(2 Nephi 31-33)

The year 1940 might have been a banner year for our family. The health and financial hardships that followed my father’s 1930 graduation from medical school in Philadelphia were past. The family was happily located in Twin Falls, Idaho, where my father’s medical practice (eye, ear, nose, and throat) was thriving and where he served on the high council of the Twin Falls Stake. In January 1938, he and my mother had returned from his four months of valuable postdoctoral training in ophthalmology in Vienna, Austria, and Cairo, Egypt. After years of sacrifice since their marriage in 1929, my mother could at last contemplate a life of security as the wife of a prosperous physician. In January 1940, son Merrill would be four, and in March, daughter Evelyn would be one. In August 1940, I, their eldest, would be baptized following my eighth birthday.

Do you know what your first spoken word was? How about the first spoken word of a child in your life? Whatever it was, there’s something powerful and exciting about those earliest moments when we first learned to communicate. This week as we study John, Chapter 1, we’re going to learn about the importance of a word. And not just any word—the Word. So let’s accept this invitation from the Savior to come and see the power of that Word and begin to understand Him in a whole new light.

In a letter to her husband, Joseph, Emma Hale Smith wrote, “I desire the Spirit of God to know and understand myself, that I might be able to overcome whatever of tradition or nature that would not tend to my exaltation in the eternal worlds. I desire a fruitful, active mind, that I may be able to comprehend the designs of God, when revealed through His servants without doubting.”

“When the Lord knows He can trust you, He both opens doors for you, and He helps you open doors.”

Emily Farmer and McEwan “Mac” Voorhees don’t have much in common.

Many years ago, a young man (he was only 23 years old) was called to be the new stake president in Tooele, Utah. In those days, stake conferences had two sessions, and at lunch between the sessions, Joseph F. Smith, one of the General Authorities attending, said to the new stake president, “You said you believe the gospel with all your heart, and propose to live it, but you did not bear your testimony that you know it is true. Don’t you know absolutely that this gospel is true?”

Back when I was in the Young Women program, I remember being told that “returned missionary” needed to be at the top of my dating criteria list. Supposedly, dating and marrying an RM meant that my husband-to-be would honor his priesthood, love the Lord, and be everything a good Latter-day Saint girl wanted—short of being Prince Charming himself.

For most of the thirty-nine years Samuel King [president of the Sudoeste District of the Uruguay-Paraguay Mission] spent as an administrator of a large meat-packing plant [in Montevideo, Uruguay], he was a staunch member of the Church of England. . . .

Chances are you have heard someone utter the phrase: “the Church is the same everywhere.” I have traveled quite a bit and attended The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints all over the world. In my experience, this statement is absolutely true. Also, completely false.