Transcript

Thank you so much for that prayer. I was just holding in—I feel like I’m kind of prayer needy. If you’ve even glanced at me sideways, I’ve asked for your prayers. There’s been a lot of thought and prayer that went into the decision of whether or not I could accept this calling to teach. I asked my family for some feedback, and I was met with some hesitation, surprisingly. So I asked what the hesitation might be, and I was told that when I’m preparing for lessons, I’m just not that much fun. So that’s definitely something that I’ve added to my prayers—that I can continue to do this and still be fun. But I have received comfort and assurance from the Lord that He will help me.

But in addition to praying for me, I have been praying for each of you—each of you that come with whatever it is that you might be carrying at this time. I recognize that you all come for different reasons and different hopes of what you want to gain from this hour of being here. And for this reason, I am so grateful for the Book of Mormon. For what it has to offer, because I know that it is the Book of Mormon that can bring whatever it is that you might be in need of—whatever hope or peace or healing or assurance is found in the Book of Mormon, because it is the Book of Mormon that points us to that true source of hope and healing, which is our Savior, Jesus Christ.

I was so inspired by Anita’s first class that she gave when she talked about finding a purpose and a focus in reading and in her scripture study. She commented about how we’re familiar with the stories in the scriptures, it’s something that we know that are comforting to us, but she wanted to challenge herself to read it with a central focus, and I believe she said she read it once focusing on the words of Christ and has since had other focuses and purposes. And when she said this, I knew that was something that I needed and that I wanted to do. I’m also curious if it motivated any of you, and if you have found a central focus or purpose this year in reading.

But after deciding that and looking for what my focus might be this year, I was especially intrigued when I heard Jared Halverson talking about Nephi’s purpose in writing the Book of Mormon. In 1 Nephi chapter 6, verse 4, Nephi says, “For the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved.” So with this, we know that everything that Nephi writes is going to point us towards Jesus Christ. And then Jared Halverson pointed out what he said is Nephi’s thesis statement. This is the first chapter of the Book of Mormon, the very last verse in the first chapter where Nephi says, “But behold, I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are over all those whom he hath chosen, because of their faith, to make them mighty even unto the power of deliverance.” That was it. That’s my purpose. That’s my focus—to focus on reading and searching these scriptures with the intent of seeing the tender mercies of the Lord.

So this week’s assignment was 2 Nephi chapters 1 through 4, and right out of the gate, guess what we find? The tender mercies of the Lord. We have Father Lehi has gathered his children together. He’s getting old. He has some words that he wants to share with his children, and this is what he says: “And now it came to pass that after I, Nephi, had made an end of teaching my brethren, our father, Lehi, also spake many things unto them, and rehearsed unto them, how great things the Lord had done for them in bringing them out of the land of Jerusalem. And he spake unto them concerning their rebellions upon the waters, and the mercies of God in sparing their lives, that they were not swallowed up in the sea. And he also spake unto them concerning the land of promise, which they had obtained—how merciful the Lord had been in warning us that we should flee out of the land of Jerusalem. Why? Because if we had stayed, we would have perished. How merciful is the Lord.”

Don’t you think that Lehi is just saying, do you want to see the evidence of God’s love? Do you really want to see how he has never forgotten us, how he’s been with us from the beginning? Look around. Look where you are. We’re here. We are in this land of promise. We are here safely. I get the feeling that Lehi, this father, doesn’t feel as though Laman and Lemuel are focusing on the Lord’s mercies. And it’s hard to blame them. Life hasn’t been easy for them. They’ve experienced every type of physical depravity. It looks nothing like what they had hoped.

Do you ever get caught in this cycle of focusing on what’s not going right? Is there any chance that we can relate a little bit? I think that occasionally we start to ruminate on what’s not going right, on a prayer that wasn’t answered in the way that we’d hoped, in the way that our life looks, in the way that we might have been wronged. I don’t think that Lehi’s trying to invalidate all of the hard, but I think he knows that ruminating on the dark keeps us from seeing the light.

But what if it’s our nature? What if it’s our nature just to be a little bit skewed towards our lack? Is that something that we can change? Can we change our nature? Neuroscientists tell us that the more we repeat a behavior, the deeper a neural pathway in our brain becomes. This is called Hebb’s law. It’s neurons that fire together, wire together. It’s basically what you think about becomes your reality. So one of the greatest gifts of God is that he has created us and created our brains to be able to change. We can change our very nature. This means that you can create new neural pathways. It’s just that your brain wants to go to that path of least resistance. So it will continue down the path that is well-worn. So if you want to create a new neural pathway, you have to repeat a behavior over and over again.

So if I want to bypass the very deeply worn neural pathway that is created by picking up my phone, which is just an impulse now, I have to focus on instead picking up my scriptures. And the more I pick up my scriptures and not my phone, the deeper this neural pathway becomes. The easier it is for my brain to go to this neural pathway. What we choose to think about is deeply influenced by our image and knowledge of God, which is what I think that Lehi is desperately wanting his children to know. He wants them to know God, he wants them to know his nature, and he wants his sons to respond to the greatness of God by openly loving and honoring him. He knows that when we understand—when they understand God’s greatness—we want more and more of him.

I personally really want my children and grandchildren to focus on the goodness of God, on the goodness that’s in their lives. My son mentioned to me recently that he spent a lot of time and effort creating what he’d hoped would be this really fun weekend for his three kids, who are ages ten and seven and four. He said he felt like the weekend went really well, everyone had a great time, and then when their grandparents had met up with them later and asked them what they did that weekend, they all shrugged their shoulders and said they couldn’t remember. My son said he just felt so defeated. How could they not remember? I feel like Lehi has a little bit of this similar feeling. How do you not remember? How can you ignore the goodness of God? How can you ignore what we just did this weekend? And then he kind of gives us a little insight as to how we remember, in that he continues to bring it up. He continues to talk to them about it. He continues to remind them about all of the ways that the Lord has shown up in their lives. And that is why in the scriptures we hear over and over again, remember, remember, remember. So when we remember, it changes our very focus, which changes our very nature.

So Lehi’s come to the end of his life, and he’s gathered his family together for some counsel. He’s going to teach them, he’s going to bless them, and he’s going to bear his testimony to them. What message do I want to leave my loved ones?

I have a new daughter-in-law, Ellie. We had a conversation recently about fathers and counsel. Ellie told me that she remembers many conversations with her own father growing up in Mexico. When Ellie was born, her father applied for a green card for his daughter, knowing that if and when that application was accepted, she would need to leave his care and his protection and move to the US. He knew very well that that time could come before either of them felt ready. What would you say to your children if you knew that you had limited time while they were in your care and protection? Ellie said her father took every opportunity to fill her with his wisdom and love and counsel. She said many of their conversations centered around situations that had moral implications, and that they would go something like this. He would say, listen, if X happens, you have a choice. You can choose to follow the crowd, you can choose to follow the world and where those natural man tendencies lead you. But pick up that thread, see where that choice leads. Could that choice lead to this, but might then lead to this, and it could then lead you to a place that you don’t want to be? Make the choice, he said, that is going to protect you and protect our family name. Ellie’s father was trying to teach her to think celestial, and she felt his love. Well, when throughout all of those conversations, at seventeen, that application was finally accepted, and she left her father’s physical presence. But his words stayed with her and have been a beacon and a protection to her to this day.

In this last conference session, Elder Christofferson had his landmark talk, “O Be Wise.” He said, at different times, President Nelson has reminded us that as we make current decisions, we should always be asking, where will this lead? What is the effect on our future of the decisions we make in the present? And then this one by Amy Wright, if we become casual in our discipleship of Jesus Christ, it could be catastrophic for our children.

Did you just really feel this from Lehi? Turn to 2 Nephi 1:21. He says, “And now that my soul might have joy in you, and that I might leave this world with gladness because of you.” And then in verse 28, we learn that Lehi really would love to give his sons, the oldest sons, the birthright blessing. He says, “And now, my son, Laman, and also Lemuel and Sam, and also my sons who are the sons of Ishmael, behold, if ye will hearken unto the voice of Nephi ye shall not perish. And if ye will hearken unto him I leave unto you a blessing, yea, even my first blessing.” I mean, after all of this dissent and murmuring and mocking, this father has not given up. He is still pleading for them to choose the greater portion. With this, I think Lehi is mirroring our own Father in Heaven, who never gives up on his children, who continues to desire a covenant relationship with them, so that he might more fully bless them, empower them, and protect them.

Verse 13, Lehi pleads, “O that ye would awake; awake from a deep sleep, yea, even from the sleep of hell, and shake off the awful chains by which ye are bound, which are the chains which bind the children of men, that they are carried away captive down to the eternal gulf of misery and woe.” Wake up, he’s saying. Wake up from the sleep of ignorance and apathy, and from the sleep of complacency, from the sleep of self-indulgence. Wake up to your own part that you’re playing in your own misery and discontent.

Lili Anderson said that she sees this as a call to wake up from our natural man’s desires to cover and deny our sins. She says this has application to every one of us. We’re all bound by something. We have great privileges through our covenants that we live beneath because we are human. And when we undertake to cover our sins and lie to ourselves, when we are selfish with our husband, when we hide resentment toward a parent for past mistakes, when we yell at our kids and justify it, it is excusing ourselves. It is dumbing down the principles of the gospel to match up with our behavior. We justify and rationalize, I was under stress, I was hungry, I was in a bad place. And you know what? I pay my tithing. I go to the temple. I serve. I’m good enough. We pretend that we’re living in better harmony with our covenants than we are, and behold, the heavens withdraw themselves. All about power, all about light and truth, intelligence, blessing, protection, withdraws. This is how we fall into a deep sleep.

Three times he implores his sons to arise from the dust, which is a way to say, I want you to arise from your low station, from the dust of the natural world, from the natural man. I want you to fully trust in the Lord and stay true to the covenants that you’ve made with him. Verse 23, he implores them to awake, put on the armor of righteousness, shake off the chains which they’re bound, and come forth out of obscurity, and arise from the dust. This is similar language to Isaiah 52, with the themes of waking up, rising from the dust, putting on sacred clothing, and removing chains.

There have been multiple things written about this, about this imagery of being taken from the dust. Apparently in the ancient Near Eastern world, being taken from the dust was indicative of a covenant with deity. It was part of a coronation ceremony. It was to arise, put on sacred clothing, remove chains, and be accepted as a covenant partner. This has been so incredibly fascinating to me. All of a sudden, as I’m reading, I am seeing references to dust and rising and it rising everywhere. We have Lehi speaking to his sons about rising from the dust while he’s preparing to go down into the dust. Adam and Eve were formed from the dust. Jesus took his finger and wrote in the dust, and then washed the dust from the disciples’ feet. So if dust is the earth, and perhaps symbolic of our fallen world, of our flesh, of our natural man, then we’re being asked to choose the things that are of the spirit and not of the flesh. And if we’re to arise, that means that we’ve fallen. We live in a fallen world. Adam fell, that men might be. And as mortal men and women, we will fall over and over and over again.

When Alma the Younger was visited by an angel of the Lord in the midst of his rebellion, he was so astonished that he fell to the earth. He couldn’t get up. And you know what the angel said to him? Alma, arise, arise. Arise and stand. Suddenly I had this image of Alma, the angel reaching out his hand, pulling Alma up from the ground, from the dust, kind of patting the dust off of him, saying, this is the dust of the world. This is the dust of your misconceptions. What is our dust? What of this fallen world and of our natural man tendencies are clinging to us? What do we need help in brushing off?

Lehi takes it one step further in verse 21. He says, “Arise from the dust, my sons, and be men, and be determined in one mind and in one heart, united in all things, that ye may not come down into captivity.” With so much of what is being talked about in the media lately about men, this one really stood out to me. What does it mean to be a man today? Men are under attack. But let’s be honest, we’re all under attack. These are the last days, and Satan has pulled out all the stops, and he has redoubled his efforts on men.

Dr. Leonard Sax, who is a physician and a psychologist, and has done extensive research on national trends that are affecting our children, namely boys, wrote a book called Boys Adrift. In the book, Dr. Sax explores what he saw as a growing problem. Our boys are losing motivation in school. They’re disengaging from achievement, and they’re struggling to find direction. He argues that there are six major contributors to this trend. I’m not going to go over all six, but one of them, he said, was changes in education. He said, if you want to know if a school is a good school for your boys, check the honor roll. He said, traditionally, the honor roll had some equilibrium. It was pretty equal girls and boys on the honor roll. He said, maybe skewed a little towards boys. You check the honor roll in schools now, they’re girls. Very few boys on the honor roll. He said, if you want to know if it’s a good school, see if there’s a little more equilibrium with boys and girls.

And then I had a friend point out this recent article from the Deseret News. Do you see this? The headline says, America has thirty million single young men. Even Utah is feeling it. Their researchers are pointing to three major factors: gambling, gaming, and pornography.

In Elder Christofferson’s talk, “Let Us Be Men,” he said, in large measure, manhood is defined in our relationship with women, and I would say in how women treat men. Godly womanhood and godly manhood can be reflected in how we interact and how we treat each other. In verse 21 of chapter 1, Lehi alludes to this when he says, “Be determined in one heart and one mind and united in all things.”

Again, Lili Anderson, who’s a clinical psychologist, she suggests that we put this question to our teens. What would it look like for your mom and dad to be united? She said she hopes that their response would look something like, it would be that they would come together on something, not necessarily agreeing on it, not necessarily coming at a decision the same way or the same direction, but being able to work together and come together and be united in that purpose. She said, then ask your teen, what would it look like for you to be united with your parents? Would it look like you being willing to submit to their will, to their goals, to their focus and their desires? Do you have enough trust in them? I think we can ask ourselves this same question about our own heavenly parents. What does it look like for us to be united with them? Do we have enough trust in them to submit our wills?

Elder Christofferson said this about men. I think this is a very comprehensive list that I think is incredible. He said, real men are one heart and one mind. They unite with others to build Zion. They don’t feel the need to do everything on their own. They’re not contentious, and they are peacemakers. They don’t put others down. They’re anxiously engaged in a good cause. They wear something—robes of righteousness or the armor of God. They are warriors of a different kind of battle. They fight for truth and righteousness. They can be great leaders, but also great followers. They are team players and humble enough to recognize the experience, goodwill, and counsel from other people. They don’t rebel. They move the work of God forward, and they don’t seek power and authority over others. A real man is not afraid to confront what needs to be confronted. He has the courage to speak the truth and stand up for it. As leaders of righteousness, they are sometimes required to speak with sharpness, endowed with the power of God. They follow the promptings of the Spirit.

I saw a clip recently from a podcast interview with Matthew McConaughey. He was asked what he thought the difference was between a nice guy and a good man. And not that I’m holding up Matthew McConaughey as the gold standard of manhood, but I thought that he had some good points. He said, a nice guy gets along. He doesn’t necessarily have discernment or judgment, and is not quite sure what he stands for or stands against, but people like him. Conversely, a good man knows what he stands for, and when that is tested, he may not be perceived as a nice guy. He said, this is much harder, because it will mean that you’re not always the most popular or the most affable. Gone are the days when it was enough just to teach our children to be nice. We are all going to be asked to stand, to stand up for, to stand up to our beliefs and our God. What do I stand for, and will I stand for it when I’m confronted with meanness and hostility, when I know that it could cause me to lose friendships or be mocked? What do our children see us standing for or standing against? Do they, or our coworkers, or our extended family, our social media followers, do they know without a doubt what we stand for? I hate conflict. I just want everyone to get along, which is why it really pulled at my mama heartstrings when I read a part from Catherine Arviset Starr’s Ali’s Mission email a couple weeks ago. In it, Ali writes, it’s been a discouraging week, and we were feeling the burden of missionary work. We had a lot of negative interactions with people this week. And we were often treated unkindly. We got sworn at a few times before we could even open our mouths and had some scary encounters with people. In the face of persecution and conflict, Ali is learning to stand for convictions, to suffer for Christ’s sake.

One of the sons that Lehi is not telling to awake and arise and shake off the dust and the chains that he speaks to is his son Jacob. Where in chapter 2, he tells Jacob that he knows that he has been subject to much trauma and abuse. And it is clear that Lehi is not concerned with Jacob’s eternal destiny as much as he is with his psychological well-being. Instead of spending any time admonishing him, Lehi is able to teach. In 2 Nephi chapter 2, verse 1, it says, “And now, Jacob, I speak unto you: Thou art my firstborn in the days of my tribulation in the wilderness. And behold, in thy childhood thou hast suffered afflictions and much sorrow, because of the rudeness of thy brethren. Nevertheless, Jacob, my firstborn in the wilderness, thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain.” So you mean that there is purpose? There is purpose in affliction? All of that affliction can be for our good. How do we do this? That’s all chapter 2 tells us. It is through this, it is through God’s great plan of happiness, the great plan of salvation.

Scholars have said that chapter 2 of 2 Nephi is so doctrinally rich that if all Joseph Smith gave us was this chapter, it would be enough to prove that he was a prophet of God. Because where did he, Joseph, get the deep and expansive doctrine taught in the Book of Mormon, much of which was contrary to the religious beliefs of his time? For example, contemporary Christianity taught that the fall was what? It was negative. But we view it, and because of this verse, as a positive step forward. He teaches us about the fall. He teaches about the purpose of affliction, of opposition, which is because of agency and culminates with the role of the Holy Messiah, the Anointed One.

Freedom, eternally and earthly, comes from the right use of agency. You will never gain freedom until you make a right choice. Captivity and suffering come from the wrong use of that agency. We have the power to choose, which is made possible by opposition. Some choices are right, some are wrong, and the way we know the difference is by the law. The law tells us that there must be an enticement. Verse 5, “And men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil.”

In verse 17, Lehi tells that an angel of God fell from heaven, became a devil, sought that which was evil before God, and then sought the misery of all mankind. I think Lehi is saying, let’s be very clear. Evil exists. There is good, and there is good’s direct opposite, which is evil. Satan chose evil. He became evil. His works are evil.

I’m going to share a very unpopular opinion. I didn’t love the classic novel by John Steinbeck, East of Eden. The portrayal of the antagonist, Cathy Ames, as pure evil made me so uncomfortable. She’s introduced in the book with this phrase, “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents.” And then this line, “She was born with a malformed soul.” Apparently, in a letter to a family friend, Steinbeck wrote that Cathy was supposed to be representative of Satan. One review of the book said that there is no logical explanation for Cathy’s misdeeds. She is evil simply because she wants to be. And I know what you’re gonna say. This is the point. The book is written as a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel in the Garden of Eden, the battle between good and evil.

The article continues, the novel’s most famous chapter introduces us to the Hebrew term timshel, or “thou mayest,” which summarizes East of Eden’s moving thesis: no matter who you are or where you come from, you have the power to choose good over evil. And that’s exactly how we know that Cathy’s misdeeds are not the result of trauma or suffering, but the consequence of personal choice. Cathy chooses evil because she wants to be evil.

So back to my discomfort, now I’m uncomfortable with my being uncomfortable, and apparently so is Hollywood, and as a reflection, the rest of the world. This is our moral relativism. There’s a new screen adaptation of East of Eden out right now. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t offer my opinion on it. But apparently, the creators were also uncomfortable with Cathy being evil for the sake of being evil, because instead they want you to, quote, fall in love with Cathy. One reviewer writes, the writer of this screen adaptation, Zoe Kazan, defended her choice to make Cathy Ames into a sympathetic character in the following terms, quote, “I’m just really curious about, like, well, what if we think of Cathy not as the embodiment of evil, but as a person who does really bad things? And I think we learn more about ourselves if we don’t think about evil people as being that different from us,” end quote. The review continues. We have created a culture that no longer believes in morality. As a result, when evil does dare to exist in our art, it is always either downplayed or tempered by some heart-wrenching backstory. East of Eden’s creators want you to fall in love with Cathy because as a society, we have stopped believing in personal agency.

A key word in Lehi’s description is “from”—to know good from evil. We don’t need to experience good and evil if we can know good from evil. President Oaks tells this story when he was younger, and he’s with his dad, and he asks his dad if he’s ever had alcohol, and his dad says, no, I haven’t, and he says, well, I wanna try it. And his dad says, well, why do you wanna try it? And he says, well, I just wanna know what it, you know, what it’s like. I just wanna know what it tastes like. I wanna know what it’s like. And his dad says, well, you know, it’s not good. He said, well, how do you know it’s not good? You’ve never tried it. And so his dad pulls over right next to a cow patty and says, why don’t you go out there and grab that cow patty and take a big bite? And he said, I’m not gonna do that. Why aren’t you gonna do that? ’Cause it’s not good. How do you know it’s not good? You’ve never tried it. His point being, you don’t need to try it to know good from evil.

Agency was a necessary part of God’s plan, in that it allowed us the opportunity to grow and to change and to become. And Lehi doesn’t throw Eve under the bus. In verse 22, he says, “And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.” Verse 23, “And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.”

Some think that if they had not partaken of the fruit, they would have stayed in the garden, and life would have been peaceful and wonderful and blissful, but that reality is wrong. The fall was part of the plan because they were not happy in Eden. They were in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery, doing no good, for they knew no sin. Adam never woke up and said, what a beautiful day, compared to what? He had no other frame of reference. Satan’s plan leaves no room for growth. It would be as though Adam and Eve came to the earth and then returned the same.

I thought about this in relationship to other events in our lives, other things that we might return and leave. What if we left for a mission and returned the same? Unchanged. What if we experienced motherhood or any other relationship throughout our lives, and there was no growth, there was no change? What if we went through this really difficult challenge or trial? No change. It would all be for naught. How grateful are we for a plan that provides an opportunity for us to grow, to learn, to change? Agency requires choice and opposition and law and enticement, and the fall makes all of this possible.

I think the great question that many ask throughout time has been, why is there so much suffering? Why am I in this messed up world? I have a hard time seeing the love of God in a world where there is so much pain. Remember this talk from Kristen Yee, “The Joy of Our Redemption.” She said, in C.S. Lewis’s writings, Aslan poses three words to a man who has entangled himself in his own devices: “Oh, humankind, how cleverly you defend yourself from all that might do you good.” Where might you and I be defending ourselves from those things that might do us good? Let us not defend ourselves from the good that God desires to bless us with, from the love and mercy that he desires us to feel, from the light and knowledge he desires to bestow upon us, from the healing that he knows we so readily need, from the deeper covenant relationship he intends for all his sons and daughters.

Like all of you, I have known seasons of and experiences of immense struggle and pain. I have felt complete despair over the choices of loved ones and regrets over my own. I’ve been in a life flight helicopter with the most absolute grip and fear that I might lose a two-year-old child to drowning. I have felt anger and fear and uncertainty around my own physical health and the challenges that that has created, coupled with the insecurities around the impact that those had on my own appearance. But I’ve also been blessed with angels, some here, some on the other side of the veil. And I felt gratitude so deep that it’s made it hard to breathe. I wish I could say that I have faced each challenge in my life with complete faith and trust in the Lord, that I’ve allowed him to stretch me and grow me and embrace me each time with his love, but that hasn’t always been the case. But I’m learning, I’m learning to offer myself grace for those times that I wasn’t able to receive what God had for me in those moments. Because I know that the more I come to know about my Savior and my Father in Heaven, the more I come to understand that all of this—this whole human, this whole life experience—has been motivated by pure love, and I’m learning to trust him.

I think one of the things that these scriptures help us to know is that we chose this, all of it. And I don’t think we were hesitant in our decision. I think we were standing at that gate and maybe even shaking it a little bit. I think we were saying, I want to be like you, Lord. I want to see what you can do. I think I’ll be valiant. Give me a chance to know what a physical body really feels like. I want to know what it’s like to be in relationships. I want to find out what hunger is and to know what it is to be tired. I want to know how to love people in all those circumstances. I think we said, I want the whole experience.

I love this. Henri Nouwen said, “We tend to stay away from mourning and dancing, too afraid to cry, too shy to dance. We become narrow-minded complainers, avoiding pain, and also true human joy. While we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. Let us mourn and let us dance.”

Neal Maxwell said, “Sorrow enlarges the heart, creating a wider expanse for joy.” I feel this. I really do feel as though I have a greater capacity for joy. Although some days I wonder if it’s this greater capacity for joy or if it’s just grandkids. But I don’t know, I feel more joy.

Lehi’s great message is, “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”

Just want to close with a couple of thoughts. This one is going to be hard. You can do hard with Jesus, or you can do hard alone. When you do hard with Jesus, the hard becomes holy. And then finally, this thought from Elder Neil L. Andersen’s talk, “The Atoning Love of Jesus Christ,” he says, “As you continue to place your trust in Him, your clouds of darkness and anguish dissolving in the night will be transformed into cascading tears of joy and peace in the morning’s light. Your sorrows shall be turned into joy, and your joy no one taketh from you. That moment will come. I testify it will come.”

I just want to add my witness to that and say it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

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