Life

I believe we can find happiness in our lives and overcome pain, regardless of the trials in our lives.

Some of my earliest memories as a child are of being beaten by my father and later scrounging for food while he was passed out drunk. I had what some would call a rough childhood. I have had friends that had worse, so I’m grateful not to have endured more. During that time, I shared my troubles with a younger brother. My mother stood by the abuse and later left us, after my parents divorced. We were later placed into foster care when my school became aware of the level of abuse and neglect that we had endured.

At first things didn’t get any better for us, and we endured several setbacks along the way. We went through two short-term shelter homes, and one uncle before we were placed in a long-term foster home. While in that home, I encountered something that helped me change my life. The family were less active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who decided to start going to church again while we lived there.

While attending church, I made an important discovery. I learned that I had a Heavenly Father that loved me and wanted me to be happy. Until this point in my life, I hadn’t experienced much happiness. I realized that if I looked for happiness in my life, Heavenly Father would help me find it. This has been a guiding light in my life since that time.

After that foster home, I had the misfortune to be cycled through several other foster homes. Some of the families were members of the church and some were not. Some of them showed me genuine love and others looked at me as a paycheck. All during those continuing trials, the memory of a loving Heavenly Father helped me to know that I could find love and joy.

Part of that happiness came from me and my outlook on life. While my circumstances didn’t change greatly in the different homes, my outlook did. I found that if I had a positive outlook on things, I would be happier, and it would later lead to my circumstances changing for the better. Happiness is not something just given to you. It’s something you have to find for yourself in all that is around you.

I am now a husband and a father. I am not a rich man by any means, but I have worked hard and I have a home. My family is a great source of joy in my life. I am amazed at the greater amount of love and happiness I have felt after becoming a father. I am grateful my Heavenly Father sent me to a home where I would find the Gospel. None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t decided to look for that happiness that I know my Heavenly Father wanted to bless me with.

Last April my brother got married. It was the weekend of General Conference so I did not have the opportunity to see all the Conference talks as they aired. I read them later and the talk by Brother Larry M. Gibson “Fatherhood — Our Eternal Destiny” stuck out to me; as I am a father of a young child and as I had the opportunity to speak to my brother concerning the responsibilities of a husband and father.

At the wedding, my son and I represented my brothers only family members by relation of blood. We both grew up in foster care and do not have relationships with our parents. At the wedding my brother told me he was disappointed in our parents and grateful to me for having filled some of role model roles in his life. He is not an active member of the church but I am grateful he has found someone special in his life.

Considering all we have been through, I will be happy for every step we take towards living normal lives and having loving relationships. I feel like I pray for my brother much as any parent should in our situation. I hope I have shown him a good example by having a family and endeavoring to be a good father. I feel like my lessons in fatherhood began with myself, then teaching my brother and now teaching my son.

When I was a young man, I decided I wanted to have a family and that I wanted to be a father. I wanted to give my son the love and opportunities that I was never given. My first goals to prepare for this was to serve a mission and to prepare to be married in the temple. If I didn’t serve a mission, how could I ever expect my son to do so? I also had seen the benefits this gave for preparing spiritually for the rest of my life. That decision did not come without sacrifice. I gave up a scholarship opportunity that I would have had to take advantage of before a mission. I believe this sacrifice was worth it, even as I am still struggling to get the education that I have always wanted.

The benefits of being married in the Temple are obvious, when I looked at them from an eternal perspective. When in High School, I made a list of characteristics that I wanted in my future wife. As I met and dated some young women, I moved on as they were lacking. When I met my future wife, she had a strong testimony and wonderful parents. Those were two qualities that I had found difficult to find in other young ladies. We later married after I served my mission. Knowing that I am sealed to my wife and that our family will be together for eternity is a huge gift. I deployed twice in the Army and I know that having a temple marriage was a strength to me during that time.

After she finished college, we had a son and he has been a wonderful blessing in our lives. I hope that I have prepared to be the type of father he deserves. I hope to have many teaching moments in the future with my son much like that which was shared in this talk. As he grows and has the opportunity to be ordained in the priesthood, I hope he will learn the lessons it teaches to later be a loving father. I believe being a father is truly one of the most important jobs a man could have.

06 APR 15

I joined the church when I was ten years old in one of my foster homes. Prior to that I had been baptized as an infant in the Catholic church at the request of my parents and grandparents. I of course can’t remember that myself but I was told when I was a little older. I just couldn’t understand why a baby would need to be baptized though. As they tried to explain it I thought of how mean a rule that was.

Reading Moroni 8:10-14 brought back to my memory this experience and learning that I would need to be baptized again to join the church. It was one of the many things that made sense to me as a child about the church. I felt why would my baptism I had no part of as an infant be valid in any way? Learning that baptism was only necessary for those who understood and were capable of sin seemed much more compassionate and just to me of a God that could see all the young children who die as part of life. This is a principle that I understood at both the thinking part of me and spiritual part as I was taught it.

07 APR 15

“Fear not what man can do; for perfect love casteth out all fear” (Moroni 8:16)

It makes it sound easy in the scriptures but this is a principle that takes a lot of practice in our life. How often do we let fear be our stumbling block from doing what we should be doing? How can we do better at casting out fear and having love and faith to overcome it? I think that one of the things that takes time and building a strong testimony. You could say that the primary answers are part of it.

When thinking of the phrase “perfect love” I think of the song by Tyler Castleton and Staci Peters from the “EFY 1999- Season for Courage”. I guess that comes from me growing up in the 90’s.

Video of song:

https://youtu.be/-0Gj8-vB1q4

Sheet music of it:

https://deseretbook.com/p/perfect-love-sheet-music-84373

08 APR 15

“Satan stirreth them up continually to anger one with another” (Moroni 9:3)

This is a principle that I believe while an example of nations; we can also apply it to our lives. Anger is an easy trap to fall into. Sometimes people in our lives do things that may cause us to be angry. I have found that to happen to me more than a time or two. Satan is seeks to stir up anger in more than just nations. The family is the basic unit of society. Satan seeks to use anger to break up more than nations. He will use it as a wedge in families. The next time I feel angry at something I will do better to examine it’s source.

09 APR 15

Nephi’s promise (Moroni 10:3-5)

Unfortunately this scripture never stood out to me until I went on a mission. During my mission I recited it nearly daily as I shared the message of the gospel with everyone I met. I know that this promise is true. I have seen it work in others lives and my own. I know that if we read the Book of Mormon and pray about it; we will receive an answer testifying of it truth.

Gifts of the spirit (Moroni 10:7-18)

These gifts have enabled the restoration of the gospel. Without the gospel I would be on a very different path in my life. Most of my foster brothers have been in and out of jail. I know that the gospel has saved my life from what it might have been.

10 APR 15

So this will be a little bit of a stretch on the scripture but I want to share a wonderful spiritual experience I had this week. In Moroni 10:11 it talks of faith as one of the gifts of the spirit. I’d like to share an experience when my son exercised faith this week in prayer and my faith in the general goodness of others was strengthened.

This past week my family traveled to California for my brothers wedding and we drove back to Texas on Tuesday/Wednesday of this week. On Tuesday while my wife was taking our son to the restroom she accidentally left her cell phone in the restroom of a gas station in Tucson, Arizona. We didn’t realize this until we stopped in Deming, New Mexico for the evening. She initially didn’t know where she left it so I was frantically looking all over the car. While I was looking she heated up our sons supper of some mac-n-cheese. She sat it before him and he reminded her that it needed to be blessed. He said his normal things, paused, and then asked for help to find the phone (he’s three years old). I went out looking in the car hoping it was there and while I was I got a call from someone who had found it and was seeing if I was related to the owner because I was the last person called in the phone. They were driving longer than us and were stopping in El Paso, Texas for the night. They nicely left the phone at the hotel desk at where they were staying and I got it the next day.

I am thankful for wonderful people that can be the instrument in answering a prayer and a little boy who has already learned to have the faith to ask for help.

Come unto Christ (Moroni 10:32)

The Mutual theme for 2014 was “Come unto Christ”.

Here is a song I found on YouTube based on that theme:

https://youtu.be/ubIP8R5-6Tw