a decision to be baptized, her and her daughter. But then the next day, in the conversation with Susan, she told me that she decided to be baptized and become a member of the Church.

I was thrilled. I expressed to her that I wish that I could be there for it, because I really wanted it to be. I wish I could just jump on an airplane, fly out there, but I knew that wouldn't be realistic. I asked, "Could you make sure you send me pictures?" And so I asked her that, and she – and they did, they sent lots of pictures. And Titus was there too and he sent me pictures.

It was a really special day, just to see the smiles on her face and see them all dressed in white. It was kind of surreal, but it was something that really touched me and our family was in celebration for the whole day. It was just a great experience to see.

And I knew this could be a great beginning, that could really change her life and the lives of her children. She's expressed to me many times about her testimony and God and His desire to help her and that she's recognized that things will come in their own due time, in God's own time.

We've since taken some of the education fund, and we've got her kids enrolled in private school. Public school in downtown Nairobi, you know it's a very difficult circumstance – 150 kids shoved into one classroom, there's not a lot of learning going and so we felt like if they're gonna have a chance at the university, that private school is going to be the best for them. And it's not a lot of money, a small amount.

She sent me a pictures of her boys on the first day of school all dressed in their little uniforms and their books. It was the cutest thing you've ever seen. Her daughter, Serena just enrolled in school, but because of COVID her schools are still shut down, and so we haven't been able to get her in yet.

At times in our life, when we think times are the most difficult, and are the most challenges it's really something that can end up being our greatest blessings. And I've seen that many times in my life. It's something that we see on the farm all the time, if the rain comes for 30 days straight – at the time it seems like the worst possible thing in the world because we can't get the work done, can't get it done timely. But six months later, when we're harvesting our crop and we have record crops – then comes the blessing that we see the law of the harvest, of how what seemed like the most difficult thing really ended up being something great.

And I think we're seeing that in, in this circumstance with, you know, having to dump potatoes, you know, what seemed like a total disaster ended up being such a wonderful blessing, lead to a family in Kenya, on the other side of the world that could potentially have their lives changed forever.

I just couldn't envision that at first. But I knew that as they had prayed, what could we experience, what could we learn from this COVID and from the whole tailored experience of being patient and waiting on the Lord's time for that to come to pass.

I really feel like that has come to fruition and really just see somebody's live blessed as we learn to listen to the promptings of our Heavenly Father that come to us and follow them.

It's really how we accomplish going about doing God's work that He would do if He was here Himself, to do our Heavenly Father's work. And I really want to envision and look just to see if Susan's family, a decade from now, a generation or two from now, to see what kind of difference that made. Something little, a little thing like dumping a few potatoes out in a, in a pile on the edge of a field, how that can lead to change the lives of many generations to come and really to see great things come to pass.

That's really a testament to me of really how God works. We have to have trust in Him and what He allows us to go through and the trials that we have that that He – iti is maybe be what's best for us and really can be our greatest blessing.

 

KaRyn  26:28 

That was Ryan Cranney. LDS Living first shared Ryan and Susan's story in a written article this past spring, and we loved that we could get it in Ryan's own words here on the podcast.

And because you know that we love to have all sides of the story here at This Is the Gospel, we did reach out to Susan to see if we could make that happen. But the time differences from Kenya to the US and technological challenges made it impossible right now. We're so grateful for her willingness to be part of the story and we will have more of her own words in our show notes as soon as we possibly can.

You know, when story producer Katie Lambert was working on this story, she remarked to me several times, pretty much every time we talked about it, how much she enjoyed Ryan's unassuming demeanor. She is well acquainted with the Idaho farmer life and said that he is an Idaho farmer through and through. Matter of fact about the loss of a major part of his income for the year, and matter of fact about his decisions to give the potatoes away and matter of fact about his prompting to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with Susan and her family.

I'm in awe of Ryan solid faith in God's timing and His plan for each of us. He understands something that I feel like I'm still trying to learn every single day. The loss of the potatoes and the money that those potatoes represented was a temporary and temporal setback. But the joy in feeding thousands or helping one soul come home to the Savior's fold, that's an eternal and everlasting joy, nothing temporal about it.

And that kind of perspective is exactly what Elder Holland was talking about when he gave his beautiful 2012 General Conference address titled: "The First Great Commandment." There isn't time here to recount the entire address, we'll put it in our show notes, you really need to go and reread it. It's so good, and so important.

But Elder Holland shares the story of the resurrected Savior coming to His apostles who have turned back to the work they did before they were first called to leave their nets and follow Him. And after showing them his power to feed the world, physically, by filling their empty fishing nets, He implores Peter three times, "Do you love me?"

And when Peter answers have after each question with "Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee." The Savior responds with these words, "Feed my lambs. Feed my sheep. Feed my sheep." Elder Holland goes on to say, quote, "I am not certain just what our experience will be on judgement day, but I will be very surprised if at some point in that conversation, God does not ask us exactly what Christ asked Peter, 'Did you love me?' I think he will want to know if in our very mortal, very inadequate and sometimes childish grasp of things. Did we at least understand one commandment, the first and greatest commandment of them all? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength and with all thy mind. And if at such a moment, we can stammer out, 'Yeah, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee,' then He may remind us that the crowning characteristic of love is always loyalty. 'If ye love me, keep my commandments, 'Jesus said. So, we have neighbors to bless. Children to protect. The poor to lift up, the truth to defend. We have wrongs to make right and truth to share and good to do. In short, we have a life of devoted discipleship to give in demonstrating our love of the Lord. We can't quit and we can't go back. After an encounter with the living Son of the living God, nothing is ever again to be as it was before." End quote.

When I think of Ryan's story, I think of this kind of love. This kind of loyalty. The kind of love that started with a pile of potatoes in an attempt to feed a hungry world. The kind of love that presented a willing heart that some may have seen as naive, ready to engage with someone very different from himself and his circumstances.

And finally, the kind of love that knows that the true soul food of this sometimes treacherous, and confusing earth life, the real sustenance for those of us who hunger and thirst looks a lot less like potatoes, and much more like the making and keeping of sacred covenant as disciples of Jesus Christ.

So this week, my friends, regardless of what your test results say, or a relentless year flings at you, I pray with all of my heart that we will seek to be filled with that kind of love. And as Elder Holland invites us to do, that we'll move forward, ever forward, to show that love by feeding His sheep.

That's it for this episode of This Is the Gospel thank you to our storyteller Ryan Cranney and Susan. We'll have more information about them and their story including pictures, as well as the link to Elder Holland's talk in our show notes at LDS living.com/Thisisthegospel. You can also get more good stuff by following us on Instagram or Facebook at Thisisthegospel_podcast.

The story in this episode is true and accurate as affirmed by our storyteller. And of course, if you have a story to share about living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, please call or pitchline and leave us a story pitch. We're currently looking for Christmas stories. Stories about getting it right, getting Christmas right. The best pitches will be short, they'll be sweet and they'll have a clear sense of the focus of your story. So call 515-519-6179 and leave us a message.

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This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with help from Sarah Blak – bless you Sarah – and story production and editing from Katie Lambert. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcasts.

Be well everybody! Stay safe.

 

 

Show Notes + Transcripts: http://ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel

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