We Are the Salt of the Earth
My companion Brianne leaned over to me, and she said, “There is a special spirit in the room.” And there is. Thank you for bringing it. I appreciate specifically the music—these beautiful texts out of Isaiah have really set the tone for me today, and I really am excited to be with you.
You probably listened to Sister Wixom last week, and I know that she said that I was coming. I don’t know if she told you that she was my third grade teacher. She only taught for one year, and I was in her class. She was exactly the way she is now—she was so loving to kids that were throwing up and throwing food, and we were third graders, and she was wonderful to us. And in a lot of ways, she reminds me of the way I feel about the Savior Jesus Christ, because, you know, in all of the childish things we do, He still loves us. And He sort of reminds me of Sister Wixom.
Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about salt. I don’t know what you know about salt. If you are studying science, then you will know that salt is a simple mineral and it’s made of sodium and chloride. And all life, depends on having salt. You have to have salt to have life, which I think is interesting. One of the most important reasons that salt is kind of the underpinning of a lot of civilization is because they could use it to do a certain thing. Do you know what that thing is? It preserves, in this case, food. When you salt meat or fish salt preserves it. Think about why that is important. Suddenly, now you don’t have to go out and fish or hunt every single day. You could do something else during that day. You could actually travel and bring your food with you, which wasn’t possible before. So it changed civilizations in this way, the ability to preserve food with salt.
Because salt was so important, enormous salt deposits were mined, and all over the world these centers became very, very important. And cultures mine salt in different ways. Anybody in this room ever been to a salt mine? [Audience members raise their hands] Okay, so some of you have. They are so big that you feel so small inside of them. When salt is mined in Africa, it’s put into slabs. And then what do they do with those slabs? They take it on these roads—they call them salt roads—and they take them other places. These were very, very important in the ancient days.
Did you know that slaves—thousands and thousands of slaves—were employed to mine salt because it was such heavy, awful work? You’ve heard some of the clichés—it’s as if he was working in the salt mines. And in some areas of the world, they lashed those big slabs of salt onto camels, and they went thousands of miles across the desert.
Salt is still important today. In ancient times, they paid Roman soldiers in salt, because it was the same value as gold and you could exchange it for gold. That’s where we get the English word salary. It comes from that, which I think is interesting.
Now, how many people have salt in their house? [Audience members raise their hands.] Every single one of us is going to raise their hand. And how much does it cost? Cheap. Salt is everywhere. Every single one of us has easy access to salt, but that is the result of millennia of developing this system so we could all have and use salt.
There is a big deposit of salt in the United States, actually in Utah. Anybody know where it is? The Salt Flats is one of them, but there is an underground reservoir down in the middle of Utah near a place called Redmond, Utah. You’ll see it in the grocery store—they call it “real salt.” When Lake Bonneville, which is the big ancestor of the Great Salt Lake, was shrinking and draining, it left these giant salt deposits. And then down in Central Utah, they got covered over with volcanic activity, so the salt deposits were sealed. And with the sealing of that pristine salt, no chemicals could get into it and it couldn’t be contaminated—and now, deep underground they are mining that salt, which I also think is interesting.
Sometimes, in order to make money, salt companies will boil the salt. They’ll heat it up because they’re trying to extract all the trace minerals out of it. So they keep the pure sodium chloride, but all the trace minerals get separated, and then they sell that purified salt, and they make money. But the problem with heating salt is that it sometimes makes the salt really bitter. It’s hard to describe that salt could be sweet or bitter, but you know what I’m talking about, don’t you? There’s kind of a mildness to a salt, or a harshness to it. And a lot of our modern salt has been heated, so it does kind of have that bitter taste.
Another thing that salt companies do to make money unscrupulously is they’ll cut the salt with some other substance, or they’ll put something in it— like sand. So it looks like salt and you can shake it out, but it doesn’t—it’s not salty enough, because it’s got all of this contaminant inside of it.
You know the very famous story from the Sermon on the Mount, when Jesus told His disciples in 3 Nephi, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, I give unto you to be the salt of the earth; but if the salt shall lose its savor wherewith shall the earth be salted? The salt shall be thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men.”[1]
There are some other characteristics about salt that I thought I would bring up with you, and one of them is that salt comes in all kinds of colors and all kinds of grinds. There is pink salt. It’s mined out of Bulgaria—totally pure, but it’s the trace minerals that make it pink in that way. And people often dismiss this kind of salt because it isn’t what they expect, and they think that there must be something wrong with it. But it isn’t. It’s perfectly pure salt. And this is true about all of us, too. If we are the salt of the earth, as Jesus said—we come in all kinds of colors; we come in all kinds of grinds. And the Lord loves every single one of us if we are pure—if we haven’t been contaminated and we’re not cut with fake substitutes. And He doesn’t mind at all the kinds of variety that we have. He has given us those gifts, and He wants us to use those gifts as long as we can continue to stay salty.
There’s another kind of characteristic of salt, and it is that you are not salt just because you are in a salt shaker. You might be in a salt shaker, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are salt. And you’ll see this in the scriptures. Just because you are a Nephite doesn’t mean that you are following the commandments. Just because you are a son of Abraham doesn’t mean that you are the children of God.
Jesus said in Luke, “Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and [don’t] say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”[2]
It doesn’t matter if you go to Church on Sunday or you attend LDS Business College, or if you are a returned missionary. It doesn’t matter what you look like. What matters is what you taste like, and that’s how you know if you’re really salt.
Lehi told his children right before he was dying this very same thing. He said, “Inasmuch”—this is the key secret—“Inasmuch as ye shall keep my commandments ye shall prosper in the land; and inasmuch as ye will not keep my commandments ye shall be cut off from my presence.”[3]
We talked a little bit earlier about how salt is a preserver, and I mentioned how important it was to civilization that salt could preserve things. There are people that act as preservers, and I’m going to tell you about one in my life, and I want you to think about somebody in your life.
When I was just graduating from university, I had taken an English degree, and truthfully, I was a little bit paralyzed. I just didn’t know what to do next. I knew I would have my degree and I had to figure out what to do now with my life. And I got depressed. I got kind of frozen, and what ended up happening was I couldn’t pray. I wanted to pray, but I felt sealed. I just didn’t feel like I could put my feelings into words. And so day after day, I just wouldn’t pray.
Finally, after weeks of this and feeling terrible, I confessed to my roommate that I was having this terrible trouble. And she is a salty person; she is a preserver. And she said, “Well, how about if you and I pray together every night?”
And for almost a year, she and I knelt down every night, and I wouldn’t offer the prayer. She would. I made her do it, and she would offer the prayer for me. I can’t tell you the difference it made for me in a time in my life that I was frozen—to hear her pray for me and ask for the Lord to bless me in words from somebody that I knew was my friend and I could trust. That changed my life. It helped me get through that difficult period of my life. If I hadn’t had that, I may have stopped praying and even fallen away from the Church because I was so stuck.
You have had that chance to act that way for other people, and people have acted that way for you. It’s why, in the very basic part of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord asked us to be salt and to preserve one another.
Have you ever noticed that salt brings out the flavor of everything else? Have you ever put salt on a melon or piece of fruit? Why do you do that? Somebody is saying, “No, I would never do that.” It brings out the juice. It brings out the flavor. And that’s true of us. Salty people make everything else around them good. It brings out the flavor of everybody else.
I’m going to show you a little video. It’s a video that was actually made for a different purpose, and you will see some of that in there, but I want you to notice how in this video everybody has good things and bad things, yet when they are all together helping each other, they sort of bring out the flavors of everybody. So this is a story about an Elder Olson in California, and how he is serving a Church-Service Mission. And notice about him, and notice about the people he serves, and his parents and some of those other things. And when it’s over I’m going to ask you a couple of questions.
[Video][4]
Elder Olson: Hi. I’m Joseph Wendell Olson. I’m on my mission, and I live here in Murrieta. This is just what I like to call my castle, and I hope I get another one so I can make this bigger and bigger and bigger until it’s just right. I’m a Young Church-Service-Missionary. “What,” you ask, “is that?” Hmm. Simple—just an ordinary Church Service-Missionary, only a lot years younger than normal ones.
Sister Fox: We didn’t know what to expect, and so we kind of have grown up together, Joseph and we older missionaries.
Mother: Joseph was diagnosed autistic at age three.
Father: One of the first things that struck me was that my son was never going to make a touchdown.
Mother: Joseph never really got picked for any teams because he was never on a team. He never went to birthday parties. That’s hard, as a mom, you know. We were really struggling with how he was going to go on a mission, but I knew that he would go on a mission.
Father: There was a lot of prayer; there was a lot of fasting.
Mother: Right around the time he was 19, he started to pray, and he prayed for a year.
Bishop: We unanimously felt that a Young Church-Service Mission was the best course for Joseph. I cleared it with the stake president; he sent me a form right on the internet. I gave it to his parents. They were so excited, they had it back to me in about five minutes, filled out.
Elder Fox: The bishop’s storehouse has filled a great need in this valley.
Elder Olson: I’m mostly doing the heavy lifting there, and stocking the shelves, and stocking the cooler, the freezer.
Mother: You should see him. He has a special coat that he puts on, you know, with mittens and a hat, and he goes into the freezer.
Father: Oh, the freezer box.
Elder Olson: The patrons are getting hot chocolate and fruit drink and pancakes, syrup, peanut butter, butter—oh, and of course the milk.
Elder Fox: He is sometimes off the wall, just does fun things, and makes us all laugh.
Elder Olson: Drinks all around!
Sister Larsen: When Elder Olson first started his mission, he was very reserved and very shy. And he didn’t want anybody to touch him; he didn’t even want to stand close to anybody. And then one day, his mom came to pick him up. And all of a sudden, he gave Sister Fox and me a hug. His mother was watching him. I saw tears in her eyes, and she said, “He’s never given me a hug.”
Sister Fox: We get grandma hugs when he leaves. He has made this a happy place where we all want to be. He’s like a son to us.
Bishop: Joseph is helping change lives. He is proud of that badge that he wears. He has turned into a man of God.
Sister Larsen: It’s been a joy for us to see him blossom.
Elder Larsen: Just send us more Elder Olsons.
Elder Olson: It’s an opportunity for us working at the storehouse to serve the patrons coming there because it’s our Heavenly Father’s love incarnate. What else can I say?
Father: The hand of the Lord, in retrospect, has been very evident in providing an opportunity for Joseph to serve as a Young Church-Service Missionary.
Mother: Being a Young Church-Service Missionary, for him, has been the best thing. It’s right now the best of the best for Joseph. Yes.
Elder Olson: I’m definitely glad that I went on this mission because now I’m able to serve my Heavenly Father. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.
I’ve seen that video so many times, and I feel like I know Elder Olson. Let me ask you a question: in what ways is he “salty”? Do you have your beautiful books and the spirit of Elder Scott?[5] Will you write those down? In what way is Elder Olson salty?
And as you are thinking about that, he said something in the video—you can feel how he has changed on his mission. How he had never wanted to physically touch or hug his Mom and Dad, and you can see how uncomfortable he still is. When he gives those sister missionaries a hug, he puts his arm around them and he sort of leans in. But he’s growing; he’s learning. He’s changing.
He uses a word that he has probably read in a book because we don’t use it in speech very much. He says, “It’s our Heavenly Father’s love incarnate.” What does that mean, incarnate? [Response from audience member] Embodied—it’s our Heavenly Father’s love embodied in the flesh, and that’s what Joseph, and those missionaries, and his parents, and all the people who come to the storehouse are. They are doing that for each other; they’re being “salty” for each other.
And then he says at the end, “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.” I came on this mission so I could serve my Heavenly Father; it’s all I’ve ever wanted to do.
I love the example of Elder Olson, and I also appreciate Michael, who came and spoke earlier today about his own experience on his mission,[6] because you are seeing it from another side. His story is from the perspective of a companion who was with somebody who was struggling, who was different and was coming into the Church. This companionship went to the area office to Skype with somebody to help that struggling person, that companion, find skills so that he could be a successful missionary and serve his Heavenly Father the way he’d only wanted to. It’s hard on a companion, and as he walked through the halls, he was praying to Heavenly Father, and he said, “I feel so alone. Nobody gets what I am going through.” And that beautiful story that he told about looking up on the wall and seeing a Mormon ad that said, “You are never alone.” [7] The Savior is with you. And I am calling you to be the salt of the earth. I am calling you to be salty in this companionship.
Now, every single one of us has those opportunities. We either have to be salty for somebody else or somebody is being salt to us, to preserve us. But that is the joy of working in the Lord’s kingdom. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was calling us, in the simple way of a substance—a mineral that is with us in every day of our lives, in everybody’s life.
Let me ask you, what gets in the way of being salty? There are two things that I—there are probably lots of things, but I’m going to talk about two things. One of them is that people just bug us so much. They’re just annoying.
There’s another part of the Sermon on the Mount that talks about your eyes being single. And I’ve been thinking about this because I went to the ophthalmologist, and I said, “Look, I wear these glasses, and here I am talking at the pulpit, and I take them on and off all the time. It’s so distracting.”
He said, “Well, this is what we can do. We’re going to fit this eye for distance, and then we’re going to correct this eye for nearsightedness.” And he said, “Some people’s brains can’t adjust to this, but I’m going to give you a contact lens. You’re going to put a contact lens in.” And the minute I put that contact lens in, I couldn’t see anything, because my eyes were fit differently and it was so distracting.
And I said, “This doesn’t work for me. I can’t see anything.”
He said, “Over time, your eyes feed into one big circle, and so your brain is always taking this image and this image and then making a big circle out of it. Well, you’ve changed that. But if you’ll give yourself and your brain six weeks, it will adjust, and it will start to filter things out.”
Well, it’s not filtered at all right now because in the circle, half of the particles are perfectly sharp and half of the particles are perfectly blurry. But they’re all mixed up together, so it’s like looking through a screen door. And it’s awfully distracting. But he said, “If you will give your brain six weeks, your brain will start to filter out, and when you look out of this eye, it will filter out that side, and when you look out of this eye, it will filter out that side.”
And so I am in the middle of this process, and I think it’s helpful because as mortals, when we look at somebody—when you look at me up at this podium, your brain is listening to what I’m talking about. But your brain is also saying, “Look at her hair. I wonder why she wore that. It’s so hot in here.” And you go through all of these things that we just notice. We notice all of those things; we can’t help it. It’s the way we are.
But Jesus is saying, in the Sermon on the Mount, if your eye be single, then your whole body will be filled with light.[8] And you’ve got to train your brain in the same way that I am training my brain—those things are there, but you’re not going to pay attention to them. They don’t really matter, and so you will receive the input, but you’re going to lay it aside, and you’re going to focus on some of the things that really matter. If you can train your brain not to care about that stuff, then you can start to see how hard people are trying, and the intents of their hearts and all they ever wanted to do was to serve their Heavenly Father, and what their potential is—maybe not necessarily the way they are acting right now.
Jesus is encouraging us in the Sermon on the Mount, and he repeated the Sermon on the Mount to the Nephites and also in the Doctrine and Covenants—can you learn to have your eye be single to His glory because that is one way to get saltier and to avoid the problems about people that bother us.
This is from Matthew 6: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”
“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”[9]
So try to be a little bit better about filtering out the stuff that doesn’t matter. That’s one thing that we can do to kind of get over the things that take away our saltiness.
The other thing that I wanted to talk about is that we get disappointed. We get disillusioned. Things are not the way we thought they were going to be. University isn’t what we thought. Our parents are not as smart and all-knowing as we thought they were going to be. Our lives are not as rich or as happy or as clean—or I don’t know, whatever—but we get disappointed and disillusioned. And the whole gospel is to figure out what we do when we’re disappointed and disillusioned.
Brianne and I were walking across Temple Square to come today, and I was saying, “Why do you live the gospel? Why do you stay active in the Church?”
And she said, “Because it makes me happy.” And that’s true. All of us have felt that. But the scriptures are full of the story of what if the gospel was in your live but you weren’t that happy? What if all kinds of things were going on in your lives and you didn’t feel happy, and it wasn’t good? Would you still stay in the gospel?
We know that the fruits of the gospel are peace, but sometimes, living in this mortal experience, we’re not in the middle of peace. We know it will happen later, but our experiences are so difficult. But we have the chance to prove to the Lord that we have felt His Spirit, we’ve felt our testimony, and even if we are in disillusioned or disappointing circumstances, we will stay faithful.
There is a good example—and you know the story—it’s the story of Joseph of Egypt.[10] Now, you know he was his father’s favorite. He was one of the younger sons of twelve brothers—probably some sisters—and he was his father’s favorite, maybe because he was obedient. I don’t know. But his older brothers bugged him about it all the time. They could not filter out any of that stuff. And they made fun of him, and they tormented him, and in the end, they put him in a pit and then they sold him off to some slave traders who hauled him off to Egypt. And he got sold. And suddenly, this favored son, who had a good life in the house of his father, became a slave in a foreign country with another language.
He was sold to a man named Potiphar, who was one of Pharaoh’s stewards, and Joseph has to do slave work. Joseph had a decision—he was disappointed; this was not the life he thought he was going to have. But he made a decision that he would try to be the very best he could be in that circumstance. And so he started to serve Potiphar. And he tried to be the best he could be. He didn’t serve stingingly or unwillingly; he gave everything so that Potiphar’s house could prosper. And Joseph was just doing great, and things were going well. Potiphar trusted and likes him, and then what happens?
Potiphar’s wife said, “Hey.” And so there was a seduction that went on, and Joseph, because he was a man of integrity, he fled. He rejected her. And then she said, “Oh, okay.” And so she made a false accusation against Joseph, and he gets thrown into prison. Once again, he had built up his life with all of this effort, and then he was in prison. And instead of being disappointed and disillusioned, he started being a good prisoner. He started helping other prisoners. He started helping the jailor. And they noticed that Joseph had a spiritual gift of interpreting people’s dreams.
Well, the Pharaoh had a dream, so the chief butler, who was had been a prisoner with Joseph and now worked for the Pharaoh, said to Pharaoh, “I know a man who can interpret your dreams.” And so Joseph interpreted the dream of Pharaoh that there would be seven years of plenty and seven years of famine. And Pharaoh took Joseph out of the prison, and he put Joseph in charge of gathering all of the storehouse to get prepared for those seven lean years. Pharaoh put Joseph in charge, second only to himself.
And in the second year of that famine, who happened to come along? There was Joseph in the palace, and he was dealing out corn and wheat to the people who came in the middle of the famine, and who came? His brothers—the fathead brothers who sold him, who he had every right to feel so much anger against. But Joseph, the kind of person that he was—he’d been disillusioned and raised up and brought back down so many times—what did he do to those brothers? He forgave them. He forgave them. They didn’t recognize him. They would have never expected that their little Hebrew brother was now this great man in the court of Pharaoh.
And when Joseph forgave them, he became a preserver to his family, and he brought his brothers and all of their children, their wives, and his father, and he brought them into the land and he preserved them in the middle of this famine.
Joseph was salty. He was salty; he had an eye single to the glory of God, and he trusted in the Lord in the same way the Lord talks about the lilies of the field. There is this beautiful scripture, also from the Sermon on the Mount—Jesus said don’t worry about the logistics of this life. He said,
Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you?
But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.[11] . . .
There are times in our lives when we get disillusioned or disappointed or we don’t understand certain things. And it bugs us, and it paralyzes us, and it stops us. And the counsel from Jesus in the New Testament—and it’s so simple—He said, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God . . . and all these things shall be added unto you.”[12]
Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine. She is an attorney and a judge, and she said that in the 1970s when the Equal Rights Amendment was coming out, she—her profession and everything—she was very supportive of this. But the Church took a stand against the Equal Rights Amendment; not that they were opposed to equal rights for women, but there were other aspects of that law that they were afraid would reduce the freedom, and so they took a stand for that. She said, “It made me so mad. I couldn’t stand that I belonged to a religion that had taken this stand that was so important to me.” She said, “I almost left the Church, but I came to the point where I believed more than I was angry. So I just went with that.”
Now, thirty-five, forty years later, she said, “I have largely worked through that disappointment.” And she said, “The Lord working with me, over and over again over those years, being patient. He has added unto me so that is not even an issue with me anymore. I have resolved that.”
But we are so in danger if in the moment we are not patient. If we get upset and we lose the great blessings that come to us from our membership in the gospel and from being people under the prophets, because of our anger or our disappointment or our disillusionment. And I would beg you to take the same counsel that she took and that I take for myself: prophets and seers, they look way down the road. They are seeing things that we do not see, and their counsel oftentimes makes us feel like, “Are they sure?” But I give you this scripture from the New Testament where Jesus says, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be added unto you.”[13]
If you want to get saltier, take the example of Joseph and serve the best you can wherever you are. Sister Linda K. Burton has that beautiful conference talk where she kind of—it’s a meme; you see it everywhere—it says, “First observe, and then serve.”[14]
I am the oldest of seven kids, and my mother is a good delegator. And every night, she would call me up, and she’d say, “Sharon, I want you to come help me with dinner.” And so I would kind of come up unwillingly.
I would stand in the kitchen, and I would say, “What do you want me to do?”
And she would say, “You know how dinner works. You’ve done this routine before. You look around and see what needs to be done, and then you do that.”
That has been such an important skill in my life because rather than waiting for somebody to tell me what to do, I can use the saltiness that is in me, I can use the spiritual gifts that are in me. You look around and you see what needs to be done, and you do that. You follow the Jean Eubanks school of service. You know how this works: see what needs to be done, and then do it. And whether you are in a pit or in a slave trader’s hall or in a prison or in Pharaoh’s court, you make the best of where you can be. You stand where you are, and you lift where you are. The Lord will bring opportunities to you that you never imagined.
So, the first thing about getting saltier is to serve. And the second thing is to keep your covenants. If you follow the Church’s plan from the very time you’re a little baby, your father will raise you up and present you to God and give you a name and a blessing, and promise to the Lord in that blessing that he will take care of you and guide you until you can make covenants of your own. It’s really a beautiful promise between that father and God about this child that the father and the mother have created.
When you are old enough, you are baptized and you make your first promise to the Lord. You promise to keep His commandments and choose the right, and the Lord promises to send His power, His spirit, His knowledge to protect you and to guide you. And as you grow, and as you are at the stage where you are, you go to the temple and you promise to the Lord. And He teaches you how to pierce the veil of unbelief and how you can walk through to the other side so that you will not only have faith, but you will have knowledge.
And then when you are sealed, you and your spouse take that veil and you actually hold it over yourselves as creators, and you bring new life on the inside of the veil, and the whole process starts over again. That miraculous, beautiful process that is going on and on with the power of the Holy Ghost and the power of the temple covenants—you want everything that exists to be underneath that covering and that protection. Your covenants are the best protection and covering that there can be, and if you keep them, it will pierce the veil and, like the brother of Jared, you will go through on the other side.[15] The temple is a metaphor for how that will happen for every single one of us.
In the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord says,
Verily I say unto you, in that day when the Lord shall come, he shall reveal all things—
. . . Therefore, care not for the body, neither the life of the body; but care for the soul, and for the life of the soul.
And seek the face of the Lord always, that in patience ye may possess your souls, and ye shall have eternal life.
When men are called unto mine everlasting gospel, and covenant with an everlasting covenant, they are accounted as the salt of the earth and the savor of men.[16]
I want to testify that there are a lot of things that I don’t know, but these are the things that I am sure about and that I do know. The first one is God adores all of His children. He is good, and He loves us all—whatever color, whatever grind. He loves us all. And I testify that questions are the beginning of revelation and that patience is the younger sister of faith. And if we ask and if we have patience, the Lord will reveal to us in a way that we can understand over time the answers to our questions. And making promises with Him and then keeping those promises, even when our life is not working out the way we thought it would through the good things and the bad things, that is the most important thing we can do with our lives on the earth. And I testify, as has been testified here already, that Jesus Christ will send His help when we can’t take it anymore. When we cry out to Him, when it is dark, when we are frozen, when we are paralyzed and we don’t know what to do, Jesus Himself will come to us and we will not be alone. And He will bring His power.
Our Father in Heaven loves salty children. May we have the salt within us and preserve ourselves and the people around us, and bring out the flavor and the very best of all of us, and in that way He will find us being like Him when He comes again. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] 3 Nephi 12:13.
[2] Luke 3:8.
[3] 2 Nephi 4:4.
[4] See the video “Able to Serve,” at https://www.lds.org/callings/missionary/church-service-missionary/videos?lang=eng#what-ive-always-wanted-to-do .
[5] For example, see Richard G. Scott, “How to Obtain Revelation and Inspiration for Your Personal Life,” Apr. 2012 General Conference.
[6] See LDS Business College Student Story Series, Michael Jewett, Mar. 8, 2016.
[7] “Mormonad: You Are Never Alone,” New Era, Dec. 2011.
[8] See Luke 11:34.
[9] Matthew 6:22, 24.
[10] See Genesis 37, 39–46.
[11] Matthew 6:25–30, 33.
[12] Matthew 6:33.
[13] Matthew 6:33.
[14] Linda K. Burton, “First Observe, Then Serve,” Oct. 2012 General Conference.
[15] See Ether 3.
[16] Doctrine and Covenants 101:32, 37-39.