Light and Truth

One of the greatest, yet hardest, times of my life was a number of years ago while serving as a full-time missionary in the state of New York. This concoction, of course, provided for many learning moments orchestrated through divine design. One of the things I learned almost immediately upon entering the mission field was the important and irreplaceable role of the ward mission leader. It was rather obvious from the perspective of a full-time missionary that there was very little we could do to help strengthen each church unit if there wasn't a local member whose primary role was to serve as a connection between us and the rest of the church members there. As I served in Middletown, the Bronx, Manhattan, and the West Point military academy I was richly blessed to always have very kind and diligent ward mission leaders who helped in man y uncountable ways. Having rarely even heard of this role prior to being a missionary, I got very good first examples of fulfilling such a calling...

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...

In the early parts of 2014, one of the strongest desires of my life began to swell within me. Although I was only 21 years of age and single, a yearning to be a father one day took root in my heart and mind. Even though I cannot pinpoint the initiation of this desire to a specific event, I am quite confident that it was the cumulative effect of multiple heaven-designed experiences: seeing the light in the eyes of young children, learning of God's commandment to multiply and replenish the earth, and the Holy Ghost prompting me towards a more complete understanding of my duties in life. While it certainly did not occur overnight, I gradually came to desire the opportunity to raise children. After about two years, I was privileged to find and marry my beautiful wife Bethany in the early months of 2016, bringing my hope for being a father much closer towards reality. Knowing that all people are children of God, I knew from the beginning that if I so desired to raise children I needed...

In December 2013, I returned home after serving full-time as a missionary in New York for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for nearly two years. Having served to the best of my ability, I stepped off the plane flight with many new lessons learned through experiences that were (at least to me) clearly orchestrated by the Lord. One of these lessons was, of course, the priceless value of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Prior to missionary service, the continual presence of the Gospel led me to deem it as normal and ordinary rather than of value beyond description. But by seeing, as a missionary, first hand accounts of so many individuals finding joy and purpose in life by coming to a true knowledge of their Savior, all of that permanently changed. Another big take-home lesson for me was that there is no such thing as a convenient conversion. I learned this through seeing the life-changing experiences of so many people, which were always accompanied with great sacrifices and c...

From the earliest of years, I have had a deep interest in mathematics and astronomy. Although I have a very limited memory of my life before the age of 12, I believe that my math interest originated in elementary school. My best assumption is that this was at least in part brought about by some internal frustration with some problems on assignments in other subjects getting marked wrong without any explanation of why they were wrong. For example, some teachers would simply mark an answer of mine to a question on a reading assignment wrong without any reason of why it was incorrect. Other times they would provide an explanation, but not one that was convincing enough of why their personal interpretation was right instead of mine. On math assignments, however, there was always a way to show why my answer was wrong and why the correct answer was truly the only one. This aspect of mathematics where everything is provable and completely void of opinion was, and has remained to this day, the...

From a young age, I anticipated the time when I would serve as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With many close family members and friends having previously served as full-time missionaries, I had many opportunities to prepare for my own experience. Among the many aspects of this preparation was a desire to know what the hard questions might be, and how to answer them. Listening to many stories from returned missionaries, combined with pretty simple reasoning, I concluded that religious questions (both sincere and intentionally-confounding) were unavoidable as a missionary. One of the most common intentionally-confounding questions involved in the stories shared by my fellow returned missionaries was how any of The Church's modern-day scripture (and particularly The Book of Mormon) could remain valid within the presence of the warning at the very end of the Bible, Revelation 22:18-19. "For I testify unto every man that heareth th...

At the beginning of the year 2013 I was serving as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in The Bronx of New York City. As most people who serve in the capacity of a full-time missionary soon find out, it can be quite challenging almost all the time. The particular difficulty that my teaching companion and I faced at this time was retaining the religious investigators we found. It seemed as if no matter how much effort we put forth to pray for, stay in contact with, and prepare to teach the people who initially were interested in the restored gospel, it didn't seem to work. Within three weeks after initial contact, most of them would either not respond to phone calls nor texts, tell us they no longer had time to continue investigating, or inform us that they were no longer interested. Of course, this is nothing unusual as a missionary. And fortunately, I had learned at this point how to deal with disappointments like these. At this same time ...