When Our Hearts Were Depressed and We Were about to Turn Back
While he was in Liberty Jail, far from the fellowship of the Saints, Joseph Smith wrote of the particular love that exists among the membership of the Church. I have been blessed by that love many times as I have attended wards across four continents. Wherever I travel throughout the world, when I am with the Church, I immediately feel that I am among family. That love is just one of the many reflections and of the love that God has for us and the love of Jesus Christ, his Son.
The Book of Mormon contains a description of how we feel when we receive the love of God. Ammon was a missionary who, at the end of his mission, considered the great blessings that he had received in his own life and in the
Great and Marvelous are Thy Works
Admittedly, I’m a novice. But the more experiences I have with the Book of Mormon, the more stunning I find the examples of faith contained in its pages. As I become familiar with the characters in the record - protagonists and antagonists alike - I realize that these were real people who were not so different from me. Though they lived in another time and place, they had the same kinds of challenges, hopes, failures and successes that I have. That is why their message is so powerful. The Book of Mormon isn’t just great wisdom literature, and it isn’t just gospel doctrine. It is a concrete account of real lives - it is testimony of “what great things the Lord hath done for [our] fathers”. That is one way it convinces us that we “are not cast off forever,” and “that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God,” and
read on