No Coincidences

Tag: selfless

  • Good Samaritan Mechanic

    Good Samaritan Mechanic

    I referenced our “van issues” in this post about our trip to Six Flags in April 2024. It is a story worth telling even all this time later. The six hour drive turned into 10 hours. This is how.

    We were planning to drive to California. The van was packed and ready to go. 

    Beth had started not feeling well the day before. As our time for leaving approached, she voiced more concern about how she was feeling. I reassured her that she would be okay once we got going.

    We didn’t get far before Beth said she couldn’t do it. She was too sick to be in the car for 6 hours to California. 

    Back home we went. We dropped off Beth and quickly unloaded her essentials. When Six Flags beckons, only the strong survive (just kidding Beth *mwah). 

    Back on the road we went. Just me and my two little girls.  

    We purchased the van we were driving from Beth’s parents. It drove well and had a brand-new engine but had some aesthetic issues. As we were driving Ivy began the drive with her normal excitement about our trip. It didn’t take long for her and Sage to both be asleep. In the quiet I started to hear things. A scraping sound was coming from the bottom of the van. 

    I pulled over and looked at the front of the van. It looked okay. Then I noticed a protective wheel well liner, the protective covering near tires, was flapping. That’s what was dragging. It seemed okay so I kept driving. I was paying close attention and noted that it started to make a very disconcerting noise if I got to 65 miles per hour or above. I couldn’t drive to California going less than 65 the whole way. 

    This led to me literally doing a back and forth exercise for the next 45 minutes. I drove ahead a little, I turned around, I called my mom, I turned back around for California, I called my dad, I pulled over and looked again, I turned back around for home, I turned back around for California.

    Like the wheel well liner, I was torn on what to do. Six Flags was waiting! Only the strong survived! Was I going to let this keep us from our already planned trip? 

    We had our SUV at home so I could have gone back, unloaded the whole car, girls, everything, then got back on the road. We were only about 45 minutes on our way. There was another problem. My brother was meeting us and the hotel was in our name. I wondered if he’d be able to stay in the room. I was in a difficult spot, and I didn’t know what to do. 

    I was praying this whole time, looking for an answer.

    Finally I decided I couldn’t risk driving the van with my girls in the back all the way to California. I turned around for the final time to go home.  

    That’s when Beth texted me a new thought – what if I looked for a place that could just fix up that part so we could make the drive? I figured it was worth a shot. I looked up a repair shop nearby and drove to it. The place I ended up at didn’t look right but I was resigned to trying one place and then giving up. At this point it was still early enough that we could get to California in a reasonable time if we hurried.  

    I wasn’t sure where I’d ended up, but it wasn’t a normal auto-repair shop. I parked the girls in front and ran into the building. Once inside, I knew I wasn’t in the right place. It was a corporate office with a front desk. Why did my navigation bring me here? 

    I decided I was already this far so I might as well ask. I started to explain my situation to the girl at the front desk who looked panicked. Panicked girl went and got another lady.  

    The other lady showed up. This lady exuded a lot more confidence than panicked lady. I think it was panicked lady’s first week. 

    I started explaining, “This is a long shot, it doesn’t look like I’m in the right kind of place, but I’m trying to go on a trip to California, my girls are in the car, and we’re having an issue with the car. I was wondering if anyone could take a quick look and see if there might be an easy fix just so we can make the drive.” 

    To my surprise, the lady asked if she could come look at it. She walked out to the van with me and got down on the ground. She quickly assessed what the issue was. She was talking out loud and wondering if she could fix it with tape, or if she could screw it in, or if it could be ripped off altogether. She stood up. “Follow me.” 

    Okay… I jumped in the car and followed her slowly as she walked around the side of this corporate building. In the back of the building was a huge auto repair shop. This was the place cars went when they were totaled. It was a massive corporate building with a giant repair shop attached.

    I saw the lady walk up to a mechanic in his bay, in the middle of a dozen other mechanics in their bays. Why did she choose this man? He was in the middle of working on a car. After a quick conference with him, she walked over to me and told me he was going to look at the car and see what he could do. He pulled the car he was in the middle of working on out and guided me into the spot.  

    I pulled in, somewhat bewildered by the kindness being shown. He immediately got down and started evaluating the problem. He quickly determined what was needed.  

    The girls continued to sit in their car seats while I stood outside the car. I opened their doors so they could see me.  

    “What are we doing, Daddy?” Ivy asked. I told her we were seeing if this nice guy could help us get to California. 

    I started talking to the guy and learned he had 6 children of his own under the age of 16.  

    He stood up. He told me what I needed to get it fixed and be able to make our trip to California. I was confused. I asked if he knew of a repair shop that could help.  

    “Oh, I’ll do it. Just go buy the part and bring it back here and I’ll get it fixed up for you.” 

    I was still kind of taken aback by the help I was receiving. 

    I hastily reserved the part at a nearby shop and got in the car to go pick it up. When I got back to the repair shop with the required part, my new angel mechanic friend put the part on. While he was at it, he took care of two other items that needed addressing. All told he spent over an hour fixing things on the van.

    At one point during the fix, what seemed to be the mechanic’s supervisor came by to see how some other work was coming along. I got worried, was I going to get this selfless good Samaritan in trouble? My mechanic (whose name, if you haven’t noticed, I embarrassingly can’t remember) explained how he was working on something and gave the timeline for that other car to get done. The supervisor was completely understanding and told him to take his time. This place seemed to have a phenomenal work environment.  

    When he finished his work, I still had the nerves of considering the drive to California in a car I wasn’t sure I could trust. I asked him if everything was good and if he would feel comfortable driving his family in it now.

    He looked me dead in the eyes and said, “I wouldn’t send you away from here if I wasn’t confident those two girls would be safe.” 

    I was touched. As I re-read my writing of this story, and just remember that moment, of this man I didn’t know pausing his whole day to help me and then assuring me that my two daughters’ safety was the most important thing in the world to him, I’m just in awe of the kindness shown. 

    When Beth suggested seeing if the car could be fixed real quick, I said a prayer. I asked my Heavenly Father for help. I asked Him, if it was possible for us to still make our trip to California, to help me find a place that could fix the car. 

    After I picked up the part I needed and was driving back to the location with my good Samaritan, I was trying to search for the place. I knew its location, I was able to retrace my steps back to it, but I was curious how I ended up there in the first place. I couldn’t remember what I’d searched to find it. 

    “Car repair shop.” 

    “Mechanic nearby.” 

    “Car maintenance.” 

    “Auto shop by me.” 

    “Auto repair garage.” 

    “Car parts.” 

    On and on I tried. I couldn’t remember what I searched for, but surely it was one of those options. Nothing brought me back to that corporate garage. How did I get there in the first place? I still don’t know. 

    I’ve since (these two years later) spent considerable time searching Google Maps and various keywords to try to find this place. I don’t have a phenomenal sense of direction and honestly have very little clue of the rough area I was in. I’ve scoured Google Maps for mechanic, demolition, and salvage shops in the area I thought I was in. It’s like the place disappeared, an angelic phantom of my imagination that did real, concrete work on our van. The only proof I have that the place existed are the still present fixes on our van.

    I asked the mechanic if I could pay him. I knew what his answer would be. 

    “Knowing those girls are going to have a great trip with their dad, that’s reward enough.” 

    I told him and the woman that I prayed for help and believe I was led there. In an increasingly non-spiritual world, it was nice when they agreed and were happy to be the answers to my prayer. 

    What were the odds of arriving at that place, and meeting a woman willing to go outside and get on the ground to look at the fender of a van, and then be led to a man, and that man be willing to drop what he was doing in his busy day to fix that van – all for no payment, reward, or recognition in return? They were a real answer to prayer, real angels. 

    I’m grateful for kindness and good people. I did nothing to deserve this kindness. It is people like those individuals that make this world a better place. They exemplify why we’re here and I thank them for their example to me of selfless service.  

    Now I can’t believe it’s been almost two years since this experience. I want to send cookies, or this thank you, or anything. But I can’t find them. While I desperately want to thank those two people, maybe this just makes it more of a miracle. I ended up there miraculously as an answer to prayer, and it’s as if the place disappeared after.

    Those two people will never see this but thank you. That became a memorable trip for me and my girls. More importantly, I was reminded that there are still exceptionally good, amazing people out there. 

  • What’s in it for Me?

    What’s in it for Me?

    “Ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

    John F. Kennedy’s famous quote given in 1961. I think this has become a great weakness of humans today, and society as a whole. There are so few asking, “what can I do for you” and so many asking, “what’s in it for me?”

    There seems to be a great falling away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is a great falling away from religion in general. I think part of this falling away is based on this “me first” way of thinking. What does a church do for me?

    I believe there might be a plague in the Church of Jesus Christ of this way of thinking. We all know someone who has left the church for whatever reason. All the reasons aside, there’s often a statement included that the church wasn’t doing it for them anymore, the church wasn’t helping them, or they didn’t see the need of the church.

    I would say, ask not what your church can do for you, but what you can do for your church.

    Now, to be clear, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the greatest blessing in my life, both temporally and eternally. It saved me from the gutters of this life. It has provided me all that is wonderful and beautiful about life. It has provided me a stable family that loves me. It has provided me a wife and daughters who I love. It has provided me a foundation to hold to in a world that tosses us all around. More than all these blessings here, it has also blessed me eternally with a perspective on why I’m here, where I’m going, and what’s truly important. It has provided me light. It has provided me hope. It has provided me love. It has provided me everything. 

    I say again: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints which is how I know of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and Christ’s love for me is the greatest blessing in my life. Both here and for forever. 

    That said.

    The Church (and gospel) of Jesus Christ is not here on the earth for what it can do for me. It is here for me to learn what I can do for others. The Church of Jesus Christ is not here because of what it can do for you. It’s here to help you learn what you can do for others. The Church is a vehicle by which you can learn to be like Jesus Christ. I wrote about this in my post Do We Really want to be like Jesus.

    I think when we truly understand this, the world changes. It’s no longer, “what do I get out of this?” It becomes “what can I do to help someone else get something out of this?” This is what it’s all about. Love. Fellowship. Support. That’s why the Church is here. Not to bless your life. So you can bless lives.

    I’ll conclude with one last question, I hope you will truly ponder: did Jesus ever ask, “what’s in it for me?”

  • Do We Really Want to be like Jesus?

    Do We Really Want to be like Jesus?

    I had an interesting thought recently. That thought was, do I want to be like Jesus Christ? What makes me want to be like Jesus Christ? Why do I want to be like Jesus Christ? What about Him makes me want to be like Him? Do others want to be like Christ? Do I know the attributes of Christ well enough to be confident I want to be like Him? Do others know Him well enough to want to be like Him?

    We hear so often in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we’re working to become like Jesus Christ. We have a children’s song (near and dear to my own heart) titled, “I’m trying to be like Jesus.”

    Why?

    When we say we want to eventually be like Him, do we know what He was/is like?

    Recently I was playing pickup basketball at a church. It was relatively competitive. Those who know me well know how seriously I take basketball.  There was one girl playing that wasn’t super competitive. She’d come the past few weeks and she somewhat lowered the level of basketball that was able to be played. 

    We were all, of course, nice to her. But some showed their frurstration in the level of basketball, I might have been one of them.

    This last time I played I decided I was going to have this girl on my team. I decided, not only was I going to have this person on my team but I was going to pass to her, encourage her, cheer for her, and we were still going to win.  The level of competition was such that, despite it being “somewhat” competitive, those were all realistic goals.

    After the first game this girl came up to me and meekly asked if there was anything she could do better. So I gave her some pointers –

    “If you’re open, shoot. Don’t pass back to us if you’re open,” and some general guidance on defense. She showed marked improvement and I was happy to have her on my team, especially over some athletic guys who could be ball hogs.

    Every couple games she would ask me if there was anything she could do better and I continued to give some advice.

    At the end of playing I told her how awesome she did that day and her response so, so warmed my heart, “thanks to you.” Such a simple statement.

    And in that moment I remembered something. It didn’t matter if we won. It didn’t matter that the game was competitive. Nothing mattered. Except that this person had a fun time, felt welcome, felt loved. Being compassionate and caring was vastly more important than any game of basketball, despite how competive and riled up I can get during competition. I needed that reminder.

    I come home from basketball often and feel good, happy. I usually tell Beth stories about what happened. It’s usually about some play I made, how the games went, how many we won and lost.

    After that night I came home and told her, “sometimes I need to be reminded how good it feels to be kind to someone.”

    Why do I want to be like Jesus? What is it about Him that makes me want to be like Him? What are His traits that I aspire towards?

    The answer is in that story.

    I felt better after that session of pickup basketball than I had in the last 10 combined. Her gratitude, and seeing someone feel welcome and have fun, was worth 10 game winning shots.

    Jesus Christ is all the love. All the caring. All the compassion. All the service.  All the joy.

    Why do I want to be like Jesus? Because loving others provides the greatest reward I have personally felt in this life. Nothing in this life compares to feelings of love, and the feeling of doing something right.

    This is in no way meant as a pat on my back for being a nice person. Jesus Christ is always a nice person, and He only asks that we be like Him in return. How interesting is that, consider it for a moment. Jesus Christ is perfectly selfless and loving to the point that all that He asks of us in return is to be perfectly selfless and loving to others. Is there any purer love than that? He makes this request not for Himself, but for us, all of us. He wants us to be like Him so that others can be happy. All He gets out of it is our joy.

    How amazing is that.

    I hope I can more and more every day, “try to be like Jesus.”

  • The Difference Between Steph Curry and Kevin Durant

    The Difference Between Steph Curry and Kevin Durant

    This will be slightly out of brand for my blog. I love basketball so it’s surprising this is the first true basketball commentary I’ve written.

    Anyways,

    Kevin Durant is without question one of the best players in the NBA right now (when healthy), and one of the most talented players of all time. He is an extraordinary basketball player. It was big news a couple weeks ago when he requested a trade from his current team, the New Jersey Nets. It was especially relevant in Arizona because Durant listed Phoenix and Miami as his two preferred destinations.

    A quick history on Kevin Durant for those that don’t know –

    Durant was on an off-the-charts talented Oklahoma City team that had 3 future MVPs on the roster. That Oklahoma City Thunder team gave a record breaking 73-win Golden State Warriors team all it could handle. The Warriors came back from down 3-1 to the Oklahoma City Thunder. That Warriors team then lost to the LeBron led Cavaliers in the finals.

    After the Warriors lost to the Cavaliers, and beat Durant’s Thunder, Durant left his team to join the record-breaking Warriors. A true, “if you can’t beat em, join em.” I didn’t hate this move by Durant like a lot of basketball fans did. As a lover of basketball, I could see that Durant hated playing with Russell Westbrook. From watching Durant play with Westbrook, I could understand Durant’s frustration. He wanted to play with a real team. Draymond Green, Klay Thompson, and Steph Curry made basketball look so fun. If I could play with any NBA team, it would hands down be the Warriors. They play basketball right. I understood Durant’s decision.

    Fast forward some years. The Warriors win two more championships in 3 years. Durant is the Finals MVP both times. Here’s the thing though. The Warriors were never Durant’s team. It was always Steph Curry’s team. No matter how phenomenal Durant was. He couldn’t be loved in the Bay Area the way Steph was.

    This led Durant to leave again. Always looking for the greener grass. He joined the Nets and hitched his wagon to a known enigma: Kyrie Irving. I won’t go into all the details, but the Nets experiment went disastrously. About as bad as it possibly could. Durant wanted to go to New Jersey to make it his city, the way San Francisco was Steph’s city. It exploded in his face.

    So here we are, full circle. Durant is wanting out again. Looking for greener pastures, again.

    Here’s the amazing thing I’m sure the casual NBA fan has missed.

    What were the two teams Durant said were his two most desired destinations to be traded to? The Suns and the Heat. Who was the number one team in the west last year?… the Suns. Who was the number one team in the East last year?…the Heat. Interesting.

    When Durant left the Thunder, he got destroyed in the media for leaving to join a better team. Despite being the player that took the Warriors over the top, potentially making them the best team in NBA history, he was never satisfied. He always seemed jaded by how he was bashed for the decision, and the perceived lack of love and appreciation he received for his basketball brilliance.

    Here we are. Years later. He’s making the same decision. He went to a team to make it his own. It was disastrous. So, he’s trying to go to another team that already has leadership and join them.

    How does Steph Curry tie into this?

    Steph Curry is a leader of men; Durant is a lone ranger. Durant is not a leader of men.

    Durant thinks because he can recruit talent to play with him, that makes him a leader. Recruiting talent doesn’t make you a leader. Elevating those around you makes you a leader. When has Durant elevated others?

    The dichotomy of Kevin Durant is wanting to be a part of good culture, then ultimately wanting to be the good culture himself. But you can’t be the good culture by the simple fact that you want to be the good culture. Good culture is humility, self-sacrifice, team before individual. Durant acts like that’s what he wants, but then he leaves the greatest team of all time because he wasn’t getting the credit he felt he deserved. He went somewhere else thinking he could have it all. A talented team and a city that loved him.

    Look who he gravitated towards in his recruitment efforts– another lone wolf, unique, kind of weird individual – Kyrie Irving. Look who else he brought in – a strip club attending, come in out of shape, (selfish), James Harden. These aren’t culture builders. What happened in Golden state doesn’t happen every day. And it does not happen by accident. It’s not every day that you find immensely talented people that are willing for it not to be all about them. Kevin Durant was never interested in it not being about him. That’s the dichotomy.

    Steph Curry brought Kevin Durant in and embraced him. He didn’t care about the limelight. He cared about winning. He proved that. Two MVP trophies that did not go his way. Why? Because he had the humility to say, definitively, “it doesn’t have to be about me.” With Steph Curry, it’s truly about the team.

    Steph Curry doesn’t try to be humble. He doesn’t try to be a uniter of men. He just is those things. They come naturally to him. He is a leader. These things don’t come naturally to Kevin Durant.

    This isn’t an indictment of Kevin Durant as a person and definitely not as a basketball player. Not everyone is a born leader. It may be unfair to compare him to the most selfless superstar in NBA history, and I don’t think it’s even close. Who has a higher combination of talent, accolades, and humility than Steph Curry?

    That said, Kevin Durant brought this comparison on himself. He had it all. Championships. A great team. Great teammates. He left that because he wanted to do it himself. When things got hard, he bailed ship faster than Kyrie bails a vaccination center. Is it any surprise that his two preferred destinations are where there’s a solid team, solid culture, solid comradery, and solid leadership?

    Durant thought he wanted to be a leader of men. He quickly realized he only wanted to play basketball. That’s fine. Hopefully, though, he doesn’t go to Phoenix or Miami, win championships, and then realize he’s still not happy. Even though, if that were to happen, it seems like a foregone conclusion that would be the result.

    Always seeking greener pastures.

  • Beth’s Talk on Mosiah 3:19 (January)

    Beth’s Talk on Mosiah 3:19 (January)

    This is a talk, exactly as written, by Beth, that she gave in church in January. She rehearsed the talk verbally to me multiple times before I heard it in church. Of course, through hearing it I knew it was a great talk, but it wasn’t until proofreading and preparing to post this that I was struck by how phenomenal a talk this really was. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as much as I did. And now, Beth –

    Mosiah 3:19 Talk
    January 9, 2022
    Good morning brothers and sisters.
    I wanted to start by introducing my family as we are one of the families that were blended into this ward with the recent changes in the stake. My name is Elisabeth Quackenbush. My husband is Brayden Quackenbush. We met in the Scottsdale Young Single Adult Ward in 2017 and have been married for over 2 years. We have a one year old daughter named Ivy. You’ll see her running around Sunday School for another 5 months but she is very excited to start nursery after that.

    The topic I was given to speak on this morning is the scripture Mosiah 3:19. When I was informed this was my assignment I wasn’t really surprised. This scripture comes into my mind a lot and is brought up in conversations about life all the time when I’m chatting with my husband. I think it sticks in my mind because it stands in such contrast to a lot of the attitudes of the world these days.

    For those of you that memorized scripture mastery back in the day you may remember this scripture, but as a reminder, this scripture is King Benjamin speaking to his people in the Book of Mormon. It reads,

    “For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father.”

    When we break down this verse, we can derive meaning in a variety of ways. The first that I noted is that the natural man is inherently selfish. The second is the importance of change to the Eternal Plan of Happiness.

    Boyd K Packer stated in his 1990 talk, “Put Off the Natural Man, and Come Off
    Conqueror”:
    “Unchecked selfishness [of the natural man] stubbornly blocks the way for developing all of the divine qualities: love, mercy, patience, long-suffering, kindness, graciousness, goodness, and gentleness. Any tender sprouts from these virtues are sheared off by sharp selfishness. Contrariwise, I cannot think of a single gospel covenant the keeping of which does not shear off selfishness from us.”

    Through the influence of the Holy Ghost, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, we can and should change from the narrow focus of the natural man and become, “submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, and willing to submit to the will of God.”

    This idea of our ability and strength to change stands in stark contrast to the pervasive attitude of our society. This attitude states that we are born a certain way. We can’t change, and even shouldn’t want to change. If we do change, we are inauthentic. On the surface, this has a false sense of empowerment, I think. However, this idea that change is bad and that we must only be one way for the rest of our life is truly limiting, almost an eternal purgatory of mediocrity. Compare this to the freedom and growth permitted to us through Jesus Christ’s suffering, that we may improve and become like our Heavenly Father and Savior, Jesus Christ.

    My husband and I have had the opportunity to have many deep, religious
    conversations with friends of a variety of backgrounds. We often come across
    criticism of our faith’s belief that we can take steps, including repentance, baptism, and participating in temple ordinances, to change and become like God. We are accused of valuing works and forgetting the grace provided through Jesus Christ. On the contrary… His grace is the key element that permits us TO become new beings.

    In 2 Corinthians 5:17 we read, “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new
    creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

    Brad Wilcox does a beautiful job in his BYU talk, “His Grace is Sufficient” at outlining how the Atonement of Jesus Christ, through His death and resurrection, provides us the need to change… (forgive me for this lengthy quote but as many of you know, this talk is incredible…)

    “[Yes, we are saved by Grace but] Have you been changed by grace? [We] are so excited about being saved that we are not thinking enough about what comes next. We are so happy the debt is paid that we may not have considered why the debt existed in the first place. Latter-day Saints know not only what Jesus has saved us from but also what He has saved us for.

    “A life impacted by grace eventually begins to look like Christ’s life. While many Christians view Christ’s suffering as only a huge favor He did for us,
    Latter-day Saints also recognize it as a huge investment He made in us.

    “As Moroni puts it, grace isn’t just about being saved. It is also about becoming like the Savior. The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can live after we die but that we can live more abundantly. The miracle of the Atonement is not just that we can be cleansed and consoled but that we can be transformed.“

    Again, just think for a minute… how does that compare to what we are being taught by the world? I can’t change, I shouldn’t change…

    HOW DO WE PUT OFF THE NATURAL MAN AND BECOME LIKE CHRIST?

    We can actively seek this positive change…

    In her 1998 BYU Speech, Wendy Watson, now well known as Wendy Nelson, lists some ways. One is reflection. She notes how Alma directs this type of reflection:

    “Just how does Alma invite these change-inducing reflections? One way is through his use of questions. In Alma 5 alone, more than 40 questions are offered—questions like:
    ‘Have ye received his image in your countenances? Have ye experienced this mighty change in your hearts? . . .
    . . . If ye have experienced a change of heart, and if ye have felt to sing the song of redeeming love, I would ask, can ye feel so now?‘ [Alma 5:14, 26]. Through the process of persistent questioning, Alma invites us to reflect over and over again: on our status with the Lord, on our spiritual growth and development, on things that need to change or have changed—and before we know it our desire for more change increases.”

    Another idea is to listen to the uplifting voices of authority in your life remembering, “As helpful as human voices of authority are, none can or should replace the ultimate voice of authority—the Word himself: the Savior Jesus Christ. What are you doing to hear his voice in your life? What are you doing to establish his voice as the voice of authority for you?”

    Other ways we can develop this change to become more like Him… Consistently and earnestly repent, seek out holy places, take steps of faith, pray to Him daily.”

    Sometimes change finds us…whether it be through loss, grief, depression, or trials in life, change is often thrust upon us in this mortal life. Again, the world finds few answers as to why there is such suffering and grief in the world. His eternal plan of growth and development is sometimes the only answer that makes sense. If we are to become like Christ, our innocent brother that felt all the sufferings of the world, how can we expect to be truly changed without some suffering of our own?

    Peter in speaking of [trials], said: “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

    When we endure this life, put off the natural man, and develop into more Christ-like beings, we set ourselves up to feel an even greater degree of joy in this life and in eternity.

    This topic makes me think of a time when I came back to church after living a life that was not in line with what I knew to be right. I made many positive changes when I started coming back and attending the Scottsdale Young Single Adult ward. I starting observing the sabbath day, stopped a lifestyle of college partying, broke off a serious relationship, and made several other difficult but important decisions.

    However, with all this positive change and shunning of the enticings of the natural man, I still felt like I wasn’t receiving the blessings I thought I would. I wallowed in self pity over my own suffering for a while because of this and even wondered if all of my change was for nothing.

    However, I eventually decided I would stop focusing on what I needed and instead turned outward. I made it my mission to seek anyone in my ward that seemed lonely as I was. I sought opportunities to serve those that were also going through a variety of trials. And a miracle happened! The less I focused on my pain, my loneliness, my loss, and focused on loving those around me as Christ did, I really came to find true joy.

    I couldn’t believe how sincerely I loved everyone around me. I didn’t feel lonely. I developed new, Christ-like attributes. And ultimately, I shunned the ultimate trait of the natural man – selfishness. What a blessing that lesson was for my life.

    I know how hard it can be to put off the feelings we have as humans in a difficult mortal journey. It is something we will actively have to work for as long as we live. However, I know that when we let ourselves change and take on the characteristics of Christ we will prepare ourselves to find real joy in eternity. We will truly have cause to rejoice in his second coming.

    I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.