~August 1, 2016 ~

This week was a great week! We won President's challenge again, so we were able to go up to Budapest and take a tour of the Parliament building, which is by far the prettiest building I have ever seen in my life! If you ever get the chance to go I would 100%  recommend doing it! The train ride home was a lot of fun, we have a great district!

Besides that, we also got a new investigator this week!  "K" is 10 years old and seriously the cutest little girl ever! I know I say that about all the kids, but seriously they are all just so cute! We taught her about prayer and challenged her to pray at least twice each day, when she wakes up and before she goes to bed! We met with her a second time and painted pray rocks with her, it was a lot of fun, and she told us that she has kept our commitment to pray everyday thus far! We are excited to be able to meet with her again! 

​While I was attending BYU, I was able to enroll in a class titled, "Joseph Smith and the Restoration", which was one of the most amazing classes I have ever taken! We studied in depth the events that occurred with the restoration of Christs church to the earth, as well as the events and struggles that followed for Joseph Smith and the other saints of the early church. Ever since my interest in church history and my admiration for the people who have gone before us in the church has grown exponentially! One of the topics that we studied in this course were the events of Liberty Jail, when Joseph Smith and 5 others were unjustly incarcerated, thrust into a basement dungeon in the jail, and brutally treated for their beliefs and  desire to bring forth Zion as the Lord had commanded them. Despite the horrible things they were put through, or perhaps because of them, we now have sections 121, 122, and 123 of the Doctrine and Covenants, which are some of the most touching revelations we have from this dispensation! 

This week I had the opportunity to read a talk that Elder Holland gave at a church fireside in 2008, titled "Lessons from Liberty Jail". It was an amazing talk with such great points and of course nobody can say it like Holland does, so I decided just to attach the main parts of the talk. He takes most of his points from the revelations in  D&C 121-123 and recommends that if you haven't read them recently to do it! 

I am going to close with this, but I hope that this talk will be able to touch you as much as it touched me and that you will be able to turn any "prisons" you may have in your life into temples! I love you all!

Sok Szeretettel,

LeBaron Nővér

"In the dungeon the floor-to-ceiling height was barely six feet, and inasmuch as some of the men, including the Prophet Joseph, were over six feet tall, this meant that when standing they were constantly in a stooped position, and when lying it was mostly upon the rough, bare stones of the prison floor.

The food given to the prisoners was coarse and sometimes contaminated. On as many as four occasions they had poison administered to them in their food, making them so violently ill that for days they alternated between vomiting and a kind of delirium, not really caring whether they lived or died. In the Prophet Joseph’s letters, he spoke of the jail being a

hell, surrounded with demons . . . where we are compelled to hear nothing but blasphemous oaths, and witness a scene of blasphemy, and drunkenness and hypocrisy, and debaucheries of every description.3

“We have . . . not blankets sufficient to keep us warm,” he said, “and when we have a fire, we are obliged to have almost a constant smoke.”4 “Our souls have been bowed down”5 and “my nerve trembles from long confinement.”6“Pen, or tongue, or angels,” Joseph wrote, could not adequately describe “the malice of hell” that he suffered there.7 And all of this occurred during what, by some accounts, was considered then the coldest winter on record.

A Prison-Temple Experience

Most of us, most of the time, speak of the facility at Liberty as a “jail” or a “prison”—and certainly it was that. But Elder Brigham H. Roberts, in recording the history of the Church, spoke of the facility as a temple, or, more accurately, a “prison-temple.” Certainly it lacked the purity, the beauty, the comfort, and the cleanliness of our true temples, our dedicated temples.  In fact, the restricting brutality and injustice of this experience at Liberty would make it seem the very antithesis of the liberating, merciful spirit of our temples and the ordinances that are performed in them. So in what sense could Liberty Jail be called a “temple”? We love and cherish our dedicated temples and the essential, exalting ordinances that are performed there. They are truly the holiest, most sacred structures in the kingdom of God, to which we all ought to go as worthily and as often as possible.

But tonight’s message is that when you have to, you can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in any situation you are in. Indeed, let me say that even a little stronger: You can have sacred, revelatory, profoundly instructive experience with the Lord in the most miserable experiences of your life—in the worst settings, while enduring the most painful injustices, when facing the most insurmountable odds and opposition you have ever faced. Every one of us, in one way or another, great or small, dramatic or incidental, is going to spend a little time in Liberty Jail—spiritually speaking.  Yes, before our lives are over we may all be given a little taste of what the prophets faced often in their lives. But the lessons of the winter of 1838–39 teach us that every-experience can become a redemptive experience if we remain bonded to our Father in Heaven through that difficulty. These difficult lessons teach us that man’s extremity is God’s opportunity, and if we will be humble and faithful, if we will be believing and not curse God for our problems, He can turn the unfair and inhumane and debilitating prisons of our lives into temples.

I’ve just said that hard times can happen to us. President Joseph Fielding Smith, grandnephew of the Prophet Joseph and grandson of the incarcerated Hyrum, said not only can they happen, perhaps they have to. Said he:

As I have read the history of those days, the days that went before and days that came after, I have reached the conclusion that the hardships, the persecution, the almost universal opposition [toward the Church at that time] were necessary. At any rate they became school teachers to our people. They helped to make [them] strong.10

Lessons from Liberty Jail

May I suggest just a very few of the lessons learned at Liberty—those experiences that were “school teachers” to Joseph and can be to us, experiences that contribute so much to our education in mortality and our exaltation in eternity.

1. Everyone Faces Trying Times

Now then, three lessons from Liberty Jail: May I suggest that the first of these is inherent in what I’ve already said—that everyone, including (and perhaps especially) the righteous, will be called upon to face trying times. We identify with him when he cries from the depth and discouragement of his confinement:

O God, where art thou? . . .

How long shall thy hand be stayed . . . ?

Yea, O Lord, how long shall [thy people] suffer . . . before . . . thy bowels be moved with compassion toward them? [D&C 121:1–3]

That is a painful, personal cry—a cry from the heart, a spiritual loneliness we may all have occasion to feel at some time in our lives.

Perhaps you have had such moments already in your lives. Whenever these moments of our extremity come, we must not succumb to the fear that God has abandoned us or that He does not hear our prayers. He does hear us. He does see us. He does love us. When we are in dire circumstances and want to cry “Where art Thou?” it is imperative that we remember He is right there with us—where He has always been! 

When what has to be has been and when what lessons to be learned have been learned, it will be for us as it was for the Prophet Joseph.  Into this dismal dungeon and this depressing time, the voice of God came, saying:

My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment;

And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high; thou shalt triumph over all thy foes. [D&C 121:7–8]

Even though seemingly unjust circumstances may be heaped upon us and even though unkind and unmerited things may be done to us, nevertheless, through it all, God is with us. We are not alone in our little prisons here. When suffering, we may in fact be nearer to God than we’ve ever been in our entire lives. That knowledge can turn every such situation into a would-be temple.

2. Even the Worthy Will Suffer

Secondly, we need to realize that just because difficult things happen—sometimes unfair and seemingly unjustified things—it does not mean that we are unrighteous or that we are unworthy of blessings or that God is disappointed in us. From the depths of Liberty Jail when Joseph was reminded that he had indeed been “cast . . . into trouble,” had passed through tribulation and been falsely accused, had been torn away from his family and cast into a pit, into the hands of murderers, nevertheless, he was to remember that the same thing had happened to the Savior of the world, and because He was triumphant, so shall we be (see D&C 122:4–7). In giving us this sober reminder of what the Savior went through, the revelation from Liberty Jail records: “The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?” (D&C 122:8).

No. Joseph was not greater than the Savior, and neither are we. And when we promise to follow the Savior, to walk in His footsteps and be His disciples, we are promising to go where that divine path leads us. And the path of salvation has always led one way or another through Gethsemane. So if the Savior faced such injustices and discouragements, such persecutions, unrighteousness, and suffering, we cannot expect that we are not going to face some of that if we still intend to call ourselves His true disciples and faithful followers. However heavy our load might be, it would be a lot heavier if the Savior had not gone that way before us and carried that burden with us and for us.

In our moments of pain and trial, I guess we would shudder to think it could be worse, but the answer to that is clearly that it could be worse and it would be worse. Only through our faith and repentance and obedience to the gospel that provided the sacred Atonement is it kept from being worse.

The Savior has been where you have been, allowing Him to provide for your deliverance and your comfort.As the prophet Isaiah wrote, the Lord has “graven thee upon the palms of [His] hands” (Isaiah 49:16), permanently written right there in scar tissue with Roman nails as the writing instrument. Having paid that price in the suffering that They have paid for you, the Father and the Son will never forget nor forsake you in your suffering. (See Isaiah 49:14–16; see also 1 Nephi 21:14–16.) They have planned, prepared, and guaranteed your victory if you desire it, so be believing and “endure it well” (D&C 121:8).

3. Remain Calm, Patient, Charitable, and Forgiving

Thirdly, and tonight lastly, may I remind us all that in the midst of these difficult feelings when one could justifiably be angry or reactionary or vengeful, wanting to return an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, the Lord reminds us from the Liberty Jail prison-temple that “no power or influence can or ought to be maintained [except] by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned; . . . without hypocrisy, and without guile” (D&C 121:41–42; emphasis added).

It has always been a wonderful testimony to me of the Prophet Joseph’s greatness and the greatness of all of our prophets, including and especially the Savior of the world in His magnificence, that in the midst of such distress and difficulty they could remain calm and patient, charitable, and forgiving—that they could even talk that way, let alone live that way. But they could, and they did. They remembered their covenants, they disciplined themselves, and they knew that we must live the gospel at all times, not just when it is convenient and not just when things are going well. Indeed, they knew that the real test of our faith and our Christian discipleship is when things are not going smoothly. That is when we get to see what we’re made of and how strong our commitment to the gospel really is. Remaining true to our Christian principles is the only way divine influence can help us.

Do All Things Cheerfully

As a valedictory to the lessons from Liberty Jail, I refer to the last verse of the last section of these three we have been referring to tonight. In this final canonized statement of the Liberty Jail experience, the Lord says to us through His prophet, Joseph Smith:

Therefore, dearly beloved brethren [and sisters, when we are in even the most troubling of times], let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God, and for his arm to be revealed. [D&C 123:17; emphasis added]

What a tremendously optimistic and faithful concluding declaration to be issued from a prison-temple! Surely, to say it again, it was the bleakest and darkest of time,yet in these cold, lonely hours, Joseph says let us do all we can and do it cheerfully. And then we can justifiably turn to the Lord, wait upon His mercy, and see His arm revealed in our behalf.

What a magnificent attitude to maintain in good times or bad, in sorrow or in joy!

Blessing and Testimony

I testify that heaven’s kindness will never depart from you, regardless of what happens (see Isaiah 54:7–10; see also 3 Nephi 22:7–10). I testify that bad days come to an end, that faith always triumphs, and that heavenly promises are always kept. I testify that God is our Father, that Jesus is the Christ, that this is the true and living gospel. In the words of the Liberty Jail prison-temple experience, my young friends, “Hold on thy way. . . . Fear not . . . , for God shall be with you forever and ever” (D&C 122:9). In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."