My name is Stephanie and I served in the Netherlands, Amsterdam Mission from August 1983 to February 1985.

I always had said I would serve a mission if I wasn’t married by the time I turned 21.  However, I met a young man just the February before my 21st birthday.  We started hanging out and dated.  The Spirit confirmed to me that I needed to serve a mission.  I told this young man, Dale, that I was going on my mission.  The night before going into the MTC (Missionary Training Center) he called and proposed to me.  I told him I needed to serve this mission.  We wrote letters back and forth until about half way through my mission when I was having a difficult time with companions and the work.  He was the only regular writer besides my parents so I took my frustrations out on him and sent him a “Dear John” [a letter essentially cutting off the relationship]. But the November before my mission ended, we started exchanging letters again.

When I look at my life now and knowing what has happened, the trials I have endured, I am very grateful for the missionary service that I did.  Dale was a convert to the church and so my service has been a big example to my children of the importance of missionary work.  Dale and I did get married August 1985, but he passed away in December 1993 leaving me to raise our four small children.  I think a mission helped prepare me for this experience in my life knowing and confirming deep within me the Plan of Salvation and that we can and will see our loved ones in the life after mortality.

A couple of experiences come to mind when I was on my mission where I knew God answered my prayers.  I hadn’t been out in the field long, it was cold and windy outside and we were proselyting door to door.  In Rotterdam Holland, there are high rises with many apartments where you stand downstairs and push a button and talk on the speaker. My companion and I were in a little entry way pushing buttons when something got in my eye. I rubbed it and realized my contact fell out.  Now this was in the time period that we didn’t have disposable contacts and they were expensive.  I didn’t have an extra pair and it was dark outside.  We looked on the ground but couldn’t see anything.  My companion and I said a prayer and still looked, but nothing.  We decided to call it a night and walked across the street to unlock our bikes and the impression came over me to look back to where we were.  I saw something shiny and told my companion to wait a minute. I went back and there it was, my contact lens.  I know that Heavenly Father had a hand in me finding my contact that night.

The other experience is from the time I served in Den Haag.  There was a nice older woman who had been seeing the missionaries for a long time and had always talked to the Elders.  In fact her son was already a member, but something kept her from joining the Church.  We would go over every week and give her a discussion and one day the Spirit prompted me to challenge her to be baptized.  She surprised us all by agreeing and was later baptized. I asked her after what had changed her mind after so many missionaries and her response was that it was something we had said.  Heavenly Father had worked through the Spirit to answer our prayers on how to show her the way.

My mission impacted my perspective on God’s love and of my own self worth.  It helped me to see that Heavenly Father loves all mankind and knew me and knew what I was in need of at those times.  It helped me to be more self confident and independent and know that I could have my own testimony and speak boldly of the Savior’s love and the truthfulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ without relying on the testimony of my parents or leaders.

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~by Mahina

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. As a member, I serve in my ward (congregation) in whatever capacity I am needed. Currently, I am a teacher in the Relief Society, and one Sunday I was preparing to give a lesson based on two excellent talks (“Temple Worship: The Source of Strength and Power in a Time of Need“by Elder Richard G. Scott and “Sacred Homes, Sacred Temples” by Elder Stevenson).

The lesson topic was temple worship and how to make our homes a sacred place.

In preparation for my lesson I have made a greater effort to “attend” the temple. When I say “attend” I don’t necessarily mean within the walls of the temple, though I am doing that as well. That week I took the opportunity to visit the temple grounds with our girls. We went twice.

Our prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, once counseled, “as we touch the temple, the temple will touch us.” So, I decided to take the girls to the temple so they could “touch” the temple.

On both occasions, we had a great experience. On one of the visits we sat in the shade of a tree and talked about and sang the children’s hymn “I Love to See the Temple.” I asked the girls what we can learn from the lyrics of the song. Here are some of the things we came up with:

• We are children of God
• Families can be together forever when sealed in the temple
• We go to the temple to pray, to listen, to feel the spirit
• The temple is God’s house
• We make promises in the temple
• The temple is a place of beauty
• We must prepare to enter the temple

On another occasion we sat in front of the fountain and talked about the significance of the water and how it represents the “living water” of Christ of which we can partake of to never thirst again.

On both visits, we walked to the back of the temple and touched the walls of the temple just outside of the Celestial room. I told them about the quote from our prophet about touching the temple and asked them what it meant to have “the temple touch us”.

During both visits the thing that struck me was how quiet and reverent they were the whole time we were on the temple grounds.

If you live near a temple, I highly recommend walking the temple grounds. If you have children, take them with you. It is a great place to feel the Lord’s Spirit and let the peace of the temple touch you. Our girls, along with myself, look forward to our next visit.

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My name is Rebekah, and I am a Mormon Woman.

I have been married for just over a year. I was married to my husband in the Atlanta, Georgia LDS Temple, and we do not, yet, have any children. I was born into a Latter-day Saint family, and was baptized at the age of eight. My mom is a convert; missionaries from the Church taught her family while they were living in Puerto Rico and she was baptized at the age of 16, along with her mother, brother, and sisters. My Dad was born to LDS parents, who were converted and baptized into the church just before he was born.

I am currently a student attending BYU-Idaho, although I grew up in Tennessee. I am majoring in Communications, with minors in Photography and Humanities. In the Church, I am currently serving as a Family Home Evening Group Leader (in our area, young, married couples get together on Monday nights once a month to share a gospel message and get to know each other through games and activities). I am also serving on the Home, Family, and Personal Enrichment Board, helping to put together enriching activities for the women in our Relief Society.

I enjoy the outdoors more than most anything else: I love hiking, camping, rock climbing, repelling, and swimming. Some of my hobbies include writing and photography. I am currently taking piano classes and trying to develop my musical talent and I also love to dance!

When I was in high school, I was one of only a few LDS kids at my school. I was a cheerleader and had a lot of really wonderful friends. However, it was often a struggle for me to have friends and keep my standards at the same time. I didn’t drink or smoke or do much of what was often happening around me. I didn’t want to attend most of the parties, and felt a little alienated from some of my friends because I just didn’t want to participate. I felt different. But, I could feel what my parents and church leaders were teaching me was right, and I held onto it. It wasn’t until after high school that I realized what a blessing these standards were in my life! Although I wasn’t perfect, and made plenty of mistakes, the things that my family and church leaders had taught me kept me clean, healthy, and happy. It also allowed me to have the knowledge of the Atonement of Jesus Christ, so that I could repent and start fresh when I slipped up. I now feel that I have lived wisely and without regret. It is a joyful way of life.

I love the joy that the gospel of Jesus Christ brings. Being a Mormon Woman blesses my marriage and keeps it strong. It gives me guidance as to how to live a happy, healthy, and productive life. Most of all, it teaches me to progress daily and provides a way for me to repent and grow closer to my Savior. Being a Mormon woman teaches me of my identity as a child of God and gives direction as to what this life is all about and what I should be doing here to get back to my Heavenly Father with my family some day.

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My name is Heidi. I am 44 years old and have been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints all my life. I currently serve in the Primary, and I love working with the children. My husband and I have been married for almost 23 years. We are parents to three children who are currently 19, 14 and 7. It has been interesting to have them so spread apart (by chance, not by choice) and it has given us the time to enjoy each one of them as individuals.

I love my husband and children very much. Loving them up and seeing to their needs does take up most of my time. However, when I do have extra time, I love to garden, read, write and, in the past, dance.  I am too old and tired for the dancing, now, but I absolutely adore music. I also love photography and doing family history research. Lately, blogging is pretty high up there on my list of hobbies, as is finishing my latest novel.  I am a total anglophile and have done a ton of reading on the British Isles. I adore well-researched historical fiction or any book that spoon feeds you history in a fictionalized setting. I love flowers and the color pink–those are two things that always have the power to lift my spirits, along with the best kinds of music.

I have had many experiences when I knew that my Heavenly Father was fully aware of me and my struggles. One that I often share is when my oldest was four years old. By this time I was 29 and the mother of only one child. Though we loved him with all our hearts, he was born with many disabilities and his future was unsure.  Coming from a family of eight children and the aunt of numerous nieces and nephews, it felt lonely and odd to be the mother of only one child.  Since the work of a parent is, in my estimation, the greatest/hardest/most enduring thing a person can do, I had been making our future family a matter of much prayer.  It weighed heavily on me that I felt like I had accomplished so little of lasting value at that point in my life.

Finally I felt sure that I was pregnant, however, I took a pregnancy test and it was negative.  Great was the despair at our house but we were careful to not discuss it in front of our four-year-old.  A few days later my husband and I were sitting at the breakfast table feeling glum when our little boy walked into the room and said, “Jesus is bringing me a little sister!”  I was so upset about my negative pregnancy test that I snipped at him.  “Well, did He tell you WHEN?”  My husband was wiser and started asking questions.  After conversing with our son, we felt positive that he had had a spiritual experience that told him he would soon be the brother of a baby sister. A few days later I took another test and I was indeed pregnant.

Eight plus months later, we were thrilled to deliver a baby girl.  During the course of my pregnancy many people tried to prepare us for a boy as my parents had mostly all boy grandbabies, but I knew without a doubt that it was a girl.  People shook their heads at my foolishness in proceeding with girly decor in the nursery and buying all girl baby clothes but I didn’t let that bother me and even announced her name to everyone several months before she was born.

When my son feels discouraged and that his life amounts to nothing, we remind him of the day he answered his parents’ prayers by announcing the arrival of his baby sister.  It helps him to remember who he truly is, indeed, who we all are: children of a loving Heavenly Father who knows our joys and sorrows and who loved us enough to send His Son, Jesus Christ, whose atoning sacrifice for us is the greatest gift that any being could ever receive.  Often we forget that this atonement not only pays for our sins but also makes up for our lacks.  As humans we are far from perfect and never will be in spite of our best efforts.  It will only be through His sacrifice that our imperfections can be made perfect.  On days that I feel especially inadequate for the tasks and responsibilities with which I have been blessed, I remind myself that whatever truly needs to happen, CAN happen if I have the faith to believe in the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Heidi Ashworth is the author of Miss Delacourt Speaks Her Mind (a Regency romance novel), and is currently working on the sequel to this lively book.

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This poem was written as an exercise in self-examination — What am I? The first part is a description of what I think I am. The second part is a description of the things I have accomplished that were surprising to me. The Third question is what has amazed me about myself. The last stanza is a declaration of who I really am.

What Am I?

What am I?
daughter,
sister,
mother,
wife,
teacher,
nurse.

Am I what?
chef,
seamstress,
poet,
pupil,
friend.

I am what?
grandmother,
widow,
dreamer,
survivor.

What I am,
child of God.

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The things I enjoy most include: people, history, traveling, hiking, exploring, discovery, science, reading, backpacking, and basically anything outdoorsy. My major in college and my career go along with my interests — I hike through the wilderness conducting environmental surveys. I am a proud archaeologist!

I love the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but my belief in it didn’t just come at one time. It has been gradually building. I notice that the times my testimony takes the biggest step is when I’m outside. At one time, I was digging out on the Arizona Strip (just north of the Grand Canyon) and every day before work I would stand on a ledge and look at the world around me. I would think about the beauty that I am surrounded by and the fact that it is here because of God’s grace. It is here for me, it is here for me to love, enjoy, and protect. He created this gorgeous world for us because he loves us.

Recently, I was recently hiking in Arches National Park (Moab, UT) and I went on a night hike to Delicate Arch. It was a full moon and as I came over the rise, and saw that majestic arch standing still in the moon light, I had the same thought come to me: God loves me. I knew I couldn’t  look at something like that and not think that there was a higher power out there.

I love being a Mormon Woman because I know I can still be myself and believe in the restored gospel. I believe that the church has given me stability, hope, and self-worth. When my life is spinning out of control I know that there is one constant that I can hold onto. I believe and know that I am a child of God. How can I not have self worth if I believe that? As long as I know that I am a child of God then there is nothing that can bring me down!

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Karen attended Brigham Young University and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education. She has taught school for 32 years. She said: “I always had the support of my husband and children, and I always felt that I was supposed to be a teacher.”

Right now, Karen serves as the Relief Society President in her ward. She has served in many areas in the Church, and she says that the more she serves in the Church, the more she realizes how important each calling is –how each one was the experience she needed. However, if she could pick, she would serve as the Primary (children’s Sunday classes) pianist!

Karen loves to read almost every kind of book –from Jane Austen to Harry Potter. She also loves to relax by watching movies with her husband. She enjoys hiking and skiing, although she doesn’t do either very often. Some of her other favorite things to do include: scrapbook, spending time with her family, doing family history, and traveling.

One time, Karen had an experience which changed her life:

“I remember one time when I was pregnant and had a miscarriage. I prayed for someone to come and my visiting teacher showed up. My husband was out of town, and I was hemorrhaging pretty badly. My visiting teacher was a nurse and she had her husband give me a blessing. She stayed with me all night, because I wouldn’t go to the hospital because my insurance wouldn’t cover it. She took me to the doctor’s office the next morning. I was in pretty bad shape, but I felt the Lord with me through the night in the form of that wonderful visiting teacher.”

For Karen, the Plan of Salvation is so wonderful! She says that only a loving Heavenly Father would have such a plan. She also knows that she is a child of God who knows her and loves her. On being a Mormon woman, Karen says:

“I have never felt that we as women were less important than men in the eyes of our Father in Heaven. He has blessed us with the power of creation. He has given us the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the Priesthood is such a blessing in our lives. I love the gospel of Jesus Christ and I love the peace it brings into my life. I’m grateful for that blessing and I wish everyone could hear about the gospel and could know what I know. It gives my life such purpose!”

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