Come What May

"Fear not little children, for you are mine, and I have overcome the world…” (D&C 50:41). Because of particular circumstances both in my personal life and in my work online as a FamilySearch service missionary I have the enlightening opportunity to talk to all kinds of frustrated people.  These friends and strangers are discouraged by limitations or glitches, by family or friends, by foolish mistakes and bad days, by circumstances both within and beyond their control.  I join them in the rankings. Some days I feel like an embarrassing disaster happening right before your eyes.  Recently, while helping a man remedy some errors he made in his family history he sighed discouraged and said, “Can I just delete it all and start over?”  The next day as I reflected on several events of the past week I found myself sighing and thinking the same.  “Can I just delete it all and start over?”  The disappointing answer that came to us both: no. We live i...

“For with God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). In Genesis the Lord promises Abraham that he will be a father of nations and his wife Sarah will be a mother of nations.  That was probably a confusing promise.  They were old, they had no children; how could a 90-year-old, infertile woman have a son?  I imagine it was difficult to understand, but as they trusted in Heavenly Father all of the blessings promised to Abraham and Sarah were brought to pass.  They did have a son and they did become the parents of nations, but I doubt the process was quite what they anticipated. In August I was a missionary in Chile.  I had been ill for nearly a month and the mission was making plans to send me home.  During this time I asked for a Priesthood blessing.  In this blessing I was told that I would go home to recover so that I could return to the mission field with greater strength.  As difficult as it was to leave, I took great comfort knowing...