House of faith

May our house be a house of faith. I share with you one example from the countless experiences I have had over the years with those who exhibited great faith.

Some years ago, while I was attending the Grand Junction Colorado Stake conference, the stake president asked if I would meet with a distraught mother and father, Hale and Donna Larson, whose son had announced his decision to leave his mission field after having just arrived there. I was happy to do so , and when the conference throng had left, we knelt quietly in a private place — mother, father, stake president, and I. As I prayed in behalf of all, I could hear the muffled sobs of a sorrowing mother and a disappointed father.

When we arose, the father said, "Brother Monson, we have been exerting our faith and pleading with our Father in Heaven to help alter our son's announced decision to return home before completing his mission. Do you think He can? Why is it that now when I am trying so hard to do what is right, it seems that my prayers are not heard?"

I responded, "Where is he serving his mission?" He replied, "In Duesseldorf, Germany." I placed my arm around mother and father and said to them, "Your prayers have been heard and are already being answered. With more than twenty-eight stake conferences being held this day attended by the General Authorities, I was assigned to your stake. Of all the Brethren, I am the only one who has the assignment to meet with the missionaries in your son's mission this very month."

Their petition had been honored by the Lord. I was able to meet with their son. He responded to their pleadings. He remained and completed a highly successful mission.

— Bolivia Stake Conference Broadcast, Sunday, March 16, 2008

Never quit

Thomas Huxley advised, "The end of life is not knowledge, but action." I put it another way: Vision without work is daydreaming. Work without vision is drudgery. But work coupled with vision shall yield to you the success you desire.

You may sometimes be tempted to say, "Will my influence make any difference? I am just one. Will my service affect the world or the work that dramatically?" The account of a seaman, Elgin Staples, teaches a great lesson. He was on a destroyer in World War II. He went into that bloody cauldron known as the Pacific Theater of War. His mother back in Akron, Ohio, wondered, "What can I do to help our war effort?" She worked in an arms plant. Every morning before she went to work, she would pray, "Grant that whatever I do today may be helpful to our country and to my boy." Elgin Staples went down in the Pacific off Guadalcanal when his ship was torpedoed. Many were killed. He clung to a life preserver and floated to a rescue vessel, from whence he was extricated from the ocean. He hauled up the life preserver with him and claimed it as the most valuable souvenir he had ever had. Later he found that that life preserver had been made, inspected and packed back home in Akron, Ohio, by his own mother.

Commitment to a purpose, an ideal; persistence, never quitting — these must each day be your quest. …

—"Go for it!" College of Eastern Utah Commencement, May 6, 2000

Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Our Lord and Master marked the way: "[He]went about doing good." He in very deed was a model to follow - even an example of the believers. Are we?

An example of the believers

Frequently we are too quick to criticize, too prone to judge and too ready to abandon an opportunity to help, to lift and, yes, even to save. Some point the accusing finger at the wayward or unfortunate and in derision say, "Oh, she will never change. She has always been a bad one." A few see beyond the outward appearance and recognize the true worth of a human soul. When they do, miracles occur. The downtrodden, the discouraged, the helpless become "no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God." True love can alter human lives and change human nature.

This truth was portrayed so beautifully on the stage in "My Fair Lady." Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl, spoke to one for whom she cared: "You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up — the dressing and the proper way of speaking — the difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she is treated. I shall always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower girl and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because you always treat me as a lady and always will." …

We need not wait for a cataclysmic event, a dramatic occurrence in the world in which we live, or a special invitation, to be an example — even a model to follow. Our opportunities lie before us here and now. But they are perishable. Likely they will be found in our own homes and in the everyday actions of our own lives. Our Lord and Master marked the way: "[He] went about doing good." He in very deed was a model to follow — even an example of the believers. Are we?

— "An Example of the Believers," General Women's Meeting, Sept. 26, 1992