One decade after completing her BYU education and getting married, a young mother met with her friends in a monthly book club. She was discouraged; her life was not what she had once expected it would be. About the time her third child was born, the woman's husband had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. The mother was anxious about her future.

"Why is life so hard for me?" she wondered.

Then the woman looked around the room, filled with other Latter-day Saint women. Each, the young mother quickly realized, had her own set of problems. One had endured infertility, others divorce. Three women had never married. One woman's husband traveled out-of-state for business every week. Another's husband had lost his job, just after the couple bought their first home. And yet another's daughter suffered from a life-shortening genetic disorder.

"All of us can become discouraged," said President Gordon B. Hinckley. "It is important to know, when you feel down, that many others do also and that their circumstances are generally much worse than yours. And it's important to know that when one of us is down, it becomes the obligation of his friends to give him a lift" (Teachings of Gordon B. Hinckley, p. 156).

The scriptures teach of a group of Zoramites "despised of all men because of their poverty." Because of their exceeding poverty, they had been cast out of their synagogues, which they had labored abundantly to build with their own hands. They had no place to worship God.

When Alma heard of their afflictions he had great joy, for "he beheld that their afflictions had truly humbled them, and that they were in a preparation to hear the word. . . . And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved."

It was in that humbled state that the Zoramites could learn the truths of God and be comforted. Alma "gave them a lift," delivered through the word of God. Alma told the people to have faith, that "God is merciful unto all who believe on his name." (See Alma 32.)

Joseph Smith taught the early Church members, who endured unthinkable adversity, what the Zoramites already knew: that after much tribulation come blessings.

"You cannot behold with your natural eyes, for the present time, the design of your God concerning those things which shall come hereafter, and the glory which shall follow after much tribulation. . . . Wherefore the day cometh that ye shall be crowned with much glory" (Doctrine and Covenants 58:3-4).

"We all need reminding . . . that our people came here and settled these valleys so that they might worship God according to their desires," said President Hinckley of early Church members at the Pioneer Day Commemoration Concert on July 22, 2001. "They came and stopped here because of the faith they had in their prophet leader. And he came and stopped here because of his faith in the living God. . . . On the anvil of adversity they were hammered and shaped and tempered."

The mother looked at her book club friends. She could see how faith had helped each weather her individual adversity. One had faith to adopt children with physical and emotional limitations. Others supported younger siblings at weddings they wished had been for them. Another quit her job after her once-unemployed husband again found work. And yet another became pregnant, even though she knew another baby could have the same genetic disorder that plagued her older child.

Church leaders have long taught the same thing the woman learned that day from faithful friends — that everyone has adversity and that following the commandments of God can help a person endure it.

"When the winds and waves of adversity swirl around you, do as the scriptures say — 'stand in holy places.' Stand on the firm, high ground of gospel living and know that not even the forces of the devil can move you from spiritual safety," said President Hinckley to a vast congregation of Church members in the Pacific islands of Samoa and Tahiti, March 13, 2005. "To the early saints the Lord said, 'Let your hearts be comforted . . . . Zion shall not be moved out of her place' " (Doctrine and Covenants 101:17).