Our covenant remembering quiets worldly worries, turns self-doubt into courage, and gives hope in times of trial.
Understand that it’s not your job to convert people. That is the role of the Holy Ghost. Your role is to share what is in your heart and live consistent with your beliefs.
| Missionary Work: Sharing What Is in Your Heart
I haven’t met anyone who found the gospel later in life who didn’t wish it could have been earlier.
As you use your agency to carve out time every day to draw close to God’s voice, especially in the Book of Mormon, over time His voice will become clearer and more familiar to you.
My promise to you is one that a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles once made to me. I had said to him that because of choices some in our extended family had made, I doubted that we could be together in the world to come. He said, as well as I can remember, “You are worrying about the wrong problem. You just live worthy of the celestial kingdom, and the family arrangements will be more wonderful than you can imagine.”
| A Home Where the Spirit of the Lord Dwells
Now, may I clarify several additional points with respect to women and priesthood. When you are set apart to serve in a calling under the direction of one who holds priesthood keys—such as your bishop or stake president—you are given priesthood authority to function in that calling.
Similarly, in the holy temple you are authorized to perform and officiate in priesthood ordinances every time you attend. Your temple endowment prepares you to do so.
I haven’t met anyone who found the gospel later in life who didn’t wish it could have been earlier.
A story is told of a woman who was upset that her son was eating too much candy. No matter how much she told him to stop, he continued to satisfy his sweet tooth. Totally frustrated, she decided to take her son to see a wise man whom he respected.
She approached him and said, “Sir, my son eats too much candy. Would you please tell him to stop eating it?”
He listened carefully then said to her son, “Go home and come back in two weeks.”
She took her son and went home, perplexed why he had not asked the boy to stop eating so much candy.
Two weeks later they returned. The wise man looked directly at the boy and said, “Boy, you should stop eating so much candy. It is not good for your health.”
The boy nodded and promised he would.
The boy’s mother asked, “Why didn’t you tell him that two weeks ago?”
The wise man smiled. “Two weeks ago I was still eating too much candy myself.”
This man lived with such integrity that he knew his advice would carry power only if he was following his own counsel.
| After the Trial of Our Faith
The age-old paradox is still true. In losing our worldly self through covenant belonging, we find and become our best eternal self—free, alive, real—and define our most important relationships.
Along life’s path, we may lose faith in God, but He never loses faith in us. As it were, His porch light is always on. He invites us to come or return to the covenants that mark His path. He waits ready to embrace us, even when we are “yet a great way off.”