November 20, 2011

I am so very grateful to have this opportunity to express my testimony to those whom I love the most in the entire world.  My family has been a great blessing throughout my life.  I have found support, love, and strength from them during stressful times as well as happy times.  No matter what life was like for me, my family has been a source of great joy and happiness for me.  There is no greater blessing to me than to be sealed to my family throughout eternity because of the blessings of the temple.  It is in my older years that I am realizing the great power of being sealed for time and eternity to my dear husband and my wonderful children.  The passing years have taught me many lessons.  I have learned through personal revelation that my Heavenly Father is intimately involved in my life.  He loves me, sustains me, and directs my life when I am willing to submit to His will.  There have been times when I have angrily cried out to Him because I felt neglected or alone.  In those times, I have been reassured that He is there.  He has told me that the blessings I was longing for were not what would lead me back to Him.  

I am confident that each of us signed up for, volunteered for, or accepted a divine mission prior to this earth life.  Elder Neil A. Maxwell has said that none of us has been foreordained to fail or to be wicked.  I am also confident that the civil war that occurred in heaven with our own loved ones there had produced the most dangerous kinds of foes; those who know how we think, what we love, along with all our strengths and weaknesses.  Those evil followers of Satan are doing all they can to prevent us from fulfilling our missions here.  The war rages on in the most dangerous of battlefields.  We are fighting for and working out our own salvation/exaltation with no memory of our former lives.  No one can fight the battle for us.   I know that it is through clinging to righteous principles that my Savior stands by my side, comforts me and guides me as I fulfill the mission that I agreed to prior to this life.   I have seen first hand that those who have great callings also have to overcome great obstacles.  

The only way back to our Heavenly Father and Savior Jesus Christ is through obedience to the laws and ordinances of the Gospel.  What a great blessing they are to me now! What was a burden in my youth is comfort to me now.  President Ezra Taft Benson has said, “When obedience ceases to be an irritant and becomes a quest, then the Lord endows us with power.”  I believe that with all my being as I have been endowed with unbelievable power and strength at critical and noncritical times of my life.  

I believe in the power of prayer.  I have received comforting, guiding revelation when I have needed it.  I have also struggled for instant answers only to have to wait (sometimes for years) for answers.  I know that our life here on earth is to refine us, not to make us comfortable in a “Happily Ever After” state.  That time will come after we are resurrected.  I am grateful to my Savior, Jesus Christ for allowing me the great privilege of learning for myself through trial and error.  I love Him!  I love the restored Gospel.  The Book of Mormon has provided a solid testimony for me during questioning times.  I love the Book of Mormon.  I love my family.  I am grateful for all the blessings that are mine.  In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.  Love you all!  Alane