I remember like it was yesterday. I was a 13-year-old girl living in Pewee Valley, Kentucky. My mom and I drove to the stake center in Louisville for the first satellite broadcast just for young women of the LDS church. It was November 10, 1985, and it was the first time the Young Women theme was introduced. I can still remember the feeling of sitting there in the chapel, hearing that theme for the first time and listening to the invitation from Sister Ardeth Kapp, Young Women general president.

Just after midnight on Friday morning, Kris Belcher, a beloved Deseret Book author and Time Out for Women speaker passed away. Belcher lived her life inspiring others despite many health challenges, including cancer that led to her losing her sight. In the wake of Belcher’s passing, Emily Belle Freeman penned the following: “She is finally able to see . . . it was the text I received just after midnight. And just like that, she was gone . . . one of the noble and great ones. And I held her hand, and I thought of the wisdom she gave every one of us. And the love. Oh, she knew how to love . . . and there was peace. #intothelight.”

INTRODUCTION: My mother was mostly blind during the final years of her life. A passionate reader, a woman who loved to sew and mend and cook and clean, her infirmity made the favored activities of her life nearly impossible. She did learn to crochet by touch, and made over one hundred Afghans for her grand- and great-grandchildren in those final years, but they were years lived in temporal darkness. But through it all she glowed! There was a source of light in her, a shining certainty, that enabled her to see more clearly than any of those whose love and compassion brought them to her side to read to her and to visit with her and to reminisce with her. The real light of the world, rather than being dimmed by her handicap, increased its brightness and radiance as the weeks and months passed by, until it seemed there was no darkness in her at all. More than any person I have ever known, she knew what Jesus meant when he said, “I am the light of the world.”

Sister Aburto lost her brother in an earthquake as a child, went through a painful divorce with her first husband, and didn’t get to say goodbye to her father before he died by suicide.

At 2:49 pm on January 13, 2019, I got the call no parent wants to receive. It was the bishop’s wife: “Your daughter has been in an accident.” My daughter Erynn, barely 18, was in a car with three other girls, all members of the Laurel class presidency. On their way to welcome a new girl to the ward, the car she was riding in pulled out of the neighborhood and was struck by an oncoming truck, causing injuries to all four girls. Arriving at the scene before paramedics, I was relieved to see them still seated in the car with their eyes open, despite looking very shaken. Unfortunately, my relief was short-lived. Although she appeared unharmed, Erynn would not respond to questions or commands. At the hospital, we were informed that she had a massive compressive skull fracture and bleeding on the brain. She would require immediate surgery.

As we commemorate Pearl Harbor in the month of December, here is an interesting look at a group of little-discussed Saints whose lives were affected by the soldiers who responded to that tragedy 78 years ago.

“I learned the hard way that addictions can happen to anyone, and I would need more than my self-motivated nature to overcome it.”

Though conference has come and gone, the words of our inspiring Church leaders are still reverberating in many of our minds and hearts. They offered much counsel, issued many calls to action, and showed their love for us.

John 7,8

It's not often that a couple can relive the excitement of their wedding day, especially after 50 years of marriage.