Forgivness: My Burden Was Made Light

The latest Mormon Messages feature on YouTube tells the story of Christopher Williams who lost his wife who was pregnant along with two of their children in 2007 car accident.  The driver of the car who struck them was a 17 year-old young man who was intoxicated.  President James E Faust referenced this story in his conference talk entitled The Healing Power of Forgiveness.  

“I am grateful that God allows tragedy and trials to occur in our lives.  Not because they are easy or because they are desired, but because they help us love.  That too is a wonderful blessing because I saw my brother coming to know a man of sorrow and one who was acquainted with grief.  As I have now come to understand it, this is really why I was sent here.  It has been incredibly difficult to have to learn those lessons the way that I have learned them, but I have always ended those episodes of greif with an assurance and hope that one day perhaps I shall see Him as he is.  One day, hopefully, I will be like Him.  And one day I will be with my wife again as well as the rest of my family, and that’s what keeps me going forward.”

Revelations 7

13 And one of the elders answered, saying unto me, What are these which are arrayed in white robes? and whence came they?

14 And I said unto him, Sir, thou knowest. And he said to me, These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

15 Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them. 

16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat.

17 For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.

More information about Christopher Williams story http://bit.ly/9EKXLH and http://bit.ly/8Uacvc

Parley P. Pratt and The Book of Mormon

180 years ago this month my great-grandfathers grandfather Parley P. Pratt discovered the Book of Mormon which not only changed his life and the life of his descendants but untold millions through his teachings and example.  President Gordon B. Hinckley tells the story:

"In August of 1830, as a lay preacher, [Parley P. Pratt] was traveling from Ohio to eastern New York. At Newark, along the Erie Canal, he left the boat and walked ten miles into the country where he met a Baptist deacon by the name of Hamlin, who told him 'of a book, a strange book, a VERY STRANGE BOOK! . . . This book, he said, purported to have been originally written on plates either of gold or brass, by a branch of the tribes of Israel; and to have been discovered and translated by a young man near Palmyra, in the State of New York, by the aid of visions, or the ministry of angels. I inquired of him how or where the book was to be obtained. He promised me the perusal of it, at his house the next day. . . . Next morning I called at his house, where, for the first time, my eyes beheld the 'BOOK OF MORMON'—that book of books . . . which was the principal means, in the hands of God, of directing the entire course of my future life.

" 'I opened it with eagerness, and read its title page. I then read the testimony of several witnesses in relation to the manner of its being found and translated. After this I commenced its contents by course. I read all day; eating was a burden, I had no desire for food; sleep was a burden when the night came, for I preferred reading to sleep.

" 'As I read, the spirit of the Lord was upon me, and I knew and comprehended that the book was true, as plainly and manifestly as a man comprehends and knows that he exists' (Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, 3d ed., Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938, pp. 36–37).

"Parley Pratt was then twenty-three years of age. The reading of the Book of Mormon affected him so profoundly that he was soon baptized into the Church and became one of its most effective and powerful advocates."

Gordon B. Hinckley, "An Angel from on High, the Long, Long Silence Broke,"Ensign, Nov. 1979, 7