LDS Living Podcasts

EXCITING NEWS ALERT~This Is the Gospel is going to join Deseret Book at this year's RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City! To celebrate, we are sharing one of our favorite episodes all about the power of our ancestors' faith stories, "The Roots of Faith." Stories in this episode: An extraordinary lesson from her family history helps Sister Linda K. Burton find the right words to minister to the women of the Relief Society when she is called as president; Deserey is called to be the Family History specialist in her single adult ward and receives a special spiritual confirmation from her father beyond the veil about the value of her calling.

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To find pictures and more from this episode, please visit LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT:

KARYN LAY: Did you know that reviews on iTunes help new people find the podcasts that inspire you most? Well, they do. So if you found something valuable in the stories that we share on This Is The Gospel, would you take a minute to rate our podcast and maybe even leave us a review on iTunes? Every written review helps us to show up in the search results for more people who could use a little bit of storytelling magic in their week. We really appreciate it. 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.

A few years ago, I got a phone call from my grandma who we call Nanny. And it was routine stuff. She was telling me all the details for the upcoming family party. So I took notes. I wrote it all down like a dutiful granddaughter and I hung up the phone. About five minutes later, the phone rang again. And it was Nanny. So I assumed she was calling because she had forgotten something. And instead, she proceeded to tell me the exact same thing she had said five minutes earlier, almost word for word. When I hung up the phone, I sort of laughed about it. Because in my family, we have a tradition of finding the humor in just about everything, but it didn't take long for the weight of that phone conversation to settle in. Not long after that nanny was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and it didn't take long for her short term memory, her long term memory, and her ability to communicate clearly, to disintegrate. It was around this time that I also got my very first iPhone. I'm a late adopter. So it took me a little while to get one. But when I did, I realized that it had this app, the voice memo app, and all I would have to do is push a button and It would record anything. So I started to record everything. I would take that iPhone and put it in the middle of the room during family parties, and push the record button, just to try to capture whatever I could. I was looking for stories. I wanted to make sure that even though my grandmother's memory was going away, the stories that she had, wouldn't. As you can imagine, sometimes I got stories. Sometimes I got grocery lists, and sometimes I got testimony and other times I got the tail end of a phone conversation. My hunger for the routine and the mundane have made me a bit of an indiscriminate recorder but honestly, I just didn't want to miss anything. And I'd like to think that I was actually rewarded especially when recently I stumbled upon this little story from my mom.

KARYN'S MOM (SUE): There was a big box that we used to keep up in the storage closet for like in the wintertime our summer clothes went in the box. In the summertime, our winter clothes went in the box. And whenever I would get into trouble, I would go up there and go in that closet and hide under the clothes and cry. And I'd just be like, "They're never gonna find me." And then I'd be

KaRyn's Aunt (Kathy):Which house are you talking about?

SUE: The one in Middletown. That we added on to on Aspen Street. And I'd be up there singing the song."Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me so I'll eat worms. Big ones, fat ones, small ones, skinny ones. Oh, how I'll eat worms. I'll bite their heads off, suck the juice out, throw the skins away. I don't see how birds can stand them for three meals a day."And the kids would come in that closet and they'd go, "She must be in here. I know she must be in here. Sue? Sue?"And I was just quiet as a mouse. And then they go out and I'd laugh quietly and say, "They didn't find me."

NANNY: Oh my goodness, oh, it's funny how you probably don't even—

KARYN: I am so glad that I captured that moment of unbridled laughter from my Nanny, especially now that she can't remember who I am most days. There's also this really cool little snippet of audio where I caught my mom and my aunt and my grandparents telling the story of their trip to Idaho Falls to receive their temple blessings and to be sealed together as a family a few years after my family converted to the gospel. You will hear my aunt on the phone, in the background, trying to find a place to get scrapple for me. And if you don't know what scrapple is, please don't look it up. You will not think more highly of me after you find out what it is. Anyway, here's the story.

SUE: This year we're actually going to Idaho Falls temple. We had a station wagon

Kathy (in the background): ...someplace that has scrapple for KaRynnie

SUE: and the back didn't have any seats.

KARYN: Were all of the kids born then?

SUE: Yeah. Thank goodness we didn't have to have seat belts and car seats and all that junk or we wouldn't have been able to go. And Kathy was responsible for handing out the sandwiches when it was lunchtime. And we were only allowed to take a shoebox full of stuff with us. Each person could take a shoebox. That's it because you didn't have room for right people to bring all their facts. If we wanted to buy any trinkets we had a room in our shoebox to put it or we couldn't get it. And we had- did we pull our camper? Our popup tent? And it sometimes would rain so hard that our sleeping bags would get wet.

Right? It's not hurting but we-

PAPPY: ...slept in the car, or out in good weather we just slept out on the ground in our sleeping bags.

KARYN: Like did anything difficult happened on the trip?

SUE: Oh yeah the brakes went out.

Pappy: Yeah.

SUE: Coming down a mountainside

Pappy: Yeah.

KARYN: Down a mountain?

SUE: Yeah it was a mountainside. Where were we? Yellowstone area?

Pappy: I don't remember exactly.

SUE: But it was—

Pappy: I made all these side trips too. If there was something interesting, I'd go there.

SUE: Yeah the bear came. One time we were in the sleeping thing. And we started screaming.

Pappy: The Big Rock Candy Mountain. Yeah.

KARYN: So I forgot to ask anything about the actual sealing in that conversation. But it was still so cool for me to know about the details of a trip that changed the eternal trajectory of our extended family forever. And aren't we so glad that there are seatbelts now? Though the recordings are totally amateurish and ham-handed. I love listening to them because they represent my newly found desire to hold on to the people, and the places that have shaped me. And all of the stories that are the basis of my own faith. I think we actually call that the spirit of Elijah, right? The turning of the hearts of the children towards their parents and the parents towards their children.

Well, today we've got stories from people who found their faith in Jesus Christ rooted in the power of their family history, and that turning of the hearts of the children to their fathers. Our first storyteller is Sister Linda K Burton. And she's telling a story from her family history. The miraculous, yet simple experience from her great grandfather's life that became a guide to her during her time as the general Relief Society President of the Church. Here's Linda.

LINDA K BURTON: Well, I don't really remember the very first time I heard this story. I can kind of put it in a time frame of when I was a very young mother, I must have been doing some family history at the time. When the little ones were in bed just to have a break from my regular routine. But I did come across this story of my great-grandfather that he had written down. I don't know at what point in his life he wrote it down but by the time the story took place was when he was about 10 years old. And that intrigued me, but the thing that really intrigued me was the broken English that he wrote it in because he was right from Denmark. And so it was so charming for me to read his own account. And I just was drawn in by this story, because he tells about his mother. And so I could see myself. I could actually relate to her as a young mother of several children. And so this is my great-great-grandmother, Caroline Catherine Holmes Kjar. And at this point in her life, she was pregnant, with I think her seventh child. She had lost one. And her husband had been sick in the hospital for about 26 weeks, so about a half year, six months. And as a struggling young mother, trying to provide for her children with her husband unable to work, she was taking in laundry, she was doing whatever she could make ends meet, and could not make ends meet. So they get to the point where the landlord comes and says, you know, pay up or move out basically. And as it always happens in sad stories, this is in the middle of the winter. So from my great grandfather, Joseph Julius point of view, he remembers looking out the window with his older brother Peter. Well, I'm getting ahead of myself, I got a back up a little bit.

My great-great grandmother was discouraged. And so she gathered the children in prayer after the landlord had come and kind of given his ultimatum. She kneels down with the children in prayer, puts her arms around them and, and says a heartfelt prayer and tells Heavenly Father, she's done everything she can do. She can't do anymore at this point in her life. I remember feeling that way at that point in my life as well. And she told Him that she couldn't think of anything else that she could do. So would He please, please help them. And after she said this beautiful prayer, she didn't get up right away. She said, "I have a feeling that Heavenly Father's gonna send someone to help us. I don't think he's gonna let us suffer anymore."

Well, the next morning is when my grandfather and my great grandfather and his brother looking out the window and it's snowing hard. And so the children are all there in the apartment. That's a second story of an apartment building. And they see a man coming up the walk, and he looks like he some kind of policeman or somebody a little bit frightening, intimidating to them. And they see him go around the back. And then they hear someone coming up the stairs and it frightens them because they think this is the man coming to evict them. So they run to their mother and get her and she hears a knock at the door. And she answers it. And she's I'm sure as frightened as they are. And so this man says to her, "Are you Mrs. Care?" Which kind of takes her back because she doesn't know who this man is. And she says, "Yes, that's me." And he says, "My name is Johan Nikolai Modvic." Sorry, this makes me teary. He says, "I had a dream last night that there was a hard-working woman. And then he gives the address 29 Field Strada who needs my help. I'm here to help you. How much money do you need?" And so she tells him that she needs 30 krona, to bring it current. He immediately gives her the money. And of course, she's just overwhelmed the generosity of this man. She has no idea who he is. And he gives her a card and says, "If you need any more, this is how to contact me." And she goes to kiss his hand and he kind of pulls away and says, "Don't thank me. You thank the Lord because the dream I had came from Him." And then he leaves. And as a sweet young mother, she gathers her children before she does anything else, and kneels in prayer again, and thanks the Lord for sending help in their hour of need, and then she says to the children, "Don't ever forget this. And don't forget the name of this man."

This is the story that my grandfather remembers as a child at age 10, which I think is pretty significant because he didn't forget. There's a sequel to this story I don't tell in the book. So we found out later that Johan Nikolai Modvig, and actually my great grandfather remembered his name wrong. He remembered his Johan Lodvic Modvic. We actually had our friend, he kind of specializes in Scandinavian family history. And so he looked up to see if he could find anything about him. He was the one that discovered that Nikolai was his middle name, not Ludvic, and he was a prominent Professor apparently. And, interestingly, about the time that this story happened, I think Brother Modvic, was actually serving as like Speaker of the House type thing in Copenhagen. This was a wonderful man. So besides the all the things he was doing professionally where he listened to the voice of the spirit in a dream and responded to it. I thought that was impressive about him.

You know, I was thinking about how this story changed my faith. I don't know that it changed my faith as much as it deepened my faith. As a young mother, we had ups and downs financially. Yeah, I knew what meager meant and how does scrape things together. And we had a turn when things were really bad financially, the early 80s. And that's when I think this story I ran across the store. So the timing was significant to us, because we'd had quite a drought in our finances. And so this resonated with me. I could feel to a degree what Caroline must have been feeling. So I was grateful to have a story to hang my hat on. I have also drawn on this story numerous times when I was serving in my calling as General Relief Society President. As you can imagine, I was traveling all over the world and seeing women in difficult circumstances. Everyone is in difficult circumstances. When I would stand up there, and I would sometimes prepare something that I- or an outline what I thought I might say, sometimes I could feel this is not the right thing. And I put it aside and he would bring this story to my mind. And that's what would be what I would share. And almost without fail, it was the connecting point to the sisters, no matter what language I was trying to be translated in. And I was able to say and able to use this story to say Heavenly Father has not forgotten you. He is aware of you in your extremities, and you will kneel on your knees and thank Him for these experience someday because you will know that He has had His eye upon you. Like He had my great great grandmother. She was just a regular little person who didn't feel like she was probably worthy of anything great. And yet He saw her in her need and was able respond to that need because she allowed Him to with her prayer of faith.

We were lucky enough to go to Denmark a few years ago when our daughter was living in, in Ireland with her family for a year. We decided to go visit them. And one of the things my daughter had decided that we needed to do while we were visiting there was to go over to Denmark. It was a not too far of a jaunt to go even though she had three little tiny children at the time. But that gave us an opportunity to tell the story to these three little children. Let them know where we were going to go and that we were going to try and find this apartment where this story took place. And that was pretty precious. To go down that street, see the name of that street that we knew, and then find that number 29 was kind of a sacred moment to stand there in front of that and look up into that second story window where we could match and Joseph, Julius, and Peter, looking down. We didn't have to go there to see that it was real. But just standing there and remembering the faith of that mother, that was influencing my life generations later. It was this connecting point. It was this "I love you" moment. It was like my way of saying "I love you, I thank you for being the kind of woman that's influenced my life for many years now." And that my grandchildren were there with me that I hope this would be significant for them to look back on. I knew they were too tiny to maybe remember it in the immediate future. But as the story is retold to them, they might have some remembrance, they were there too, and that this is part of our sacred heritage.

KARYN: That was Linda. After listening to this story, I was struck by the realization that Caroline, Linda's great-great-grandmother probably had no idea that this tiny moment, in the cold snowy world of Denmark, would someday reach beyond time and space to inspire women across continents to believe and trust in Christ. Her everyday devotion to the Savior has become a legacy so much greater than she or even her family could have imagined. And it makes me want to reevaluate my own faith practice. Am I living in a way that could someday provide a blueprint of faith for the people I love? Am I seeking to demonstrate deep trust in Jesus? And more importantly, am I writing down the moments that have changed me? The fact that a small transformative moment in our lives could have a lasting impact on generations beyond us is something that was actually reinforced to me during a drive through Amish country, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with my mom, I had my phone recorder turned on because that's what I do. And I must have asked my mom to tell me the story of our first known Amish ancestor.

KARYN: Mom telling me why the Amish Fultz got shunned.

SUE: So the story is that the- and I don't remember his name, I think it's John Fultz, was raised by the Amish. So they took him in because his parents died on the ship coming over here to America. And he grew up Amish and then he was planting his field and he decided he was going to plant... wasn't malt.

KARYN: Something you could make liquor out of?

SUE: Yes, I can't seem-

KARYN: Barley?

SUE: Barley. And it's not unusual to plant barley. But it is unusual for them to sell it to someone who uses it to make liquor. And he did not appreciate them telling him he could not sell it to this man who was making liquor with it. And so because he did that, he was told that he had to leave the Amish and he was shunned by the rest of the Fultz. So that's who we come from.

KARYN: Do you know when that was? Was it the 1700s? 1800s?

SUE: I could tell you if I had my genealogy in front of me but I don't. And kind of found all that out because Uncle Tim was driving down Lancaster County. Came across the street sign that said Fultz Lane and so he pulled over and had his son taking a picture of them. And a Fultz Amish man, whose last name is Fultz, came out. And he told us the story of the Fultz. And sure enough, it was the same, Fultz.

KARYN: That's really interesting that he would... that that's like folklore in their-

SUE: Yep.

KARYN: In their family, right? Like the Fultz who got shunned because of-

SUE: Yep. In the Amish eyes, we're the bad Fultzes.

KARYN: That was my mom Sue O'Daley. Certainly, John Fultz wasn't thinking about the future spiritual growth of his family when he stubbornly refused to stop selling his barley for liquor. I'm sure that shunning felt awful. But regardless of whether you think that was a good thing or a bad thing, it was a choice that opened the door of the world to the Fultz family who became ardent Methodists, and eventually ardent members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It's also interesting to note that the same gift of stubborn individualism that sent John Fultz out from the Amish is the same gift of stubborn individualism that sent my Pappy, Robert Fultz, the first in our family to join the church in search of a new faith tradition. Our physical and spiritual genetics are hard to escape. But I'm more and more convinced that they are often the thing that will move us forward along our earthly plans towards the Savior, just as they were meant to. Our next story from Deserey illustrates that connection that comes to us from honoring those gifts as we work on our family history. Here's Deserey.

DESEREY: So to truly understand my story, I feel like you have to know a lot about hearts. Not only scientifically how they work and how they're made up, but also the hearts of my father, who was a very important man to me, and my brother, who I have not yet met on this earth. My older brother Corbin, he was diagnosed with a heart condition known as aortic stenosis. And this is a defect where your aorta valve is different. So usually, on your aortic valve, you have three cusps, they call them. And when you have aortic stenosis, instead of having three you have two cusps, and that can cause a lot of issues with blood flow and with your aorta. It was recommended that he gets surgery at Primary Children's Hospital. And he was so little and unfortunately, he did not survive that surgery. Fast forward, years later, my dad, he was out working in the yard and came in later that night and was having some chest pain. Well, when he went in to see the cardiologist, they found out that he also had an aortic stenosis. And this kind of shows you my dad's personality and character, because in that moment, when he's finding out this life-altering diagnosis, essentially, that he never knew about his whole life. He felt so bad that he had given that to his son. They didn't know when Corbin was diagnosed that aortic stenosis can be genetic. But in that moment, he turned to my mom, and he said, "I feel so bad that I gave this to my son without knowing." Which just shows how selfless my dad was. He was just always worried about other people more than himself. So, after this, my dad continued on with his doctors, and they recommended surgery for him. My dad's heart was really, really weak after this long, extensive surgery. And so they had trouble taking him off the heart and lung machine. They decided that life flight was needed to come and take him to a hospital that had the equipment that they needed. And while my dad was in the ICU, and life flight was getting ready to take him on the helicopter, he crashed.

My family and I were waiting in the hallway to watch him get put on the helicopter. And unfortunately, we had to watch my dad get rolled down the hallway. With life flight crew giving him CPR and working on him. That was a very, very hard experience for my family to witness. Three days later, after a lot of waiting and a lot of hopelessness, we were informed that we were going to have to take my dad off of life support. We had to say goodbye.

Now I am the youngest of eight children. And after I lost my dad, I was really concerned about him, not being able to be at all my life's big events, I I felt kind of cheated. I was really worried that, you know, I wasn't going to fill him in my life. I was upset that things we could have been doing together that those opportunities were taken away. I had a dream that I was getting married. And I kept looking for my Uncle to give me away. So I said, "Where's my Uncle, he, he needs to give me away?" And I was searching through these crowds of people. And I kept looking. And all of a sudden, I ran into a huge crowd of people. And they were all dressed in white. At the very front was my dad.

I just was shocked. And I said, you're here, you're actually here. And he laughed at me. And he said, "Why I'll always be here. And I've been here the whole time." And I started thinking who were all those other people behind him. And I started asking questions like "Who is he with on the other side of the veil?" And later, within my ward, I was called to be the family history lead. And I had been interested in family history ever since that experience and ever since going through the temple, but I wasn't really sure where to start or how to begin. And I remember driving home from meeting with my Bishop and hearing the news that I was going to be the family history lead. And I just remember the voice of my dad saying. "This is something we can still do together." And, and I could just feel him there with me. He was proud of me.

I know that, that he was he knew my worries, he knew he knew that I was upset that that time was taken away from me and that I was worried that he wasn't going to be there. And this was the way that he was telling me that he was still there. And that there were still things that we could do together, even though he's on the other side of the veil. Ever since then, I have immensely felt his hand in my family history work. And it's been a real comfort to me. And it has really helped heal me and help me in my grief. And I know for a fact that family history work is essential, and that the other side is here with us. And if we could only put on our spiritual glasses, we would see them. When angels minister to us, it's not- they're not strangers. They're our family. They're our ancestors. And I know that him and my brother are helping me on this side of the veil. And I find it so amazing that they're there. And they're working on finding ancestors and teaching them the gospel. And I know for a fact that they helped me find those names so that I could take and do their work for them in the temple

KARYN: That was Deserey. I don't know about you but I'd never thought of family history work quite that way. I love her perspective that it's a bridge and an opportunity to work together with those who have passed on before us. And I think that her perspective will change the way I view this work. I want to see it more as an opportunity and a blessing rather than a boring chore that I feel some guilt and shame about. I'm going to try a little bit harder to see it that way.

As I was listening through all of my family's poorly recorded voice memos for this episode, I realized that there was one very important thing missing from my library. Apparently, and all of my recording I'd never asked my Pappy to record his conversion story. He's written it down in a few places. But I wanted to get it in his own words. So I begged my Aunt Kathy to record him. Here's what he shared.

PAPPY: I mean, I was at work when two missionaries came to our door. My wife, she talked to them, and she invited them back when I would be home. And they came and taught us the gospel, which was The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I first heard it, as I just thought it was another church, but when they taught me, I found out it wasn't just another church. I knew that it was true. I changed churches because when they taught me the word of wisdom, I was smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. At that time, and I threw them away and never smoked again. The Gospel changed my life. What I know about Jesus Christ. Christ when on the cross, setting the example for us. (singing)"The old, rugged cross where the dearest and best. For a world of lost sinners..." I'm trying to remember it."On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross The emblem of suffering and shame And I love that old cross where the dearest and best For a world of lost sinners was slain So I'll cherish the old rugged cross. And exchange it someday for a crown." What do I like about that song? I like to tell what our Savior did for us.

I love you too.

If I can do anything else for you, just call me.

KARYN: That was my grandfather Robert Charles Fultz Jr. That short sweet story and song sum up so much of what I've learned from my Pappy's legacy of faith: Open the door to spiritual experiences. Bare your testimony through song. Always serve others no matter what's going on in your own life. And believe in the power of Jesus Christ to help you do whatever hard things are in front of you, even if you're trying to quit smoking three packs a day.

Elder Packer once said, "Family history work has the power to do something for the dead. It has an equal power to do something to the living. Family history work has a refining, spiritualizing and tempering influence on those who are engaged in it."

I think our stories this week are absolutely proof of that truth to me. We are not alone in our desires to live the gospel well. And I know that we have countless family members whose stories can influence our lives and who are rooting for us, rooting for us to have the kind of stories that will strengthen the faith of those who come after us.

That's it for this episode of This is the Gospel. Thank you for listening and thank you to Deserey and Sister Burton for sharing their stories. If you want to see the gorgeous children's book that they've made out of Sister Burton's family story, head on over to our show notes for this episode at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll have a link there to her book "A Mother's Prayer." A special thank you to my family Robert and Shirley Fultz, Susan O'Daily, and Kathy Yanks, for letting me share our family stories and for showing me an example of true discipleship with a sense of humor. If you have a story to share about living the gospel well, whether it's funny, touching, or miraculous, we'd love to hear it. Call our pitch line at 515-519-6179 and leave us a message with a short synopsis of your story. We get so many of our stories from this pitch line and we love hearing what you have to say. This episode was produced and edited by Katie Lambert and me KaRyn Lay. It was mixed and mastered and scored by Mix at Six Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hollstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and the other LDS Living podcasts at ldsliving.com/podcasts. That's ldsliving.com/podcasts. Have a great week.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

After a devastating breakup, broadcast journalist Tamara decides to do something a little different for her 31st birthday: 31 dates in 31 days. But what starts as a fun blogging experiment quickly turns into big news and an even bigger spiritual eye-opener than Tamara initially assumed as she discovers more about who she is and how God sees the potential in all of us.

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This episode of This Is The Gospel is sponsored by GOSPEL DAY BY DAY.

To find pictures and videos, please visit LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay 0:04 Welcome to This Is The Gospel - an LDS living podcasts where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith everyday. I'm your host KaRyn Lay.

A few years ago LDS Living made a video series called, "Love Lessons." You may have seen them. We invited three couples who had collectively been married over 125 years to share their well- earned wisdom about life in the trenches of love and faith. I had just hit five years of marriage myself and was quickly learning that there was still so much I didn't know about this business of tying your life together with another person. I was so grateful to hear these honest stories of work and sacrifice and frankly, longevity. We made four videos with those couples, including the video of our friends, Jim and Lyndia and they are a delight. So, to kick off our theme today, which... we sort of stole from that video series, we thought it was only fair that we share the audio from the compilation video that features Vern and his wife, Myumi, Bonnie and her husband Bruce, and our buddies Jim and Lyndia.

Bonnie 1:19 We've been married for 51 years.

Lyndia 1:22 54 years

Vern 1:23 we're celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this year. Friday the 13th turned out to be the luckiest day of my life.

Bonnie 1:30 I think what I love the most about Bruce is he's very kind.

Jim 1:35 She's a good cook

Vern 1:36 Serene

Lyndia 1:40 He is a very compassionate person.

Bruce 1:41 She is truly the person I always wanted to be.

Vern 1:47 She is the epitome of serenity.

Myumi 1:51 That's not....

Lyndia 1:51 One surprise to me about marriage after all these years is what a joy it is at this stage.

Bruce 1:56 I didn't know that it would be that wonderful again, As it was, you know, before we had all these little screaming Mimi's

Bonnie 2:04 Well, it's not easy.

And if anybody thinks that you're going to be on your honeymoon for 51 years, It's ridiculous.

Jim 2:11 Sometime the tunnel's pretty long,

Lyndia 2:14 and dark.

Well, it has been an enjoyable challenge. Because I've been introduced into a culture that I was just totally ignorant of.

Bruce 2:23 It was very hard for her, I know that. What hurt so much?

Bonnie 2:27 You! I think I had to been like in my 30s or early 40s. And I thought, this is it? This isn't....This isn't fun.

Lyndia 2:38 It didn't matter to me that Jim wasn't a member of the church because I loved him very much. And I thought if I only live with him for this time only, then that was what I would be happy with. But a couple years later, when our children started to come along, I realized that was not true. That I wanted to be with my children and him forever,

Jim 2:55 Really, the only reason it worked in those early years... We both loved the Lord. And we taught our children to love the Lord,

Bonnie 3:05 The secret to anything I think, is holding to the rod. If you hold to the rod, and don't give up, when things are hard, there's always a way through. President Hinckley always said it - that that this will pass and that things will get better and things always do get better.

Lyndia 3:25 So you have to be patient and loving and see where it goes.

Bruce 3:29 Yeah,

Bonnie 3:30 you're gonna have ups and downs and but it's worth it.

You cannot change someone to fit the mold you want them to be.

Myumi 3:38 I just respect his space and he respect my space. I love him the way he is.

Vern 3:45 Be sure to buy two tubes of toothpaste.

Bonnie 3:50 I will say you are the love of my life. And I'm so grateful that we have stuck it out this long and I see us together another gazillion or Google? Do you say Google now?

Jim 4:05 she's my babe.

Bruce 4:08 And I love you. And I love the fact that I'm going to have you by my side forever.

Lyndia 4:13 I love him so much. love being with him.

Bonnie 4:22 How could you not kiss?

Bruce 4:24 Yeah.

KaRyn Lay 4:34 You'll have to watch the videos to see those really adorable little smooches that you heard at the end of the audio. And we'll have that, as well as each individual couple's video in our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel . Really, if you're looking for something fun to celebrate the Spirit of St Valentine - This is it. You know, one of the things that I love most about the Love Lessons videos is that they represent the end result of a lifetime of learning about the true nature of love. Each of those couples paid the price to sit on that couch and dish about what love looks like for them.

Well, in today's episode, we have one story about someone at the beginning of that journey, who decided that in order to learn her lessons well, she needed to take an unconventional approach to the world of dating. And whether you are well seasoned in your own understanding of Christ -like love or struggling to make sense of something that sometimes feels like nonsense, Tamara's experienced will probably ring more than a few bells. Here's Tamara.

Tamara 5:35 You know, some people would say I'm kind of living this Hollywood love story, because of the way that things played out or the ending or...well, I happen to actually live in Hollywood and work in Hollywood as well. But, I think it's more of this Hollywood love story because I honestly did not anticipate going into this with any expectations. Isn't that the best kind of story?

So, let's go back to New York in 2009. That's when this all started. Before that, I'd gone through two major breakups. You know, those heart heartbreaking types of breakups where it's like, you don't really care if you collapse into a ball of tears in public. You just aren't sure things are ever going to be mended again. And you start questioning yourself, you know, what am I doing wrong? And ... am I lovable? You know all these terrible things that we start to ask ourselves, and that was where I was, and my 31st birthday was coming up.

I was in a Singles Ward, and being in a singles ward and turning 31 means that you no longer go to the singles ward. Instead you go to a family word, and that was tough for me. I'd been in a singles ward since I joined the church in my early 20s. And so leaving a singles Ward was a big deal to me. It was leaving my friends. It was leaving my spiritual connections and kind of truthfully felt like I was a failure, because I was still single. I know that sounds terrible to say, but I did. I remember when I was 21 years old meeting a woman who was 28, who was still single in my ward and thinking, "Ah, how sad." And then I was 31 and single, and thought, "it's not terrible." But I did feel like I didn't get it at this point... that I didn't understand dating. I wanted to learn something, I wanted to figure out what I needed to do to improve myself.

So I decided that it was time for me to just go back to the very basics of dating. And for me, that was first dates. It had been a long time since I'd just kind of dated I would go out on a first date, and then think. "it's going to be a long time until I have another first date. I should invest in as much in this person as I can right now." And I would decide that I was their girlfriend. They were my boyfriend. And probably way too soon. I decided I needed to just start over and go back to trying to develop friendships with people. I'm a TV news producer, I like to think of things in terms of projects. So I turned this into a little bit of a project. For my 31st birthday, I thought 30...31... 31 dates in 31 days. That's 31 days straight in a row of going out every night with a new guy. I kind of came up with a set of rules. The first 30 dates, I decided, would be a first date, and I would blog about it along the way. I wasn't intending on dating these guys much less marrying them, so they didn't have to meet any of my past list requirements. But I would go out with somebody as long as they didn't give me the creepy serial killer vibe. Basically, I'd go out with anybody who would agree to go out with me

You know, I would make sure to do something that wasn't just like, a sit down dinner where it felt like I was like, interviewing the person in front of me. I definitely didn't want to do just your dinner and a movie for 31 days straight. I wanted it to be something more as a way to explore my city around me. And I kind of figured, if the guy and I did not have as much fun of a time as we wanted, then at least we'd enjoy the scenery a little bit. I wanted to make sure that the date lasted at least 31 minutes. So you couldn't just walk up and say, "Hi, nice to meet you." and then bail. You had to start investing some time. It had to be in a public place. I put a price tag on it. I decided that if I were going to spend a month trying to invest in learning about myself and learning about men, I kind of looked at this a little bit of like my master's class in men. And just like any class, you should be willing to pay for it. So I set a budget of $31 a date And I had a secret rule for myself, no kissing any of these guys.

The 31st date, I decided, would be a second date. One of the guys that I'd met from the first 30 days. I'd hold a poll on my blog... people would help me decide who I would go out with on that second date. And date number 31 would occur on Valentine's Day.

I was afraid of a few things with this. I was afraid of not making it to the end. I was afraid that I would be exhausted. I was kind of afraid of what I would find out about myself. Because I wasn't sure. Like, am I really just not dateable? or I don't know. I had no idea what I would find out. I mean, I I was afraid that I probably wouldn't get anybody to go out with me. I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get get 30 guys to go out with me. You know, that's a lot. I had maybe total on a good year, three first dates. You know, I'd have like two days in the summer and a bonus date in the winter. So there's no way that I was thinking 30 new guys would be realistic. I wasn't going into this thinking, "I'm going to find a boyfriend." In fact, that wasn't my goal at all. You know, I had realized maybe a year before that I really was afraid of getting married. In fact, I remember saying that out loud. "I don't want to get married." So crushing. Saying it out loud. It also felt true. For some reason marriage equalled being trapped. And I don't know, that just seemed scary to me. It seemed...to me, it felt like I wouldn't be able to really be happy or do the things that I wanted to do. And I thought, "Gosh, is that really how I look at marriage? Oh, who who would want that?" If that's the way I look at marriage. I thought, "Finally I've admitted the truth." Kind of felt like I had been dating with this goal of getting married and then all of a sudden I thought, "I don't want to get married. Well, then why am I doing this whole thing?" I wanted to make sure that I was living life on my terms, and with a full connection to Heavenly Father. I wanted to change myself. And I wanted to walk away learning something and having become...having... I wanted to walk away having a greater sense of who I was.

I had asked my friend Marcus for a blessing before this began. I figured if I were going into this with my eyes and my arms and my heart wide open, I definitely needed some spiritual support. So, I asked Marcus for a blessing, and it gave me comfort but what it said in the blessing -- he told me that I was going to learn more lessons in this than I realized and that this was going to affect more people than just myself. So I felt as if I had a bigger responsibility than just going in this to have fun and date people.

So, in the beginning of the project, I only had three dates set up. Most of the guys were met either through internet hookups, through friend meetups, friends of friends of friends were most of the guys who I'd met. There were there were a handful of guys who had gone to church -- who were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but most of the guys were not guys from church.

My first date was with this guy, Rob, who's a friend of a friend, and, you know, not necessarily the type of guy that I could see myself fitting into his world in... in a few ways. He was from Long Island. He has a thick Long Island accent, and he wrote a motorcycle and he was like a guy's guy. He was the kind of guy who still hung out with guys from his childhood, and was best buds with them... really cool...Like, just dude's dude. By the end of the date, I could see myself riding on the back of his motorcycle, with my hair blowing in the wind and thinking just how glorious life would be with Rob. And I realized something about myself in that moment -- that I had developed this habit of quickly imagining myself into the future with a guy who I'd found interesting, and I could see how I would quickly fall for these guys. But I didn't have time to really fall for Rob, because I had to go out with Joel the day after. This could actually be good for me and maybe it would help break my first bad habit of falling too quickly.

Date number four was with Ryan. Ryan had just moved to the city from a really small town in Michigan, and I lived in Harlem. And I thought, "let's go walk around Harlem to show him a place that's not like his small town where he's from." And we went to one of those classic Harlem churches that you see about in the movies, gigantic tall ceilings and the singing and the clapping is reverberating throughout the entire room. And we were clapping and singing. And there was a point when one of the people up front asked for people to stand up and testify. And Ryan stood up, and he testified. And he said, "I'm so glad that I came to this church today... never felt more welcome." And everyone said, "Amen." We walked out. I could tell that Ryan was being genuine. Like,there was something about him. And I asked him, "What is it that's happened in your life? Like, what is it that makes you just really feel deeply?" He tells me that when he was seven or eight years old, he was sitting in the second row in their family's van. And back then, people didn't really wear seatbelts. It was one of those seats that was like, just a long bench. And he had his elbows up and his fists under his chin, leaning forward talking to his mom in the driver's seat. Right as that happens, she hits a patch of ice. Ryan goes flying through the windshield. He was in a coma for several months. He had to learn how to walk and speak all over again. He missed pretty much that entire year of school. And he said ever since then, he's realized how precious life is. I could tell. I could tell he didn't take any day for granted. He didn't take anything for granted. And that's when I learned my second big lesson of this project. That there was something special about him. And I realized that there was something special about Ryan, there's probably something special about each of these guys that I was going to meet. So that was my assignment for myself. On every single date, I would ask myself, "what makes this person so special?" And I started to realize, as dates went on, and on, and on and on and on, each person that I met, had something different and remarkable about them. I realized I needed to treat all of these guys with respect, and be extremely open minded. In fact, I started to appreciate more people around me, not just the guys that I was going out on dates with, but I was appreciating every single person and realized that everyone was special.

I mean, I remember sitting on the subway and looking at other people and thinking, "Heavenly Father loves them just as much as he loves the rest of us. Now, typically, before this happened, I would think of the gift of discernment in terms of the gift of having the ability to judge well, right? or make a decision, but I ran across this definition, it says this, quote, "to understand or know something through the power of the Spirit." And then it goes on to say, "it includes perceiving the true character of people."

That was what was happening. And I started to feel as if I could really see what made these guys so special. I felt like I had a glimpse of how Heavenly Father saw and that he really loved them. And if he sees all these guys that I'm going out with as special in some way, then he must see me that way too. was the first time that I really started to feel the way that Heavenly Father saw me. I thought it was pretty open minded before and that I, you know, gave a lot of people a chance and was friends with all sorts of different people. Butthis really changed the way that I looked at people.

So a lot of times, I hear a lot of people go, "what was the worst date?" Oh, I hate the question. Having a positive attitude, and thinking about what makes a guy so special makes it so that you don't have a lot of bad dates. Having said that, date number 21 was with Derek. And I thought Derek and I had so much in common. We were both from Northern Virginia. And, you know, we kind of like jived well over email before meeting in person. But when I met him in person, he was so cold to me. He just gave me the cold shoulder. I would ask him anything about himself and he would give me one word answers. And it happened to be the date when I had a photographer from the New York Post following me to show how great my dates are going. Oh, it was so terrible. You know, any other day, I would probably think he was handsome, but he was being so short with me. And I thought, "this guy is super rude and nothing is special about him."

So we decided to walk about 10 blocks to go play billiards and I'm freezing and I'm holding my jacket in tight and I'm looking back at the photographer with my eyes rolling of "Can you believe this guy?" And just thinking how terrible this date is... and I say a prayer to myself. And the prayer was simple. It was this. "Heavenly Father, please help me see the good in this guy."

Tamara 20:24 And I look up to him, and I think, "that beard's actually pretty cool."

Tamara 20:33 I'm thinking he is really... handsome and, you know, just kind of getting him and he starts to open up to me. And then he tells me about how he has run an Iron Man. I was like, "An Iron Man? That's insane! I mean, that's a full- on marathon. 26.2 miles and then you're swimming like an entire ocean. And then you're cycling." I was like, "That is amazing." I said, "Did you love it?" And he says, "No, I hated it." I was like, "Oh, okay." And he said, "so I decided to do another one." What? Why would you do a second Iron Man, if you hated the first one, and he said, "Well, all of my friends told me that I was going to love it so much. And since I hated the first one, I figured I needed to give it another shot." You know, what endurance! I thought this guy was crazy in the best of ways. And we sat and laugh together. And he says, "Have all of your dates been this good?!"

Tamara 21:42 And I said, " Well, no, they don't all start out great." Thinking..."Did he miss the entire first hour that we were together?" He said something like, "yeah, I guess I wasn't that warm when we first met today." And I said, "Yeah, what was up with that?" And he goes, "Well, I read your blog." And I said, "Well, what was on... What was on my blog that made you think that this wasn't going to be a good time?" He says, "You went out with all these great, guys. I don't know how you did it. But you found the best guys in New York City it seems like. How can I keep up with that?" I was like, "Derek, are you kidding me? You're amazing. You completed two Ironman competitions, just because... Because you thought, 'Hey, why don't I try that?'" I mean, he was one of the best guys in New York too, but I probably would have missed it had it not been for this project.

Once I started writing about each date, I think people realized, Hey, I'm actually in this for fun - that I wasn't going to be so catty about things. I'm not trying to like, write about, Oh, you know, how terrible this first date was, and I think that helped get more guys to come. And lots of guys were like, "Hey, I'm totally down for that. Let's just go and check out the city." So some guys would read my blog and they'd write me. But most of my dates were friends of friends or friends of friends, friends,

So, crushes. I actually started to develop a lot of crushes. Of course, Derek, you know, who I thought I hated? was one of them. I had crushes on probably a third of the guys. And one of them, you know, was like, "Hey, can we go out on another date?" and I was like, "Well, I happen to be dating a few dozen other guys right now. So maybe after the project, I can go out on a date." But, I just didn't have time. I was working full time during the day, going out on dates right after that, coming home and blogging. And then I still had to maintain the relationships with the guys who I'd already met and try and set up dates for guys in the future. So I had packed days. I was exhausted. Date 14, I wasn't sure that I was going to survive. I was so tired. Dating is tough work. There were a handful who I kept in touch with regularly because I thought I might want to go out with them again after the project. And if they didn't want to go out with me, I realized I actually was okay with that. I had fun with just having a crush on them. I didn't need to have them like me back. That was huge for me. I wasn't crushed by my crushes.

So my last few dates come and I needed to figure out who I was going to go out on a second date. But 31st date was a little different. It was Valentine's Day. I wanted it to be big. I blew my budget for it. So I got tickets to a Broadway show. And I was going to pay for a nice dinner. And not only that, but I was going to go on to national television -- "Good Morning America", and "Fox and Friends" and talk about who I'd picked. I was working at "Good Morning America" at the time and, you know, my co-workers were really excited about it. So, they were also going to follow me to dinner for the date that night, and a few other news outlets picked up on it as well. And so this had become bigger than I had imagined. Just like Marcus had told me in my blessing before. So, I reached out to every single one of the guys and I said, "Okay, I would love to go out again with you guys." It was kind of funny saying that to 30 guys, "I want to go out with you again." I told them how much national attention this had been getting and if they weren't into it, then that's fine. I would just hopefully go out on another date with them after the project. So most of the guys were interested in going out with me for the 31st day and thought that that would be fun. Not all of them, most of them, and some of them said, "Not interested, but I'll see you after your 31st date."

I gathered a lot blog readers over this time, which was funny. I thought only my mom and maybe like a handful of my friends would read this. And I said, "Okay, guys, it's time. We're going to figure out who my Valentine's Day date is. Who is date number 31?" And they would get 50% of the vote, and then I would get the other 50%. So I ran the poll with all the guys who were interested in going on national television and having video recorded of their date with me. I was sitting up late that night, my friend Rachel had come over, and we're seeing all the poll numbers come in, and the polls closed right around midnight, and it's down to two guys. And I'm trying to figure out who to go out with, and I say "This one guy. I could see myself dating him, maybe even being in a relationship with him and having a lot of fun. But this other guy, I could really see myself marrying someday." And Rachel says, "Well, there you go then." And I'm like, "What are you talking about?" And she says, "Look, these last 30 days have been so great for you. You have gotten what you wanted. Like, you figured out a lot about yourself. You saw the good in people and realized what makes them so special." She said, "Well, what's Heavenly Father's other purpose in dating? If you think that there might be something there with this guy, then go out with him." And so I did.

And a year later, we got married. And I cannot believe that that is like, my real story. That this whole project to figure out myself and what I was doing, quote unquote, "wrong", turned into this amazing ending that I truly didn't expect. And it's not just because I got married and it's this, you know, happy ending. It's a happy ending because I found love. I found true love, Heavenly Father's love -- the way that he loves all of us. When I realized that I didn't want to get married, that was information that I could work with. I had to redefine, you know, at 30 - 31 years old, what marriage would look like. I thought, "Well, if I were to get married, then what would it have to look like for me to actually want to get married?" Being able to meet one guy and then another guy and then another guy and another guy -- It was pretty easy for me to kind of figure out "Yeah, this is the kind of guy who I could see myself in a relationship with." You know. So it's not like this is the like, perfect formula for everybody to find love. You don't need to go out on a date every day for a month to figure that out. I sure hope that Heavenly Father teaches us each that lesson in his own different way. This, this just happened to be the way that I needed to learn it. You know, I truly believe that I was ready to learn something about myself and learn something about dating. And that Heavenly Father was probably like, "thank goodness! She's finally opening herself up to let me be in charge of this, like, move over a girl." And I really believe that when we give Heavenly Father the room to teach us well, He will show us lessons and a life way better than we ever could have imagined. He continues to show that to me.

So, life is a little different now. You know, that was 11 years ago, and we just had our 10 year wedding anniversary. We just had our third baby girl, and life is pretty fun. It's really simple but It's really fun. It's funny. because I think when they first hear how we met, sometimes people probably think that we like live life like that all the time. But we have our favorite TV shows that we sit and watch after the girls go to bed. You know, we do swim class on Saturday mornings. Life is simple, and it's good. It's better than good. It's, it's great. It's the good stuff.

There's a copy of my book, sitting in our living room. And, you know, the girls, they see this copy, and it's just, you know, a piece of our living room. And I think someday when they're old enough to read it, or to ask me about how we met, the lessons that I teach them are probably the same simple lessons that I learned. That I not only got to meet your dad through this, but I got to meet some pretty incredible people. And I learned how Heavenly Father loves each of us for who we really are. And that he loves them that way too.

KaRyn Lay 31:03 That was Tamara Duricka Johnson and her blog, "31 Dates in 31 Days" is still up. Although it's not really being upDATED these days. Get it? updated? Get it? Anyway, any date that she would write about now would include her husband Evan, and those three sweet girls who call her mama. Tam and I have been friends since our early 20s. we bonded over our displacement as two East Coast girls living in the rainy rainy jungles of Portland, Oregon. She has always been a go- getter. But when she started this ambitious and exhausting project, I think all of us who knew and loved her realized that we were watching something really unique unfold. Like Derek, also known as date number 21, Tamara was going after the things that she wanted. It wasn't an Iron Man race, but it was a race nonetheless. The difference was that the prize at the end of this grueling course was a deeper knowledge of the kind of love that can actually make a difference in our lives. And really, it's the kind of love that can change the world.

Look, I don't mean to be dramatic, but it's dramatic. When Tamara allowed herself to access God's perspective on the men that she was dating, a spiritual gift that I like to call divine empathy, she saw them differently. And then she treated them differently. Sometimes they acted differently because of it, and sometimes they didn't. But that kind of doesn't matter. Because in the process of seeing the Divinity in them, Tamara came to understand who she was in relationship to God's love more clearly. And because of that, she was changed forever. I think it's important to note that Tamara had to ask for it. She had to invite Heavenly Father to gift her with his perspective as she practice divine empathy. But when it was given to her, she acknowledged it and didn't hesitate to pass it around... to share the love.

Remember that moment on the train from her story when she looked around and saw every person as worthy of God's love? Well, I think that's the definition of what the prophet Nephi described in fourth Nephi chapter one verses 15 and 16, when he wrote, "and it came to pass, that there was no contention in the land because of the love of God, which did dwell in the hearts of the people." I love the idea of love dwelling in our hearts. It means that love lives there, that it's taken up residency and it's settled in, it's become part of the cycles of the blood beating in and out of our true center. And according to ni fi, that dwelling love has the power to calm the envying, the strife and the tumbled so that there could not be as Nephi wrote, "a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God." Isn't that dramatic? What would change in our world -- the small one that swirls around us and the big one that twists and turns around the Sun every day --If we, as a people could find space in our hearts for the love of God to dwell. Well, whether we are seeking a committed marriage relationship with another human being, or seeking a committed covenant relationship with the Savior of our souls, that power of peace that comes from asking for the perspective of divine empathy, and then offering our hearts as a dwelling place for pure love, well, that's worth every 31 day sprint, and every exhausting effort that we take to get there. Those love lessons are the ones that will change the world.

That's it for this episode of This Is The Gospel. Thank you to all of our friends who are part of the Love Lessons video series. Shout out to the Knowltons, brave and true and especially to our storyteller Tamara for sharing her war stories and her lessons in love with us. We'll have links to all the videos and Tamara's book and blog as well as a transcript of this episode in our show notes at LDS living.com/thisisthegospel. Hey, it's Valentine's Day. So if you have a minute to tell us what you LOVE about this podcast, we'd love to hear it. Please go to iTunes and leave us a review. If you don't know how to do that. Find us on Instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast, where we will have a story in our highlights that will show you how to leave a review. Every review helps us to spread the love of faith filled stories that really matter. Speaking of good stories, all of the stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. If you have a story to share about Living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, call our pitch line and leave us a pitch. We often find many of our stories from the pitch line and we love to hear how the gospel has blessed your life. Give us a call at 515-519-6179 and pitch your story in three minutes or less. This episode was produced and edited by me KaRyn Lay with additional story producing and editing by Skyler Brunner. He's the genius behind the love lessons videos. 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 the other LDS living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcasts. Happy Valentine's Day!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Laric breezes through sleep deprivation games on the Netflix show "Awake," but the final results leave him wondering if God cares about what matters most to him; A lost set of scriptures devastates Mark, but how they come back to him years later is nothing short of a miracle; David struggles to adjust to his mission in the Philippines until losing a contact lens in the mud helps him gain a new perspective.

SHOWNOTES:

This episode is sponsored by Gospel Day by Day

Check out pictures of Laric, Mark, and David at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel. you can also see a picture of the heart necklace and KaRyn's bangs!

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. If you were to ask my husband Justin, what my biggest quirk is, he will easily tell you that it's the fact that I lose everything all the time. Our morning routine inevitably includes him calling my phone three or four times to help me find where I've stashed it in the 30 minutes between waking up and getting dressed. It shouldn't be that hard. Our house is not big by any stretch of the imagination. And still, I lose my phone daily. I find it under a pile of clothing or in the pantry on the shelf next to a jar of pickles. Don't worry, I don't eat pickles for breakfast– usually. Sometimes it's right in the pocket of the pants that I'm literally wearing. Losing things is just part of who I am, in fact, is such a part of me that after two years of living in Korea, I finished out my time in the Seoul military branch by giving a talk in which I cataloged all the things I'd lost while living there. Mostly things I left on buses or in taxis: a computer, an iPod, a hard drive with every poem I'd ever written on it. Books, glasses, a couple of wallets, at least two journals, countless pens, pencils, bobby pins, and papers and most devastatingly my well-worn mission scriptures. Usually, I lose small things, but sometimes every once in a while I lose very big things.

When I was in college, I borrowed a friend's truck so I could haul something around the streets of Philadelphia and I honestly can't remember what, but I planned to return it to him in the morning. So as a poor college student, I opted to park it on the street where it wasn't going to cost me anything. And if you've ever been to Philly, then you know that parking in that city is a hot mess, a nightmare with loads and loads of special zones and one-way streets and half cock signage that doesn't actually tell you where you can and can't park. So I did my best to read the signs and after driving in circles, I finally parallel parked on a side street near the corner that seemed safe-ish, and I called it a night. When I woke up in the morning and headed back to that same spot to take the truck to my friend's apartment, it wasn't where I left it. I mean, it wasn't where I thought I left it. I walked around six city blocks convinced that I just couldn't remember where I'd parked. But after the final go-round, it became absolutely clear that the truck just wasn't there anymore. I had lost a truck. So I girded up my loins, I found a payphone and I called my friend to confess. I mean, it really wasn't outside the scope of reality that I could lose something like this. I lost things all the time. So through tears, I explained that I didn't know where his truck was, at which point to my deep surprise, my friend started to laugh. He then made his own confession. He had hopped on his bike and written through the streets near where he thought I might have parked it, located his truck and used his spare set of keys to take it back to his apartment. I will never forget the panic that I felt of believing that I'd lost something of someone else's. And then the sense of relief and anger that flooded me when I realized that I hadn't actually lost it. The real miracle in that story is that this guy and I remained friends. Now, in the years since that traumatic event, I admit that I've become almost cavalier in my attitude about losing things. I still have that sinking feeling when I realized something I care about is gone. But I am so much quicker to move right into my mantra that things are just things. For better for worse, I have reconciled myself to being, well, a loser of things.

So today, we have three stories about losing stuff, and finding stuff, from three people who lost something they needed, wanted, or hoped for. In some cases, they found the thing again, but in all the cases their experience helps them to see themselves and their connection to God more clearly. Our first story comes from a Laric who had the chance of a lifetime when he found himself competing on a game show just minutes away from winning a million dollars. Here's Laric:

Laric 4:19

So I have wanted to be on a game show ever since I was a little kid. I grew up loving to watch Temple of Doom and all those Nickelodeon game shows and just was always interested in going on one. It just looked like a lot of fun to me. I don't know. I mean, even watching the little kid shows the prizes were just toys and things like that. But I just, I just wanted to go and compete. It wasn't even necessarily about what you could win. It was just wanting to do those cool tasks and challenges that you couldn't do anywhere else. So this desire to be on a game show kind of stems with my oldest sister. We have both loved the idea of going on game shows.

And so we both started to apply for certain ones, not every one, just ones that we thought we'd be good at. I'd just google every few months new game shows. And if I think it looks interesting or that I'd be good at it, that's when I apply for it. I applied for a show called The Wall, which I was interesting because I applied with my friend. So he made it on but I didn't get to go with him. So after I applied for The Wall and didn't get on that one, my next show was Awake. And this one popped out at me because all it said was it was a sleep deprivation game. And I'm like, Well, I work 48-hour shifts and 72-hour shifts all the time as a firefighter, where I get little to no sleep frequently. So I figured that that would be a great game for me, even though I have no idea what anything else is. Because it's a brand new game show that just says sleep deprivation. I figured I could do that one.

And then they said I was picked to go on the competition. It all happened really fast. It was just a couple, I think it was like two months that it all happened. And they said I'd be filming in Los Angeles within the next month. You know, called me set up my airport that I was supposed to go to and flew me out to Los Angeles. So I knew I wanted to get a good amount of sleep. So I tried to go to bed early because I was going to be up for at least the next 24 hours. But it was a little hard going to sleep though. But once we woke up, I had breakfast and they loaded us up in a couple of vans and drove us to the location where the show would be taped. So all I knew about this show before I went was that it was going to be a sleep deprivation game. I had no idea what the money prize was. I had no idea what we were going to be doing to stay awake for 24 hours or if we were going to be playing games. I just had no idea what was going to happen. It was hard because I usually like to prepare and I had no way to prepare, because I had no idea what was to come.

Finally, it comes time and the director comes in or the producer and says, "Okay, I'm going to hand you this paperwork. It's going to explain the game and how it works and all the rules. Once I hand you the paperwork, you're not allowed to talk to each other. Once we've all finished reading it, and you guys sign this paper that say, you understand we will begin the game." And that's when I learned that we're going to be counting quarters for the next 24 hours. And I just like, gasped out loud, like, That's insane. Counting quarters for 24 hours who, who decided to do that? And then afterward, there was the sleep deprivation challenges that we had to perform. And that's when I learned that you could win a million dollars if you counted so accurately and made it to the end of the game. And I was just like, "Yes! I'm doing it. I'm winning a million dollars. This is happening." I am ecstatic. So I'm kind of freaking out. So after we finished reading the contract and found out the money amount and the rules, they immediately got us up and we walked into the room where the game show would start. And so it was within, like, 10 minutes that we read the contract and began the game. I was, well, at least me, I was in frantic mode. And I wasn't thinking I was just counting. While we were counting, there were no clocks anywhere. There was no way to tell how long we'd been counting. And so your mind starts to wander and you start to get a little tired and delirious and, like, legitimately, we were counting for 24 hours and I never actually stopped and took a break, besides the bathroom break. 30 minutes into the show, I decided there's no way I could go for a million dollars. There's no way I'd be right because to get a million dollars at the end, you have to be within $25 of your count. So what you turn in and what you actually counted has to be within $25 I was like, "Okay, I know that I'm missing some quarters." And I thought, maybe I need to just add a certain amount, like 250 or whatever amount of dollars just to account for what I have probably missed. Last second, I thought, "No, Leric, you should just trust yourself, you probably didn't miss that much. Just write what you actually think you counted instead of adding to it." And so that's what I did. Which would come to be my demise later. So the time ran out, and they take our quarters away in these huge were wheelbarrows, which they've taken away multiple times. So we filled up those wheelbarrows a couple of times. So we gave our number to the directors and then we were moved to a different location of the IKEA, and we started a different portion of the game. And this portion of the game was a competition type of thing where we do tasks that are difficult to do while you are sleep deprived. But first, before we start those tasks we are brought up to the stage and all of the sudden, you know, we moved from this warehouse to this really elaborate well-done stage with audience members that were there. And it was just, it was a lot of fun and a really cool atmosphere. But we all get brought up to this stage, we meet the host. And immediately after we're introduced, two of us get kicked off the show.

The person that counted the least gets kicked off, and the person that counted the most inaccurately gets kicked off. After those two get kicked off, we were explained the first game, and the first game is drinking a huge slushy for, I can't remember the time limit but for a certain amount of time, and whoever drinks the most wins. So we play this game and we all play next to each other but we all have dividers up so we can't see how each other did I was drinking it so fast that I never got a brain freeze because it never you get a brain freeze from it touching the roof of your mouth. Well, I never touch the roof of my mouth and was straight down my throat. So I got a chest freeze, and it like right in my heart. And it was the worst chest pain I've ever felt in my life it was very painful. And there's this lady in the audience screaming to me, she goes, "you're not gonna die, you're not gonna die." And I remember thinking like, "you're right, I'm not gonna die. It's just pain." So I kept going and drank it as fast as I could. So that was a lot of fun. So after that was done, we all get brought up, they announced that I won. So I was moved on to the next portion automatically. So the next challenge is the one that made me the most nervous, and it was a sewing challenge. Obviously, when you're sleep-deprived, that precision is hard and your hands tremble and it's hard to really focus on small objects. I was really nervous about this one, because I'm not good at those precision skills anyways, and I'm sleep deprived. But again, so we start that, that competition, and we can't see each other so no one knows how each other is doing. But anyways, same concept we're all brought up after that game is done. And they announce who won, which duh-du-du-duh it was me again. So then I moved on to the next challenge along with two other competitors. So there's just three of us left, and this one was a money catching challenge. And this one I was the most confident on because, you know, I was a receiver in high school football and I have good hand-eye coordination. So I was really excited about this one. So I went and immediately started and once I popped that first balloon, I knew it was much harder than I thought because it was very difficult catching this money. This is the first time I really felt the effects of being sleep deprived. Because I just could not focus on this money falling, I just couldn't find it in the air and keep track of it and catch it with my hands. I had a really hard time finding it. And then we're brought up on stage again, to announce the winner. And this time, to my surprise, I won again, which was awesome for me. So now I automatically get to go to the final two. But then, sadly, I was up against the one person I didn't want to be up against, which was just very disheartening to me. And the last challenge wasn't necessarily a challenge. It was this is where the counting came into play. So between the two of us, whoever counted the most accurately, it wasn't the most it was whoever kind of most accurately was the one who got to move on. And we were offered a buyout and this one was a $10,000 buyout. And that was a little tempting for me, I wanted that $10,000. I didn't want to up against this guy, because I thought that he had counted better than me. But I was on such a winning streak that I kind of took it as a sign that no you should keep going, you know when the countdown started, we get 10 seconds to take the buyout. Nobody took the buyout and I said, I shook his hand and I said, "Dude, I know you beat me." And sure enough, he beat me and he got to move on to the final rounds where I went home with nothing. In that moment, I was still kind of on a high with the whole show. I felt okay, I wasn't that bummed. You know, I said the typical saying that. People say, "Oh, I came here with nothing. I can go home with nothing." It's no big deal. So it didn't really bother me. 'Til I got back to the hotel, I had about eight hours of sleep. After I woke up, that's when it really hit me of what I had done. Not only did I not win as much as I thought I would, I didn't win anything. I could have taken $10,000. And that's when it really hit me, where I regret started coming in, I started to feel sick to my stomach about what I did. I was confused about why I didn't win, you know because I felt like I could have and should have and all types of things were going through my head. I was really hoping to win a large amount of money because I work 48-hour shifts already as a firefighter. And a lot of times I have to pick up overtime shifts and I work 72-hour shifts so that that's a long time away from home, you know because we sleep at the station and were away from our family the whole time. And so I wanted to win this money to just be able to handle our bills easier and not have to work overtime anymore. Like so that means I could stay at home with my kids a lot more, be around my family a lot more, maybe do some fun side projects, things like that. So I just really wanted to get over the need of doing any overtime. And that was like my main goal. I was following all the steps before the competition. The night before I was praying that I would do well. I even watched General Conference talks just to try to help me out and get me in a spiritual mood where maybe I could be taking cues from the Spirit during the show. And so when I lost and didn't come home with anything, it was really hard for me. I had a really hard time understanding why Heavenly Father didn't want to help me out in this matter when I had asked for help, and where I thought that I deserved it. And I had good reasons for wanting this money, you know because it would allow me to spend more time with my family. The next few months were actually pretty, they were just hard for me I had a lot of sleepless nights. Not only did I wonder why Heavenly Father didn't help me with it. I played the what-if game and What if I had done this, What if I counted differently? And just all these things were going through my head? What's interesting is I was going through the feelings of disappointment and not understanding why my prayers weren't answered. And why wouldn't Heavenly Father want me to be able to spend more time with my family and, and I am active in the church and I fulfill my calling, why wouldn't I get this blessing? At the time I was teaching Sunday school, and we ended up having this lesson about eternal matters. And in that lesson, it talks about how Heavenly Father concerns himself only with eternal matters. That includes our happiness but, but basically the steps that we're taking for salvation and growing closer towards him, and things like that. And it wasn't until then that it kind of finally dawned on me. And I finally let go of all of those bad feelings that I was having because I realized this Show and that money is just an earthly matter. I have everything I need. I even have most of what I want. I work hard for what I get. But at the end of the day, Heavenly Father just doesn't care if I win a game show or not, you know, just like any other thing. He doesn't care who wins the Super Bowl, or who won this championship, or who won that; He's got no skin in that game because it's not an eternal matter. And so I realized that I already have the blessings that I was basically asking for, that he's already given me these blessings. And maybe I just wasn't recognizing them at the time. I wanted to spend more time with my family with that money. But Heavenly Father always helps us find the time that we have and make the time more meaningful. Heavenly Father's going to take care of us. And it doesn't mean He's not going to put us through trials or things that are difficult. But He's going to give us a way to overcome those trials which I look at this as a trial and it was a trial of my faith, but He always gives us a way to overcome those trials and to come out even better than before.

KaRyn 19:24

That was Leric. You can watch Leric's episode of the show Awake on Netflix, which is where my family and I first thought, in my line of work, you get pretty good at spotting someone who might be a member of the Church in various settings. And when my family was watching the show, and Leric said, "O m g, oh my goodness." I turned to my husband Justin. I said, "I bet he's a Latter-day Saint." Well, I reached out to Leric through good old Facebook and the rest is history. I am so glad that we were able to have him tell this story. Our next story of Lost and Found comes from Mark who lost something irreplaceable and the came back to him is truly epic. Here's Mark.

Mark 20:05

I hadn't done a lot of studying before my mission, I kind of went out unprepared. And, you know, I was kind of a scared, timid little boy, with a weak testimony and poor knowledge of the gospel at that point. Still wanting to go out on a mission and do what I was supposed to do, but unfortunately, had not prepared myself at all. And my parents decided to buy me a brand new set of scriptures, it was a leather-bound quad. Because at that point, I'd never really had my own scriptures and they wanted me to have a nice set to take on my mission. And so this set of scriptures they got me became kind of important to me because it was my first set that I was going to be able to go through and read and mark the way that the Spirit directed as I read them. While I was excited when I opened my mission call to Nashville, Tennessee, and when I finally got out there, I realized how hard and trying it was to be on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ. I didn't really realize how hard that would be to make the change from thinking and serving yourself all the time just to serving others full time. Because I went out so unprepared, I found myself in a situation where I would just lock up all the time when teaching discussions. I realized that you can't teach the gospel unless you've prepared yourself in such a way that you know and understand the scriptures and you, more importantly, understand how the Spirit and the Holy Ghost works are able to use that to communicate your testimony to others, I'd been in the mission field for about a year, and I had finally begun to feel comfortable with my teaching skills and my knowledge of the Scriptures. And this level of comfort came in part because of the time and effort I had spent marking my scriptures in such a way that I could find things easily. I grew to love the set of scriptures. There was even a spot at the end of the Book of Mormon where my mom had written in the margins that she loved me and was proud of what I was doing. And you know, this spot the end of the Book of Mormon in Moroni, Chapter 10, verses three through five. This is where she wrote this note to me. Somehow she knew I would be spending a lot of time in those special verses I think.

These scriptures were somewhat of a security blanket to me, especially as I got them marked in the way where I could find things easily and teach out of them. Leaving my apartment one day to go to zone conference, and I set my scriptures on top of the car to unlock the door. And then I jumped in the car and I forgot that the scriptures were on the roof. We headed down the freeway to Dickson, Tennessee. Now as you can guess the scriptures didn't make it to zone conference. Oh, boy. Well, I was devastated. They were the one thing I had that helped me to feel comfortable as a missionary. I wanted to go back and find the scriptures, but we didn't have the miles to go looking for them. And the Spirit had really told me in my heart that they were gone, that I needed to go get a new set and start over. So that's what I did. I think part of the reason that my Heavenly Father wanted me to lose this set of scriptures was because He realized I was probably leaning on them a little too much, rather than teaching by the Spirit. And I think He kind of realized that I may have hit somewhat of a wall. I began to understand that it was more important to listen to the Spirit when teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, rather than constantly turning to the same scripture that I'd used 50 times over. I began to understand how our Feavenly Father works. And more importantly, how much He loves each one of His children and cares for them on an individual basis. And I realized that you can't just go in and teach the same lesson to every single person because our Heavenly Father loves each one of us individually, and knows us individually. And each person is going to need something a little bit different. And so my testimony was strengthened of the love that our Heavenly Father has for us.

Fast forward five years, and I'd been home for quite a while now. My brother Seth received and opened his mission call to Nashville, Tennessee mission. I was very excited for my brother to go to the same mission I did and not only that, that's also where my grandparents are from is from Tennessee. They were converted to the gospel there as they were raising tobacco and running moonshine. They were hillbilly rednecks in Tennessee. So I was, I was excited when I went to Tennessee and I was very excited for Seth to go experience some of the same things I was blessed to experience. Seth had been out in the field for about two weeks. And he was going to church for the second time. And he was struggling with homesickness and a few other trials at the time. Sunday morning, he and his companion entered the chapel. One of the members just walked up to him and handed Seth a set of scriptures. Seth took the scriptures with a kind of a confused look on his face, he tells me and he said, "they're not my scriptures," and the brother was sure they belong to him because he had Elder Mays is written on his name tag. And Seth kind of being green in the mission. He didn't even put a whole lot of thought into what was going on. And so he just took the scriptures, and he brought them home with him. And the next morning, he said that he finally opened up the scriptures and he flipped right to the part where our mom had written in the margins. Feeling that the handwriting was familiar. He then looked on the front page and saw my name and address recognizing it was his home address as well. This is when the Spirit fell over him. And he realized what the Lord had done for him at this difficult time at the beginning of his mission, and it brought great peace to him. So, Seth continued to use my scriptures for the remainder of his mission. And he told me that as he would read my notes and look at the things I had marked, it felt as if I was his personal study companion.

Seth wanted to do some investigating on how these scriptures came into his possession. And so he asked the brother they gave him to him in church, where they came from. And basically, the story was that his brother was a highway worker. And he was doing some work on the highway one afternoon and he came across my set of scriptures that was laying there in the bar ditch. Which obviously it must have been fairly quick right after I lost them. Because my quad doesn't show any water damage or even any real damage from staying out in the sun for too long. So he picked him up and he was not a member of the church, but he felt they looked important so he brought them home with him. And he kind of read them looked at them, browsed them once in a while, and he was interested in them because his brother was a member of the Church, had recently been converted. What he finally decided to do was to return these scriptures to his brother, Seth could tell the story better than I could but from what I understand, he kind of had hard feelings with his brother because he had joined the church and he decided that this was a sign from God that he should mend things up with his brother. And so he went to his brother and told him he was sorry for kind of disowning him. And he gave him my scriptures and said, "These belong to someone who thinks they're important. I can tell by the markings. So would you please return them to the correct owner for me?"And then his brother said that he would but he actually just set them on his shelf and his son began using them as his seminary scriptures taken him to the church every week for seminary study. And one week, he forgot them there at seminary, and this was when the brother church picked him up at church, read the name on the front, and then my brother walked in the church. He looked at my brother, read the name on his name tag and matched up the scriptures with the name tag. Walked over and hand in the scriptures to my brother. When I found out that Seth had the scriptures back in his possession, I can't describe the feeling but just a feeling of great joy. Not only that, I got my scriptures back, which, which did make me happy, but just the thought that our Heavenly Father could show up for my brother during that time of difficulty. In such a personal way that I could never have done on my own. And there's even a little bit more to the story that I'd like to share. When Seth and I were reunited at the airport, I remember him walking down the flight of stairs and he looked so different than when he had left, looked full of the Spirit. And I noticed he was holding my set of scriptures in his hand, I recognized them and we embraced each other. And then with a big smile on his face, he handed me my lost set of scriptures. I took them all my nowhere that they would still be miraculous in my life. As time went by, I began to have some doubts and questions about church and church doctrine. I was just kind of in a place where I was trying to make sense of everything and understanding whether or not I was needing to be all into the gospel of Jesus Christ, or if I should take a step back. And I just wasn't feeling very good about the space I was in and I think I'd kind of lost focus in my life. During this time, I had been studying pretty much everything on the church, other than the actual scriptures that I should have been reading every single day. And I believe this is how I lost my focus. As I sat, thinking about this that's when I caught a glimpse of my scriptures up on the shelf. And the Spirit whispered to me in that moment, I just sat there looking at them. And the Spirit whispered to me, "Mark, these are the words of eternal life. Quit putting so much of your time and effort into the opinions of men." And as I thought about that direction from the spirit, I walked over and picked up my scriptures. And, unfortunately, dusted them off. The Spirit just confirmed to me that I needed to read them every single day to get my testimony back and to get back on track. It was such a clear inspiration that I made a promise to Heavenly Father I just said a prayer and made a promise that I would read out of those scriptures every single morning. And as I did that, everything came together for me. My experience with losing and then finding these scriptures has changed my testimony in such a way that, that there's no doubt. I think of the small tender mercies that our Heavenly Father is willing to bless us with, if we continually try to do His work, at the rate that we're ready for. He's so personally aware of where we're at and how we need things to happen in our life in order to truly understand that he's there for us, and to help our faith grow. That He will do things for us like He did for my brother and I with the set of scriptures in such a personal way, that there's no doubt that He is with you, as an individual person, at all times and in all places.

KaRyn 33:02

That was Mark. Mark's story resonates with me a lot, remember that lost set of mission scriptures that I mentioned before? But what I love about Mark's perspective is that although he lost something he thought he absolutely couldn't live without, that loss was actually the catalyst for some serious spiritual growth. And isn't it so amazing to think that something we lose could actually become the thing that someone else finds when they most need it like Mark's brother? I often think about my own missionary scriptures, riding all alone around Seoul on a bus seat all by themselves. I love to think that someone who was desperate and excited to learn English, pick them up and maybe took them home so they could read it when they needed something to practice with. Who knows the life these scriptures have had, especially considering the life that those scriptures can bring. Our final story comes from David who discovered that losing your sight has more than one consequence. Here's David.f

David 33:59

I've always wanted to serve a mission since primary. And it was just a natural choice. It wasn't anything that I even thought about. When I received my mission call to the Philippines, the call stated that it was like an English speaking mission. So I was to go through an English district in the MTC, but when I got to the Philippines, I didn't hear a lot of English being spoken. And so that was a big shock. I would go to lessons. And in our apartment, of course, the missionaries were all speaking Cebuano and I didn't understand anything that my companion or the families that we were teaching, I didn't understand anything that was being said. It was very motivating for me to learn the language as fast as I could, but it was hard. I felt very alone and isolated, and like I wasn't doing anything to really help. I had been serving about two months in the Philippines. And on one particular night my companion and I had arranged with a fellowshipper in the ward to accompany us as we went teaching. And we had three appointments scheduled that night, spread out in the evening. It was a rainy night, and as we went to our first appointment, their family wasn't there, or we weren't able to meet with them. And so we tried to be productive and do some other things, just visiting with people nearby. And we started walking to our next appointment. And we would try to meet people along the way and use our time. When we arrived at our second appointment, that one fell through also. And so we decided, well, maybe we'll go to our third appointment a little bit early, and we could either spend more time with them or we could get our fellowshipper home earlier. And along the way, we were trying to meet people, maybe knock on some doors, what we call tracting. And we arrived at our third appointment and that one also fell through. And so as I'm going through culture shock, not understanding the language, introduced to new foods, the schedule of the mission, the rigors of the mission, the heat and the humidity, a new nation, a new culture. I was feeling so isolated and alone and that night, having finished a night that just everything fell through. I didn't feel like there was a lot of joy in my mission. Well, as we were, we decided to return our fellowshipper to her home. And it was we were walking along a dirt path, and it was still raining so the path was wet and muddy with puddles, we walked by a little store that we called a sari-sari store. It was like a little shack made out of wood, it had a window in it, not a glass window, kind of a mesh window. And you could buy items there. And the light was on in the sari-sari store. And as we walked by, I turned my head partway a little bit. And I also moved my eyes towards the store and I blinked my contact lens in my eye and one of my eyes popped out. I wear hard contact lenses. I actually I have pretty bad vision, all the way from elementary school up through my mission. My vision was changing so rapidly, and I actually didn't have a pair of glasses that I could see well enough with. And so I work contacts which gave me my best vision. And when my contact popped out under the ground, I panicked. I was far from home, and I immediately realized, if I didn't find my contact lens, writing home to my parents, that letter would take 10 days to arrive and then they would order the lens and ship it that it would take maybe five or six weeks to get a new lens to me in the Philippines. And during that time the contrast between one lens in my eye and one lens out, I had done that before and it kind of caused headaches, it caused distortions. It was just hard to function and work because of how poor my vision was. I just panic, so I dropped down to the ground and started searching for the contact. My companion went to the store nearby and bought some matches and he would strike a match and use the light from the flame until the match burned out and then you strike another match and we would just go inch by inch over the ground looking for this contact lens. But there were puddles everywhere and the lens looked like a drop of water. I realized that I didn't have a good chance of finding the lens. So I began praying, I needed a miracle. And I prayed so earnestly, so fervently for a miracle that we'd be able to find that lens. Well, some Filipino men gathered around us asking what we are doing, and if they could help. They didn't know what a contact lens was. And so I took the other lens out of my eye to show them what it looked like. And then I put it back in my eye and we kept looking. I was grateful for their help, and I didn't want to push them away. I also recognize that they were probably likely to step on it, push it into the mud, or break it or something. I was afraid that their help would not really be helpful at all. After about 20 minutes, I gave up. I felt bad that our fellowshipper was just sitting there in the rain and realizing that the contact have probably been destroyed or permanently lost and just losing hope and faith that Heavenly Father was not going to answer this prayer. I determined right then to talk to my mission president and asked to be moved to a new mission. I was really, really discouraged and I was angry that my prayer had not been answered.

David 38:56

My miracle that I needed so badly, it didn't come. Well, my companion and I, and our fellowshipper began to walk further towards our home and we walked around a corner in this trail, and we heard some excited voices from behind us, back up the trail. My companion grabbed my arm and he explained to me, the men claimed that they had found my contact lens, and I immediately discounted it. I said, "That's impossible. They don't even know what they're looking for. And it's wet. There's just no way they found it. And we have the matches! Unless they bought new matches to keep looking. There's just no way they could have found it." We went back towards the men and they were walking towards us. And as they approached us, there were about six men, and the one in front, held out his palm, and in his palm was my contact lens. It wasn't broken. It was perfect. And I thought how perfect that Heavenly Father would answer my prayer through a real miracle. I didn't find it myself, a man that had never seen a contact lens had found my contact lens in the rain in the dark. It was a miracle and it hit me so hard, but also a series of scriptures came to my mind and I understood the verses immediately. The verses of scripture are found in Alma chapter 33. And it tells the story of Moses, when the children of Israel were being bitten by poisonous snakes by serpents. It starts out, "Behold, Christ, he who was spoken up by Moses, yea. And behold, a type was raised up in the wilderness that whosoever would look upon it might live, and many did look and live, but few understood the meaning of those things. And this because of the hardness of their hearts, therefore they perished. Now the reason they would not look because they did not believe that it would heal them, but my brethren, if ye could be healed by merely casting about your eyes, that ye might be healed, Would you not behold quickly? Or would you rather harden your hearts in unbelief and be slothful that you would not cast about your eyes that he might perish?" those verses of scripture spoke to me and I was taught by the Spirit that I had been acting in unbelief. I wasn't blind from losing the contact lens, but that I had been blind because of my self-pity, because of my doubt, I hadn't been looking to the Savior. I hadn't been loving him and loving the people in the Philippines. I had not been adequately serving him or the people in the Philippines. But through this miracle, the Savior, the Spirit also taught me how I could look and really see that I needed to exercise faith in Christ and in His Atonement, and then teach that. Teach faith in Christ, teach of His Atonement to the Filipino people and to love them and to serve them and that experience, it changed my mission. It changed me in that I became more patient with myself. I became patient with my circumstances, I exercised more faith and gratitude to my Heavenly Father for where I was and what I was called to do. And I knew that I wasn't alone. It wasn't just me in the Philippines trying to adapt, trying to be a good missionary, trying to learn a language, trying to teach. It wasn't just me, but that He really was there with me. And He was mindful of me and that He would help me in my need. It's been over 30 years since that night of the miracle, since having my contact lens restored to me and being taught by the Spirit. But that experience has not faded at all. And it has helped me weather other challenges and trials. I've been able to maintain and keep faith in Christ, knowing that He'll deliver. He has the power to deliver and He can and will deliver me.

KaRyn 42:49

That was David. I remember those gas permeable contact lenses that he's talking about. It was no joke to lose one and I can appreciate the panic that came with the realization that it was lost. I can also appreciate the new perspective that came from finding it. If the lesson from Leric was that God is more concerned with our spiritual gains than our earthly gains, well, then the lesson from David is that God can use the moments when we do gain or regain something in the physical sphere, like a contact lens, to teach us a spiritual principle. If we have eyes to see it. It amazes me always that we will most likely each have a story of losing or finding something in this life. I mean, because after all, we live in a fallen world. And despite the universality of that experience, the lessons that we're going to take away will be completely tailored to our own needs and our own spiritual growth. Take me for example, after all those losses and the rise of my callous attitude, God decided to teach me something precious about hope through losing something. I was at my parents house in South Carolina about a year ago during an impromptu family reunion. I had digitized all of our family VHS tapes for my parents' anniversary seven years ago, and I was planning to surprise them. And then because this is what I do, I promptly lost both the box of VHS tapes and the hard drive that had the newly digitized footage on it. But by some miracle just before this trip, I relocated that hard drive and my mom and I spent quite a bit of time uploading them to one, and then two, and then three different places so that we would have every kind of backup since the VHS tapes were long gone. In the process of all of that uploading, we found ourselves reviewing hours and hours of early 90s camcorder footage. The kind that makes your head spin and its lack of storyline or even clear focus. We watched my baby brothers elementary school Halloween parade for 45 minutes only to see him skip past the camera in 30 seconds near the end. We inexplicably watch 20 minutes of children with mullets, that was us, getting in and out of a swimming pool at dusk. We endured no less than five instances of one of my teenage brothers taping over something semi-important to show himself in his wide-pants-wearing friends skateboarding. And as we were watching what seemed like the third hour of unintelligible Christmas morning footage, I saw my 14-year-old self with a very, very high bangs. Open a jewelry box and held up a golden heart necklace to the camera and say thanks only to forget about it moments later in favor of the box CD set of the International cast of Les Miserables. My mom stopped the computer and said, "Oh my goodness." And then she disappeared without another word. She came back a minute later, dangling a golden heart necklace from her hand. It was the necklace from that Christmas, when I was 14 years old. Fully intact, still shining, still beautiful. I don't even remember losing the necklace. To be honest. I don't remember getting the necklace. I assumed that all my childhood treasures had gone the way of everything else in my life: lost into the ethers. But here was my mom holding that necklace and saying, "I've been wondering where this came from for 20 years. It's been in my jewelry box forever." And then we marveled at how it must have been more than the costume jewelry we both assumed it was back then because it hadn't tarnished or rusted or even become dull. My mom handed it to me and said, "This is yours." Clearly, I undervalued that necklace. From the moment I opened it. That was apparent from the video proof of my half-hearted teenage, "thanks." But now, years later, as I held it again, I felt the weight of that gold heart. I loved it and treasured it immediately when my mom showed it to me in 2019. Partly because it's now tied to her since living in her jewelry box for 20 years, and partly because it's held up, and partly because it represents everything. Everything that we think we've lost through our carelessness, our youthful error, our downright sin. Now, every time I put it on, I'm reminded that someone is holding on to the things that we've discarded, erroneously, or carelessly. Whatever we think we've lost, whether that thing is a contact lens, or a million dollars, or something as complex and painful as our faith in ourselves, or maybe even our faith in God. Whatever we think we've lost is not lost to Him. He is holding on to our hearts keeping them safe and untarnished. And God knows exactly when we'll be ready to recognize their true value so that we can find them again.

That's it for this episode of This Is The Gospel thank you to Leric, Mark, and David for sharing their stories and their faith with us. We'll have links to pictures from this week's stories including the picture of the necklace, and maybe even Bonus a picture of me and my high bangs as a 14-year-old, as well as the transcript of this episode in our show notes. So go to https://www.ldsliving.com/pages/this-is-the-gospel and find Episode 46. Special thanks to my mom for being the keeper of lost things in our family. All of our stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. If you have a story to share about living the Gospel, please call our pitch line. That's how we found Mark's story and David's story and leave us a pitch. It'd be great if it included a beginning, a middle and an end so that we can see your whole story in a quick moment. We really do love to hear how the gospel has blessed your life. Call 515-519-6179 and pitch your story in three minutes or less. If you've loved having these true stories from real people in your life, please leave us a review on iTunes and be sure to tell all your friends and social networks how This Is The Gospel has helped you. We read every review and really we do truly appreciate your willingness to share the good stuff. This episode was produced by me KaRyn Lay with additional story producing and editing by Katie Lambert, Jasmine Mullen and Ashley Porter. 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 the other LDS Living podcast at https://www.ldsliving.com/pages/podcasts Have a great week.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Jim, a devout Baptist, sends five of his seven children on Latter-day Saint missions despite his misgivings about what they will teach and finds himself "tapped on the shoulder" by God; Though she grew up a member of the Church, Brooke doesn't really search out her own testimony until devastating loss puts her faith, or lack thereof, at the forefront of her life; Missionaries go the literal extra mile to find Martin when he moves back to Norway after a visit to temple square; Dumdi finds the strength to remain faithful after baptism despite being alone in her efforts; When Monique's family moves to a predominantly Latter-day Saint community, she vows to steer clear of "The Mormons" but finds herself drawn to the doctrine despite negative experiences.

SHOWNOTES:

This episode is sponsored by Gospel Day by Day

Check out videos of Jim, Brooke, Martin, Dumdi, and Monique, at ldsliving.com/thisisthegospel.

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn Lay 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.

If you love to learn about bugs, then you enjoy entomology. But if you love to learn about the origin of words, well then you have a thing for etymology, which is what I have, a thing for etymology. For a really long time, I would get those two "ologies" confused, even though I am most definitely not a fan of things with lots of legs. What I am a fan of is where a word comes from and how it evolved into its current meaning. Take the etymology of the word "convert," for example. When the word is used as a noun, the online Macmillan dictionary defines it as someone who has changed their beliefs in an important way, and I really like that definition. But the actual origins of the word from the Latin add an even deeper perspective. It comes from a mix of "com" meaning together or with, and "vertere" meaning to turn or bend. And I have no idea if I said for "vertere" right, it just sounds kind of Latin in my mind. Well, when I think of the word "convert" with that underlying Latin root, I can practically feel the word. Because with that understanding, when I call myself a convert to Christianity, I'm acknowledging that I am someone who has turned together and bent toward the gospel of Jesus Christ. The word conversion, which is really closely associated with "convert" from the Latin, started to have a religious connotation in the 14th century. It's a turning round, a revolving, an alteration or a change. If I was putting together a video montage reel of the best conversions, I would illustrate that woman at the well turning to face the Savior. And Saul turning towards the angel and his new name. And Alma, and King Lamoni, and everyone who has ever converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ turning, turning, turning their bodies and their hearts to the Savior. Well, in today's episode, we have five little stories of five big turns. Moments when something shifted and led the storytellers towards God and towards Jesus Christ.

Our first story comes from Jim who found that his conversion to Christ as a member of the Baptist faith was an important step in setting the stage for another revolution of his faith. Here's Jim.

Jim 2:30

I grew up as a Baptist. There were very few Baptists in Clearfield, Utah. My parents taught me about Jesus Christ and I went to church every Sunday. I grew up, actually, with kind of an anti-Mormon tilt. The Southern Baptists love the LDS people, but they felt and believed that they were not writing their doctrine and they, in fact, were lost. They were active in trying to save the LDS people get the LDS people to realize they were wrong.

As I met Linda, my wife Linda, she was LDS. Any time we talked about church, it was just me trying to convert Linda or Linda trying to convert me. We learned that that didn't work. We would take the children to church, Linda would take some time and I would take my time. They enjoyed both churches. Ultimately, the challenge left me feeling like it's better to just let them go to the Mormon church. They came time for the kids to be baptized, I was was reluctant to that, feeling as I did about the church. And consequently, when it came time for them to be baptized, the challenge there and the heartache for me was that I was relinquishing my responsibility to teach my kids, I guess, the truth—the truth as I saw it and knew it. It was a struggle, but I let the kids be baptized.

The hard part really for me was when my kids came and wanted to go on a mission. Again, feeling as I did, it was hard to know that they were going to go teach something that I didn't believe. I had taught them and told them that they were no longer responsible to their father, their earthly father. They were more responsible to their Heavenly Father and if that's what He wanted them to do that they needed to go do it and do the best job they could.

Through the years with the Lord working with me and tapping me on the chest, I was feeling that, and I knew the Lord had worked with me before like that. That I had no doubt in my mind He was wanting me to do something and telling me something. So when two granddaughters were to be baptized, and one granddaughter to be blessed, that was really emotional for me. That Sunday, a lady stood to give her testimony. She testified of Joseph Smith, the truth of the gospel and Joseph Smith doing that. It was then, that Sunday that my savior told me, "You need to look at the Church with thoughts other than trying to disprove it."

So we went home, I thought how am I going to tell Linda and my family? They obviously had been praying for this for a long time. But I knew I needed to tell her and I couldn't figure out how and I just thought, "Well everybody's together, just tell them." As I call it, there was shock and awe. Everyone was happy, some were crying to know that it might take place. I know some doubted it—that it never would, even then.

I told them that I didn't need to meet with any Missionaries of the church because I had a whole house full of them. Five of my seven children were returned missionaries and all three of my sons-in-law. I asked them if they would read with me and pray with me and help me answer questions that I had. And we did. We met often and prayed every day. As I prayed about it, every time I got a distinct feeling that the Lord wanted me to continue to read and look. Finally, my Heavenly Father showed me that I didn't have to leave the truth that I knew and to turn my back on Him, but He had more truths for me. And through that, I made the decision to be baptized. I was able to tell my bride of 41 years that I was going to be baptized.

A little over a year later, I was able to go to the temple and be sealed to my wife and seven temple-worthy, wonderful children. The most remarkable thing about it was to realize the truth of the eternal family. When we lost a son a few years ago, to know that we would be with him again, that it was just for a short time that he would be with us and we would all be together as an eternal family. To endure something like that without that knowledge would be so difficult. And I testify, the blessings that come through the plan of salvation and knowing that again one day I will see and be with my son. I testify that that is the greatest, the most wonderful thing that there is.

KaRyn Lay 9:19

That was Jim. Jim and his wife, Linda have been friends of LDS Living for a couple of years now when we first filmed them for our love lessons video series back in 2017. And we've been consistently in awe of Jim's willingness to share his story if it'll help others find the peace that the restored gospel has given him. Though we didn't get to hear from Linda in this particular version of Jim's story, I can attest that her resolve to maintain and grow her own faith, as Jim maintained and grew his faith in Christ, was integral to his eventual recognition of the truths of the restored gospel. I hold on to their powerful reminder that timing, plus love, plus consistency, plus allowing for agency, plus Faith, plus a commitment to peace can do way more than pushing and fighting ever could. Those things combined allow us to get out of the way and let God do the work that He is already doing with His children.

Our next story comes from Brooke. Brooke's true and lasting conversion happened when she was already a member of the church. Just a quick note for anyone who might be sensitive, Brooke's story discusses infant loss. Here's Brooke.

Brooke 10:27

After out daughter Kennedy passed away, I naturally had questions. Where do we go after this? What is life? And it just kind of led into this prayer. And in that prayer, I wasn't expecting some miraculous thing, but I got something miraculous.

So I was raised in the church. I was baptized at eight years old. I was in young women's, and then I got married at 18. I think once I became an adult, I really started to question what I believed. I got to a point in my life where I realized that I had been riding on my parents' testimonies more than my own. So for seven years, I put my faith on the shelf and I didn't touch it. I didn't think about it, I did everything that I was told not to do. In that, there was good things I experienced, there were really rough, hard things I experienced. But I grew from all those experiences.

I was 37, almost 38 weeks pregnant when our daughter Kennedy passed away. Her heart just stopped and there was no reason why she had passed away. It was heart wrenching for a family. We had tried to have children for three years. We have an 11-year-old son who is amazing and one of my favorite people on this planet, but we wanted more kids and it took us a really long time. And then Kennedy passed away. And it broke me. In that brokenness, I was able to be vulnerable enough to want answers for myself, not for anyone else. One day, I was sitting at my kitchen table, and I decided to pray. And the idea of praying was really uncomfortable. Because I felt so far away from Heavenly Father. I had no idea what really that even meant to me at that time. I gave one of the clumsiest prayers I've ever heard in my life. The questions—the specific question I had was, "Why did Kennedy die?" I wasn't really sure I was going to get an answer. But as I sat there, I felt so much comfort, more comfort than I've ever felt in my whole life. And I felt my daughter around me, and I felt our Savior. And I felt what it meant to have unconditional love around you. Something struck me really, really hard and that was Kennedy's sacrifice to earthly life so that my family could come back to the gospel. And that she could be my beacon and my light.

After that, incredibly clumsy prayer, I opened up a Book of Mormon. The last time I had opened the Book of Mormon was probably in seminary and I probably wasn't paying attention. Once I opened up the Book of Mormon for myself and not for anyone else, I just kept reading. And the more I kept reading, the more relevant it was in my life, which was shocking because it always felt so old and ancient to me. But I was reading things and I felt like they understood what I was going through. And it wasn't until I was about halfway through, that I really started to get this desire to not just attend church, but to really dive all the way in.

So I started getting the discussions again. My son also was getting discussions with me. Then I was prepped to go through the temple. And at this time, I had gotten pregnant again with another little girl and we found out that she was going to pass away also. So in March of 2016, our daughter, Holland, lived for one hour and then passed away. And it was wasn't, it shouldn't have been able to happen, I shouldn't have been able to survive both of these horrific tragedies. And I know for a fact it was from that clumsy prayer at that kitchen table, was because I was able to get through all of this. Because that was the starting point for my life.

You know, with loss comes grief, and can come depression. And I think sometimes you get lost in that. And knowing that I have a hope now that is a living, breathing hope, and His name is Jesus Christ, has laid a foundation in my life. That I now know that I can go through really hard trials and I can go through really hard moments and I don't have to wait for Him, because he's there. I don't have to be perfect, because He's been there the entire time and He comes to my level. The difference in my life now is that fear doesn't own me anymore. Death doesn't really scare me, because I've seen beautiful things happen with death. I used to hear people say that, you know, death isn't the end. I didn't believe them. But I now know it's so much more than that. And I look forward to the day that I can hold both of my girls again. And I look forward to this journey, though. I look forward to now, I look forward to today because there's so much hope in today. And there's so much hope in this life. And I know that through my daughters, I've been able to learn that.

KaRyn Lay 16:45

That was Brooke. Brooke first shared this story as part of our "This Is the Gospel" video series. Much like our pitch line, we don't always know the people who voluntarily share their stories for videos like this, so we hadn't met Brooke until she burst into the studio with all the energy of a woman twice her size. And I have to say that Brooke's love for the Savior and His plan of happiness radiates from her. It is absolutely a gift to witness someone who's experienced such loss, take such comfort in the perspective that the Savior offers.

Our next two stories are short and sweet. Both Martin and Dumdi came to the United States from other countries. And while their circumstances were very different in coming here, they both found the restored gospel of Jesus Christ on their journey. First, we'll hear from Martin and then from Dumdi.

Martin 17:33

I'm from Norway, and where I grew up, there wasn't really much talk about God or religion or anything like that. So when I moved to Utah as an exchange student at the age of 17, the concepts of faith and church really foreign to me. Luckily, later that year I made some really good friends that took me to church and they taught me about faith. And everything I learned there really resonated with me. And I learned about things that I had never even thought about before. It was just a really wonderful experience right there. But when I visited temple square that summer, the sister missionaries there did what I assume they always do and ask the visitors if they would like missionaries to visit their home. And because of what I had learned, I said, "Yes, please." And I was really excited about seeing them. But unfortunately, my family and I, we were planning on taking a three-week vacation in the states before returning home. So the missionaries in Norway, they probably tried to call me several times to try to get a hold of me without any luck. So when I got home, I never heard from them. Until one day, a senior couple finally called one last time trying to get ahold of this reference. I answered the phone and they asked me if I wanted the missionaries to stop by and I said, "Sure, send them over!" However, where I live, there were no missionaries. The missionaries had to travel an hour and a half by plane to be able to teach me, but they did. And we sat there and we talked about the Plan of Salvation, the Gospel, the restoration, and everything just felt so good. And I really liked what I learned and the thoughts about baptism started crossing my mind. But, growing up in this environment where I really didn't know anyone that even was Christian, it was really hard to try to stand out that much. I was really worried about what my family and friends would say. So with all those worries and all those doubts in my mind, one night I knelt down to pray, and prayed about what the missionaries had taught me, and prayed about the Book of Mormon, and prayed about the church. And I was filled with such an immense happiness, something I had never felt before. And knew that this happiness did not come from this world, it came from God. And I knew that I needed to be baptized regardless of what would happen. So that is what I did. I got baptized on November 14, 2010, and none of my worries came true. I just received blessings and happiness from there now. And often I think back about what would have happened if my friends hadn't taken me to church if the sister missionaries hadn't asked for my name and address. If the missionaries in Norway hadn't tried so hard to contact me. And especially if the Norwegian members hadn't embraced me the way I did. And I consider myself so blessed to have experienced that, and I know because of my experiences that there are no coincidences in God's plan. That He loves every one of his children so so much. And He works so hard so that every single one of us will be able to find our path home to Him.

Dumdi 20:56

I was 12-years-old when I joined the church. My family had been in the states for about three years, we came over to the states as war refugees from Nigeria. And it was just, you know, a typical day in Dallas, it was warm and sunny. And we had two, sorry, but these two scrawny white dudes—because like, we live in like a very black neighborhood anyway. And I was really surprised my dad let them in, but he did. And I think that's probably the best thing my dad has done for me, was letting those missionaries in. They taught us and they challenged us to read, you know, they gave us certain verses in the Book of Mormon to read, and I think I was the only one that read them. But I'm always up for a good challenge. So I decided to go ahead and read them and then pray. And it was actually the first time I'd ever addressed Heavenly Father the way that I did when I knelt down to pray about what these missionaries had been teaching us. Because personally for me, just learning that God was my Heavenly Father changed everything. And also made sense, you know that we would have prophets now, just like in the biblical times because I, you know, had been taught about the Bible. I accepted the invitation to be baptized along with my parents and one of my sisters. And I just remember when they lifted me out of the water, they had to baptize me again, because I had this like long hair, kind of like right now, and it didn't all go in. I just remember getting lifted out of the water and just feeling this warmth and it just like consumed my whole body. And I started crying because I had felt this peace that I hadn't felt in a very long time. And I just knew that God was proud of me, that He was proud of the decision I'd made. And I try to remember that when it does start to feel hard. And now I'm the only active member, and it's okay because I love my family. But there are definitely, you know, hard things about being the only active convert in your family. But I have seen God's hands in my life every day, whenever I decided to notice them. But as I pray an I read my scriptures, for me, it's about my relationship with Heavenly Father, and about Jesus Christ. And that's why I stayed. That's why I chose to be baptized. And that's why I'm still here.

KaRyn Lay 23:37

That was Martin and Dumdi. Even though their stories of conversion are different from one another, I love these snapshots of finding faith for the same reason. As a lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it can really be easy for me to forget that there are still people who want and need the truths of the restored gospel. I know how that sounds, but hear me out. I don't know what it's like for you, but in this brave new A world of constant communication and connection, I have literally watched so many of the people I love and care about, step away from the church or out of the church for various reasons and with varying permanency. While I honor that agency and seek to always put compassion first, I, for one, feel the loss of those church associations pretty acutely sometimes. When I'm overwhelmed by that grief, I simply lose sight of the fact that faith is actually a living and breathing thing. In one breath, we rally around those who are experiencing a transition in their faith, maybe towards doubt or disbelief for a time. And in that same breath, we make space for the truth that there are still those who long to turn with us, to come closer, to understand new truths or remember old ones. There are still people searching, there are still people longing. And we must still speak of Christ with all the breath in our body so that anyone who knows us can know Him, wherever they are in their path. Martin's friends and Dumdi's missionaries lived that way. And I'm trying. I'm really, really trying.

Our final story of turning hearts comes from Monique who had absolutely no intention of letting the gospel into her world. Here's Monique.

Monique 25:21

It didn't take us long to figure out that the town was different. And the reason that it was different was because they were all the same religion, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we just didn't, we didn't like them, and they didn't particularly like us. And I certainly, as a 10-year-old, didn't want anything to do with the religion. So it was my first week of school, I was at recess on the monkey bars with some friends when a little girl asked me, "Do you feel bad that you live in a bad family?" And I didn't know how to answer that question. I didn't know what she meant. But the reason she asked that was because she saw my dad that day. He's a large man, lots of tattoos. And to that little girl, that was what that meant, was that we were from a bad family.

Growing up, I had friends that would say, I'm not allowed to hang out with you anymore. And, you know, I was a really good kid but it was just because they found out that I wasn't a member of their church. And my siblings are treated the same way, that they are just not quite good enough because they don't go to church. It was hard for me as a little girl, I had a lot of anger and resentment built up, just naturally because of the course that my life had taken and some of the things that I had gone through. I didn't know if I believed in God, it was almost easier to think that He wasn't real because if Ge was, then I was being punished for something, or He didn't love me. It was really hard for me for a long time to understand why my family wasn't good enough to be loved by God.

So fast forward to my junior year and one of the families that I had grown close to through baseball, one of their little boys passed away. He was 10 at the time, and we all rallied together to help this family. And they remember on social media, it was posted that we were going to fast and pray for this family the day of the funeral. I knew enough, I had been around long enough to know what fasting was and to know what prayer was. And I decided that that was something I wanted to join in on. So I fasted that day of his funeral, and I said my first ever personal prayer, and I just wanted the family to be okay. And I wanted understanding. We all went to the funeral. And the dad, who I've known for a really long time, bore testimony of Jesus Christ, of a Savior who made it possible for him to see his son again. And it wasn't a question to him, he was going to see his son again.

Six or seven months later, I had a friend who was serving as mission Arizona, and he had access to Facebook. And he messaged me one day and basically said, "What do you believe?" And my initial reaction was, "What do you want?" But I ended up talking to him and his companions through Facebook Messenger for six or seven months. And just taking the discussions and learning about what Jesus Christ taught. There were so many times where I would pull up my phone, I'd messaged my friend and I tell him, "I can't do this, so and so offended me at school today. They said this, they said that this is what you believe, and I don't want anything to do with it."

He'd say, "Monique, listen. This is what Jesus Christ taught. And this is what we believe. And we are all surrounded by imperfect people, but there's a difference between the people and Christ and what He taught." And it was so important for me to have those experiences where I was like, okay, the doctrine and okay the people and to be able to separate those two for me personally.

So I decided to meet with the missionaries in town, the elders, and they extended the invitation to be baptized. And it was the easiest "Yes" I've ever said. I don't think I fully understood, obviously, I didn't fully understand everything. And I didn't fully understand what I was getting myself into. But I knew it was what I wanted. It was extremely hard on my family, they all love me and were extremely supportive. But I remember my mom crying and saying, "So you don't want me to be a part of your forever? You don't want us to be a part of your forever?" Because that was the understanding that we had, that as a whole we didn't get what everyone else was getting because we weren't members of this church. When she asked me that I was like, "No, that's not what I believe. Like, I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't think we had a chance of being together forever."

A year after I got baptized, I went on a mission to Texas. It was absolutely the best experience I've ever had. I got home from my mission. And my family was a lot more vocal about their feelings and about how they had been treated. And I guess their feelings about what I was a part of. I have found a lot, so much happiness and hope and peace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And I'm confident and I know who I am, Heavenly Father's daughter. But it's still so so hard because the ones I love the most don't understand what I'm doing or why I believe what I believe because they're still caught up on a lot of people's stuff. But I trust that truth makes sense. And that phrase has stuck with me. And I go back to it anytime I question anything. And when I'm learning stuff, it's, "Okay, this makes sense." And that doesn't mean that questions aren't going to come up but the answers make sense. And so when my mom asks me, "You don't want me? You don't want us in your forever," that doesn't make sense to me. And so like learning about the doctrine and learning that Christ teaches forever, that makes sense. And that's what propels me forward because I know that we can be together forever.

My family and I don't see eye to eye on religion stuff now, and I don't know if we ever will. But I know that Heavenly Father loves us all the same, that we are all His children, and I know how much He loves them. My hope is that I can be a better example, that we all can be better examples for each other. Christ's love is what this gospel really is.

KaRyn Lay 32:21

That was Monique. I'm truly grateful for her willingness to share some of the pain that accompanied her conversion. The turning of our hearts to Christ is a joyful thing. But that doesn't mean that it comes without complexity or nuance. It's an opportunity, a true opportunity for us to be able to hear the reality of life for adult converts beyond that moment in the baptismal font that often carries this sort of mystical quality in the fabric of our cultural storytelling. Stories like Monique's should change us as we minister to the newly converted. How would our succoring and mentoring and loving be a little different if we are more attuned to the possibility that there is most likely a little bit of loss mingled with the newfound joy of a recent convert.

As we've assembled these stories this week, I've been pondering the phenomenon of this thing that we call "conversion stories." We know that our individual conversion is hardly a one-time deal. Conversion, the act of turning to Christ, bending with Christ, is meant to be a lifelong pursuit really, with as many twists and revolutions of our faith as there are days in the year. So what good does sharing the moment of conversion do in our efforts to understand and be reconciled to the long game of discipleship? Well, I haven't fully figured it all out. But this Sunday, I heard something that helped me to understand it a little bit more.

My rescue friend Steve, whom you'll remember from our "To the Rescue" episode, spoke this past Sunday in sacrament meeting. And he reminded me that when emergencies come, and our bodies are flooded with the desire to fight or take flight, we don't recall the thing that we just learned. In those moments, our brains are able to access only what Steve calls our "lowest level of common and consistent training." He then suggested that the same is true of our ability to manage our moments of spiritual duress. The question then becomes not what we'll do when our commitment to Christ is challenged, but rather, what have we already done to secure the lowest levels of our common and consistent spiritual training, so that we don't even have to think about what we're going to do? Well, I submit that we have told our stories. We've shared them, we've written them down, we've committed them to our collective memories. The stories of our moments of conversion, the stories of others moments of conversion, well those become our common and consistent training that we can recall, in duress. This might feel like a stretch, but I promise it isn't. Think about how many times you've used the story of King Lamoni's moment of conversion, or Paul, or any of the other converts in the scriptures to help shore up your spiritual life. We share our conversion stories because then they become part of the community knowledge, they become common among us. And the more we share, the more consistent that information is to our brains in the moments when our discipleship is challenged. We may still have the long road of living a life of conversion ahead, but in that one testing moment, we'll recall a time when we did know. When we felt the peace of the gospel, when our hearts were turned, and we were converted. So if you have a conversion moment, or if you're working towards one—hopefully you'll get there soon—turn it into a story and tell it. It may well be the thing that you or someone you love recalls, and then clings to in the moment of their spiritual duress.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thank you to Jim, Brooke, Dumdi, Martin, and Monique for sharing their moment of their conversion and their faith with us. We'll have links to the videos from our "This Is the Gospel" YouTube series that features the storytellers in our show notes for this episode at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll also have a transcript there if you'd like to read these stories. All of the stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. If you have a story to share, and I know you do, about living the Gospel, help contribute to our lowest level of common and consistent spiritual training by sharing your story. Call our pitch line and leave us a pitch. We often find a lot of our stories from that pitch line and we love to hear how the gospel is blessing your life. Call 515-519-6179 and pitch your story in three minutes or less. If you've loved hearing these true stories from real people, please leave us a review on iTunes and tell all your friends and social networks how "This Is the Gospel" has helped you. We read every review and I really appreciate your willingness to share the good stuff.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with additional story producing and editing by Katie Lambert, Jasmine Mullen, Hayden Paul and Daniel Garcia. It was mixed, scored, and mastered by Mix at Six Studios and our executive producer is Erin Hallstrom. If you want to hear more episodes of the podcast or any of the LDS Living podcasts, we have the "Sunday on Monday" and "All In" podcasts as well, please go to LDSliving.com/podcasts.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: When Christie and her brother are left to their own devices after school, their daring adventures at a local hospital lead to a little bit of trouble and a lifelong understanding of their true identity; Artist Kate struggles with her self-worth until an unusual assignment from her stake president leads to a different perspective about who she really is to God.

SHOWNOTES:

This episode is sponsored by Gospel Day by Day

To see Kate Lee's artwork and Christie's books, check out our shownotes at 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.

When I was a little girl, I had a deep sort of angst about my name. It's pronounced KaRyn, but if you're looking at it all written out, you'd probably read it, Karyn, at least all of my teachers did. In fact, when I introduced myself to people now, I always tell them that my name looks like Karyn because if they meet me in person, and then they get an email from me later, they're like, who is this Karyn lady? I've never even met her. So there's a capital 'R' in the middle just to make things even more confusing. And even though my parents swear that this name is an Irish name, I have literally never met another Irish KaRyn spelled the way that I spell it. And to be honest, I've never been to Ireland, and I don't know very many Irish people. So, if somebody is listening in Ireland, and you've met another KaRyn, please, please please email us. I would love to know that.

Needless to say, when I was six years old, I decided that I needed a different name, a better name, a more beautiful name. And the most beautiful name that I could think of was Rose. I honestly don't even know where that came from. I don't know anyone named Rose. We don't have any Roses in my family. But I distinctly remember telling people that if they wanted me to respond to them, then they had to use my new name, my real name, Rose. And while clearly my renaming didn't stick, it stuck with me enough that I remember it even to this day. My longing to be someone other than plain old KaRyn lasted probably through middle school.

And by the time I finally reconciled myself to my first name, and actually started to think it was pretty cool, it was my last name that wasn't cool enough. I mean, someday I was going to be discovered and taken to Broadway where I would star in Les Misérables and I definitely needed a cooler name than Daily, So I spent what seems like hours doodling my stage name, which was KaRyn Cavanaugh. Doesn't that sound so romantic?

The good news is that I never made it to Broadway. And I eventually grew to love all the parts of my name, especially as I got older, and took on a new family name through marriage, I now see my name as this beautiful tribute to every single person who's ever loved me, and all the things that kept me grounded and make me who I am, and couldn't we all use just a little bit more grounding, a little more sense of ourselves in a world that is constantly challenging our identity in more ways than one. Well, today, we've got two very different stories that explore the question, the spiritual question, "who do you think you are?" And how claiming that true divine identity, our true divine identity, can give us strength and power to fulfill our personal mission here on this earth.

Our first story comes from Christie whose unique childhood set her up for a lifetime of possibility. Here's Christie:

Christie 3:07

In the middle of downtown Salt Lake is a neighborhood called the avenues and it's built on the hills, right above the valley. There are old houses all the way back to pioneer times -- big houses, little houses, old but they all look Victorian and kind of beautiful. To me it reminds me a little bit of Boston when you get right outside of the city. And that's where I grew up.

I was older. My brother was four years old, and I was eight years old when we moved into this beautiful old house that had been in our family for years and years and years and was owned by my great uncle. He lived in a house about three blocks away. And this was just the house where he had raised his family and he wanted to keep it in the family. My mom was a recently single mother and that was a recent development. And here we were this mom in her 20s with these two little kids and she was just trying to make her way in the world.

So my uncle was sharing his home with us. My great uncle was the most eccentric man you've ever met. He had a farm in downtown Salt Lake, he had terrorist the mountain all the way down into city Creek Canyon, which is this canyon right by the Capitol building, and he raised chickens and goats and had sheep in the middle of downtown. It was bizarre, but he was a really well known surgeon, and he was a cancer surgeon, and that's what he did. And he was just the most amazing man. He sang in the Tabernacle Choir with this huge voice but everyone who was anyone knew this guy.

My great uncle and aunt were the closest to grandparents that I had near me; My grandparents all lived far away. And we were happy that in the middle of this really challenging time for our family, where we were going through the divorce of our parents, we had this additional family close by.

So my mom worked a full time job and was trying to support these two little kids. So because our mom was away a lot working, we kind of had the house to ourselves a lot and we were left to our own crazy devices. And so my brother and I would go to school, and when he was in kindergarten, and I was in school, I would stop at the babysitter on the way home from kindergarten and pick him up. And we would go home and wait until our mom got home from work.

So my brother and I would come home from school and have a lot of time to ourselves. We would do our homework, watch TV, we would practice the piano and then we had to make ourselves Dinner, so macaroni and cheese, tuna fish sandwiches, whatever leftover happened to be in the refrigerator. But unless we went over to our uncle's house, we didn't really get hot meals at night.

But making stuff like that doesn't take too much time. And so, we had some extra time on our hands. And we were both little entrepreneurs so we would come up with all different ways to make money and we decided to start a business selling things to our neighbors. So we would cut all of the flowers out of our neighbor's garden and then bring them home and we knew that having a dozen roses was the thing. So we would put them in groups of 12 and then put them in our little red wagon and drive around and sell the neighbors their flowers back that we had just cut out of the yard.

We would paint rocks and sticks and create things with a hot glue gun and then take those and sell them. We sold any canned good that we had, and we would take those door to door and sell them, and then we would share the profits and depending on who came up with the scheme, they got more of the profits, but I think if you asked my brother, he would probably say that I took the lion's share most of the time, so sorry to my brother.

We didn't really know a lot of our neighbors. We knew some of them, but really not a lot. And we just had guts and would go right up to the door and try to sell our wares. And my brother and I just had a lot of hutzpah.

We really never had any neighbors get mad at us for what we were doing or our crazy antics, or anything we decided to do when we put on plays in their yard, or we had a surprise party for our mother once where she had worked a full day at work a single mom, she comes home and her living room is full of these random neighbors from all around the Avenues who had no idea who she was, but we had hand delivered invitations to her birthday party. So I think she spent her 30th birthday party with total strangers.

One time we sold some flowers to a family that we had cut out of their yard and the mom invited us in, she gave us some money, they were getting ready to leave, and there was just a little chaos in their house, and I think they forgot that there were these two children sitting in their foyer, and then everyone left and we went to their playroom and it was awesome.

It had all of the best toys that we did not have at our house and it had this butcher paper that you could pull out of a roll from the wall and you could color all over it. And we just played and played and played and the people weren't even home and we didn't know them. And they were 18 blocks away from our house. We just decided we were done when it started to get dark and so we left the house grabbed our little red wagon -- wagoned home.

So, with all of our sales, we really felt like we were making some money here and what did we want to do with it? We would go and buy penny candy at the Eighth Avenue store, and when that got to be old and we weren't so excited about buying penny candy anymore, we thought we don't want to make ourselves dinner anymore.

Across the street from our house was a big hospital, LDS Hospital in downtown Salt Lake City. Let me describe this hospital. It's right in the middle of the Avenues. It's surrounded by houses, and I actually grew up with the sound of ambulances and helicopters landing medical helicopters to the point where when we finally moved from this house, I could not sleep. We moved to a neighborhood that was quiet and dark, and I missed the sound of the ambulances and the landing helicopters.

And it kind of was a hub to us. We rode our bikes in the parking lot of the physician's office building. And it was kind of just a home base there. One day we decided to go into the hospital. And we started wandering through the halls and looking at everything and to our little minds, it was so exciting and everyone was dressed up in 'Dr.' gear and they knew where they were going.

And so, we started wandering and in one of our wanderings, we saw that there was a cafeteria there. Now being the two kids that we were, we started thinking about that macaroni and cheese and the tuna fish sandwiches and we went, "Why are we eating there when we could be eating fried fish and chips that are seven days old from the hospital?"

So we decided to pull the money from all of our entrepreneurial activities and eat dinner at the hospital at least once a week. So we would sneak into the hospital and walk through the halls. And rarely we would get a look or two, but mostly nobody paid attention. And we went and we would have our dinner in the LDS Hospital cafeteria. And we thought it was a very fancy because we could pick whatever we wanted. We started to become kind of known in the hospital.

And people started to say hello to us and the different workers and orderlies and nurses and doctors and the people who even worked in the cafeteria knew who we were and started to expect us. From my child mind, I just thought that that was normal. From an adult mind, now looking back, I wonder what these people were thinking about these two urchin kids wandering the halls of a hospital day in and day out.

So we started to get more and more comfortable in the hospital and with people knowing us and we started to venture outside of the cafeteria and the hallways, my brother was really interested in surgery. So we pushed the button in the elevator to the surgical level waited until someone had something to open the door and he snuck in to an actual surgical area. It when it was my turn to pick what we got to do, I made my brother Go with me to see the babies. And I would hold him up. And we would press our face to the glass and look at all of the little babies in the nursery. I have no idea why people didn't pay attention to two little kids roaming the halls of the hospital. But maybe it was just in my mind, but nobody really seemed to notice or care or even say anything to us.

We were never scared of getting caught. We never thought that there was anything to get caught about. We did know we were being sneaky sometimes when we would sneak into areas we definitely weren't supposed to be in, but We really just felt a sense of entitlement to be there. We knew that if we ever needed to and if anyone ever said something, we could just drop our uncle's name. We basically thought that being a surgeon meant that you owned the hospital. And so we thought our uncle was the king of the hospital and if we ever got in trouble, we would just use his name and that would be that.

There was this one time when we knew what we were about to do at the hospital might be crossing a little bit of a line. It got to be summertime, and it got really, really hot. And so what do two little kids want to do in the summertime when it's really hot, you want to go swimming, but we didn't have anyone to take us to the neighborhood pool. So we donned our swimming suits and picked out some towels and went to the hospital fountain and we put out our towels, we lathered up with sunscreen, we were very conscientious and responsible children and started swimming in the fountain, and this is when the look started.

So as we were swimming along in the fountain, we noticed that there was an official looking guy that came out of the hospital and he looked a little bit mad. And he was coming our way really intently. And as he approached us, I had maybe a moment where I thought, "Oh, maybe you're not going to be too happy that we're swimming in the fountain." But I splashed right over to him and he said, "What do you two think that you're doing out here? What do you think you're doing?" And I said, "Swimming." And he said, "What makes you think that you can swim in the hospital fountain?" And I kind of got a bravado about me, shook my head and said, "Don't you know who our great uncle is? Our uncle is a surgeon," and then I said his name. And the guy looked at me, and I just was quiet, and he just turned around and walked away. That was enough for him. And I don't know what he thought, but no security ever told us to leave and we went back to swimming and it wasn't the last time we swam in the hospital fountain.

I never really felt guilty about any of it. Even though now as an adult, it's funny to think about and interesting to think about, and I would kill my kids if they tried to swim in a hospital fountain. Who did those kids think they were?

Looking back the memories with my brother in the avenues in Salt Lake City are actually the best memories of my childhood. That confident little girl in the fountain who knew that her uncle would protect her and had the courage to just be herself, ended up going through a lot of really hard things, and life didn't get super easy for those two little kids, it got even harder than it was.

And one gift that came from this childhood is that I've never questioned whether or not I was alone. No matter what happened to me through the rest of my life and things got kind of intense over the rest of my childhood. Well I was the kid who swam in the hospital fountain. I was the kid who knew that her uncle was there, if she needed him. And just like I knew my uncle was there, I've always known that God is there. And no matter what else happened, I knew that I could depend on that. Having Heavenly Father behind us, makes us capable to do things that we never thought we'd be able to do, and that we could never do alone and gives us that hutzpah and that confidence to go for forward, knowing who we are.

I guess what I would want to tell people is that no matter what you go through, no matter what questions come your way, no matter what trials come your way. No matter how much you feel like you're traversing this world alone, you're not, you have God and you can invoke his name and that will give you the confidence to move forward in whatever you have to face in this life.

KaRyn 17:47

That was author Christie Gardner. Both of Christie's books, "Holy as you Are" and "You are the Mother your Children Need," are full of personal stories about claiming your divine identity, right now in the midst of your imperfection. And I think that's something that I really love about Christie's story. When she says that she doesn't really feel bad about doing the things that she and her brother did. Well, we know that it's not because she's full of herself. It's because she understands that all of these experiences have made her into the woman that she is now. And wouldn't the world be a very different place if those of us who are struggling with our confidence acted just a little bit more as though our uncle was the king of the hospital?

Well, the great news is that our father, our Heavenly Father, is the king of the universe. And the humility that accompanies our duty as his child, mixed with the power and entitlement that comes from the gift of our spiritual genetics, can and should send us confidently into the fulfilling of the measure of our creation. I love to think about that and I'm grateful for Christy for sharing this story. Besides making me laugh, it really made me think.

Our next story comes from Kate who's lifelong struggle to believe in her own worthiness and connection to God was challenged by a loving church leader.

Here's Kate:

Kate 19:09

I always knew God existed, I've always known he was there. But I always felt like he was disappointed in me and that he didn't have time for me. Growing up, I was incredibly insecure. I was really terrified to go to school, when I went to church and different activities with the young woman or whatever, and I was the odd man out, you know, I just, I felt very awkward. I remember one time needing some kind of strength or comfort, and I knew that other people turned to God. But I knew that I wasn't worthy enough.

I even wrote him a note, which sounds silly, but I did. I was like, "This is how I feel and this is what I need." I was probably like 10, and I folded it up, and I put it under my pillow and I thought if God loves me, he'll take This note, and I woke up in the morning and it wasn't gone. I know that that sounds silly, but in a 10 year old's mind, I was like, "Of course he doesn't love me, of course he is not going to take that." And I remember just crying and crying and crying on my bed that there was no relief for someone like me. I carried that with me into high school and into my mission and into my, you know, my young married life. You know, I really felt like sorry that I'm not enough and I can't fully come to you and to get comfort because I'm just not the person that deserves that or is worth it.

I started drawing when I was really really young. I remember getting in trouble in kindergarten because I would draw more than I would do my work. And I just have always loved it. Like it just something that made me happy. And then in high school is when I picked up painting, and we tried all types of mediums in high school and then watercolor was when I was hooked. But I never ever felt like I was good enough. And so I'd always hide my drawings or my paintings, because I didn't want to be embarrassed.

It was about five years ago that my stake president asked me to do a specific project for him. I met with my stake president. And it really was just for the recommend interview. That's all I wanted to talk about, get in and get out and go. At the end of that interview. He's like, "Is there anything else you want to talk about?" And I was like, "No, I'm good," like thanks, but I'm fine. And he said it again. He's all, "Sister Lee, is there anything else that you want to talk about?" And I just like bust into tears.

There was everything that I want to talk about, but I was too afraid. I didn't know that I could talk about the things that I felt inside. And so I started telling him, "This is what I feel about myself, and you know, I wish that I could be better. I wish that I could be like good enough for God and I really felt like I was just a huge failure." Anyways, so we would meet every week and talk about different things. And he'd give me different assignments. There were two assignments that really changed me. First one was just a scripture in Alma, but it's talks about to act and not be acted upon it. Because forever, I always felt like, Oh, I'm just a loser. You know, I'm just not a good enough person, and I'm not good at anything. And he says, "Well, are you going to just live your life like that? Are you just going to continue to believe that about yourself?" And I was like, "Well, how else am I supposed to live?" You know? And he says, "Well, you can either act, or you can be acted upon," in the nicest way. He basically said, "Stop being a victim and take your life into your own hands." So he told me to go home and study that those scriptures and to really, like apply that to my life. And I have, I have done that, you know, and it's changed me in ways I never ever imagined it would.

The other assignment he gave me, he said, "What are some things that you think about yourself, how do you feel about yourself? How do you think God views you?" And I told him, "You know, I feel like he is just kind of disappointed in who I am." And he says, "Okay, well hold right there." And he pulled out sticky notes. And he put these sticky notes on his desk, and he gave me a pen and he said, "Write down what you think is truth about you." And so I wrote down, "You are ugly, you're dumb, you're not smart enough. You're a waste of time. You're bad at your calling," like all of these negative things. And but it was truth, that was my truth. He says, "Well, what are those?" and I said, "Well, this is who I am. This is my truth." And he said, "No, that's not who you are." And I said, "Well, yes it is." You know, and he, he put those ones aside and he put up fresh ones like new sticky notes, and he says, "I want you to take these sticky notes home, and I want you to pray about the ones that you wrote down. And then I want you to write down what God really thinks about you."

I was like, "No, because God's gonna confirm what I think; I can't handle that." But he says, "This is your assignment take it home." It took me two to three days to get the courage to sit down and to actually even just to acknowledge that the sticky notes were there because I was terrified that God would say, "You're right, you're right, you are a waste of time."

And then the boys one morning left for school, and I was like, "Okay, I can't avoid it." And I knelt down at our couch. Before, you know, anything came out. It was just this feeling of calm and peace.

Heavenly Father answered all of my questions. And he confirmed that, "No, this is who you are. And this is what you can do. And this is your abilities and just, you know, go forward." And it was just incredible. And I have my folder upstairs. I keep it with me, always. Because it's a reminder because it's so easy to fall back into that, "Oh, I'm stupid. Oh, I'm, you know, like, I just am a bad artist or I'm a bad mom or whatever it is," and I keep it with me so that I can remind myself of this is what God said. This is what maybe the world says, but this is what God said. And, you know, I'm going to go with what God said, and his truth. Through talking with my stake president and sharing things with him, it's fully opened my heart to be able to look at my Father as a real Father. Because I didn't, I never understood it like that before. And I didn't believe that he loved me and that he was interested in me, it was really difficult for me to communicate and talk to him because I didn't feel like I was worthy enough to talk to him or that he wanted me to talk to him.

About a month after the sticky note assignment, I went back to my stake president talking to him and he said, "What are some of the things that you like to do, like what do you love to do?" And I named off a few things, you know, like, "Oh I like being outside and I like doing, you know, being on my mountain bike and stuff," and he's like, "No, no, like, what do you like to do?" And I'm like, "I like to draw." And he goes, "Yeah, you like art, right? And I, you know, am like, "Yeah, yeah I love it. I love it. It's so good." And he says, "I need you to paint me a picture." I looked at him like this like, What? "I have this scripture that I love, I want you to paint it for me." And he gave me a scriptural reference in second Nephi about the flax and chords and he said, "Paint this, and paint it how you want and how you interpret it." And he says, I want it on a really big Canvas, the biggest you can find."

I was scared to paint that. I believed I was going to fail. I did. It was the whole being acted upon all of the thoughts that I had when I was kid: "Oh, you can't do it. You're not good enough," came flooding in and every brush stroke was like a heart attack because I was terrified I was going to make the wrong stroke or I was going to ruin the whole painting, and more importantly, though, I was afraid that I wouldn't get the message that he wanted, you know, he had a specific message that he wanted and I was afraid that I wouldn't capture that for him. And it took me nine months to paint this picture. And in that time is when I really discovered my abilities, like I learned to trust myself.

So when the painting was done, it was on Halloween night. The Stake President just walked over to her house to check on the painting, and I almost had a panic attack, because I didn't want to give it to him. I brought it up out of the studio and handed it to him. And he kept saying, "It's beautiful. This is beautiful. This is exactly what I want." And I was like, "You don't have to be so nice. It's okay. I know it's bad." And he's like, "No, this is what I want." And it just was such a cool experience because it taught me this is a gift and this is something that you can share your testimony through this, you know, and that's really the first time that I felt like a real artist was about five years ago. And I didn't realize this at the time, I probably didn't even realize this until a couple years ago, that I had been that girl that was wrapped in these flax and chords that was pulled down by doubt and fear and you know, just experiences from when I was a kid and all of that, and I didn't know how to break free from those flax and chords and it was it was pulling me down. It was keeping me from progression. It was keeping me from knowing Christ. It was keeping me from knowing who I really am.

And I think that, he knew that, and I didn't know that. Anyway, master plan, but he knew that I could paint that that I could start to break free and he was right. And I didn't realize what he was trying to do. But that painting, opened the door to all the other paintings that I do now, you know, had I not done that painting, I would not be here, because I would still be scared. I'd still be the girl in the flax and chords.

I feel like my art reflects that. So the painting, "Faith to be Healed," is about the woman who has the blood issue, right? And this is a story that I've always loved because she so desperately wanted to be healed, you know, and this image came to my mind, I was like, "Oh my gosh, I want to paint that, like right now," you know. And so I went into my studio, and I drew it and it just kind of like poured out. And as I was painting it, I imagined what she was feeling, you know, with every, like different color she'd come more and more alive and it was just like, I was connecting with her and I felt what she felt and I was like, "I know how you feel, because that's how I felt." She wanted to just fit in, in the crowd, you know, but that she didn't and she couldn't. And that's something that I felt like, I just wanted to find a place, I just wanted to have a place where I fit in, but I felt like I just didn't. This lady this is her story, she knew that through Christ, she could be healed. She knew that one touch and Christ's robe would heal her from the inside. The last thing that I painted was her hand touching Christ. I finished that coat of paint, and it was like, my heart was just whole.

I could see my life and I could see where I was going, what I wanted and what Christ could do for me. For her, it was the same thing. She knew what she wanted, she knew what Christ could do for her. She just had to reach out to Christ, she just had to touch him, you know, and it's the same here. I can't physically touch Christ. But I can reach out to him and I can like, dive into His Atonement and be healed.

I paint my experiences now or my, what I put on paper, and I'm not afraid of it anymore. Like I feel like where before I was terrified that I would be criticized and now I'm like, I hope that this painting can help somebody else feel the spirit. I hope that this painting can you know, bring somebody else to Christ. I hope that they can know that who they are is important. But more importantly, I hope that they can know that Heavenly Father is there watching over them and that they have a Savior. Like I just want them to like, emotionally connect with not just the painting but through the painting they can emotionally connect to Christ, and that they can understand what the atonement can do for them because the atonement isn't just for sins, it's for you know, heartaches and sorrows and insecurities and all of those little things that we carry every day. That's what the atonement is for and so I hope that people can come to Christ through my paintings.

KaRyn 31:50

That was Kate Lee. Kate is an artist if you didn't figure that out from her story, and that painting that she talks about "The Faith to be Healed" painting is beautiful and it's truly evocative of that moment. One of my favorites in all of scripture where the woman with the issue of blood reaches out to touch the hem of the Savior's garments, we're going to have a link to that painting and that first rendering that she did of flax and chords in our show notes at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel. You'll also love to see how Kate's gifts have evolved over time as she put her faith and her trust in God. I know that I can't possibly be alone when I say that I can relate to the self-doubt and lack of confidence that Kate described in her story. It is absolutely a truth that the world has a way of twisting us around so that we never know which way is up and which way is down, and we are definitely no longer recognizable to ourselves in our most divine form.

I'm so grateful that Kate had a wise and loving stake president who was willing to listen to the Spirit and ask a question that he didn't have to ask so that he could help start her on that spiritual path to understanding her worth. Those guides, the people that guide us, however they present themselves to us are absolutely a gift. I believe that they are a gift from our Heavenly Father. For me, it was a perfectly appointed therapist in just the right time and just the right place, who handed me the book "Believe in Christ" in a therapy session. I am forever changed because of that understanding that I got from reading that book. And I'm amazed that our Heavenly Father reaches us in whatever way he knows will most readily hear his voice. Whether it's a book or an art assignment, or a moment of surety in a hospital fountain that has burned itself into our memory, ready to be recalled when the earth dust gets too heavy. It makes me wonder where else have I seen his reaching hand filled with those reminders of my divine origin? What about you? What other places have you seen his hand show up to guide you to a new truth to help you remember who you are? I think we all have those moments if we really dig in and look for them.

As we've recorded and edited the stories this week, my heart has been pulled steadily back towards the story of Moses, that we learn about in the Pearl of Great Price. It's that moment in the first chapter of Moses, the book of Moses, when the Great Deceiver, Satan, tries his very best to shake one of God's most stalwart children. The Prophet Moses had just received his errand from the Lord in verse six of chapter one, and he had been filled with the Spirit of the Lord. And when that spirit withdrew taking with it the spectacular light and glory that had just moments before filled all of Moses, he was left with only whatever light the world provided, which we can all agree is not even close to comparable to God's light. And in that moment, Satan saw his chance, he stepped in ready to offer Moses some light to fill the void. And he says in verse 12, "Moses, son of man, worship me." But Moses, who had just recently been in the presence of real light, well, he can smell a counterfeit a mile away. So we asked Satan, "Who art thou? And where is the glory that I should worship thee?" And then just on the heels of that, he reminds Satan that he can judge between him and God: "For God said unto me, thou art after the similitude of mine only begotten." That knowledge of his divine identity was the key to what happens next.

He calls Satan out, and he tells them that he's not about to worship him. And then Satan gets grumpy as he does, and he tries one of his old tired tricks, which is to use his power of fear to impose obedience. And it seems to be working at first. Moses is shaky, and he has to call for backup. Emboldened by his knowledge of who God is to him and who he is to Christ, he starts to claim his power against the fear and he tells Satan to depart, and when he sees that Satan is trembling, he invokes the name of the Savior, the source of all love, all hope, and all true light and Satan must depart, but not without a whole lot of fanfare, no one ever said Satan wasn't dramatic. And Moses is left to lift his eyes to heaven in a holy gesture of, "What was that?" And his father, his real master sends a message. And we find that message in chapter one, verse 25 and 26. And calling upon the name of God, he held his glory again, for it was upon him, and he heard a voice saying, "Blessed art thou, Moses, for I the Almighty have chosen thee, and thou shalt be made stronger than many waters for they shall obey the command as if thou wert God, and low I am with thee, even unto the end of thy days, for thou shalt deliver my people from bondage, even Israel, my chosen."

The lesson I learned from Moses, and from Kate and from Christie is this: It's not always easy to remember who we are in moments of distress or fear. Satan's tactics may be old and they may be tired, but they've worked for eons, and he's not about to stop now. But we can take courage from the fact that despite the quiver in our voices, or the uncertainty in our stance, when we begin to step into our true identity as Sons and Daughters of God, and when we begin to call upon him with a sense of our true birthright, he will strengthen us to fulfill our mission. The first stroke of the paintbrush may be weak and unsure and full of panic as it was for Kate, but it will not stay that way. With each subsequent brushstroke, and every next moment of facing our demons, and each call for Satan to leave us alone. We will grow in confidence and surety until we to like Moses can lift our eyes to Heaven and know that we will be made stronger than many waters when the time comes for us to part our Red Seas.

KaRyn 38:02

That's it for this episode of "This is the Gospel." Thank you to my friends, Christie and Kate for sharing their stories and their strength and true selves with us. We'll have links to both of their beautiful creative work in our show notes for this episode at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel. That's also where you will find the transcript of this episode.

All of our stories on the podcast are true and accurate, as affirmed by our storytellers. And if you have a story to share about Living the Gospel, please call our pitch line and leave us a pitch. We often find many of our stories from the pitch line, and while we might not get back to you right away, if a story fits one of our upcoming themes, we will give you a call, and we'd love to hear how the Gospel has blessed your life. So give us a call at 515-519-6179 or you can find that number on our show notes and pitch your story in three minutes or less.

If you've loved having true stories from real people in your life, would you consider leaving us a review on iTunes and please tell all your friends and social networks how "This is the Gospel" has blessed your life. We read every single review and we truly appreciate your willingness to share the good stuff.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, that's 'K, a,' capital 'R,' 'y, n.' not Rose, with additional story producing and editing by Katie Lambert. It was scored, mixed and mastered by Mix at Six Studios and our executive producers Aaron Holstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and the other LDS living podcasts at LDSLiving.com/podcasts. Have a great week.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you're looking for an engaging and fun way to supplement your Come, Follow Me study of the Book of Mormon this year, the team at THIS IS THE GOSPEL has been working hard to help bring you The Sunday on Monday Study Group - a Deseret Bookshelf Plus Original weekly podcast with host Tammy Uzelac Hall and friends that digs into the scriptures with real stories, new insights, and a whole lot of humor.

In this bonus episode, we share Episode 2 of the Sunday on Monday Study Group podcast covering 1 Nephi 1-7. If you love it and want more, head on over to ldsliving.com/sundayonmonday to find extensive show notes, transcripts and links to bookshelf plus where the full series lives and then come back in two weeks for brand new episodes of THIS IS THE GOSPEL.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Tammy's Rockefeller-worthy Christmas tree doesn't bring the holiday spirit like she hopes but leads to a new take on Christmas with her blended family; A not-so-magical Christmas causes many of Paula's holiday plans to go awry but helps her reflect on the sacredness of Christ's birth; From gifts gone wrong to hospital holidays, four stories straight from our pitch line show how even the worst Christmas can be the best; Kevin reexamines his motivations to help reunite his family over the holidays after his pornography addiction leads his wife to ask for a divorce.

This episode of "This Is the Gospel" is sponsored by Light the World. If you're looking for a meaningful addition to your christ-centered Christmas traditions, the brand new short film "The Christ Child" at LighttheWorld.org is a beautiful way to go. In our little family, we have a special Christmas Eve dinner and I know that I will be showing this video as part of that celebration. Speaking of gathering with friends and family, Latter-day Saint wards and branches all over the world (that means your ward and my ward!) will be holding a special Christmas service this coming Sunday on December 22. Don't you think it would really light the world if we could invite everyone—neighbors, friends, family—to come celebrate the season with us and our temporarily beefed-up ward choirs??? I'm in and I hope you are too as we light the world together.

SHOW NOTES

To see pictures, and find links to things mentioned in this episode, go here.

To find out more about the themes we're developing for upcoming episodes, follow us @thisisthegospel_podcast on Instagram and Facebook :)

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay 0:00

Merry Christmas friends! Before we hop into our episode, we wanted to let you know that this is "This Is the Gospel" is taking a few weeks off to enjoy the holidays with our people. But don't worry, we'll be back in the new year. So keep an eye on us on Instagram @thisisthegospel_podcast because the pitch line will still be open. And we've got some exciting upcoming themes including an episode dedicated entirely to the new youth theme. So as those stories start rolling at your family gatherings, do not forget to share the stories from your holiday with us.

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. We're deep in the throes of the Christmas spirit around here. And as we barrel our way towards Christmas Eve planning our word Christmas socials, thinking about our ministry assignments, and trying desperately to learn how to wrap round present, we wanted to take a minute to tell the stories of Christmases past.

You may think our theme this week is a little . . . well, grim for holiday celebration episode. In fact, if you've ever heard of the term "schadenfreude," which is a German word that loosely translates to taking pleasure at someone else's pain, you may worry that listening to other people's stories about their worst Christmas would be like indulging in this terrible practice. But I promise we're no schadenfreuders! Is that a word? Schadenfreude-ers? Schadenfreuders? Well, this is "The Best Worst Christmas" episode.

And now I can hear you asking, "But KaRyn, what does that even mean? How can the worst Christmas also be the best Christmas?" Well, don't worry. Our seven storytellers today are going to show us exactly how that's done. So buckle up for "The Best Worst Christmas."

Our first story comes from Tammy who wanted what we all want at the beginning of a new adventure: magical firsts. Here's Tammy.

Tammy 2:00

I waited 34 years, eight months, and 14 days to get married. . . finally! I felt like I had totally been prepared to get married, but nothing prepared me for our very first Christmas together.

We had been married for five months when we celebrated the first Christmas, which was so exciting. I married a widower, and with that came two little darling girls so I became instant-mom overnight. So you can imagine my anticipation at celebrating Christmas as a family.

We went as a family and picked out the most beautiful Christmas tree and came home and decorated the house and then got out all the ornaments to decorate the tree. Now, I had had a few ornaments and a few things that I had collected over the years of being single but not really a lot so there wasn't much that I could contribute to the decorating festivities. So we used everything that the family had had before I joined them. And when we got everything out to decorate the tree, I had not anticipated the grief that I would experience.

Ornament after ornament, of course, I'm being a little dramatic. I would say a majority of the ornaments though, were decorated with my husband's name and his wife's name. And after 14 years of marriage, of course they would have ornaments together. And, of course, they would have collected ornaments, but I didn't even think that that would be a thing on Christmas morning. And so as we pulled each ornament out, and I sat on that couch, the girls would pull the ornaments out and go, "Oh look, Dad, remember when you and mom got this?" And I just sat there and it was every ornament they pulled out. My emotions just swelled and I got more and more emotional. And then I started crying on the couch. And I just was so sad and I didn't even think that I would be. And my husband looked at me and I tried to hold back the tears and I couldn't and we both recognized what a difficult Christmas this was going to be for both of us.

So I just did what any adult, responsible, mature woman would do and I had myself a full-blown adult tantrum. And the next day I went out and about my own tree and my own decorations. And I decorated that bad boy and made it the most beautiful thing that I'd ever seen. We put it in another room of the house. we affectionately refer to it now as the Rockefeller Center tree because it was a little bit audacious. It was gigantic, and the ornaments were big. And I did that thinking that that would make everything better. And it didn't because here's the reality and one thing I recognized is that we'd only been married five months, and their mom had only been gone for a year. And those years of firsts are rough. And it was a year first for all of us. Because I think what the Savior taught me in that moment was everybody was grieving. My girls and my husband were grieving the loss of a wife and a mom, and I was grieving the loss of the dream of being just someone's first choice, I guess, first wife. I would never get a year of firsts. I mean, I would have our first Christmas together, but it wouldn't be like a newlywed with no kids. It was just a different kind of first. And so I think I realized that we all were grieving, we all were sad.

We left the Christmas tree up as is and didn't change anything. And then when January came when we took the tree down, my sweet husband took all those ornaments and put them in a separate box. And we've just kept them and stowed them away until the girls grow up and then they can have those ornaments.

I just think it's so important for me to recognize that Christmas really is about Christ, and it certainly was that day. And throughout that holiday season, I feel like He kind of healed all of our hearts. Specifically mine, and I grew up and I recognize that while I didn't get what I hoped for, I definitely got what I wanted, which was a family and a husband who I adore. And I love being a wife and a mom, being a mom is harder than I thought it would be, but I do love it. And we've added two more little girls to the family and Christmas morning is glorious and the festivities are wonderful and we decorate and we have so much fun.

I loved the talk by Elder Wirthlin in October 2006, the year I got married, called "Sunday Will Come." And it just made me kind of think about how no matter how dark our Fridays are and how lost we feel, and that decorating day was a dark Friday for me, my Sunday did come and my heart healed. And everything turned out just wonderful.

KaRyn Lay 6:50

That was Tammy Uzelac Hall. And I'm excited to tell you that Tammy is the host of LDS Living's newest podcast the "Sunday on Monday" study group podcast. It's a "Come, Follow Me"-based scripture study, which is going to be available on Desert Bookshelf PLUS+ starting at the beginning of the new year. Tammy hosts a different group of women each week to talk about, expand on, and explore the gospel through the scriptures. And if you thought she was real here, you will not want to miss her take on the Book of Mormon.

You know, Tammy and I often chat about the highs and lows of step-parenting. And one thing I realized as we were listening to her story is that sometimes, the worst things become the best because of a little bit of empathy. When we open our hearts to even consider the perspective of those around us, like Tammy did with her stepchildren and even her new husband, well I think that opens the door for God to do His work in our hearts just like He did with her. It also doesn't hurt to have a healthy sense of humor about ourselves, which my friend Tammy has in spades.

Our next story comes from Paula, who found herself one Christmas unexpectedly removed from the holiday cheer that she so desperately wanted to be a part of. Here's Paula.

Paula 8:00

Growing up, Christmas was very magical for me. My grandparents would have a huge Christmas gathering for our family on Christmas Eve. When my husband went for the first time, he said it was really kind of like something off of a TV Christmas special. And that was probably my favorite part of Christmas.

When my kids came along, I wanted Christmas to feel as special and magical to them. We had six children, so it got kind of crazy at times. We just kind of would buckle up at the beginning of December and kind of just take it one thing at a time. There were dance recitals and music recitals and Christmas church socials. My husband always had a work Christmas party and both of our families live here in North Carolina so there were extended family gatherings on both sides. I always did kind of feel a little guilty as the Christmas time would come to a close and I would stop and think, "Oh, I've been so busy and haven't really stopped to take a few minutes to reflect like I wanted to." And it just seemed like it kind of came every year and you just kept going.

Christmas of 2002, we had our fifth child at that time, Benson. He was about 18 months old. He had kind of a rough year with some sicknesses. At the early part of December, he had bronchitis that kind of kept me out of the cold with him. We would stay home and there were several things that we missed right at the beginning of the month. You know it was disappointing, but we still had the rest of the month and I thought, "We'll just get him well and then everything will be fine."

But as time went on, it was one thing after another. There was an ice storm. Here in North Carolina when an ice storm hits, pretty much everything shuts down. Everyone goes to the grocery store and stocks up on bread, the bread gets gone really quick. So if you don't get there soon enough, you're out of luck. The bread's gone. And you kind of come home and then when the ice storm hits, you are pretty much house-bound.

I had planned a Young Women's Christmas party at our house that I was really excited about that year. And that just happened to fall during the ice storm so that was canceled. I was pretty disappointed about canceling that because I had put a lot of work into getting ready for it and was excited about having the girls over.

So after this ice storm, then Benson had a relapse from his bronchitis that kind of sent us back inside again. He was pretty sick. And then my husband usually has a work party that he and I would go to. The work party was something I looked forward to every year. It was a chance to get dressed up and have a date night in the middle of all the other stuff that was going on. But this year, I wasn't able to attend that either. There still were several things to look forward to in the rest of the month. But just before all those things happened, we all came down with a stomach bug. It started with one person and it was one of those things that would take a day or two before it hit the next person. And it just slowly went through our whole house. Our Christmas was not turning out very magical at all.

A large part of the month I felt like I spent at home alone with Benson, my youngest. We would sit there and rock with the lights turned down. We'd usually sing him Primary songs if I was getting him to sleep. But because it was Christmas time, I substituted those songs for Christmas carols. As I was alone and had that time to reflect and think about the things that really happened during the first Christmas, I realized that those Christmas carols made those events that happened over 2000 years ago come alive for me. I felt what a silent night it was in Bethlehem. I could almost see the bright stars in the sky and picture the beautiful virgin mother with her little baby and how precious and tender and mild he was. I felt a little bit of the wonder that the shepherds experienced they were visited by the heavenly messengers. And I could hear the songs and the sounds of the angels singing. It was during those times with my little baby boy that the birth of our Savior became so real to me. I felt like I was given a gift and a chance to go back to those many years ago and experience a little piece of it myself.

I think it's interesting that going back to when I was a little girl and the thing that made Christmas so magical to me was the music that I heard at my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve. And then this Christmas in 2002 I had such a special experience with Christmas for myself was also because of the music, that I realized that probably the thing that kept me home and caused me to miss a lot of Christmas that year was because my little boy was sick. But it was that same reason that calls me to have this special experience with the birth of our Savior.

KaRyn Lay 14:46

That was Paula.

I think we can all relate to those seasons in our lives, like Paula had, where God invites us to slow down and just be with Him. It might be hard initially to be very appreciative of that gift because it's easy to feel the deep disappointment of all that we've missed or the fear of disappointing those we love. But what I'm reminded of from Paula's story is that we can find the gift if we're willing to let go of the pressure of our own expectations and open our eyes to the offerings around us. And though I don't have a baby to rock to sleep on the dark nights before Christmas, I'm going to try harder to carve out some quiet time to just sit and dream and think about the things that matter most during this Christmas season.

Our next few stories came to us directly from our pitch line. We asked you to call in with your best worst Christmas stories, and you did. We got so many fun and touching submissions from gifts gone wrong to tragic decorations to difficult moments in your lives that somehow showed forth the power and goodness of God. Well, we got them all and here are a few of our favorites.

Patricia 15:53

Hi, my name is Patricia Henderson. My story begins when I was about 13 years old. I grew up in Northern California and I had, it was Christmas. And I had just received the greatest gift in my little brain and that was a Swatch watch. It was awesome. It was see-through and the band was colorful. It was awesome.

So, the day after Christmas, our family took a trip to Disneyland. And we had stayed at a hotel and I was very careful when I put my watch by my towel at the pool when we were swimming and I forgot my Swatch watch down by the pool at the hotel by Disneyland. So I rushed back down when I realized and, of course, it was gone. I was devastated. I went back to my room and just cried and cried and cried. And I've pleaded with the Lord, "Please Heavenly Father, please help me find my watch."

So the next day was the day we were to go to Disneyland. Disneyland that day was at full capacity. It was so busy, people everywhere. And my heart was heavy because I had lost my watch. And I was so devastated about it. So I went throughout the day kind of standing in line at a ride. And you know how the lines are, they go back and forth and back and forth with people and you just stand there. And you move a little ahead and then you stand there. And I look over on a boy's arm and I see a watch that looked just like mine. And I feel like the Spirit told me, "That's your watch, ask for it." And so I did. I got the courage. I wasn't that kind of teenager. I was very cool, I thought, and I didn't do things like that. But I did. I asked him I said, "Hey, where did you get that watch?" And he said, "Funny story, we staying in a hotel and it was down by the pool at the side of the pool and so I put it on." I said, "What hotel are you staying at?" And it was the same hotel. And I said to him, "I lost my watch down by the pool and that's my watch. I just got it for Christmas." And guess what? He gave it back to me. And I got my watch back on the busiest day of probably the whole year at Disneyland.

To me, that has been a miracle in my life. I was young, I was impressionable, and this was very important to me at that time and my prayer had been answered. I've often gone back to that story throughout my life and remember the undeniable power of prayer. Of the thousands of people at Disneyland that day, Heavenly Father led me to my watch. I've always felt like it was my special connection to heaven. Where this could have been the worst Christmas ever, it showed me the powerful lesson of how aware my Heavenly Father is of me. Thank you.

Suzi 19:07

Hi, my name is Suzi Hjorth. I grew up in Southern California and my grandparents had a Christmas tree farm in Vista. And every year, our family of nine would pile in the Suburban and go to grandma and grandpa's house and we could pick any tree we wanted on the lot. And it was a pretty magical time.

When I was about 12 or 13, my grandparents sold the farm. And for the first time, we had to go buy a tree at the store like normal people. And we all piled in the Suburban and went to the store and were quickly dismayed at the cost of Christmas trees. And we were on a fixed income and my mom finally looked at us and said, "Guys, you want more presence or a tree?" And we left the store without a tree.

But my mom isn't one to be messed with, and so she went out into the backyard and cut a branch off of our pine tree. And then she got a drill and she drilled holes anywhere that there wasn't something green coming out of it. And then she went and cut more branches and she stuck them in the holes and made her own Christmas tree for our family and we put it in the regular spot. But being 12 or 13 years old, I was mortified by this Christmas tree. It wasn't triangle-shaped. It wasn't neat and tidy. It didn't look like anyone else's Christmas tree. It was wild and unkempt. And I could have just died from the shame of that Christmas tree.

People would come to our house and say it was amazing and I would roll my eyes thinking they're just trying to make us feel better about ourselves but we are so lame. Years later, I look back and I realize that was the most beautiful Christmas tree ever. And every year now I make a wreath out of the pine branches that I go and cut off of the tree in the backyard. And every year my kids complain that it's a little too sloppy and it's not round and neat like all of the other people's Christmas wreaths. And it makes me happy and joyful that I've turned out a little something like my amazing mom. Thanks, bye.

Greg 21:15

Hi, my name is Greg Davis. One of my most painful Christmas memories, which is that when I was about 8 years old, all I really wanted was a football for Christmas. I was so excited to get it. And I saw that odd shape under the Christmas tree and thought for sure I knew what it was. And sure enough, I opened it up and it was a brand-new football. So what else do you do on Christmas Day when you get a football besides throw it across the room with your brothers? So I took this brand-new football, threw it across the room to my brother, and he threw it back to me. Only, I didn't catch it but it went off my fingertips and into the fireplace. And inside the fireplace, there was a hot nail sticking out of a board, and it punctured right down the heart of that ball within 30 seconds of getting my brand-new Christmas gift. I watched to sizzling there in the fireplace. Even when we pulled it out, it was not salvageable.

So was I upset? Yes. Did I cry? Probably. But what's amazing about that is even though it was so frustrating at the time, it's now one of my favorite Christmas stories. So crisis plus time equals laughter. We laugh about it now. And things that seem big in the moment aren't always as big as we make them out to be. That's my Christmas story.

Carissa 22:36

Hi, my name is Carissa Abrams. Christmas 2016 was a really hard time for our family. We had recently moved from St. Louis, Missouri, to Richmond, Virginia, for my husband's military training. And shortly after we arrived in Virginia, our baby boy was born 13 weeks early. To give you an idea of how early and how sick he was, he weighed two pounds exactly and just really, really sick. And it was hard because all of our friends were across the country in St. Louis and our closest family members lived in Idaho. It was just really isolating. One of the hardest things was that our daughters, who were six and seven at the time, couldn't hold him. He was too little and too small.

Fast forward to the Sunday before Christmas, I was talking to the missionaries in our ward. We had two sets of elders at the time. They could only talk to their parents twice a year on Mother's Day and on Christmas and I asked them if they were excited for Christmas and excited to talk to their families. The two elders I was talking to looked at each other and they looked a little sheepish. And they said, "Yes, we're really excited to talk to our families, but we're not sure how and when we're going to do that." And I realized that they didn't have any plans for Christmas. No one had invited them over. Immediately, I felt the Spirit whisper to me, "Carissa, you need to have them over to your house." I said, "No, I can't. I have, my son's in the hospital and my family's really struggling. It's a hard year, I just can't." And I felt the impression again so I invited them over.

And it was such a wonderful experience to have them. I actually called all four of their moms to set up the time for them to call. And one of the elder's mom said something that really touched my heart. She said, "I've been praying that someone would be taking care of my son on this mission because every time I get the opportunity, I take care of the missionaries and I see them at my house. So I knew that if I took care of these elders, that someone would take care of my son." And I realized that was just like my family situation. I couldn't take care of my son that year for Christmas. I couldn't see him or really do much for him. There were other women taking care of my son, but I could take care of other women's sons at Christmas.

And we had a great day and it was so healing for me to be able to care for those boys when their moms couldn't. And the real miracle came that night when we went to the hospital and my daughters were able to hold their little brother for the first time. So what should have been our hardest Christmas was our best.

KaRyn Lay 25:22

That was Patricia, Susie, Greg, and Carissa.

Thanks to everyone who submitted their best worst stories on our pitch line. We absolutely loved seeing how many of our friends are able to find the good stuff in the midst of the hard stuff so thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just to be clear, Patricia, I feel you. All I ever wanted was a Swatch watch, and I never got one so I feel a little bit jealous of you right now.

Our final story today of "The Best Worst Christmas" comes from Kevin, who after 15 years of marriage found himself and his family in very different places during the holiday. A quick note for those of you who might be listening with small children, this story openly discusses addiction. And while there's nothing to really worry about, you may want to preview it yourself before sharing. Here's Kevin.

Kevin 26:09

My worst Christmas actually started in August. It was an August that after many years of having to deal with me and honestly my pornography addiction, that my wife finally decided to take my three children and leave.

She told me that she was going to leave, and I totally understood. She had taken the time through much prayer, and I believe she even went to the temple and considered it. I knew that she needed to do this if that's what she felt, and I didn't blame her. I totally put all the blame upon myself.

She went out to her parents with my three children and it was extremely hard for me. I was absolutely devastated. Let's be honest, I was bawling my head off. It was terrible. I knew at that very moment that this was "do or die" for me. That I had a very, very serious decision to make in my life at this point. Either I make changes or I go into a very, very scary route, one that I did not want to go into.

So I decided at that point that, you know, if she's not there, who's pushing me to do things? Who's pushing me to make these changes? Well, it had to be me, and I knew it had to be me. And I was already starting the repentance process. I was meeting with my bishop regularly, I was going to addiction recovery meetings, and I started to see a therapist. And you know, I was doing these things to help me heal and a lot to try to get my family back. I really wanted my family back. That was, you know, a lot of my motivation at the time. It was if I, if I made these changes, my family will be okay. We're going to be back together. That was my motivation. It was good motivation, but it wasn't quite the right motivation.

It was looking like we were going to be just divorced. And when I talked to her, she'd be like, "Yeah, we're, I don't think this is going to work out." It was Thanksgiving of that year and I was preparing for them to come visit. And I was having a really hard time. I was, I was in a moment of deep depression, deep anxiety, deep, deep fears. They were going to be here for Thanksgiving for about a week, and I wanted the house to be perfect. I wanted there to be no reason for her to come and be like, "Oh, he's not changing." So I was doing things. I just, I got to a point where I couldn't do it. I was, I was cleaning and I couldn't do it. And I, the anxiety totally took over. I was sitting on my bed telling myself, "Kevin, you gotta get up, and you've got to clean more." And not being able to move. I picked up my phone and I called my best friend and then another good friend, to come give me a blessing. I was bawling my eyes out. Not understanding why, why I could not move. Why I could not do this simple task for my family. I went downstairs in preparation to get my blessing and I still could not stop bawling.

I got a phone call from my son Keagan. And he said, "Dad, I just wanted to talk to you. I needed to talk to you." Heavenly Father heard my prayers, and through Keagan, He answered them. Afterward, my wife told me that my son said he wanted to call me and she said, "No, he, you got to go clean your room first." And so he went in to clean this room and he came out and said, "No, Mom, I gotta call Dad." There's no doubt in my mind that, that was the Spirit telling him to call me.

It was most definitely a panic attack that I was experiencing. The brethren came and they gave me a blessing. And at that point, you know, I knew I just couldn't worry about how the house looked. I just had to worry about taking care of them when they're here. So they came and things went well. Things went very well. I was feeling really good thinking, you know, "Oh yeah, things are great. I'm gonna, we're gonna get back together, yeah, yeah." So afterward, I talked to my wife again and she's like, "No, no, we're still on the road to divorce here, Kevin." That hurt, you know, that was really hard for me to hear.

I had made some arrangements for me to be able to go out to my in-laws' where my wife and children were staying for Christmas. Before I'd go to my in-laws, I was going to visit my brother and sister in Utah. When that time came, I flew out with some really difficult flights. But you know, more than happy to do it just to see my family. Had like a Christmas dinner with my sister and her family. It was, it was a hard time. I was emotional because it was family, right? It was a family thing, but it wasn't because my family wasn't there. And so it was extremely difficult for me. And unfortunately, my sister had to feel that from me.

So my wife meets up with me and I transfer my belongings over to the van and we drive up to her parents. The kids are in the car and we're all just, you know, we're having a good time driving up. We get to my in-laws and, you know, I know that my in-laws love me. They're really amazing people. My mother-in-law, so very supporting, and as is my father-in-law. However, I do have to say I was really uneasy when I first got there. I was not sure how my father-in-law was feeling about me. And the reason I was uncomfortable was because I had actually told them why we were separated and called them before she came out there and had apologized to them. It's not an easy thing to talk about. There was a lot of shame involved, a lot of—I had hurt his little girl. Not physically, but emotionally, and it was painful. I'm sure it was painful for both of us. I know it was painful for my wife. So here I am in their home, feeling awkward with my family. But again, not truly with my family. So I'm here at Christmas with the hope of being able to fix things. So I'm, you know, serving I'm helping I'm doing all kinds of stuff. And I'm doing it because I love them but in all honesty, I also was doing it because I wanted them back.

Christmas Day came I, I honestly do not remember a whole lot about the day. My children made these wonderful gifts for me. They got me a drawing tablet because I like to draw. And inside, they wrote me a little note, you know, telling me that they love me and everything and it was wonderful. I mean, the morning felt nice. It did. I mean, it felt nice, but it's still hard because I knew that I was going to be leaving soon.

My wife and I, we had many conversations. I shared things about me, about my life, about my life experiences, and I'm not very good at sharing my life experiences. I'm very guarded about those things. I knew though that if I did not start opening up, that I would definitely lose her. She was still talking about divorce. And so, you know, I had to, I had to open up. I'm always willing to like to listen and I'll talk about things but I don't share. But I know that in a relationship, it's not just about talking but it's about sharing.

So we finished up Christmas and it was again time for me to leave. Things seemed like they were going well, but I felt like things weren't going to be still how I was hoping where we are gonna just reconnect. Everybody's gonna get back together. We were going to be a happy family. I did not feel that. So then as my brother picked me up to take me back to the airport, I was sitting reflecting. I was actually, a lot of, we talked about a lot of things. Um, I don't know if I talked to him about this or if this was just in my mind as he was talking, but it came to me that I was serving, I was trying to serve my wife with the expectation of her coming back to me. With the expectation that if I did all of these things, then she would come back to me. And I realized that no, that's not why I need to be doing this. But I need to be doing it just because I love her with no expectation of anything other than showing my love for her. It was very significant for me to realize this, to realize that, that I needed to do these things for love. And as I realized that, I also realized that my heart was changing.

Before this, I did not feel like I was worthy for Heavenly Father's love. I did not feel like I deserved His love. I know that Heavenly Father was there. I just didn't feel like I was important. I think at this point, I started to begin to love myself. I began, not, you know, not to this degree of, "Oh, yeah, I'm great." No, but I started to understand how Heavenly Father sees me. I still don't fully see how Heavenly Father sees me. But, you know, it was nice to be able to feel a glimpse and to see a glimpse of that. I think the really cool thing about this is I'm pretty sure that Heavenly Father has been trying to tell me that for years. I think that it's through the repentance process that I came to this understanding. And it wasn't necessarily that He told me this because I repented. It's that because I repented, I was now open for this. I was now ready to receive this information, this, this knowledge.

I came back home and it was confirmed she was still talking about divorce. But after the revelation, I believe I was more vested in my personal, mental, and spiritual and physical health. I really wanted to just be a better me. I started to do things that I had never done. I went and saw a doctor. I was starting to recognize the depression that I had and so I went and saw a doctor to get help with that and I continue to see a therapist. And I started to randomly send flowers to her, randomly sent her treats, I randomly just did things. I am, I would get flowers for her home, but there was something else to it.

So as I was starting to send these things, these random things, my wife calls me and thanks me for one of them. And she says to me, "Kevin, why did it take you this long to do this? Why didn't you do this while we were together?" And honestly, in my mind, I thought, "Well, I thought I had done some of this." I think that Heavenly Father was just opening up some more things, again, to be seen differently. But even that at that point, she still was like, "You know, but we're still on this road for divorce." And honestly, at that point, as much as I loved my family, I was okay. I was okay because I knew that I was going to be okay through the Savior. As long as I do what I need to do, as long as I keep Him in my life, as long as I let the Atonement work in my life, I would be okay. That doesn't mean that I still didn't have my struggles with depression and whatnot, but at least I knew that I will be okay.

I am happy to share that that spring, spring break, my family came home to visit. Near the end of that visit, my wife pulled me aside and she started listing off the pros and cons of being with me. That as she did this, I'm like, "Oh crap, this does not sound good for me." But apparently, the things that were pros to her were much more important than those cons because she told me at that point that she was, she was ready to try to make it work too again. That she was willing to give me another try. I know that that was not my, I did not change my wife, but that it was the Savior. It was the Spirit. There is no way that I caused that change. But I do know that the things that I would, was doing, helped, helped get us there.

We're together as of August. They came back and we've been together and we've been working through things. I do know that there's still work to be done as a family, for healing and for, for everything, but with the Lord's help and as long as we're open and willing to share and willing to do the things that we need to, our story will continue. It'll be rocky, but it will continue. I'm so very grateful that my wife had the courage to leave me. And that my Savior, while I felt so alone, made sure that I knew that I was not alone.

KaRyn Lay 42:38

That was Kevin. I am proud to say that Kevin is my brother. And I'm the sister he worried about at that Christmas dinner. But I want to say for the record, that we were just happy to be with him and high emotions are no big deal for the Lay family. So whenever any of you are ready for your breakdown, just come to our house. There's a place at the table. We're ready.

You know, it's hard for me to imagine that a Christmas separated from your partner and your children, a Christmas spent wondering if you'll ever find healing for something that seems like it's held you hostage for a really long time, could possibly become the best Christmas in your memory. But that's the thing about difficult experiences and memory. I heard recently on this other podcast that I love that we are scientifically wired to forget the feeling of the high emotions and pain that we experienced during stressful times in our lives. Otherwise, honestly, no one would ever have more than one baby or more than one family Christmas party. And while that science is helpful and explaining how our minds work, to give us courage to get back in the ring and keep fighting, I think the scriptures teach us how heaven helps our hearts to have that same courage.

One of my favorite scripture passages of all time is in the New Testament when Paul is writing to the Romans. In chapter eight, he's reassuring the disciples in Rome of the nature of Christ and the power of living His law. And he's teaching them how to become conquerors in the cause of Christianity, despite their setbacks and trials. And in verse 28, he says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose."

I think I love that verse because it explains how something that is the worst can possibly become the best in our hearts. I think it's really all about perspective. I think that's what Paul was trying to teach us. According to Paul, loving God and seeing ourselves in service to His purpose instead of whatever purpose we've dreamed up for ourselves, those are the only two requirements for all things to work together for our good. And things working together for good doesn't actually mean that the minute we choose faith and belief that our football will be resurrected from the fiery furnace, or our baby will miraculously be healed and home from the NICU in time for Christmas, or our fractured family will need less time to make their way back together. But what it does mean is that through our love and our commitment to His plan, we can see the light in the darkness. Our eyes will be opened, we'll be able to see our baby in the eyes of the homesick missionaries that we comfort and place of their own mothers. We'll recognize the gift of dark nights in a rocking chair while we miss the glitz of the holiday party. And we can feel the hope of our own connection to the Babe of Bethlehem at the exact same time that we feel disconnected from the people we love most. Our hearts are turned and turned again so that we can actually see and believe when Paul says in Romans chapter 8:31, "What shall we then say to these things? If God before us, who can be against us?"

Biology may sometimes lighten the mental load of past pain, but it is our Heavenly Father who lightens the spiritual load. And suddenly, what was worst is now and forever best. We say to these things, "God is with us. We are His. And because of Him, we are made new and whole."

That's it for this episode of "This Is the gospel." Thank you so much for joining us as we celebrate the beauty of Christmas together through stories. And thank you to Tammy and Paula and Suzi and Patricia and Greg and Carissa for sharing their stories. And a special thanks to my brother Kevin and his family for being unashamed of the brave path they have taken to healing.

It's probably not easy to have me and your family or your ward asking you to tell the stories for the greater good. So I'm truly grateful to everyone that I've hit up for stories.

And if you're as excited as we are for the "Sunday on Monday" study group podcast, it launches December 30th on Desert Bookshelf PLUS+, and we cannot wait for you to discover it. You can get a free trial of Desert Bookshelf PLUS+ for 30 days by going to deseretbook.com/thisisthegospel to check that podcast out and to see what we're all talking about. You're going to love it.

As we head into the short break for the Christmas season, just a reminder that we're still gathering your stories on upcoming themes. So follow us on Instagram and Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast to find out what's coming up and to keep connected with us during the break. If you have a great story about your experience living the gospel of Jesus Christ, well we want to hear from you on our pitch line. So leave us a three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179.

All of our stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. And this episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, and Sarah Blake with additional story producing and editing by Katie Lambert. 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. Have a beautiful, merry, wonderful best Christmas. See you in the new year.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Ken's professional future is uncertain until a unique series of dreams leads him down the right path; A challenging move to Fiji and a brush with dengue fever leave Craig and his young family desperate for a message from Heaven;. After the death of her colleague's son, Emily receives a unique message of hope for her grieving coworker.

This Episode of This Is The Gospel is sponsored by LIGHT THE WORLD. Join us as we #LightTheWorld this Christmas and sign up to get daily service prompts through text message or email. Text the word "LIGHT" to the number: 71234 or visit LighttheWorld.org. That's also where you'll find "The Christ Child", a brand new short film that New Testament scholars are calling the most historically accurate depiction of the Nativity ever filmed.

SHOW NOTES

To see pictures, and find links to things mentioned in this episode, go here.

To find out more about the themes we're developing for upcoming episodes, follow us @thisisthegospel_podcast on Instagram and Facebook :)

TRANSCRIPT

KaRyn Lay 0:05

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 and if you can't tell, I have a cold. But don't worry, you can catch it through the podcast so I think we're safe. And I hope you can still understand me. I'm not exactly sure where I got the dream book, probably in the discount section of Barnes and Noble where I got almost all of the books that were not textbooks in college. Or maybe it was a gift. But wherever it came from, it was a hit at parties. Someone would just mention the word dream in casual conversation and I'd immediately run to the shelves and come back armed with this book that was somewhere between a dictionary and a comic book. I think it was even called "The Dictionary of Dreams." So anyway, I'd have the person tell me all the specifics of their dream, every little detail, and then I would look up every symbol so that we could try to interpret the dream together. Did you dream your teeth were falling out? Well, according to the book on page 72, you are feeling insecure about some aspect of your life. There was a chicken in your dream? Page 193 says that something new and exciting is coming around the corner. Abraham Lincoln showed up fighting vampires in your last dream? You have a strong and honest character, or you don't and you need to clean something up. Like I said, hours and hours of party fun. Now I know what you're thinking, "Wow, I really want to come to one of KaRyn's riveting parties." But maybe you're thinking, "That's a load of psychobabble," as my dad would call it. And I have to agree on some level. As hokey as all of this dream stuff might sound, there is definitely precedent for dreams and their interpretation making an appearance as an important tool for revelation of truth. Lehi's dream ring any bells? Well, today we've got three stories about the way God sometimes uses our dreams to talk with us as we navigate our way through discipleship.

Our first story comes from Ken, whose experience with two revelatory dreams in his life helped to guide him in his career in two very different directions. Here's Ken.

Ken Alford 2:13

In the fall of 1978, I was wearing an ROTC uniform to the first day of class at Brigham Young University. It was a political science class, I still remember the classroom. And just as the class was ready to begin, we had no professor in the room. And the professor came running into class just seconds before the class began, had a big stack of books, dropped it on the desk, and we all expected he was going to begin class. Instead, he looked around the room, he zeroed in on my army cadet uniform and ran up to my desk and said, "It's just so good to see a uniform."

And so I said, "Well, why would you say that?"

And he said, "Well, I just retired, after 30 years, serving the country in the United States Army and now I'm a professor here at BYU."

And so I asked what was probably the dumbest question I could have asked. I said, "You can do that?" Well, obviously you could do that because he had done it. But he was very patient. He said, "Yes, I, I just retired just a week or two ago. And now I'm teaching here." And in the back of my head, I could hear the spirit say, "If you do it right, you can do this too." And that day in 1978, the seed was planted to come back and be a faculty member at Brigham Young University. So after that experience in that classroom, I finished my senior year, along the way got engaged to the cutest girl at the school, and she became my wife. That actually was quite a week. On Thursday, graduation week, I was commissioned in the army by my father. The following day, I graduated from Brigham Young University. Then five days later, I married my sweetheart over the altar in the Salt Lake temple. And then the following day, we left for Fort Harrison in Indianapolis and that began kind of a whirlwind experience in the army.

I had a very unusual military career. I never served in a division. I had the opportunity in my career to do lots of educational things. First, the army sent me for a master's degree. And then I taught computer science at West Point for four years. And then I had the opportunity after working in the Pentagon, to reapply to West Point and I was selected again, this time for a Ph.D. in computer science. And then I went back to West Point for four years. But while I was doing my Ph.D. program, I was kind of, quite frankly, a fish out of water because I had a political science background as an undergraduate. I had a Master's at that point, but I hadn't done anything really advanced in computer science. My Ph.D. dissertation was on large scale databases, and they had given me three years to finish what's—the average in our program was four and a half to five years—and they gave me the loving advice "Be dead or be done." And I decided I would rather be done than be dead so I was going to finish in three years. But what that meant was that you had to do your dissertation research in a very compressed manner. And at that time, large-scale database search engines, Google was brand new, they were on the cusp of what was happening and we were all trying to figure this out together. And so I reached a point in my research where I was kind of stuck. Because in the sciences and computer science included, you have to advance the field in order to get your Ph.D. You just can't report what others have done. I went up to talk to research lab personnel and other Ph.D.'s and they said, "Yeah, you're kind of stuck." And what happened was in December in January of 1999, and then into the winter of 2000, over a period of about three weeks, I had the most amazing experience. I would dream—it wasn't every night but it was most nights—I would dream the next portion of my research and my dissertation. And I would wake up in the morning and it had been handed to me. And I would get up and write it down and it would work!

One of the problems that I had was trying to figure out how to load quickly such large amounts of data. And the answer just came in a dream and I did it and it worked and it ran in just a fraction of the time of what I'd been doing. And it's cut weeks off my research, and it came from a dream. Other times, I would wake up and I knew exactly what to write, I knew exactly how to approach the problem. And it was just day after day after day, and it got to the point where it was exciting to go to bed because I couldn't wait to see what the next part of my dissertation was going to be. And then, as soon as I reached the point where I was kind of over the hurdle and now just needed to write it up, it stopped. It just stopped. It was just—I don't know what else call it—it was just a tender mercy. But it came at the exact right time, in the exact right amount. If I'd gotten the whole thing in one night, I would have been frustrated, I couldn't have remembered. But it became in just these doses that were perfect to help me finish my Ph.D. And I finished on time and went to West Point and taught as a Ph.D. professor. And I was not dead. The experience I had over that series of weeks, and from my perspective, it was just truly miraculous, it was just a wonderful, wonderful time. And exciting to see what was coming next because I was just sometimes as surprised as anyone else. And I remember my advisory Professor kept saying, "Where'd you get this from?" And I really didn't know how to answer the question. I couldn't say, "Well, I dreamed it last night." But it was one more confirmation kind of along the way that the thought I'd had, the impression I'd received in 1978, that If I do it right, I can return to BYU one day, was just kind of confirmed along the way.

So I was able to finish my Ph.D. on time. And really, quite honestly against all odds as my dissertation chair kept telling me, and then we went to West Point just a few weeks later and began four wonderful years there. Fast forward, in 2006, I went into the kitchen in our home in Virginia, and there was a Michael Buble, a song called "Home." And my wife and I started dancing in the kitchen. And I just turned to her at the end of that song after one of the lines and I said, "It's time." And she said, "It's time." It's time for us to start thinking about what's next. And so that's when we turned and began looking at applying to BYU to see if what had happened in 1978 we could bring it to fruition. Throughout my career, especially in Virginia, Brigham Young University used to send out to recruiters and they would talk about what you have to have to even apply to teach at BYU. And so I went to several of those meetings before I had my masters or before I had my Ph.D., and learned what the requirements were. And so I just kind of made sure I did all of those. I don't know if the folks in the church history and doctrine department had planned on having that requirement filled with a computer science degree who had published on databases and taught at the Military Academy, but it met the requirements of the law. 30 years as a full military career, I was approaching the 30-year mark. And it's a fairly traumatic thing when it's time to leave that military environment. It's similar, in many ways, to the kind of environment that the church provides, people just as wonderful I will say. There was never an opportunity in my entire career where the military ever tried to place me in a position where I had to consider whether or not I would compromise any of our values, or break the word of wisdom or anything else connected with the church. I worked with just a wonderful group of people.

But in the back of my mind, I wanted to pursue the opportunity with Brigham Young University. And so I had applied to teach religion. I had been teaching institute and seminary as a volunteer for over 20 years and wanted to do something different in retirement other than leadership or computer science. And what had happened is I was kind of in a box that I really didn't see the way out of because of timing. Brigham Young University is a wonderful place and has wonderful things. But one of the things it does very slowly is hiring. I've heard them described as glacial. So what was happening is I would not hear from Brigham Young University whether or not I had been hired until the window would have closed for me to submit my retirement papers in time to begin the fall semester at Brigham Young University should I actually be hired. We were trying to decide what to do. It was a matter of our daily prayer, my sweetheart and I were asking the Lord, you know, what's the way forward? What's the way out of this?

So I went to bed, and in the dreams of the night, and it's just as vivid today as when I had the dream—the details of this dream are just so vivid. I found myself viewing a meeting. It was in a small office, there were several individuals seated around a small little table and they were in the process I could see of counting votes. And so I listened in, I recognized two of the people in the room and knew exactly who they were. And they were counting votes and discussing a vote that had just taken place among the faculty. And I soon, very quickly realized that I was watching the hiring meeting where the faculty had voted on whether or not would be selected as the next faculty member. And the votes were tallied. And at the end of the meeting, the department chair said, "Well, then it's agreed. We will send forward Ken Alford's name to fill this position that we're looking for on the faculty." And they went around the room and everyone concurred with that decision. And then the meeting ended.

When I woke up, I recognized that that dream was just different. There was just a spiritual nature about it. And I was just absolutely comfortable that the time was now that I was to go ahead and "drop papers" as the army slang is, that I was to drop my retirement papers and to move forward in faith. Even though I hadn't heard from Brigham Young University yet that I was hired, I had absolutely no fear at all whatsoever. I talked with my wife, I said, here's what happened. She felt very good about it as well. And she said, "Are we going to do it?" I said, "We're going to do it." And about two days later, I turned in my papers and then several weeks later, it was actually about two months later, I got the call from the department chair. He confirmed what I had seen in the dream and I was hired to be a professor in church history and doctrine at Brigham Young University, in many ways, against all odds.

From the time we arrived and kind of signed in to the university, it's just felt like home. That was just so wonderful. And then after I arrived at Brigham Young University, several years later, someone just mentioned, just off the cuff, "Oh well I was on the hiring committee at the time you were hired." And it was one of the individuals that I had recognized in my dream. The other individual, I recognized, the department chair at the time, and when I saw the room where the meeting was held, I recognized the room from my dream. I recognize that these revelatory dreams that I'd been blessed with—and they're really a rare event. I'm in my mid-60s and it's happened a couple of times in my total life. But I recognize, I just see them as just tender mercies, just kindness that they came in times when I'd reached a point where I needed outside help. I needed information I didn't have or I needed an understanding that I didn't have. It's just so wonderful and reassuring to know that Heavenly Father knows who I am, He knows what I need, and He's just so willing to help. The revelatory dreams I've shared here that happened with my dissertation, and then also to know that it was okay to go ahead and retire and leave the army at that point. They all, even at the time, they just kind of seemed to fit with the thoughts that have been placed in my head and 1978. It just seemed to be kind of like the next piece and I was just getting a little nudge and it was just really fun to be on the receiving end.

KaRyn Lay 15:15

That was Ken Alford. Ken is one of the authors of a new book called "Dreams As Revelation." And he, along with Craig Mansell, whom we're going to hear from next and Mary Jane Widger have spent years researching and seeking to understand the nature of our dreams from a spiritual perspective. After he was done telling his story, I asked Ken a few questions about how dreams work in real life.

So, Ken, I have this reoccurring dream and it's where I'm in a station wagon. I'm in the front seat, but you know how they used to have those benches in the old station wagon?

Ken Alford 15:46

That face backward?

KaRyn Lay 15:47

Yeah. So I'm in the front seat, but there's no seat belt and I'm in the middle and there are no pedals. And I can't stop it and it's going over a cliff. So, that's not revelatory, right?

Ken Alford 15:58

I think not.

KaRyn Lay 15:59

Okay, okay, that gives me some peace. Actually, I don't think I've ever had a dream that is revelatory. I think God speaks to me in a totally different way. As the author of this book, you've done tons of research about dreams as a revelatory tool. What would you say to someone like me who's never had a dream that we can count as revelation?

Ken Alford 16:19

While researching this book, we learned very quickly that revelatory dreams are the exception and not the rule. And not everyone has them and that's okay. God speaks to us each individually in many different ways. And some people seem to be more prone to these, that God can speak to them this way. Other people have other ways of receiving information from the Holy Ghost. And it's an individual matter and there's nothing wrong with anyone if they haven't had these. And in fact, quite frankly, those who do have them, when they look at it objectively they're very rare. This is a very rare event over the course of your life.

KaRyn Lay 16:58

Yeah, because you said you'd had them a couple of times—smaller ones—before that dissertation "Bonanza," I don't know what else to call it. And then the big dream that helped you to know to "drop your papers" before you knew what was coming next.

Ken Alford 17:15

Very briefly, it's kinda like this. We think of the Apostle Paul as a visionary man and we talked about Paul's visions, the road to Damascus. But when you look at Paul's life, it is a very rare event, even in someone who is considered a visionary. Or Joseph Smith, we consider him as being so visionary, but if you look, most days are not attended by angels, most days are not accompanied by visions. And it's absolutely the same situation for even people that do experience occasional revelatory dreams. They are a rare and unique and wonderful opportunity, but they are not the only way God surely communicates with man.

KaRyn Lay 17:54

So what would your advice be to somebody who does have one of these dreams?

Ken Alford 17:59

First, I would just caution that you listen to the spirit to see if this is a revelatory dream. Because we don't want to convince ourselves that something that's occurred is something that it's not. It's also important to recognize that revelatory dreams fit within your stewardship. You won't receive dreams to direct others, you won't receive dreams to direct the church, and that this is something sacred from the Lord. And, for example, the dreams about my dissertation, I haven't really shared that much until now. But I felt the time was right to be able to do that.

KaRyn Lay 18:38

So seek counsel from our Father in heaven about how and when you share these things?

Ken Alford 18:42

I would say very much. You need to be comfortable and recognize that there's a time and a place for everything and every place is not the time to share everything.

KaRyn Lay 18:52

And just be grateful.

Ken Alford 18:54

Oh absolutely. Be grateful when it does occur, but be open to all of the ways that the Lord can speak to you.

KaRyn Lay 19:01

Thanks for sharing.

Ken Alford 19:02

Thank you.

KaRyn Lay 19:04

So, friends, there's the good news. Not every dream that you have about vampires and Abraham Lincoln under your bed is a revelation. And one thing that I really appreciate about Ken's book is that it contains some pretty well-researched guidelines that can help you and me as we try to determine whether our dream is revelatory, or just that late-night Philly cheesesteak coming back to haunt us. That actually happens to me. We're going to have an excerpt from that part of the book in our show notes because we all need a little bit of help figuring out what's real.

Another thing that I, as a storyteller, really love about this book is that it's essentially a collection of stories written down from church history, from Joseph Smith to modern-day prophets and apostles and visionary women, covering all the many ways that those dreams can appear. The dreams in their purposes and the stories are as varied as the people who experienced them. For instance, some dreams are warning dreams and some dreams are teaching dreams. Some are guiding like they were for Ken and some, like the one in the story we're about to hear from Craig, they just help us to know that we're exactly where we should be doing exactly what we should be doing.

Here's Craig.

Craig 20:13

Not all dreams are revelatory, but some are. We have Lehi's, and that dream led his family out of Jerusalem into the wilderness.

I had been led out of Ogden, Utah, into the wilderness and life was tough.

I grew up in the Ogden area, and I come from a small family farming community called Farr West. I worked on a 250 cow dairy herd all my life. I knew what hard work meant. I love the mountains. I love to be, you know, around my family, that was everything to me. Soon after my mission, once faced with the decision of a career, I knew I wanted to be a teacher because I love to see what the teacher does in the classroom and how ideas change people's lives. And coming off a mission, I wanted to teach religion. So if I could teach Latter-day Saint doctrines, concepts in history, I would love that. And I would love to be able to work with the youth of the church. And so I was fortunate enough to be hired at seminaries and institutes. I began teaching in the Ogden area, and I was now living my dream. I met the sweetheart of my dreams and we married, we had had two children, we were teaching seminary, life was grand. And then a phone call came.

Administrators from seminaries and institutes, we appreciate all this and, and then he says, "Craig, we have a new assignment for you if you choose to receive it."

I go, "A new assignment? I've only been in my assignment here for just six months and now you would like me to change it?

He says, "Yes. We need someone to teach English as a second language in Suva, Fiji and we need to know the answer within 24 hours." I decided whatever the Lord asked me to do—discipleship was very important in my life—and the Lord's hand would be in it. Others were inspired, we took time to pray about it, talk to our parents, they all said, "Don't go." And I turned to my wife and I said, "The hand of the Lord is in this. We are to go."

And she says, "I'll support you." And we call them back and in two months, we found herself as Suva, Fiji. Now our administrators might have known how much of a cultural shock this was going to be because they gave us a round trip airfare, meaning we could come home if this wasn't going to work out. My wife, Jana, had never lived outside of the United States, let alone hardly Utah. And while I served a mission and traveled a little bit, this was new to her and she was very homesick. And so she was suffering from a lot of things, trying to deal with the language, trying to figure out how to, you know, make meals in a different culture. She would have to take a bus downtown to the open market area, and she would have to learn a different money system, different kinds of vegetables she's looking at, and the meat was on the hoof, or it was live. And I remember she said to me I'm going to bring home dinner."

I said, "Great. What's that going to be?"

She says, "Chicken." She says, "And oh, by the way, the chicken will be live. You're gonna have to kill it."

And I go, "Okay, yeah."

She said, "You grew up on a farm, you'll know what to do about that."

I go, "Yeah, but my dad's not here to show me what to do." And the truth of the matter is, is what happened is the chicken got loose on the bus and was sort of flying around. A Fijian lady grabs the chicken by the neck, and ringed it and killed it right on the bus. And she came home and the chicken was dead. And she says, "I'm sorry the chicken lost its life on the bus." And that was our first experience having our meal. And I plucked the chicken, cleaned the chicken and we had chicken.

It wasn't long after when we were there, we all came down with a fever. We learned that was called Dengue fever, which is a mild form of malaria. We suffered through that. Our two children were suffering with heat rash because it was so hot. We were sweating profusely and the humanity was high, I mean, we were just going through all of this. We began to question, "Oh my gosh, what have we gotten ourselves into? We have no friends other than the new people we'd just been introduced to up at LDS Technical College—which is the school I was now asked to teach at. They call it a college, but it really is a high school. And it had forums 3, 4, 5, and six. I was called in to teach forms four and five. And my job was to be able to help the students successfully pass the British system school cert exams. If you don't pass the exam, you cannot go on to form five, which is the pre-course to go to a university. And both math and science and English, all those courses at the school were failing and the students were not being able to move forward to the university. And the church went out on a limb and built this school and Fiji, primarily for its members, so that they could further their education of their young people, the dreams of their parents. And what the school has become nicknamed was "The low down school." Low down because they're so low on their scores, they'll never get their students into university. So the church took action and brought three "pelongis," three of us white folks into this multicultural, diverse situation to bring the scores up. And I was then, teaching English as a second language, something I had really never been trained to do. And so that added to the stress and the difficulty of making the adjustment. My biggest fear was whether I would succeed because if you don't have 80% or above, you have failed and mom and dad will take them out and just put them on the plantation. And their life is pretty much you know, that's what it's going to be the rest of their life.

So there I was, day in day out, I was working through what I was doing with my work. I needed something. I needed some answer, that this was the Lord's well for me. And I prayed about that, I fasted about that and I received my answer. It was in the form of a dream.

I remember, the dream is if it was yesterday, it never leaves my mind. I was in my very classroom, in the building that I teach at. I remember I was teaching. But as I was teaching, my students started looking and pointing, and they could see something behind me that I couldn't see. And I turned around and there was someone standing in the air, and he was dressed in white and immense light. And no words were spoken and I could see his feet, and I could see the wounds hit his feet.

Now at that point, everything in the classroom had just dissolved. The students who were there, they weren't part of the dream anymore. But I remember seeing His feet and I bathed His feet in my tears. And I held them close. And I recall, He lifted me up to Him. And He then encircled me in His arms, His ever-loving arms, and He pulled me close. And He said to me, you can do this.

And I woke up. I woke up at that point, I sat straight up in bed. I thought I was going to be in the presence of the Savior when I woke up. And then I clearly understood it was a dream. I left our bedchamber and walked over into our of the room. I sat there, just stunned what had happened. And I knew that this was different, a different experience than I had ever had before, my first experience of a revelatory dream.

I could not journal it for the longest time. I couldn't bear to write it down in words because it was so sacred to me. And I was filled with this love that He had—my Savior—had shared with me. I was filled with this love that overcame all the obstacles that we had felt. I soon realized that I had transcended the pain and the obstacles that were still in front of us. But my wife had not because she was still suffering and I had now come above that suffering and could understand. She had noticed that something had happened to me. And I finally realized I must tell her about this dream. And so I sat her down and I shared it with her. And I said Jesus said, "We can do this." We can do this. And she says, "I knew something had happened to you. You've changed over the last couple of weeks." She says, "That makes all the difference to me, because if you can do this, then I can too." And it changed our life forever. We stayed three years. And what happened after the students had their exams, they went from the low 50-60 percentile that year, to 86%. And the following year 91%. And then the third year, they were up into the 94 percentile. We won the spelling bees and we won the drama events, we had the best yearbook competition. Every different way we could find to make English live in the lives of the students through lots of curricular activities with them. And it happened for science and for math and for English. When we left, they've never had to bring in a plunge again. And they've continued on and to this day, for 40 years. And from that experience in Fiji, every time the phone call comes, and they have come several of them. Jana, we've got another phone call. And she says, "Where are they asking us to go?" And I will tell her and she says, "Are we going to go?" I said, "We're going to go."

It comes back to the dream. You can do this. Not just Fiji, but it meant anything the Lord would ask me to do. I learned that God knew my thoughts and the intents of my heart that I wanted to be a disciple. But it was hard at that time. He knew my thoughts. I believe the Lord knew how to succor me and how to give me that answer. And for me, it was in a dream.

KaRyn Lay 33:50

That was Craig Mansell, one of the three authors of "Dreams As Revelation." That moment in Craig's dream when the Savior encircled him, is such a beautiful image. It makes me wish that I could remember a dream that I've had at some point in my life. I love to think that Heavenly Father can and does sometimes use our dreams just to comfort us, and in the process reveals something about ourselves that can help us move forward. For Craig and Jana, his wife, it was that reminder that our strength and sustaining power to complete our missions and callings here on Earth, doesn't have to come from us. Because when we are yoked with the Savior, embraced by him, we move together, and we have access to his power. And we can have hope in that kind of success so that when the phone rings next time, we're ready to heed the call and head wherever we're asked to go. Our final story comes from Emily who learned that while we can't receive revelation for another person, sometimes God does use our dreams to help us minister to one another.

Here's Emily.

Emily 34:50

When I came back to work full time, the man in the cubicle next to me became a really good friend. He had been hired by the same man who hired me. He was a mutual friend of ours who had died of cancer some years previous. And this colleague of mine had spoken at his funeral and we just were really close and had a great relationship. This colleague had a son, his only son, who had been introduced to drugs in elementary school and struggled with them for years and years. And finally, as parents they had to make him leave the home and have him try to figure out on his own what to do with his life. And he was figuring it out and had actually come home as an adult and was working on putting his life back together and making really good progress. So you can imagine how shocked they were when one day the sheriff showed up at their door and said that their son had died of an accidental drug overdose.

It was a terrible, terribly sad turn of affairs and my friend was devastated and sad, but faithful. And he spoke at his son's funeral, which I thought was incredibly courageous. When you're in that much pain and have that much grief, I just, I can't imagine having the strength to be able to speak at that funeral. But he wanted to tell his son's story. He wanted to be sure that people understood the whole picture, and how he knew that his son had been doing his best to return to the light.

So some months after the funeral, one night, I had a very vivid dream in which I dreamed of this young man who had died. The son of my colleague and it was really strange because I didn't ever meet him. I didn't know him at all, and I'm not even sure I knew what he looked like. But in my dream, I knew that that was who it was. And while I was watching him, a man came and put his arm around him and started walking with him and was sitting down with him, and clearly talking with him and working with him. And it was clear again to me that this man who was doing this was our mutual friend who had passed away, the man who had hired us. That it was that friend who was now working with my colleague's son on the other side of the veil. It's so interesting to think about how I recognized that it was our mutual friend who was helping this boy. I'm not even sure that I knew it from looking at him, although, you know, he was very familiar to me, of course, his face would have been very familiar to me. But it was almost more a feeling that I had, and it made so much sense to me, that it would be him because that was the kind of person that he was, that was the kind of friend he was. And I know he would have done anything he could have for my colleague. If he'd been here he would have. And so it made sense that he would continue to feel that way on the other side of the veil.

When I woke up from that dream, I felt so calm and clear. And it was so clear in my mind that what I had experienced a certainty about what I had seen, and a clarity of detail in that whole interaction. I didn't hear anything that was said, I'm not even conscious of there having been sound, just of being an observer of this interaction going on. But I do remember feeling an urgency to capture that while it was clear in my mind, so I could share it. The next day, I wrote a letter to my colleague who had since retired. When I thought about sharing the dream with my friend, my first thought was, "That's a little presumptious." Like "Who am I to be getting a dream for you?" Which is why when I wrote to him, I tried very hard to make it clear, "I don't know why but I just want you to know this is what happened." So a little nervous, just because it seemed unfair, in a way, that it should be me and not him that would get the dream. And I said, "I don't know why I was given this dream and not you. It seems very strange to me because I don't have any skin in the game. There's no reason for this to have come to me, except that I think Heavenly Father knew I would tell you about it, I would share it with you and that maybe it would mean more to you, or might be easier for you to believe it, if it came to somebody who just didn't really have a stake in this. Maybe you would have thought it was wishful-thinking if it had come to you, but I want you to know that this is what I dreamed, and this is what I saw. And I feel certain that our friend is taking care of your son on the other side." Just another really interesting message that people who cared about us here, continue to care about us. That we have people who have been in our lives who really are a lasting part of our eternal lives and our eternal progression. I have wondered why Heavenly Father gave me that dream. The more I have thought about it over the years, the more layers I uncover about what it really means to me and what I've learned from it. And it was a really rare occurrence. It's not a way that the Lord typically speaks to me. And I think part of it is because he knew that I had the kind of friendship with my colleague that I would share it with him. And then I would actually write it and share it in a form that he would keep that is sort of my form of communication is writing so that he knew it would be a record for my friend. It makes me want to listen to my friends more. Someone says, "I've been thinking about you," or some of those kinds of things, it makes me want to listen more to my own feelings. I've been thinking about somebody, I should tell them, I better let them know that means something. I don't always get it that clearly, as clearly as it came in that dream. Not that I think you should get revelation for other people or should plan on doing it, because I don't believe that but sometimes I just think He's just generous in that way. But it was a good reminder that the Lord really does want to communicate with me and with his children, all his children. It really helps me to know that there are things that I can learn that are specific for my development or for the help of people that I love, that the Lord really wants to help us and He'll do it through whatever avenue will get us the help that we need.

KaRyn Lay 43:02

That was Emily.

I love that Emily's experience with this dream was a personal call to action. It would have been really easy for her to brush it off, or even share that one time and call it good. She didn't. And as a friend of Emily's, I can attest to the fact that she often sends the scripture, the note, the poem at just the right moment. And that is the beauty of our relationship with revelatory experiences and ministering. They're meant to open a connection between our earthly existence and our heavenly one, to unite our spirits and our bodies for a brief moment so that we can be different forever. And so I take two lessons from Emily's story. First, to be the kind of disciple God can trust to write it down. And second, to be the kind of disciple God can trust to let the dream or the prompting or the ministering assignment, change me.

While I've never had anything more than anxiety dreams, like the one I mentioned to Ken. Our producer, Sarah, has had so many symbolic and revelatory dreams. In fact, she even shared one with us in Episode 12 of this podcast. It's the episode called "Love Is What Brings Us Together Today." So of course, I had to ask her thoughts on this theme. And first of all, she echoed what each of the storytellers says about the dreams that they've had that have revealed something. They said, "This dream felt different. Other dreams are mostly nonsense, but for some reason, this one felt special, and I knew it immediately." Sarah also shared this thought, "In our dreams, we are sort of uninhibited. We're free from some of the constructs and constraints of real life, like the laws of physics or the passage of time. But also, we're not always free from some of the social constructs or the limits that we put on our thinking. And I think that juxtaposition of the freedom of physical law and the ways that we're still tied to the earth, I think that's kind of where the rubber hits the road. The contrast opens us up to seeing our world in new ways or learning something that we didn't expect to. Messages can come through with different clarity because we're in a different kind of world. I personally love that idea that God can use this unique revelatory tool to cut through some of what I often call 'Earth dust.' 'Earth dust' is that feeling that settles on us little by little that lulls us into thinking that the ways of the world are the ways of God, or that who we are here right now is all we'll ever be. That earth dust can be so subtle and so insidious, and really detrimental to our spiritual growth. I can't help but think what a gift it is to have a dream, a moment of otherworldliness and connection with our heavenly parents through revelation. Which by the way, the word revelation comes from the Latin, 'to unveil to uncover or lay bare.' Through revelation, however it comes to us, we are laid bare as true children of God in those moments and we see ourselves, and our true nature as problem solvers, creators, teachers, just as Ken did. Or we see ourselves as worthy, capable and embraced by Christ as Craig did. And we see ourselves as true friends and trusted allies in the work of ministring as Emily did. Every one of those revelatory moments helps us to be better able to move forward in our discipleship, despite the inevitable accumulation of more and more Earth dust. Revelation is a clearing off, a starting over. Whether your moments of heavenly connection and uncovering come through dreams or one of the myriad other ways God uses spiritual gifts to communicate with us, what we can absolutely trust is that He is doing everything He can to reveal us and our true nature to ourselves so that we can win, so that we can come home to Him.

That's it for this episode of "This Is The Gospel." Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for putting up with my winter voice. And thank you to Ken, Craig, and Emily for sharing their stories and their faith. We'd also like to offer a special thanks to Dr. Mary Jane Woodger for helping us to make this episode happen. If you want more stories about dreams and revelation, well, you definitely need to check out the show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. We'll have a link to "Dreams As Revelation," as well as an excerpt about the different guiding principles that can help you determine if your dreams are a revelation, or indigestion.

We really appreciate those of you who've taken the time to leave a review on iTunes for this podcast. You're probably sick of me asking but, hey, I'm a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I know that if we don't ask, we don't receive. So if you haven't already told us in a review how you feel about our stories about the podcast, please take a minute to do that. It really does help more people find the show. All of our stories are true and accurate as a firm by our storytellers. If you have a great story about your experience living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, well we want to hear from you on the pitch line. Leave us a short three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179 and you can find out what themes we're working on right now by following us on Instagram and Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. This episode was produced by Sarah Blake with story producing and editing by me, KaRyn Lay, Katie Lambert, 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 other LDS Living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcast. Have a great week.

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Stories in this episode: Encouraging words at a low point in Matt's mission show how missionary work can be done beyond the veil. Melissa finally finds a way to share her testimony with her extended family after an unusual prompting. Amidst her son's battle with cancer, Cheryl finds angels sometimes come in the form of a kind neighbor with a red wagon. Brooke learns how angels can help us in ways we don't always anticipate after the unexpected passing of her mother.

This Episode of This Is The Gospel is sponsored by LIGHT THE WORLD. Join us as we #LightTheWorld this Christmas and sign up to get daily service prompts through text message or email. Text the word "LIGHT" to the number: 71234 or visit LighttheWorld.org. That's also where you'll find "The Christ Child", a brand new short film that New Testament scholars are calling the most historically accurate depiction of the Nativity ever filmed.

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TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn Lay

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.

Last year right around this time, I was lucky enough to attend the Tabernacle Choir's Christmas concert featuring Kristin Chenoweth. And even though our seats were far from fancy, my friend and I were literally going to sit in the nosebleed section of the conference center, you know those seats up at the very top that makes you feel just a little bit dizzy if you look down too quickly? I didn't even care. I am such a huge musical theater nerd that the thought of watching Glinda from Wicked singing with Mack Wilberg, it totally had me fangirling.

But then, just moments before we made it into the Conference Center to find our seats, I got a phone call from my mom telling me that my grandma, my nanny, was not doing well and was not expected to live through the night. And even though I knew this might be coming, I found myself unable to keep my emotions at bay. I cried all the way to my nosebleed seat. I wept through the first half of the concert. I ran out of tissues by intermission. And I really thought that the tears were not going to stop.

But as I sat there listening to that beautiful music, suddenly they did stop. Somehow, in the midst of my feelings of deep loss and sorrow, something else came over me. And I don't really know what else to call it, but it was a wave of comfort, of sweetness. It washed over me, and I was finally able to breathe again. The theme of that concert was "Angels among Us" and many of the songs were pointedly dedicated to the angels, both earthly and beyond, who point us towards the Christ child. It might seem strange to say this, but as the choir and sweet Sister Chenoweth, as I like to call her, sang about the work of angels to herald the birth of Jesus, it's like I could feel the angels there with me too, reminding me that heaven and earth are not that far removed from one another. And that I can take comfort in the birth and the life of One who restores the distance that does exist.

My nanny surprisingly rallied. And, in fact, she's still with us today. But I knew when we were thinking of story themes for this season, that I wanted to honor that moment in the conference center with stories about angels. About the angels in our lives, both earthly and heavenly, who continue the work of drawing us towards the Christ child. And today, we've got four stories that do just that.

Our first storyteller is Matt, who didn't realize he needed the help of angels until it was already in progress. Here's Matt.

Matt (2:47)

I was the first person in my family to be called on a mission that required the learning of the language. I had been called to serve in Nicaragua, Spanish speaking, and I didn't get any insight or counsel from my brother, for example, or my dad because they didn't know what it was like to learn a language.

I was naive at the time and for whatever reason, I thought that the gift of tongues was something that came more immediate. I was four days into my stay at the MTC, and I was thinking to myself, "Gosh, this is just not coming to me." With hindsight and perspective now, it's funny as I look back on that. That I would have thought that somehow four days in I'd be learning and understanding and being able to speak the language.

I was in a meeting one day and I had my head down, and I was discouraged. I was really discouraged. I was missing my, my house, my family, and having a difficult time with what I perceived to be the inability to learn Spanish. While in that frame of mind, and with my head down, I began to wonder, "Can I even do this? Is this worth it?" And I had a very clear message come into my mind. It was the voice of a man, nonaudible but almost felt audible. And he said, "Elder Hill, pick up your head. I need you to find my family." And I thought, "Wow." I knew it wasn't me because it wouldn't have been a thought that I would have had at the time. My thoughts were far distant from that thought. My thoughts were, "How do I get out of this? How do I go home?"

I wrote in my journal that night and thought nothing of it. I actually didn't even mention it that night. It wasn't until the next day it, almost as an afterthought, I wrote in parentheses, almost as like a P.S., "Oh yeah, by the way, while in a meeting the other day, I heard the voice of a man tell me to pick up my head because he was counting on me and needed me to find his family." And then I wrote, "I guess he's dead. I guess we'll have to see if I can find his family." And that was it.

You know, I didn't think much on this experience the rest of my stay there. I didn't even share the experience with anybody. Nobody in my district there at the MTC, I didn't write about it in any letters, it was something that just had taken place that day. And I thought, "Well, I guess I'll write a little bit about it. And we'll see at some point if that ever really translates to anything."

I know it sounds funny that I put this thought in parentheses almost as like a P.S. at the end of my journal entry, but there's a reason for that. I had an experience prior to my mission in a similar nature came while in the Logan temple one day. I had just received my mission call and I was going into be confirmed for the dead. And I close my eyes and out of nowhere, I felt the presence of my grandpa, who I have never met. My grandpa passed away when my dad was nearly turning 12 and so I've never met him. And so for me to have an experience where he's there, it seems like this would be something kind of out of that world, but it just felt so natural. I knew that it was my grandpa. And I'm not sure how I knew that. I could see him in my mind's eye. And I absolutely felt that it was him. I knew it was him. As I think back and reflect upon that, that experience, it seems odd, even to my mind, to consider and to think on that. How did I know it was him? I instantly knew. There wasn't a second guess. I close my eyes and there was my grandpa.

In fact, the very second I perceived his presence I said, "Hey gramps, how are you?" And his response to me was, "So Nicaragua, huh?" And he expressed how proud he was for my decision that I had made to go and to serve a mission. And I got the chills. And I immediately was just so, it was like a longing, like a, "I haven't seen you forever," kind of a feel. And that's the way it felt is, "Grandpa, how are you?" And I missed him, and I knew I had missed him. And I guess it was my spirit who knew him and who missed him. Because like I said, I had never met him before. So the idea of that sounds very strange that I may have known him. And he told me that he had come to tell me he was going down to prepare the hearts of people that I would come in contact with and to give me a bit of advice, and he gave me some advice. He told me that, "While on your mission, I want you to make sure that you are obedient to the mission rules." Because I will find protection and safety through my obedience. And then he said, "I want you to go home and I want you to tell your mother that you will be protected on your mission. She is worried about you, where you've been called to serve."

And I went home and I told my mom the experience and she broke down, and she had hid it really well. My mom had hid it, I had no idea that she was concerned and that she was worried about where I was going. She'd been looking up all about it that they had recently had a war not long prior, a civil war in the country. And I was pretty clueless. I was just excited to go. I had prepared for it and was excited and had no idea that my mom was beat up inside about this. And so I look back on that experience with my grandpa in the temple that day, I think in part it was maybe for me. But I think the bigger reason, I should say, for the experience was more for my mom to give her some peace of mind.

Three months later, I was walking out of a pueblo one day with my trainer, that the pueblo was Sunny Isidro. And as we were walking out of the pueblo, I looked over to the right at the very last house in this little pueblo. And I saw two little kids playing out front in the dirt. I kind of looked at him and then continued to walk forward. And I had an impression that we should go talk to that family. So I turned to my trainer and said, "Hey, do you mind if we go introduce yourself to them real fast?" He said, "Okay, yeah, let's do it." So we get into the house and my campaign starts to talk with the mom and she was knitting a little piece of clothing at the time and sitting in a rocking chair. And I, as I mentioned, I didn't speak very much Spanish. I had kind of suggested we'd come introduce ourselves here.

And, and one thing my dad, one bit of counsel he gave me before I serve my mission, he said, "You know, when you go into these homes, look at the walls and look at things that are on the walls. Typically, those are things that have meaning to people and comment on them." So, I made that a practice of mine and I noticed a picture on the wall of a police force. I walked over to the picture, and I looked at it, there was about 15 or 20 policemen in this picture. And as I was looking at the picture, there was a man who jumped out at me, and I didn't know why. With my limited abilities in Spanish, I said, "Quien es el?" Which meant, "Who is he?" And I pointed at him. And the mom as she was knitting, she put her head down, and she began to cry. She said, "He was my husband. And he was shot and killed this last year."

I immediately had the chills overtake my body and the hairs on my arms stood up. And I was so excited because I knew this, the Holy Ghost had confirmed to me this is that man's house. And I knew I had found the family. And so my reaction, I know that the normal, typical reaction in a scenario such as this would be to say, "Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry for your loss." But inside what I was feeling is just complete joy and excitement and I wanted to scream out, "Your husband is alive and he cares about you. And he wants you to be happy. And he spoke to me." I had no words, I couldn't speak Spanish. I knew I had no chance at articulating that thought, and I knew the moment wasn't right to express joy and to be excited. And so what I did is I said, "I'm sorry." But inside, if she could have seen my true emotions, my emotions were jumping for joy. And that's how I felt. I had forgotten about the words that I had come into my mind in the MTC, I'd forgotten all about it. It had been months and there I was, standing in that home and connection was very vivid and clear. This is my family.

We left that home. And I said to my campaign, my trainer, I said, "Elder, they're going to join the Church. They're going to accept the gospel. And he looked at me and he kind of chuckled, he says, "You know, I felt the same way. You know, when I was new, I felt the same way about everybody I came in contact with." And I left it at that. He was, he was getting close to going home and I didn't feel like the moment was right to share the experience I had had.

So a couple of weeks later, my trainer went home, and I was sent a new campaign. His name was Elder Wilson. Elder Wilson only had himself maybe three or four months out in the field as well. And so he came and said, "Hey, tell me about who we are teaching in the area." And I said, "Elder, I want to share an experience I had in the MTC a few months back." And he looked at me and he said, "Elder Hill, if we do nothing more together with the time that we have then help this family by giving them every opportunity to join the gospel, I believe our time together will have been a success. And I thanked him for that. And I said, "I agree." And he said, "We cannot and we will not give up on that family." And, oddly enough, I started to laugh and he looked at me, he said, "What are you laughing about?" And I said, "I'm laughing because of the idea and thought of you and I going out and trying to teach this gospel because you don't speak much Spanish and I speak far less." And we both just started to laugh as we envision what it might be like to receive the gospel in that way. And we realized that in there, it wasn't going to be much what we did. It was really going to come down to the Spirit testifying that whatever we were trying to say, was true. And we relied heavily upon the Spirit more so during that phase of my mission than any other just simply because of the fact we didn't have the benefit of our words to help express what we were trying to convey.

We didn't give up on that family. And a couple of months later, I was in the baptismal font watching as the mother entered the waters of baptism with tears coming down her face. And I was in a similar emotional state at the time and I was crying as well and we embraced. And again, I wanted so badly to tell her so much about her husband and how excited and happy he would be because I knew it. But, again, I didn't have the words in Spanish to express and convey that message.

The next day she received the gift of the Holy Ghost, her and her daughters. And it was fast Sunday and she bore her testimony. And in her testimony, she said, "Ever since my husband passed away, I have felt the yearning to come to this church. And I haven't known why. Now I know why." She said that this gospel, with the limited time she has spent in it and learned about it, has brought her so much peace and joy. And she is convinced that her husband is super happy with her and her daughters' decision.

Having the perspective of being a father myself, there isn't anything that I wouldn't do for my children. It connects me with the father who spoke with me in the MTC in a very real way now because I have the perspective that he has. I understand the, the longing that must be present there as he watches his family live their lives in his absence. It helps me to know that I would do the very same thing. That I would do anything in my power to help my family in any way possible. I didn't have the ability to ever have a full conversation with that family, to express to them what had happened to me and what their dad had come and told me. And I look back on that and maybe I'm grateful that I didn't have the words to express that, because maybe they joined the gospel more free willing of their own accord rather than feeling like they were doing it for their dad.

I don't think there's anything special about me, per se. The times where these experiences have happened. It has always been for the benefit of somebody else. And why I've been having the ability to have that happen or to be able to perceive those words and those thoughts, I don't know. But I do believe that our Heavenly Father does know how to reach us. And oftentimes I think the way He chooses to do that is different for all of us. The gospel of Jesus Christ is very important to those that are living and those that have passed on. I've learned that our Father allows those on the other side to be very much a part of the work that we are doing here. He allows my grandpa, as an example, to go and to go in advance of me and help prepare people for people I would meet. And every time I had somebody accept the gospel, I would always think back on my grandpa, and I would think, "Man, I'm grateful to have a grandpa that cares enough to be out here. And that cares to help me find these people."

KaRyn (19:59)

That was Matt.

Matt first shared his story with us on the pitch line and when we contacted him to develop it for the episode he, like so many others, wondered if this experience was too sacred to share. I get that. Telling our stories is a sacred business because our stories are powerful. And because of that, we have a duty and an obligation to seek counsel with the Lord about how we share our stories and when we share them.

I'm always humbled when the right place and time to share the story is on our podcast and even more humbled when someone realizes that the time is not right. I honor that. Ultimately, the choice to share a personal witness of a sacred experience is between the storyteller and the Spirit. In his own process of determining the timing to tell this story, Matt found this beautiful quote from Elder Holland's message entitled "For a Wise Purpose" from the January 1996 Ensign. In that message, Elder Holland said, quote:

"I believe we need to speak of and believe in and bear testimony of the ministry of angels more than we sometimes do. They constitute one of God's great methods of witnessing through the veil, and no document in all this world teaches that principle so clearly and so powerfully as does the Book of Mormon," end quote.

I really believe that our stories, when used for a wise purpose or gift to one another, testify of Jesus Christ and His power and His glory.

Our next story bearing witness of the ministry of angels comes from Melissa, who believed she was alone in her new faith until a unique heavenly message helped her see that she was anything but alone. Here's Melissa.

Melissa (21:41)

I grew up with the memory of my cousin. She was nine months old when she passed away. She actually passed away before I was even born. But I was named after her, my middle name was after her, and I missed her. And I couldn't figure out why, I didn't understand why I missed her so much. But I knew that I wish that she could be here.

That was until I learned about the plan of salvation. And I learned about how we live before we were born. I learned about how we had relationships, and we chose to come to this earth to be able to progress. It made sense that we had relationships because I felt this bond that I probably was best friends with my cousin. And she's probably been rooting for me this whole time. So I knew I had to be a part of that kind of truth.

But joining the Church wasn't really the easiest thing in the world. My mom wasn't very excited about it. Neither my mom or dad were excited about it. I think it was because I was 18 years old. I was just graduating from high school about to move away to a new world, a new life away from them. I was the oldest too so it's the first time any of us are going through it. So not only my throwing in moving away and experiencing life but also I threw in a new religion and a new way of life. And I think my mom at one time told me she just couldn't go with me. She couldn't follow where I was going. And it really broke her heart. And it was hard for me because I felt like I was going to truth and I was going closer to my Savior, and if anything, I was doing things so that way my family could be together forever. So going to Church was a little bit tough. As much as it's so exciting, and I felt so whole and connected to my Heavenly Father, my Savior, it was very lonely going to church.

I would walk into church and you see all these families, regardless of probably how hard it was to keep everybody reverent during sacrament, you can feel and tell the love that just embodied everybody and their families. And it was, I was so jealous to see that and be able to have those families sit together and be able to share these experiences together.

And don't get me wrong, I was pretty popular. Everybody wanted me to sit with them. They always wanted me to make sure I felt welcome and loved. And so definitely was not a lack of support from anybody. But it was hard when you go with friends when they go through the temple of the first time and you see this crowd of family at the luncheon afterwards. And you just see this, people from so many different sources, whether aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas, all there to support you in your decision and your journey spiritually. So I always felt super lonely and just really sad and longed for the day that I could be able to be sealed to somebody and be able to have family that I was able to share the gospel with.

Luckily, my husband took me on, and we have four beautiful children. And we've been sharing testimonies and stories and it's wonderful to have that. But again, it's so, it's just saddened because I wish that I can share it with my family, too.

About a couple years ago, I started hearing this voice in my head, "Ugh, aye mi hija!" And my grandmother has passed away 10 years ago. When I was a kid growing up, I did a lot, a lot of dumb things. And whenever she'd catch me doing something she'd be like, "Aye, mi hija!" And she was so disappointed in me for being, making just dumb choices. And I was hearing that sound, "Aye, mi hija!" And I knew what it was. "Aye, mi hija!" It was my grandmother. "Aye, mi hija!" Why have you done my work yet? Why have you not gotten me sealed to your grandfather yet? "Aye, mi hija!"

So I knew I had to get her work done. Because I was not gonna be here that was the rest of my life. So I start, I started working hard getting all of her work done. Through my grandparents, who had passed away, I was able to get all of their parents' work done and sealed. And so we got this nice lot of work done now for my family. And it was super exciting to be able to get all that stuff done.

Well, a couple of months ago, I was training for a marathon and I was on a 20-mile run that day. I had to leave at four in the morning. I was 10 miles into my run, and it was just a beautiful, was a beautiful day. The sun hadn't come out yet and the stars were shining. The area that I happened to be in was a gated community so there wasn't any streetlights. So the stars were able to even shine brighter, and it was a completely clear sky. So I looked up to the sky and it was just gorgeous. And I couldn't help but admire how beautiful this creation that God had given me, this earth that just naturally brings beauty. And then as I was running, I felt somebody running beside me. And I knew it was my grandmother. She started running beside me. And then, then someone became beside her. And on the other side, there was someone else that came beside, and all of a sudden I had a row of angels running beside me. And I knew It wasn't just angels. It was my family. It was my grandfathers, it was my cousin, it was my great-grandparents.

And they ran with me for a little bit. And so I started bearing my testimony, my soul, sharing up all the wonderful things that I have found by coming to know of the truth of the gospel, that I was able to share my testimony and able to share my experiences with my family.

Because of that experience, I have felt them so much more lately in my life. I even felt them actually on my marathon. I was running, and I was only at mile seven, and I felt them coming down and I was like, "Wait on guys, hold on, hold on. Appreciate you coming down. But I'm going to need your help around mile 18. Mile seven, I'm good, keeping good pace." And they did come at mile 18 and had to stay with me the whole entire time because I barely made it till mile 26.

I was reading in the Doctrine and Covenants when the Kirtland Temple was being dedicated. And it talks about how to leave this temple with angels having charge over us. It made me really connect that to my family, that the angels being charged over me are not just any random angels, they're my family. That loneliness has been able to to go away because I do have those family members that are part of the gospel. That were most likely there when I got sealed to my wonderful husband. That had been there when my sons have gotten baptized. That will continue to be there as we go through these great moments. I am so grateful to have that knowledge, to have those angels with me as I go forth.

KaRyn (30:24)

That was Melissa.

I love the image of her ancestors coming to run next to her. Every time I think about it, it reminds me of some kind of scene from the end of a movie. It's like, after the montage and there's this amazing music playing and then all of a sudden the heroine looks to her left and looks to her right and realizes that she is not alone. And honestly, couldn't we all use a little shove in the middle of a marathon from those who've already finished the race? I know I could.

Our next story is a short and sweet one from Cheryl whose angel came right to the front door. Here's Cheryl.

Cheryl (30:56)

My son Lincoln was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia, which is the cancer of the blood when he was 2-and-a-half years old. We also had a 1-year-old, Sawyer. So our hands were pretty full, and it was pretty devastating to get that diagnosis.

About six months later, we moved to Greenville, North Carolina, so my husband could do his residency program. Shortly after we moved to North Carolina, things got really hard for me. Lincoln was in a phase of his chemotherapy treatment that was really intense. And he was on these medications that made him super cranky and really agitated, particularly the steroids that were bad. They caused him to want to eat constantly. He ate so much, he retained so much water that he had what the doctors called moon face because his face got so big and round that it looked like the shape of a moon. On top of all that, I was pregnant and in my first trimester. I just remember being so nauseous and waking up with Lincoln, sometimes multiple times a night, to spoon-feed him chicken broccoli casserole and Pasta Roni, those are the two things he always wanted because he was so hungry. And it broke my heart to see him so uncomfortable and so miserable.

Meanwhile, Sawyer, his little brother, was almost two and I felt so guilty for the life that he'd been experiencing for the past several months. I felt so bad for him being stuck inside all the time with a sick brother and a sick mom day after day, and I did, I just didn't have the energy and I couldn't do much about it. I couldn't take him out and play with him and go to the park, anything like that. And we just moved to the area so I didn't know anybody so I didn't feel like I had friends or support to draw on at the time.

And I remember one day, I just hit an all-time low and had a bad night hadn't slept. And I just I picked up my phone, and I text my three sisters who live all across the country. And my text said something like, "This is awful. I can't do this anymore. Help." And I'm a very dramatic person so I knew that text would be alarming to them. But I was just so desperate.

Right after I send the text, my sister Wendy called, but I was busy and I couldn't answer the phone. So then about five minutes later, she called back again and that time I, I did answer. About a minute into our conversation, the doorbell rang. And I told my sister and she said, "Well, go answer the door." and I said, "I'm not answering the door. I am not expecting anyone. I don't know anyone here. My house is a mess. I look horrific. I'm not answering the door." And then she told me that for the past five minutes since she received my text, she'd been on her knees praying that someone would come help me because she couldn't. So I swallow my pride going out to the door, and standing there was my neighbor who lived down the street. And I had only met her once before that, maybe twice, just in passing. And she was there with her daughter who was in a red wagon. Carolyn told me she felt like she should just come see how I was doing and she wanted to know if Sawyer, my son who had been feeling particularly bad about neglecting, if he might want to go on a wagon ride with her daughter around the neighborhood.

It was such a simple act, such a simple gesture, but it meant the world to me. I started crying and I told her that I felt like she was an angel and that God had sent her and she was an answer to prayer. And I'm sure she thought I was a little bit crazy but in that moment, I was just so grateful. And I really, truly felt like she was an angel that had been sent. I knew my Heavenly Father was aware of me and I felt His love so strongly. It just washed over me. I knew He'd heard my sister's prayer, and I felt His love and His awareness so strongly that I just, I couldn't deny it, and I still can't deny it today.

Though nothing really changed drastically after that day, Lincoln and I continued to feel sick and struggle together. But I had received a witness that God was aware of me in my darkest hour, and He sent my neighbor who I barely knew as a ministering angel to offer the perfect act of service. And that was just enough to keep me going.

Lincoln continued to have chemo treatments for another three years but he made it through and he's cured. He's in remission now and he's been cancer-free for the past four years. And I'm just so grateful.

I often look back on that experience with Carolyn and it just reminds me that we can get through hard times. And we can be angels for other people just like she was for me. So we can lift each other, and we can be the hands of heaven here on earth.

KaRyn (36:52)

That was Cheryl.

Do you ever worry that what you're offering is weird or wrong or might offend somebody? I know I do. And I think that sometimes that stops me from showing up for people in their time of need. But Cheryl's story is exactly what I needed this week to kick my shame to the curb. Ministering is all about trusting that who you are and how you move in the world is already enough for the people you've been paired with or prompted toward. And that God will transform your offer of a red wagon ride into exactly what your neighbor needs. I also think it helps me to remember that the work of heaven and angels is not limited to those and other realms. We get to be a part of that work, too. And what a privilege that is.

Our final story today comes from Brooke and if you've been silently listening to today's stories, wondering where your angels are, well, this one's for you. Here's Brooke.

Brooke (37:46)

I was on a conference call with Whitney and Soni, the two girls that I sing with. And we were discussing our upcoming tours and I got a phone call from my mom. My mom was diagnosed with the flu the day before, so I thought, "Oh, she's just calling to tell me how she's feeling." And she kept calling. She'd call hang-up, call hang-up, which is normal for my mom. That's, that's what my mom does until you answer the phone. So I finally texted her and just said, "Hey, I am on a conference call, I'll call you back as soon as I'm done." And I sent this text and as soon as I sent the text, she called again. And I thought, "Okay, that, that's not like my mom." It was my dad calling from my mom's phone and told me that my mom had stopped breathing and the ambulance was on their way and to just hang tight until they got to a hospital. And then he would call us from there. But I live fairly close to my dad so I told him I would just jump in the car and just run over and just be with him until they get that figured out. And I remember driving and just praying, "Just let her be okay." I just assumed she'd be okay. It's the flu, right? It's 2018, it's not 1740, so I felt okay about it but obviously a little nervous.

When I got there, there was two or three ambulances there and a police car and they were rolling out a stretcher, the stretcher was empty. And I thought, "Oh, maybe she's okay." So I asked them quickly, "What happened? Where's my mom?" They said, "Well, are you Brooke? Just go inside." And my dad was standing there with the most blank look and said, "There's nothing they can do. They couldn't do anything." And I just froze. I couldn't believe this was actually happening. And I even remember kind of yelling at the, yelling at the EMTs saying, "How long did you try? You didn't try long enough." They just kind of stared at me. And I just I couldn't believe that I had lost my mom to the flu. You know, she'd been at my house three days before just loving on my kids and she was, she was gone.

My mom was very full of life. I know that sounds cliche, but I don't know how else to describe her. Everything she did was so big: her actions were big her, her voice was loud, just her hair was big. She even would had this whistle. And, you know, it was interesting no matter where you were, what event you were at, what school play you were at, you knew where my mom was sitting because of this whistle that would just kill everybody's ears. That was her signature thing.

She was the person that would walk up to strangers, even like homeless people, and hug them and talk to them. Sometimes the, the stranger's face would have a look of confusion like, "Who is this lady touching me and why is she touching me?" But a lot of times you'd almost see their faces just kind of melt just, "I just I really needed that." Even though she's a stranger, you know.

We found out all these really great stories about her after. She would visit her Young Women with flowers when their sister moved away to college because she knew that this little girl was struggling with her sister leaving. Or, she'd show up at lacrosse games or she did tea parties for my kids. She was a grandma that came to things and showed up. I think we definitely took it for granted.

I don't know if you're ever really done grieving. I think the first year was fog and a lot of drowning. And I think that's typical. Second year, maybe it's a little bit easier. That first year was horrible. I still have a lot of triggers. It sounds so funny, but she loved "Downton Abbey." She thought she was British. We always laugh like, "You're not British, Mom." But she thought she was British so she loved "Downton Abbey." It was her ringtone on my phone. And after she passed away, you know, the show is not on anymore and I was sitting in the movie theater just a couple months ago and the preview for the new movie coming out came up. The second I heard the music, it was just, just waterworks. You know, I don't expect to be sitting in a movie theater crying about a song that represents my mom. There's triggers everywhere and I just, all the firsts you expect, but the little things are hard. I don't even know how to tell somebody how to get through this other than I just know you become a part of this crazy club of people grieving lost ones. And so there are days where you feel really alone and days that you know you're not.

One of the things that comforted me after I lost her was that I knew angels existed and I knew that they were very present in our lives. I have had experiences with that before. I have felt my great-grandmother with me through really hard times. My great-grandmother was a singer and there was no other singers in my family. And so I've always felt connected to her. I've never met her, but I felt her presence. I don't know how to explain the feeling. I don't see her or hear her. I just know she's there. Even times before I'm going to go on stage and I'm nervous I felt my great-grandma with me. You know, she's a singer so she knows what it's like to to step on a stage and be nervous.

During the birth of my last baby, it was a really traumatic experience where we almost lost her, and it was bad enough that even my life was in danger. I was, I had to be sedated for that one. Waking up and kind of slowly opening my eyes, I could see my husband and I could see my mom in the room, but the room felt full of people. And I just kind of sat there thinking, "Who else is here?" And the room was just filled with love, a bigger love than can be contained in just the two people that were there. And, even from that moment, I've always felt like my youngest, Claire, belongs to a collective group of people. I just get to be her, her mom here.

Having had those experiences, I had an expectation that I would have the same experiences with my mom. And my patriarchal blessing even talks about angels and that the presence of my loved ones will be very important to me in my life. I expected my mom to come and visit me just the way I had been visited in the past. I thought that she won't feel very far away. She'll always feel close. What added to that belief was that a couple years before my mom passed away, I had a very strong impression to study angels, not just because they were mentioned in my patriarchal blessing, but I was really intrigued with the idea of them. So I studied scriptures and talks and books and I went to the temple, they're talked about all over in the temple. I would read experiences that people have had, and I just really gained a huge testimony in their existence and in their roles in our lives. All of these things led me to believe and to expect that my mom would come to me in certain ways, and I will feel her presence on a regular basis. But I haven't.

I haven't felt my mom since she's passed. It's been a year and a half, and I had all these expectations. Maybe when I was, after the year when I could see more clearly or I wasn't in this fog or during some big life thing that would happen: my daughter's baptism, during my dad getting remarried. Would I feel her that week? And I haven't, I haven't felt her.

That's been difficult. It's been hard because I have expectations. And I know what it feels like and I know it's possible. So why, why not my mom? Why my great-grandma, why people that I don't know? Why can I feel angels but not my mom? Why does it talk about my patriarchal blessing how important they'll be in my life, but the one who's the most important feels silent?

So the questioning did come to a point where I, I was angry. And it's interesting because, throughout the entire process, I never felt angry at God. I know death is a part of this experience. I saw His hand in all the service and all the love that we were given. I even looked back and saw all the ways He actually prepared us for her passing. I was never mad at God. I really wasn't, until one night I really wanted to talk to my mom, and I don't even remember, honestly, what it was about. And I remember praying out loud and I was in the car driving and I was praying out loud. And I asked him, "Why? Why have you let me have all these experiences and gained such a testimony of angels and their existence and their involvement, how close they are. And I've been led to so much study and pondering and praying about the subject of angels. Why have you not let me feel my mom?" And it was a really clear moment, a really clear answer that came to me and it's, I don't have a lot of those in my life. I have seen the Lord's hand and the Spirit has spoken to me, but this is one of those clear like, "I hear the words. I'm sitting on your shoulder in your ear." And He said, "I had to come to that knowledge, I had to study all of this so that you would know she was there even when you don't feel her."

Everything kind of turned at that point, my vision shifted a little bit. I started to look for my mom in different ways. It's interesting because I still, still haven't felt my mom the way I felt my great-grandma. But I see my mom through the actions of other people. Right when she died, a sweet friend did a painting for me. And she said, "I felt like somebody took my hand and the paintbrush and painted this," and had a painting out in 10 minutes. I wish like everybody can see this painting. It's a painting of an angel, which she didn't know that that's my love. You know, I have an angel wall in my office and the colors that she used were all the same colors on my wall and the angel looked just like my mom. Big hair, you know, and she's never met my mom.

It was just really interesting that I thought, "Oh, that's my mom. She knows I love angels, of course." In fact, even at Christmas time, this gal in my neighborhood, she had a very strong impression for two weeks, "You need to buy Brooke an angel." And she kept saying, "Why? I don't even know Brooke that well. That's gonna look so weird." And so she's like, "I'll just buy her a candle or something like that." She bought something else. But it kept coming, "No, buy her an angel. Buy her an angel." So she's like, "I finally just bought you an angel. I'm so, I don't even know why." She doesn't know that I have this love of angels.

You know, I got a letter, this beautiful letter from a friend that said, "Was listening to your song and your mom was there with me and this is what she told me and this is what she wants me to tell you." And it was a really beautiful moment for my friend that became a really beautiful moment for me. We were both blessed from this, you know, and that's how my mom operates. That's what she, that totally sounds like my mom. My mom works in heaven the same way she works on Earth. She works with other people a lot and I, it's interesting because I think she'll do something to bless somebody who will then turn and tell me so that we kind of both get blessed. So it's like a two birds with one stone kind of a thing you know, she just, she knows she can bless two people with one action. So that's what she's gonna do. And it makes sense to me that she's going to do the same things in heaven that she did here on Earth. They don't change, you know.

I still want to feel her all the time. I think I'll always miss her and there will always be moments where I'm just kind of, maybe angry is not the right word, but sad. Sad she's not here with me. It's been interesting to see the compassion that's grown and how much I've learned to lean on Heavenly Father instead. Like, I had an experience one night. I was praying and telling Heavenly Father I was frustrated I couldn't talk to my mom about my, my mothering. My mom was really good at telling me I was doing a good job. I can't talk to my friends about that because we're all, everybody's in the trenches together. We all think we're a horrible mom. All of us think we're ruining our kids. But my mom was out of the trenches and could tell me from a different perspective I was doing okay. And I remember praying and saying, "I miss my mom being here to tell me I'm doing a good job. And the Spirit said, "Well, I can tell you you're doing a good job." I thought, "Oh, of course, why don't I just go to Christ? Why don't I tell Him everything?" And honestly, it's been interesting because I've never before relied so much on Him, even as being a connection to my mom. I can't tell you how often I've said in a prayer, "Will you please tell my mom I love her?" And how often the Spirit has said to me, "She knows."

So even though I can't feel my mom, or even sometimes I don't know if she hears what I was saying, He does. Christ knows how I feel. He knows what I'm saying. He hears my thoughts. And if there's something that my mom needs to know, He'll make sure it happens. And I trust that.

KaRyn (52:36)

That was Brooke.

Brooke Stone is one-third of the music group Mercy River, and she first shared part of this story at Time Out for Women where I heard it and realized that it had to be a part of this episode.

We celebrate heavenly visitation when it happens because in these latter days, we do believe in angels. We believe in a realm beyond this one, but we also believe as with any friends form of divine communication, that heavenly visitation is only one way that God reaches us in our need. And just like Brooke said, how we receive that revelation is no indication of our goodness or lack of goodness. We may long for and work for and study and seek for angels only to find that God needs us to hear His message a different way at a different time.

Like Brooke, I don't understand the whys of revelation. I don't understand why one time it's an angel and the next time it's a feeling and the next time it's silence. But I do know that someday it's going to all make sense. And I hold onto that day with hope that I'll rejoice in my heavenly, "Aha," moment.

One thing that is clear from our stories today is that the work of angels is always beautifully related to the work of discipleship. As I was sitting in the Conference Center listening to what felt like a choir of angels heralding the birth of the Savior with those tears for my grandma falling freely, I heard the lyrics from the chorus of the song "Angels among Us," and I felt something shifted in me. I felt a new understanding beginning. Here's a little piece of that song for you.

Oh, I believe there are Angels Among Us,

Sent down to us from somewhere up above.

They come to you and me in our darkest hours

To show us how to live

To teach us how to give

To guide us with a light of love.

That guiding light of love that the song speaks about? Well, that light was the guiding force for Matt and the families he taught as a missionary. It was the homing beacon for Melissa as she found her place in the family of Christ. It was the knock at the door for Cheryl who just needed to know that she was known. And it was the gentle reminder for Brooke that even in her grief and her loss and her longing for comfort, He can be the one to tell her she's getting it right, that she's not alone, and that she's got back up. Our angels, whether we feel them or not, will always show up. And they will always point us towards the true light of all love, our Savior, Jesus Christ. So as we feel inspired to, as Elder Holland suggested speak of and believe in and bear testimony of the ministry of angels more than we sometimes do, we can trust that those inspired expressions will also bear witness of Him and His holy life and His holy work.

That's it for this episode of This Is the Gospel. Thanks for joining us today. And thank you to Matt, Melissa, Cheryl, and Brooke for allowing us to help tell their stories of divine communication.

We'll have so many good things in the show notes for this episode, you guys, so many good things. You really, really want to go there. We're going to have a transcript of the episode along with some pictures and we will have a link to the Tabernacle Choir's Angels among Us album, which is so beautiful and it has that song that we played from Kristin Chenoweth and the choir.

You can also follow us at @thisisthegospel_podcast on Instagram and Facebook to get more about the podcasts and about this episode. All of our stories on the podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers.

If you have a great story about your experience living the gospel of Jesus Christ, well guess what? we have a pitch line and we want to hear from you. Leave us a short three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179. We're still looking for some stories for season two, so don't hesitate to call and leave that message. You can find out what themes we're working on right now by following us on Instagram and Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast.

Don't forget to tell us about your experience with this podcast. Take the time to leave a review on the Apple podcast app or on Bookshelf PLUS+ app from Deseret Book. We really do appreciate it. We love to hear your thoughts about the episodes, about the podcast as a whole, and it really does help more people to find our stories.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story producing and editing by Katie Lambert 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. Have a beautiful week.

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Stories in this episode: Jim feels conflicted about receiving a life-saving kidney until three words change his perspective; A surprise friendship leads Arthur to see the connection we have with others is far more precious than material possessions.

SHOW NOTES

Today's episode was sponsored by TOFW.

To see pictures, and find links to things mentioned in this episode, go here.

To find out more about the themes we're developing for upcoming episodes, follow us @thisisthegospel_podcast on Instagram and Facebook :)

TRANSCRIPT:

KaRyn Lay: Hey friends, I wanted to take a quick minute to say thank you. Thank you for sending us your stories on the pitch line. thanks for sharing the stories with your friends and your family and thank you for finding us on Instagram and Facebook. I know social media is a mixed bag and sometimes you really need to disconnect for a few minutes, or for a few days, or for a few weeks just to get your bearings. But social media also gives us the unique opportunity to have conversations about these stories that we're hearing together and we love talking with you. We love hearing what you loved about the episodes and how they've affected you. And we love the opportunity to talk back. So if you're on Instagram or Facebook, you can find us @thisisthegospel_podcast. We promise it'll add good things to your day. Now, let's get on with the stories.

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. Annyeonghaseyo! Okay, I know that sounded like I knew Korean really, really well. But I don't really speak any other language besides English. I tried to learn Spanish in high school and American Sign Language in college and I really tried to learn Korean when I lived in South Korea for two years working. But unfortunately, and despite my best efforts, it turns out, I'm pretty useless as a second language learner. Besides being able to communicate the kind of food that I want, which is very important, and where I'd like the taxi to turn, the only real words that I got down in all those years of praying for the gift of tongues, were Hello, "annyeong." And of course, thank you, "Gracias," "Dangsinboda." I think it's interesting that whether we're a toddler or 30-year-old, or it's our first language or 21st, words of gratitude are some of the very first that we learn. Offering gratitude and communicating gratitude are such a huge part of both our social life and our spiritual life. But "thank you" is only one part of the gratitude equation and today, what happens after "thank you" is the focus of the two stories that we have for this episode. Our first story comes from Jim, whose unique experience with gratitude helped give him a glimpse into what it might feel like when he comes face to face with his Savior. We recorded Jim's story remotely from his home in Pennsylvania, so you might notice a slight difference in the recording quality. Here's Jim

Jim (2:26) It had been a late night as I was contacted by my mother and was told that she had been diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease. We talked about the fact that she might have to get dialysis for the rest of her life if she didn't get a transplant. We discussed the rigmarole around a transplant, and she was down and I could tell that she was struggling with it. My heart ached, worrying about what would happen to her. She did dialysis for about three or four years. Waiting for a kidney was a time of much anxiousness as a family. All of my siblings and I were tested, and none of us was a match. So not only were we not a match, but two of the four of us kids were diagnosed with the same disease. I was one of the two that were diagnosed. I remember being disappointed, but not really upset at first. I was still young and felt nothing would affect my health. I was healthy, I pretty much did anything I wanted. She finally received a kidney between 2000-2001 sometime.

As the months and years ticked by, my anxiousness grew, and I feared that I'd suffer a similar fate as my mother. I followed up with a kidney physician in my town, we kept track of my blood pressure and my kidney function. I was eventually put on a donor list, which, you know, most of the time it takes a very long time to receive a kidney. Eventually, the doctors and I felt like a preemptive transplant would be the best situation for me—being as young as I was—from a live donor. So we decided to look up the two siblings that I had that did not have the disease to see if they were a match. My sister Christine was a perfect match, and she gladly agreed to donate one of her kidneys. Now, this was a time that, unfortunately, I have to confess that I was not living the Gospel life I should have. It had been years since I had really connected or reconnected with my church roots. I'd served an honorable mission but had not held on to what I knew to be true when I returned home. Why that was? I don't know why, but it happened. And I subsequently was at a time in my life that things were not the best with regard to my spiritual growth and development and actual participation in church. But after my sister was deemed a match, and committed to give me a kidney, my life and the way I was living became an issue. When I say it was an issue, I didn't change a whole lot in my behavior, but I was overcome with a sense of guilt and spiritual loathing. I didn't feel worthy or deserving of what my sister was willing to do. It takes great sacrifice to donate an organ. Things can go wrong during surgery, pre or post-surgery. It's not like getting a tooth pulled, it's a serious surgery and major veins and arteries are involved. I decided since I lived relatively close to Palmyra, New York, that I'd go and maybe spend some time in the grove.

I was searching for comfort from the Lord. I guess I thought perhaps that that was a good place to search for it. My wife is a nonmember of the church but is a strong Christian woman. I worried that she would wonder, you know, what the heck is going on with my husband? And I explained how I was feeling and that I wanted to go spend some time in the grove. She was more than supportive. I should also say that, although she was not interested in the church per se, with regard to converting or investigating the Church, she continuously hammered me about going to church and living the way I was brought up to live. So she also understood very well, what the grove meant and what had taken place there and why I wanted to spend some time there. It was a beautiful day in upstate New York that day. I remember some of it, but what stood out to me the most was the quiet that existed in the grove. I was alone there that day. There were no visitors or people walking around taking pictures. It was kind of the offseason. I was thankful that I could be alone. I remember how quiet it was and it had a great calming effect on me. I believe I was comforted. I don't believe I had a burning of the bosom or an earth-shattering experience in the grove, but it was quiet and reverent. And although I was comforted, I also felt that I needed to change some things in my life. I eventually resolved my guilt, to an extent, and allowed the surgery to take place.

So the surgery was set for September 2007. I had the surgery down at the University of Pittsburgh medical center's Montefiore Hospital. My sister and her husband had flown in from Utah—that's where they still lived—to prepare for the surgery. The procedure on the day of surgery is quite unique. Typically, they take the donor down to pre-op, roughly a half-hour before the patient that's set to be the recipient of the organ. When they took me down, the place was a madhouse. There were people everywhere. There was a nurse that was barking out orders sending some people one way, and other people the other and it seemed like she was at this big desk. And it reminded me of a judge sitting there handing out sentences as people were wheeled in. When they wheeled me into my slot that they had there, I look to my right and lying on the gurney next to me was my sister Christine. She was in the process of answering questions probably for the 20th time. And meanwhile, I had an anesthesiologist asking me the same questions for the 20th time. Suddenly it seemed as though, while all this was going on, Chris and I were kind of just aware of each other. I finally looked over at her and said, "Hey."

She said, "What?"

I said, "I want you to know how much I love you."

And she said, "I love you, too."

I, again, said, "Hey," a few minutes later, and she again said, "What?"

I said, "Are you scared?"

And she said, "No, are you?"

I said, "No." We had both received Priesthood blessings and I was confident in the power of those blessings. Shortly thereafter, they started to wheel her away to surgery. And I once again said, "Hey."

And she said, "What?"

I think I remember her being somewhat annoyed. And I said, "Thank you."

She looked back at me and said, "You are welcome." This was a moment in time between my sister and I, that was full of love and sacrifice. It was an example to me from what true sacrifice is and what Christlike love looked like.

In the years since, thankfully, I've straightened myself out spiritually. I've never resolved in my mind, however, or my heart, the willing gift of my sister. It was an unselfish gift that I am forever grateful. And we have a bond that will live on as long as I live. As I study these days, particularly when studying about the Atonement of Christ, I often think of that exchange between my sister and I, in that pre-op room. I'm doing everything I can to prepare myself spiritually, live the gospel as best I can, and do the things that I know I should be doing. My hope is that someday when I stand before the Savior, I can apologize for the suffering my sins caused him. I hope to say "thank you" and I ultimately hope to hear, "You are welcome."

KaRyn Lay (13:11) That was Jim. You probably caught the part of Jim's story where his desire to be a grateful recipient of his sister's kidney drew him towards the Savior. I think it's such a beautiful reminder that if we let them, the difficult things in our lives can lead us closer to Jesus Christ as we seek to be filled with gratitude. And I have to say, I am filled with more motivation to repent and get right with God as I consider Jim's vision of his reunion with our older brother. Our next story from Arthur illustrates how true charity can be found in the ways that we welcome one another into our lives. Here's Arthur.

Arthur (13:47) Like a lot of young 20 somethings, I was idealistic, and I felt like I need to go make my mark on the world and I'm going to go to Africa. I'm going to do aid work and I'm going to help people. Totally naive.

When I had finished my degree at Brigham Young University, I had spent four years there, I was the captain of the men's soccer team. I loved, loved my time at BYU and playing for the soccer team and I knew I wasn't quite ready to be an adult yet. So I was kind of looking for an adventure. And the Olympics had come to Salt Lake City and an organization called, "Right to Play" that was started by Johann Olav Koss, a gold medal-winning speed skater from Norway came. And I kind of got excited about their work and what they were doing and the way I could maybe bring my soccer knowledge and experience to the refugees in war-torn Uganda. And so I interviewed and became a volunteer for "Right To Play." There was a moment when I was leaving U.S. soil on the airplane and flying over the Atlantic when I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?" And you fly over the Sahara, and you fly over all the desert of the Sudan, I think even as we were coming in, and it's very surreal, and it doesn't feel like anything you're comfortable or familiar with. I mean, I was very much out of my comfort zone for the first little bit. We were flying into a little tiny village called Arua, Uganda, which was the hometown of the Ugandan president, Idi Amin, who had just absolutely decimated certain tribes within Uganda, massive genocide taking place before that. Still a lot of scars. And you have, you know, as an American, as a white kid from Utah, you have a little bit of a sense for the legacy of not just Idi Amin and the Ugandan history, but the history of colonialism, the history of, you know, European and white colonizers in that part of the world. But, I mean, I was clueless. I was completely, completely clueless. And so here we were sort of, you know, there's a group of about six or eight of us who are coming in working with the UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and tasked with the job of implementing sports programs for kids in these refugee camps. And the refugee camps were about an hour and a half drive on terrible dirt roads outside of Arua. You're working with refugees that are coming across the border from the Congo, and from the Sudan, from those civil wars, from those conflicts. And refugee life is a completely different equation than even this little bush town of Arua, where you can still get meals and there are little hotels and televisions to watch, you know, football matches on and some of the amenities. But you go into those camps, there is just nothing. Some people are new arrivals who are just sitting there with a pot to go to the bathroom and that's it. They're exposed to the elements, they don't know where they're going to get their next meal, they've traveled from these distances to just escape the violence of those conflicts. You're looking at real poverty, real desperation, real need, and you're supposed to have answers and you're supposed to have solutions. And the truth is, we really didn't.

And here are these kids from America or Canada, or some from Europe, who are saying, "Hey, let's play sports together! Let's run soccer clinics." Who was I to sort of say, this is going to help children feel better, you know, psychologically, physically, this is going to help them overcome the trauma of war. Like, are you kidding me? Really? I mean, it's such a ridiculous notion that we would have anything to offer. But we're there and so you have to sort of pretend like you do have something to offer. I mean, I wanted to help people. I felt like I had benefited so much in my life from playing soccer. From that sport from the teamwork and the camaraderie and it was just something to, I mean, you're in the moment, right? And if giving these kids a moment to play football, so they could forget about the world they were coming from, they could forget about the poverty, they could forget about the violence, I wanted that to happen. That was my reason for going. But there was a part of me too if I'm honest, that was, you know, I wanted people back home, they were saying, "Oh, you're so brave. You're so altruistic. You're such a good person," right? And that sort of feeds your ego and then you get there and you realize you have no answers and there's so much hubris. I asked myself every day I was there, whether or not we should even be there. It was that complicated. Which is why, and I'll get to the point of the story when we met Ayub and interviewed him to be our driver—we had to buy a vehicle and have some way to transport ourselves back and forth between the village of Arua where we'd get supplies. And then we'd go out to the refugee camps and stay for a week or two at a time sometimes because it was just hard to go back and forth. And we were trying to service two different refugee camps with populations of over 50,000 people in each of those camps: Rhino camp, and Invepi camp. And so we go through all of these interviews with these different drivers, potential drivers, right? And they're desperate for money, they're desperate for a job. And you see the tangible dependence that they have on our being there, even though we don't have real solutions to these long, systemic problems that are occurring in the refugee camps, right? Displacement, war, poverty, violence, illness, like we haven't, we have no answers, but we've got to find a driver to get us over. That's our only task. And so their motivations and our motivations sort of gets complicated too, which is when Ayub walks in. And he's missing a tooth, and he's laid back and it was almost like he couldn't care if he got the job or not. And we take him up this like big, rocky mountain thing to see how his driving skills are. And we and we do things like put in American rock music to just see how he'll handle it. And he just rolls down the window, puts one arm out, drives with one hand on the wheel, completely laid back. And then while he's driving tells us the story of how he missed his tooth, how his big front tooth was missing. Because on another caravan on another job for another NGO, the truck had rolled, and it rolled into a river, and he dove in to try and save somebody and busted his tooth on a rock. And we're like, that's our guy. We're hiring him. He's amazing.

I started to sort of develop a friendship with Ayub and became very, very close with him, closer than some of my other colleagues even. I was so close to him he invited me into his home. And Ayub was Muslim and he was the first Muslim that I knew well and I knew personally, it was my first experience with that religion. And so I was in Uganda long enough that as Ayub and I started to become friends, it happened to be the holy month of Islam coming up, or Ramadan, when they fast from sunup to sundown. And it's a time of sort of Thanksgiving, but also special focus, religious focus, but it was a sort of a poignant, intense spiritual time. And we knew Ayub was going to be participating in Ramadan, he was going to be fasting. That meant while we were out at the refugee camps, and we were eating, he was not going to be eating. There's already not a lot of resources, it's hard to get food. You know, we're buying chickens on the side of the road and we're, you know, having people in the refugee camp slaughter goats for us, and it's a big deal to eat and he was going to be foregoing that. So it became really meaningful to me and deepened our friendship when he was willing to share that religious experience with me. And we were traveling back and forth between the camps and its long, dusty, terrible road. Sometimes if it was in the rainy season, there's mud and cars are sliding off the road. And as soon as the sun would go down during Ramadan, he would pull over and walk into a stranger's hut who had prepared a meal for anybody who happened to be traveling through or traveling by. And he would always include me and bring me into that intimate, sort of brotherhood of Islam that was especially poignant during Ramadan. But it occurred to me when we were— not just during Ramadan, but all throughout my time in Uganda, I had nothing in common with Ayub. I mean, really, nothing in common. And so one day when he said—we were driving back from one of these Ramadan meals, you know, he just turned to me and, and said, "Tomas," they called me Thomas, not Arthur. They couldn't pronounce my name very well. He said, "Tomas when we breathe, we breathe in the name of God."

And I thought that's the only thing we have in common. It's just the air we breathe. We don't have the same religion, we don't have the same socio-economic, we're from different continents. And it was so meaningful to me. I was so grateful that my young, naive idealism could be manifested in a tangible, practical way through this man. That all the things I believed about the commonality of humanity was real and it was true, it wasn't just a good idea. And it manifested itself through Ayub. When the only thing we had in common was the air we breathe, but it came from God, we had the same maker, we had the same Heavenly Father.

He used to like to put his finger up to my finger and push really hard, our index fingers would touch and he would say, "Tomas, you are my brother." And make sure we made contact like that. For me, that was important, that two people, we could transcend race, we could transcend religion, we could transcend a history of colonialism and violence. We could transcend all that stuff and we really could be unified. We could really be brothers. I didn't feel like I was an imposter or I was a wannabe white savior figure, I felt like I was Ayub's friend. So when I had to break a rule of my NGO to take the vehicle to drive him to another village close to the Congolese border for his mother's funeral, I didn't think twice about it. I did it because Ayub was my friend and he didn't see me as just a means to an end. He didn't see me as money or a resource. It was a friend helping his friend get to his mother's funeral in a faraway village. And that relationship, I think, carried me through my six months there and we're not in contact now. And you know, I have no idea what's happened to him. But because of that closeness and that recognition that I was more than just a foreigner who was coming in with ideas about how to save the world and fix things, I mean, how ridiculous is that. But he allowed me to just be me and to see me for who I was to and not just an interloper who's caused a lot of problems in that part of the world for him and his people. But as a true brother. He should not have seen me as a brother, but he did.

What Ayub taught me is to be grateful for connection more than for things. I mean, the things are easy to see and to and to assess, and to make a judgment on. But the harder thing is to find a way to connect with somebody that cuts through all of that stuff, all of the labels and all of the layers of identity that we carry around with us based on our religion, our skin color, our gender, all of those things. They end up just stacking up so many walls and obstacles to getting to the heart of connecting with somebody. And so when you can find someone you can cut through all of that nonsense with and see them for who they really are, that's when I feel welcome. That's when I think what gratitude means and what feeling welcome means and when real charity can live. I always come back to that line he said to me during Ramadan, "Tomas, when I breathe, I breathe in the name of God." And every breath is a gift.

KaRyn Lay (27:16) That was Arthur. When we breathe in, we breathe in the name of God. There is so much that can divide us in this world right now. And when we think about what connects us, what really connects us, like Arthur and Ayub, the breath, the air that we breathe, that is filled with God, well then we are filled with gratitude for all the things. And I think it actually makes saying, "you are welcome" that much easier. This interplay of gratitude and charity is such an interesting concept for me and one that I honestly had never really thought of until I listened to these stories. I started to think about the words "You're welcome." There's something in the way that Jim envisioned the savior offering His Atonement so freely and with such love I mean, at this point in my social development, saying "you're welcome" in response to someone's expression of gratitude is really nothing more than an idiom or reaction like saying, "bless you" after someone sneezes or "sorry," when you accidentally walk into a wall, or at least that's what I do. It's rote, it's automatic. And while it means something, it doesn't really mean all that it could.

But, what if like Jim's sister Chris, we really could dig into "your welcome" and mean it with all the possible depth inherent in the phrase. You know, in Spanish when someone says "Gracias," you reply with "De nada," which is loosely translated to mean, "it was nothing." In Korean, when someone says "gomabseubnida," you reply with "cheonman-eyo," which is a polite way of saying "No, no don't thank me." But in English, and a few other languages, we get to say "you are welcome." Think about that. It's really actually an amazing thing to say to another human being, an acknowledgment of our agency and intent to offer ourselves and our service with the truest charity, the pure love of Christ. You are welcome to what I've just given you. You're welcome. What might change in me if I started to say that with some intent? Now listen, I don't want to get all creepy about it. Like I'm not going to start staring deeply into stranger's eyes when I open a door for them at the grocery store and pronouncing "you're welcome," as if it was a blessing upon generations of their family. But maybe I could start to do things that I do for others with the kind of charity, the pure love freely given, that when you say "thank you," and I say, "You're welcome," even in a perfunctory way, I really mean it. No resentment, no obligation. You are welcome. And maybe the key to gaining that kind of welcoming heart is to start with our own "Thank you's." Elder Uchtdorf suggested that as we develop a sense of gratitude for all that we've been given, and gratitude for the things that we have in common because of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we can't help but be filled with charity towards others. In his April 2014 general conference address, "Grateful In Any Circumstances" he said, "In any circumstance, our sense of gratitude is nourished by the many and sacred truths we do know. That our Father has given his children the great plan of happiness, that through the Atonement of His Son, Jesus Christ, we can live forever with our loved ones. It must have been this kind of testimony that transformed the Savior's apostles from fearful, doubting men, into fearless, joyful emissaries of the master. When the apostles recognized the risen Christ, when they experienced the glorious resurrection of their beloved Savior, they became different men. Nothing could keep them from fulfilling their mission. They accepted with courage and determination, the torture, humiliation and even death that would come to them because of their testimony. They were not deterred from praising and serving their Lord. They changed the lives of people everywhere. They changed the world." That testimony of the Savior and His Atonement filled the apostles with gratitude and that gratitude fueled their gift to the world as they taught and offered themselves to the disciples of Christ. They were filled to the brim with "You are welcome." Just as Arthur and Ayub's friendship was filled to the brim with "You are welcome," and Jim and Chris's exchange of a kidney was filled to the brim with "You are welcome." This is possible, I believe because first, they understood that when they breathe in, they breathe in the name of God. And as Arthur said, "Every breath is a gift." Elder Uchtdorf continued with this, "You do not need to see the Savior as the apostles did to experience the same transformation. Your testimony of Christ born of the Holy Ghost can help you see the bright future that the Redeemer of the world has prepared." I hope this week as we seek to have a little bit more gratitude for the sacrifice of our Savior and its power in our own lives, that will, in turn, put just a little more meaning behind every one of our "your welcome's" as we strive to become more like Him.

That's it for this episode of "This Is the Gospel." Thanks for joining us today. And thank you to Jim and Arthur for welcoming us into their stories and their faith. We'll have the transcripts of this episode along with some pictures and a link to Elder Uchtdorf's talk in our show notes at LDSliving.com/thisisthegospel. All of our stories on this podcast are true and accurate as affirmed by our storytellers. If you have a great story about your experience living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, we want to hear from you on our pitch line. Leave us a short three-minute story pitch at 515-519-6179. You can find out what themes we're working on right now and what we need for the pitch line by following us on Instagram and Facebook @thisisthegospel_podcast. If you love the stories that we've shared, please leave us a review on the Apple Podcast app or on the Bookshelf PLUS+ app from Deseret Book. We love to hear your thoughts about certain episodes, and every single review helps more people to find this podcast.

This episode was produced by me, KaRyn Lay, with story producing and editing by Katie Lambert. It was scored, mixed and mastered by "Mix At Six Studios," our executive producers Erin Hallstrom. You can find past episodes of this podcast and other LDS Living podcasts at LDSliving.com/podcasts. Annyeong!

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

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