In what way will I find financial and spiritual stability? I have been faithful to the gospel and have been torn down by years of dysfunction at home. While the family has been getting more stable in recent years, my marriage and the spiritual practices of the family have been deteriorating and my capacity to carry on has been diminishing. (Marriage deteriorating as Laura has lost faith and had been growing more aimless and less motivated to actually make changes. She is long on excuses and short on self control.)
The family did everything to make friends at school, contribute, and be accepted, but to no avail. The family prayed and prayed hearts would soften.
One night, the family felt their prayers were answered, though in a very unexpected way. Their house caught fire and burned to the ground. But something else happened. The fire softened their neighbors’ hearts.
Their neighbors and local school gathered clothes, shoes, and other necessities needed by the family, who had lost everything. Kindness opened understanding. It was not the way the family hoped or expected their prayers to be answered. However, they express gratitude for what they learned through hard experiences and unexpected answers to heartfelt prayers.
Truly, for those with faithful hearts and eyes to see, the Lord’s tender mercies are manifest amidst life’s challenges. Faithfully met challenges and sacrifice do bring the blessings of heaven. In this mortality, we may lose or wait for some things for a time, but in the end we will find what matters most. That is His promise.
Maybe I am expected to learn what matters most.
In the household of faith there are to be no strangers, no foreigners, no rich and poor, no outside “others.” As “fellowcitizens with the saints,” we are invited to change the world for the better, from the inside out, one person, one family, one neighborhood at a time.
In 1823, who would have imagined that in the year 2020 there would be three countries each with more than a million members of this Church—the United States, Mexico, and Brazil?
Or 23 countries each with more than 100,000 members of the Church—three in North America, fourteen in Central and South America, one in Europe, four in Asia, and one in Africa?
That is an insightful breakdown.
By small and simple means—in which we are each invited to participate—great things are brought to pass.
For example, at a stake conference in Monroe, Utah, population 2,200, I asked how many had served missions. Nearly every hand went up. In recent years, from that one stake, 564 missionaries have served in all 50 U.S. states and 53 countries—on every continent except Antarctica.
A diaspora of testimony.
Heavenly Father invites us everywhere to feel His love, to learn and grow through education, honorable work, self-reliant service, and patterns of goodness and happiness we find in His restored Church.
As we come to trust God, sometimes through pleading in our darkest, loneliest, most uncertain moments, we learn He knows us better and loves us more than we know or love ourselves.
If we trust that he knows us better than we know ourselves then we should trust that His will would lead to our greatest benefit and happiness.
As we discover God, sometimes unexpected answers to prayers take us from the street, bring us to community, chase darkness from our souls, and guide us to find spiritual refuge and belonging in the goodness of His covenants and abiding love.
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