Pure religion: Trust, then go and do
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The following is excerpted from President Henry B. Eyring's October 2010 general conference address: "Trust in God, Then Go and Do."
God sends messages and authorized messengers to His children. I am to build trust in God and His servants enough that we will go out and obey His counsel. He wants that because He loves us and wants our happiness. And He knows how a lack of trust in Him brings sadness. ...
Trust in God can bless communities as well as families. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey. Our branch of the Church had fewer than 20 members who regularly attended.
Among them was a woman — an older, very humble convert to the Church. She was an immigrant who spoke with a heavy Norwegian accent. She was the only member of the Church in her family and the only member of the Church in the city in which she lived.
Through my father, who was the branch president, the Lord called her as the president of the branch Relief Society. She had no handbook to tell her what to do. No other member of the Church lived near her. She only knew that the Lord cared for those in need and the few words in the motto of the Relief Society: "Charity never faileth."
It was in the depths of what we now call the Great Depression. Thousands were out of work and homeless. So, feeling she had her errand from the Lord, she asked her neighbors for old clothes. She washed the clothes, pressed them, and put them in cardboard boxes on her back porch. When men without money needed clothes and asked her neighbors for help, they would say, "Go to the house down the street. There is a Mormon lady living there who will give you what you need."
The Lord did not run the city, but He changed a part of it for the better. He called one tiny woman — alone — who trusted Him enough to find out what He wanted her to do and then did it. Because of her trust in the Lord, she was able to help in that city hundreds of Heavenly Father's children in need.
