While training at the Army Operational Emergency Medical School, U.S. Army Special Forces Combat Medic Staff Sergeant Leo Jenkins noted:

We speak about “excellence” a great deal, but by definition, excellence does not come easily or quickly—an excellent education does not; a successful mission does not; a strong, loving marriage does not; rewarding personal relationships do not. It is simply a truism that nothing very valuable can come without sacrifice and effort and patience on our part. Perhaps you discovered that when you got your last grades. Maybe you are also finding that many of the most hoped-for rewards in life can seem an awfully long time coming.

The following article originally ran on LDS Living in May 2016.

Chris Montierth speaks frequently during our interview of “pushing the button.”

When my pre-teen son asked for a phone, I wondered if President David O. McKay had imagined the small devices we all carry around each day when he prophesied of scientific “discoveries latent with such potent power, either for the blessing or the destruction of human beings, as to make man’s responsibility in controlling them the most gigantic ever placed in human hands” (in Conference Report, Oct., 1966, 4). Could I hand my innocent son a little phone with more power than the first supercomputer, with all the knowledge of millions of books and world-class entertainment to put in his pocket? Would this bless him? It could. But it could also destroy him.

Many of us know the First Presidency best by their messages and the service that they give. But what do we know of their life history and the women who have been by their sides?

Perhaps one of the most discouraging struggles women endure is that never-ending battle with our own bodies. A woman’s attitude toward her own body is fraught with misconceptions fueled by a world that celebrates an almost prepubescent female body as the ideal norm. Unfortunately for most of us, time moves on. We are no longer seventeen, a number of children have made their way through our birth canals, and gravity is exerting its inexorable pull. Whenever we look in the mirror, we are reminded of what we are not. Satan would have it just that way. He would have us think that because our bodies do not look a certain, supposedly desirable, way, they are not worth having at all. Thus, we enter into a war with our bodies, hating the very tabernacle our Father has given us, despising the flesh. If Satan can get us to fixate on our bodies, either in vanity or self-loathing, then he has caused us to misunderstand completely the role our bodies play in our salvation.

Eternal life is the promise that death is not the end, that there is life after death. It’s the promise that both my body and this world can continue after death in the presence of God. And this promise matters. As Paul says, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (1 Corinthians 15:19). But the reverse is also true. If for the next life only I have hope in Christ, I am also lost. By itself, even the glory of an eternal life is not enough.

World War II hero Saiji Zakimi courageously served the U.S. after Congress granted Japanese-American men the right to serve in the military—even as more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were being held in internment camps throughout the country. And since he found the gospel so many years ago, he has honorably served the Lord with the same commitment and integrity.

In his April 2023 general conference address, Elder Gary E. Stevenson challenged us to rethink the way we celebrate Easter by asking this question: “How do we model the teaching and celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Easter story, with the same balance, fulness, and rich religious tradition of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Christmas story?”