Light and Truth

 One of many experiences I've had that confirm Moroni's declaration that faith must precede miracles ( Ether 12:6,12 ) occurred in October, 2022. At the time my family and I were just short of one year living in our newly bought house in Layton, Utah. I had a great job at Spiff and everything was going very well for us. Our daily routine consisted of me working a few hours in my office, taking a lunch break around noon, and then working four more hours before dinner. After my lunch break it was time for Isaac's nap, and my wife Bethany certainly needed a nap as well due to being in the midst of pregnancy. So it was normal for Aaron to get a half hour or so to watch some toddler shows that we checked out from the library (so as to avoid the risk of inappropriate commercials and an unending flow of shows). In the middle of October, we discovered that Aaron was really interested in watching recordings of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. But since that was so old, the library didn'...

From before the time of my earliest memories in life, my family has been actively involved in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of course, one of the (very positive) consequences of this is that many of the teachings and commandments became normal to me relatively quickly. But even with the religious beliefs and way of life being rather normal, I still needed to gain a personal testimony of everything through experience before I knew it to be true. Often times these learning experiences were initiated by simply living according to the commandments without requiring a knowledge of why. For some of the beliefs and commandments, my testimony process was relatively short term. Others took a much longer, extended time. An example of one such commandment that took many years for me to learn the "why" behind it was the Lord's law of tithing. From the day of my baptism until now, I have always been 100% obedient to this law and payed one-tenth of my income back t...