"I Wish I Had As Many Friends As This Bird Does"

Last night I was talking to an older lady from Hawaii; she was baptised when she was 8, but was inactive and apathetic to the gospel most of her life. When she was in her twenties, some friends finally brought her to church, and she said that she felt some kind of draw to it. She didn't know what the heck those feelings were, but she stuck with it, and started attending church regularly again. She ended up becoming a missionary, and while she was on her mission, somebody asked her how she knew that God and Jesus Christ were real. She didn't. All she knew was that she felt happy at church, and that it helped her be good. 

She said that in the middle of her mission, she watched a video of the First Vision of Joseph Smith, and it wasn't until then that she knew. It wasn't just in her heart anymore. She knew God was real, because why would Jesus Christ come to earth if He didn't love us? Why would so many people love Him, if He didn't love them? Why would He be prophesied about for centuries and millenia before His birth, and remembered for centuries and millenia  after His death, if He wasn't so great and so good? 

At one point, you don't just feel it, you know it. The Gospel of Jesus Christ isn't just a feel-good story. It's everything, and somewhere along the way, as long as you stay on the way, everything clicks. 

I know that you don't come to know it immediately. It takes work, and it takes time, because good things are never easy. 

And I know that even though you don't know it immediately, that God promises us that wewill come to know.

"Dispute not because ye see not, for ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." -Ether 12:6 

Everyone can gain that witness. I know because I did. 

Merry Christmas! 

This is my silly family:

This is a friend I made at the bird park today: 

And all of his friends: