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."
