Trials
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in the Young Women General Presidency Raise your light if you have felt overwhelmed by life lately. Have you been afraid of the future and what's ahead? Are you carrying stress about things you can't control? Are you tired of comparing yourself to everyone else? Do you struggle to see yourself the way God sees you? And lastly, is the light you're supposed to let shine feeling dim? ... Faith, too, is a lifelong quest. It takes practice and exercise. And if life was easy, if everything was effortless, our faith in Christ, like a muscle, would grow weak because we didn't have to use it. This is what I have learned. Faith isn't faith until it is tried. And the moment we need it is the moment we may question it. And this is the moment faith can truly expand. This is what I experienced when my appendix ruptured a few months after we arrived in Sydney, Australia on our mission. After emergency surgery, I ended up back in the hospital for the third time. And I remember wanting so badly to be healed and thought I was exerting as much faith as I could muster to get better. We were away from our home and family to serve the Lord. And I have to admit, I wondered, heavenly father, are you really there? And do you really care? But in those fearful moments, I came to realize this great truth that my faith isn't in a certain outcome or even a timely outcome. My faith is in Jesus Christ and his ability to work all things together for my good. Now we're away from our heavenly home. And it's like we said yes to surgery before we came to this earth. And then after the veil or the anesthesia kicks in, we change our minds because we've forgotten what we agreed to before. There are days when it feels like I'm in the middle of an operating room and I'm trying to stop the surgeon midway through the operation by saying something like, "I am really sorry to bother you right now. I know I said yes to this surgery, but I've changed my mind. I thought it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would, and it is so much messier. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's going to leave a scar." ... it helps me to remember that when we turn to God, we are recapturing the faith that we had before we came to this planet. When we were all together, all of us in our premortal home, we said yes. We may feel weak now, but we weren't then. Remember, our imperfect, desperate faith is still faith. And because our faith is centered in Jesus Christ, we don't have to do this alone. ... Maybe you have thought, “Carest thou not that my life isn’t turning out at all how I’d planned?” Or “Carest thou not that my child is struggling?” Or “Carest thou not that I feel so alone?” Now, I want you to think about the Savior’s next words: “Why are you so fearful? How is it ye have no faith?” Did His disciples look at Him and think He didn’t care about them? Of course He did. Didn’t they trust Him? Of course they did. But maybe they were questioning Him because He was the one who said, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake.” And when they did, they went straight into a storm. Does that sound familiar? You feel like you’re following the Savior and you still end up in a storm. Remember, the storm doesn’t mean He has abandoned you. He is in the boat with you. I believe He is saying to you and to me, when we cannot see the lighthouse, “I’ve got you. I’ve got this, and I’m going to get you to the other side.” When will that happen? When will the promises finally be fulfilled? We don’t know. But we do know the time is drawing near. We were on our mission when President Nelson said, “Time is running out.” And I was in the conference center when he said, “In a coming day, Jesus Christ will return.” Sometimes if we can’t imagine how it will happen, we think maybe it won’t happen. But that’s not true. It is my testimony that the Savior of the world will return. And I got a glimpse of what it might feel like. I got to be part of the Hill Cumorah pageant with hundreds of other actors wearing costumes and portraying people in the Book of Mormon. Towards the end of the play, there is a scene that has stayed with me. When the Savior was crucified, there were earthquakes and houses shook. There were fires and cities sinking into the sea. And somehow in the pageant, they made it sound like it was really happening. On stage, people were crying and wailing. Then it was dark and silent, and hundreds of us made our way onto the stage on the Hill Cumorah just as they had gathered in the Book of Mormon times at the temple. And then we waited. Suddenly we turned our eyes upward to the top of the hill to see a bright figure descending in the dark. He was bathed in light. It was completely quiet as He came down and stood among us. We all fell to our knees at the same time and reverently declared, “Blessed be the name of the most high God.” And this happened night after night. And I remember when Christ called Nephi to come to Him. I thought, “How must Nephi have felt?” He had stayed faithful to the end, even when the people around him were denying that Christ was real. And here He was—real. And night after night, the Spirit whispered to me, “One day this will happen again.” It is my testimony that the Savior of the world will return. And we are all here at the very end of this very last dispensation getting ready for something—the arrival of our King, the return of the real King, Jesus Christ. And one day, you and I will really see Him. I used to be afraid of that moment when I meet my Savior, but not anymore. The thought of standing before someone who sees the pain that no one else sees, who knows the things that have made life so hard, who understands just how hard I’m trying—it gives me such great hope. And it is a fearless hope. Not because I’m good, but because He is. I bear testimony that we have a Savior who knows us intimately. He knows your heart and your heartache. He knows your DNA, the very circumstances you were born into, and the predispositions that are part of the mix precisely because you would grow the most in these conditions. And because of this, He knows the degree of difficulty you are living with. I’ve thought about this moment a lot, and I think I know what I will do. First, I will thank my Savior and fall at His feet and bathe Him with my tears. But the next thing that I will do is point backward and say, “That was hard. That was hard!” And He will say, “I know,” because He does. It is my witness tonight that you are not alone. You’re not just one person fighting by yourself in this beautiful, complicated world. All of us who love, believe, and turn to Christ—we are one. And we can let His radiance and His love shine through us because we are His. So let us be one. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Sister Tamara W. Runia
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We’re standing here in front of the Salt Lake Temple, still in the process of being renovated and restored to its original beauty with more strength. Now, the interesting thing is that there's this huge scaffolding around it, which hides somehow the beauty of the temple, and it looks a little dirty at some places. Often the situation which we have, whether it's trials or even callings in the Church or other special circumstances, they're normally temporary, like the scaffoldings. These scaffoldings are here to support, to help, to come to the core, to restore and beautify what is below and bring it to a new and a better purpose when this time is over, if we focus on the work, which goes to the core, to the inside, to the heart, to the soul, the scaffolding will go, and the beauty of God's true creation will be seen. Now it is mostly gone. Steel beams, platforms and supports surrounded the sacred structure for a purpose. The scaffolding was there to help protect the House of the Lord. The scaffolding provides access for repairs, restoration and strengthening of the temple. It provides access to fortify the temple’s foundation, refine or repair the structure, and make it safer during earthquakes. The scaffolding is evidence of loving care for something sacred, supporting something worth preserving for future generations. In our lives, the Lord offers scaffolding as well. Parents, good friends, teachers, leaders, commandments, covenants and even seasons of correction and stretching. They are there to help us gain better access to the light and life that will bring us back to our heavenly home and safely reach our eternal destination. My dear friends, we rejoice in Christ because he is the Master Builder. He knows what He's doing. With the
Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf
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