By the Power of the Holy Ghost

To my son, 

                In general conference this last week, President Nelson gave us this invitation: “I extend to members of the entire Church the same charge I gave to our young adults last May. I urged them then—and I plead with you now—to take charge of your own testimony of Jesus Christ and His gospel. Work for it. Nurture it so that it will grow. Feed it truth. Don’t pollute it with false philosophies of unbelieving men and women. As you make the continual strengthening of your testimony of Jesus Christ your highest priority, watch for miracles to happen in your life.” I was struck with the urgency with which this invitation came—he is pleading with us to focus on our testimonies of the gospel to prepare us for what is ahead. Each of us must develop and nourish our own spiritual witness and knowledge by doing those things that invite the Spirit of the Lord into our lives. These include daily sincere prayer, consistent study of the scriptures, and partaking of the sacrament each Sunday at church. I hope that you will heed President Nelson’s invitation and focus more on these things over the next few months. As you do so and sincerely seek to know what is true, you will come to feel more deeply that the teachings of the gospel are true and that you are a beloved son of your Father in Heaven. That knowledge will help you in all aspects of your life and enable you to see more clearly what is right and wrong and how to find happiness.

                I remember one day as I prepared to serve a mission I was driving in the car and pondering why I was serving a mission. Why was I going to leave my life as I knew it and live in a foreign country for two years? As I thought about this I felt the Spirit witness to me again that I knew through a witness of the Holy Ghost that the Father and the Son had visited the boy Joseph Smith in the Sacred Grove. It really happened as Joseph said it happened, and that witness required of me that I share with the world the knowledge I had been given. That testimony sustained me on my mission as I bore testimony on the streets of France that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that he had called a prophet in our days to prepare the world for the Second Coming of the Savior. I hope that you can gain that same witness through the Spirit which will teach you the truth. At the end of the Book of Mormon, the prophet Moroni gave us a powerful invitation about how we can know the truthfulness of this book. He said this, “And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost. And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” (Moroni 10:4-5). That is the invitation we gave to everyone we gave a copy of the Book of Mormon to—that they could know for themselves it was true if they would read, ponder, and ask with a sincere heart to know if the book really came from God. Moroni’s promise is that each of us will gain that witness through the Holy Ghost if we so seek. And as we come to know that the Book of Mormon is true, then we will, as the Introduction to the book promises, “also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah.” I urge you with President Nelson to seek to know these things for yourself and they will give you a foundation on which to build your whole life. I know that God lives and loves you, and He will speak to you as you draw near to him.

Love,

Dad