Saturday morning session: Finding ways to finish one's story
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With the Lord, nothing is impossible, said Sister Gayle M. Clegg, "but we have to finish out our own stories. . . . He wants us to finish well."
Speaking Saturday morning, Sister Clegg, second counselor in the Primary General Presidency, related three examples of people, who, with vision and determination, knew how to finish their tasks.
She told how Jimmy, a former sixth grade student, pleaded to be given more time during the summer vacation to complete a writing assignment. "I thought about him that summer," she said, "but the assignment left my mind until years later when I found his completed project in the mailbox.
"I was amazed and wondered what made Jimmy finish the story," she said.
Sister Clegg described how her husband's great-grandfather, Henry Clegg Jr., was a finisher. While crossing the plains for the Salt Lake Valley, his wife, Hannah, died of cholera and was buried in an unmarked grave. The company moved on, and at 6 o'clock that evening, his youngest son also died.
"Henry retraced his steps to Hannah's grave, placed his young son in his wife's arms, and reburied the two of them together," she said.
For the next several weeks, Henry stopped writing in his journal. "I was struck with the words he used when he did start writing again: 'Still moving,' " she said.
She recounted a recent experience in West Africa where she "witnessed every-day pioneers walking forward, joining a new Church, leaving behind centuries of traditions, even leaving behind family and friends."
Jimmy spent years on his own writing for no deadline. Henry Clegg marched on alone and without heart even to write in a journal. And African saints lived worthy of a temple they could not have imagined would one day rise in their nation, she continued.
"To keep going, to stay faithful and to finish had to be its own reward."
Each person must find and finish his or her own story, she said.
"We have to keep writing, keep walking, keep serving and accepting challenges to the end of our own story," she said.
