Mountains To Climb

Trials

I have been blessed with loving parents, a safe home, and wonderful family and friends. With my 17 years on earth, I don't feel like I've had any significantly challenging trials in my life. Which I am very thankful for, but also wish I could empathize with others who have not walked an easy path. 

During my scripture study, I decided I was going to read my favorite talk of all time, (on the rizzle, it's amazing) "Mountains to Climb" by Henry B Eyring. 

President Eyring opens his talk with sharing a personal experience he had, "I heard President Spencer W. Kimball, in a session of conference, ask that God would give him mountains to climb. He said: “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges.”¹

"My heart was stirred, knowing, as I did, some of the challenges and adversity he had already faced. I felt a desire to be more like him, a valiant servant of God. So one night I prayed for a test to prove my courage. I can remember it vividly. In the evening I knelt in my bedroom with a faith that seemed almost to fill my heart to bursting."

"Within a day or two my prayer was answered. The hardest trial of my life surprised and humbled me. It provided me a twofold lesson. First, I had clear proof that God heard and answered my prayer of faith. But second, I began a tutorial that still goes on to learn about why I felt with such confidence that night that a great blessing could come from adversity to more than compensate for any cost."

After reading this, I paused...it had never occurred to me before that perhaps I should pray for trials! Instead of waiting for an experience to "prove my courage", humbly ask my Heavenly Father to provide one. I have always received answers to my prayers before, certainly this time would be no different.

So, as President Eyring did, I knelt in my bedroom and offered a fervent plea to my Heavenly Father to test my faith and allow me to grow.

 

A few days go by...nothing changed. Maybe my trials will come later in life and I should just be patient? Then Saturday Sk8 Night rolls around. I was sk8ing with a few of my friends from Lehi and of course my best friend Mikfly, and it was by far one of the most thrilling nights yet! We were trying new moves and sk8ing like it was nobody's business! Of course, we did the Hustle and I attempted to sk8 backwards (something I still cannot master and it drives me crazy). Oh if you haven't heard that song before, go on ahead and give it a listen. The Hustle-Van McCoy

I had this brilliant idea that Mikfly and I should practice doing tricks off the jumps (basically jumping as high as you can while bringing your knees in close to your chest while flailing your arms around like a goon). We looked pretty cool the first few times..or at least I hope so. Feeling overconfident, I leaped into the air, ready to land triumphantly, wink at the crowd, and ate it. I crashed right on my knees. It wasn't till the next day that I was in pain. 

Since last summer I've been struggling with back pain. And being the hyper and active person that I am, I didn't let it stop me from doing anything I wanted to do. This time was different. Any movement caused intense pain. It was incredibly frustrating. I could sit in my bed and that was about it. I resisted going to a doctor, due to the six chiropractors we'd previously visited in the summer, and felt like no one would ever know what was wrong with my back. But my lovely mom found a doctor she felt confident about and reminded me that by me doubting that an answer would be provided, I was not acting in faith. She was absolutely right. I prayed for an experience that would test my faith and allow me to grow, and here it was. 

And surely enough, Heavenly Father provided an answer. With a few hours of scans and tests, they were able to pin-point the pain and tell me exactly what was going on. I had a bulging disc (L5 I believe) that was causing my discomfort. I had injured it during the summer and it was starting to heal, up until I attempted some crazy tricks at Sk8 Night. I then had an  epidural cortisone shot in my L5. Painful, but will stop in the pain in a few days.

I am ashamed to say that in the mist of my trial, I did not react with such great faith as President Kimball and say, “There are great challenges ahead of us, giant opportunities to be met. I welcome that exciting prospect and feel to say to the Lord, humbly, ‘Give me this mountain,’ give me these challenges”¹. It sounds a little sheepish, but I did not think it would require as much patience, humility, and gratitude to overcome challenges. I was truly humbled. Since I was unable to go to school, I valued even something so simple as a text from a friend, being able to walk to the kitchen to eat a tasty avocado, dancing when the jam comes on, a phone call, or my mom's loving care. It was incredible how only a few days in bed can cause a drastic change. And even so, my challenges were so minimal! I can hardly imagine the great faith that many poses who do not walk an easy path.

Now I would like to continue with the rest of the talk by President Eyring. It is truly beautiful and has changed my life.

"The adversity that hit me in that faraway day now seems tiny compared to what has come since—to me and to those I love. Many of you are now passing through physical, mental, and emotional trials that could cause you to cry out as did one great and faithful servant of God I knew well. His nurse heard him exclaim from his bed of pain, “When I have tried all my life to be good, why has this happened to me?”

You know how the Lord answered that question for the Prophet Joseph Smith in his prison cell:

“And if thou shouldst be cast into the pit, or into the hands of murderers, and the sentence of death passed upon thee; if thou be cast into the deep; if the billowing surge conspire against thee; if fierce winds become thine enemy; if the heavens gather blackness, and all the elements combine to hedge up the way; and above all, if the very jaws of hell shall gape open the mouth wide after thee, know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.

“The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?

“Therefore, hold on thy way, and the priesthood shall remain with thee; for their bounds are set, they cannot pass. Thy days are known, and thy years shall not be numbered less; therefore, fear not what man can do, for God shall be with you forever and ever.”²

There seems to me no better answer to the question of why trials come and what we are to do than the words of the Lord Himself, who passed through trials for us more terrible than we can imagine.

You remember His words when He counseled that we should, out of faith in Him, repent:

“Therefore I command you to repent—repent, lest I smite you by the rod of my mouth, and by my wrath, and by my anger, and your sufferings be sore—how sore you know not, how exquisite you know not, yea, how hard to bear you know not.

“For behold, I, God, have suffered these things for all, that they might not suffer if they would repent;

“But if they would not repent they must suffer even as I;

“Which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit—and would that I might not drink the bitter cup, and shrink—

“Nevertheless, glory be to the Father, and I partook and finished my preparations unto the children of men.”³

You and I have faith that the way to rise through and above trials is to believe that there is a “balm in Gilead”⁴and that the Lord has promised, “I will not … forsake thee.”⁵ That is what President Thomas S. Monson has taught us to help us and those we serve in what seem lonely and overwhelming trials.⁶

But President Monson has also wisely taught that a foundation of faith in the reality of those promises takes time to build. You may have seen the need for that foundation, as I have, at the bedside of someone ready to give up the fight to endure to the end. If the foundation of faith is not embedded in our hearts, the power to endure will crumble.

My purpose today is to describe what I know of how we can lay that unshakable foundation. I do it with great humility for two reasons. First, what I say could discourage some who are struggling in the midst of great adversity and feel their foundation of faith is crumbling. And second, I know that ever-greater tests lie before me before the end of life. Therefore, the prescription I offer you has yet to be proven in my own life through enduring to the end.

As a young man I worked with a contractor building footings and foundations for new houses. In the summer heat it was hard work to prepare the ground for the form into which we poured the cement for the footing. There were no machines. We used a pick and a shovel. Building lasting foundations for buildings was hard work in those days.

It also required patience. After we poured the footing, we waited for it to cure. Much as we wanted to keep the jobs moving, we also waited after the pour of the foundation before we took away the forms.

And even more impressive to a novice builder was what seemed to be a tedious and time-consuming process to put metal bars carefully inside the forms to give the finished foundation strength.

In a similar way, the ground must be carefully prepared for our foundation of faith to withstand the storms that will come into every life. That solid basis for a foundation of faith is personal integrity.

Our choosing the right consistently whenever the choice is placed before us creates the solid ground under our faith. It can begin in childhood since every soul is born with the free gift of the Spirit of Christ. With that Spirit we can know when we have done what is right before God and when we have done wrong in His sight.

Those choices, hundreds in most days, prepare the solid ground on which our edifice of faith is built. The metal framework around which the substance of our faith is poured is the gospel of Jesus Christ, with all its covenants, ordinances, and principles.

One of the keys to an enduring faith is to judge correctly the curing time required. That is why I was unwise to pray so soon in my life for higher mountains to climb and greater tests.

That curing does not come automatically through the passage of time, but it does take time. Getting older does not do it alone. It is serving God and others persistently with full heart and soul that turns testimony of truth into unbreakable spiritual strength.

Now, I wish to encourage those who are in the midst of hard trials, who feel their faith may be fading under the onslaught of troubles. Trouble itself can be your way to strengthen and finally gain unshakable faith. Moroni, the son of Mormon in the Book of Mormon, told us how that blessing could come to pass. He teaches the simple and sweet truth that acting on even a twig of faith allows God to grow it:

“And now, I, Moroni, would speak somewhat concerning these things; I would show unto the world that faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore, dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.

“For it was by faith that Christ showed himself unto our fathers, after he had risen from the dead; and he showed not himself unto them until after they had faith in him; wherefore, it must needs be that some had faith in him, for he showed himself not unto the world.

“But because of the faith of men he has shown himself unto the world, and glorified the name of the Father, and prepared a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift, that they might hope for those things which they have not seen.

“Wherefore, ye may also have hope, and be partakers of the gift, if ye will but have faith.”⁷

That particle of faith most precious and which you should protect and use to whatever extent you can is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Moroni taught the power of that faith this way: “And neither at any time hath any wrought miracles until after their faith; wherefore they first believed in the Son of God.”⁸

I have visited with a woman who received the miracle of sufficient strength to endure unimaginable losses with just the simple capacity to repeat endlessly the words “I know that my Redeemer lives.”⁹ That faith and those words of testimony were still there in the mist that obscured but did not erase memories of her childhood.

I was stunned to learn that another woman had forgiven a person who had wronged her for years. I was surprised and asked her why she had chosen to forgive and forget so many years of spiteful abuse.

She said quietly, “It was the hardest thing I have ever done, but I just knew I had to do it. So I did.” Her faith that the Savior would forgive her if she forgave others prepared her with a feeling of peace and hope as she faced death just months after she had forgiven her unrepentant adversary.

She asked me, “When I get there, how will it be in heaven?”

And I said, “I know just from what I have seen of your capacity to exercise faith and to forgive that it will be a wonderful homecoming for you.”

I have another encouragement to those who now wonder if their faith in Jesus Christ will be sufficient for them to endure well to the end. I was blessed to have known others of you who are listening now when you were younger, vibrant, gifted beyond most of those around you, yet you chose to do what the Savior would have done. Out of your abundance you found ways to help and care for those you might have ignored or looked down upon from your place in life.

When hard trials come, the faith to endure them well will be there, built as you may now notice but may have not at the time that you acted on the pure love of Christ, serving and forgiving others as the Savior would have done. You built a foundation of faith from loving as the Savior loved and serving for Him. Your faith in Him led to acts of charity that will bring you hope.

It is never too late to strengthen the foundation of faith. There is always time. With faith in the Savior, you can repent and plead for forgiveness. There is someone you can forgive. There is someone you can thank. There is someone you can serve and lift. You can do it wherever you are and however alone and deserted you may feel.

I cannot promise an end to your adversity in this life. I cannot assure you that your trials will seem to you to be only for a moment. One of the characteristics of trials in life is that they seem to make clocks slow down and then appear almost to stop.

There are reasons for that. Knowing those reasons may not give much comfort, but it can give you a feeling of patience. Those reasons come from this one fact: in Their perfect love for you, Heavenly Father and the Savior want you fitted to be with Them to live in families forever. Only those washed perfectly clean through the Atonement of Jesus Christ can be there.

My mother fought cancer for nearly 10 years. Treatments and surgeries and finally confinement to her bed were some of her trials.

I remember my father saying as he watched her take her last breath, “A little girl has gone home to rest.”

One of the speakers at her funeral was President Spencer W. Kimball. Among the tributes he paid, I remember one that went something like this: “Some of you may have thought that Mildred suffered so long and so much because of something she had done wrong that required the trials.” He then said, “No, it was that God just wanted her to be polished a little more.” I remember at the time thinking, “If a woman that good needed that much polishing, what is ahead for me?”

If we have faith in Jesus Christ, the hardest as well as the easiest times in life can be a blessing. In all conditions, we can choose the right with the guidance of the Spirit. We have the gospel of Jesus Christ to shape and guide our lives if we choose it. And with prophets revealing to us our place in the plan of salvation, we can live with perfect hope and a feeling of peace. We never need to feel that we are alone or unloved in the Lord’s service because we never are. We can feel the love of God. The Savior has promised angels on our left and our right to bear us up.¹⁰ And He always keeps His word.

I testify that God the Father lives and that His Beloved Son is our Redeemer. The Holy Ghost has confirmed truth in this conference and will again as you seek it, as you listen, and as you later study the messages of the Lord’s authorized servants, who are here. President Thomas S. Monson is the Lord’s prophet to the entire world. The Lord watches over you. God the Father lives. His Beloved Son, Jesus Christ, is our Redeemer. His love is unfailing. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

I would like to add my testimony, that Heavenly Father loves His children. So so much. He does not give trials that we cannot overcome. He knows our strengths and our potential. He does not expect us to do it alone. He is a God of love and patience. Do not be discouraged when the road you have been asked to travel seems too difficult. You will overcome it! You will triumph with the Lord's help. "A revelation I give unto you concerning my will; and if thou art faithful and walk  in the paths of virtue before me, I will preserve they life, and thou shalt receive and inheritance in Zion" (D&C 25:2) It is not an easy task to be grateful during challenging times. But is worth it. I am thankful that Heavenly Father answered my plea and provided a humbling experience that would try my faith. 

"And verily I say unto thee that thou shalt lay aside

 the things of this world, and seek for the

 things of a better." (D&C 25:10)

I Love To See The Temple

Temples

This week I had the wonderful blessing of going the temple. Once, with my best friend, and another with Seminary Council. I feel so blessed to have a best friend who has a strong testimony of the gospel and shares a desire to attend the temple often. She inspires me to always be found worthy of the Holy Ghost. And also, my friends on Seminary Council. I love them dearly and they are a marvelous example to me each day of putting the Lord first and magnifying your calling. We have grown closer together as we love and serve others and attend the temple.

It's incredible to live within sight of so many temples. They stand so beautiful and tall, as a beacon of light, hope, and truth.

Both times that I attended the temple this week, I had a similar experience. I felt the spirit bare witness to me that the youth that are living on the earth today have a specific mission. Heavenly Father sent the youth of this time to be valiant missionaries who, just as temples, stand as a beacon of light, hope, and truth for ALL. To stand as "a voice for good, a voice for the gospel, a voice for God".

We live in a time of rapid growth and discovery. People are seeking the truth, and we as members of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,  need to be anxiously engaged in bringing others to the truth. But in order to do so, a foundation of testimony must first be founded. And Heavenly Fathers desires so badly for each of His children to gain an unwavering testimony, for their own personal salvation, and more importantly, the salvation of others. "You cannot travel down what Lehi called "forbidden paths" and expect to guide others to the "strait and narrow" one-it can't be done". 

If you do not yet have a testimony of Jesus Christ or Joseph Smith or this gospel, ask and ye shall receive. Kneel in humble prayer to our Heavenly Father. Search the scriptures. Ponder. Allow the Holy Ghost to touch your heart and bare witness to you. Do all these things not once or twice, but continually until you have received a confirmation of the truth and a testimony for yourself. Then, you can begin to direct others through your own light.
   

"Missionary work isn't the only thing we need to do in this big, wide, wonderful Church. But almost everything else we need to do depends on people first hearing the gospel of Jesus Christ and coming into the faith". 

Temple work is another way to stand as a beacon of light, hope and truth. It is for the living members of the church and the redemption of the dead. (see 'What Temples are For' by W. Grant Bangerter)I have come closer to my Savior and Heavenly Father through embarking in the service of God and attending the temple often. "Yea, and my presence shall be there, for I will come into it, and all the pure in heart  that shall come inot it shall see God". (D&C 97:16)I have a testimony of temple work. It brings joy and blessings into our lives as we help others who are dependent on our service. There is a unique spirit felt in the temple. It is a place of peace and a place to be reclaimed.  

We never came to earth to save ourselves,

 but to save each other.

Excerpts from 'We Are All Enlisted' by Jeffrey R. Holland.

Testimony

Testimony

As I have grown older, my priorities have changed a little bit. Time is something I value more than I used to. I don't so much care what we're doing, I just want to spend time with people. To sit down and talk, or genuinely listen, or play silly games and laugh, or go enjoy nature. I simply want to give my time to people as freely as I wish. So that they know that I want to be around them not for what we're doing or where we're going, but because I love and care for them as a person.

Testimony is another "value" I have come to appreciate. I say value as in the importance, worth or usefulness of something. To gain a testimony of something or someone does not require anything tangible. It is not something one can purchase, borrow, or obtain in an instant. Testimony requires patience, constant prayer, persistence, and action. It does not come easily. It is a process of questioning, seeking, discovery, and action.

As Pilate once asked in John 18:38, "What is truth?", and I add, what are you willing to sacrifice to find the truth for yourself? Every man and woman has the responsibility to discover truth for themself. 

Then how do I find truth?

"If any of you lack wisdom , let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." James 1:5

“Never did any passage of scripture come with more power to the heart of man than this did at this time to mine. It seemed to enter with great force into every feeling of my heart. I reflected on it again and again, knowing that if any person needed wisdom from God, I did; for how to act I did not know, and unless I could get more wisdom than I then had, I would never know; for the teachers of religion of the different sects understood the same passages of scripture so differently as to destroy all confidence in settling the question by an appeal to the Bible.

“At length I came to the conclusion that I must either remain in darkness and confusion, or else I must do as James directs, that is, ask of God. I at length came to the determination to ‘ask of God,’ concluding that if he gave wisdom to them that lacked wisdom, and would give liberally, and not upbraid, I might venture.”

(JSH 1:7-13)

Everything that I am is because a of young boy seeking the truth and a single verse, James 1:5. Joseph Smith needed to know the truth. He pondered and prayed while patiently waiting for an answer. He humbly approached the Lord to be free of a "state of darkness and confusion". Because of his fervent prayer, I too have discovered the truth.

I have a testimony of my Heavenly Father. He is a God of love and light and does hear the prayers of all His children. He is constantly trying to show His love for us. Through powerful words of the prophets, loving friends or family, principles and doctrine from the scriptures, or promptings from the Holy Ghost, we can receive personal revelation. I am grateful to be a member of the gospel of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It brings purpose and happiness to my life. I strive to use my time purposefully and act on prompting I receive from the Holy Ghost. It is a blessing to have truth and light in my life.

For those of you who do not yet have a testimony or have not discovered the truth for yourself, humbly approach the Lord. Do as James 1:5 directs and ask of God. He will hear and answer your prayer. No matter how long it may take, he will  provide an answer.