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It snowed today in Utah and in Idaho! Meanwhile we are still in the 90's and the bugs are thick and the sweat is rolling down our backs and off our foreheads whenever we are outside.  You can't have everything I guess.

Our sacrament meeting was wonderful today.  Bro. Hill gave a powerful talk, and the passing of the sacrament was a sacred and special experience.  We are so blessed to be able to live the gospel during our mortal lives.

Tonight we had our first post lock down BYD.  We met at church, and by Zoom, and our speakers were Randy and Meredith Casto, who joined us by Zoom from MD.  They did a phenomenal job and it was exactly what was needed.  They shared their conversion story and bore powerful and meaningful, relatable yet specifically unique testimonies of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.  Randy said several times that he found "more" than what he had before, and there is "more" ahead for all of us.  I loved it.  We left edified and uplifted. They were pastors when they were introduced to the restored gospel.  Randy a Lutheran and Meredith an Episcopalian priest, they gave up their jobs and even some family and friends, really all that they were used to they gave up when they got baptized.  

There was time for a couple of questions at the end and Bro Hill asked them what the greatest obstacle was for them in leaving their ministries and being baptized.  Bro Casto said "Martin Luther said "here I stand, and I can not do otherwise" when jailed, and criticized for his teachings.  He, Randy, said when he received personal revelation that this was God's church he felt the same.  "Here I stand, and I can not do otherwise.”

Meredith said that she was raised in a strongly feminist, extremely liberal house hold and thought that being a stay at home mom was the worst thing that could happen to a woman, that women don't need men, and that her career was her first priority.  Then she learned that the opposite was true.  She left a church where she was the priest and the authority to one where women can not be priests (and she added and I didn't even want to be because I now understood my role and it is so much more).  She said being in Relief Society was the best place to be because there she found the strongest, most valiant, women who knew who they were and what their purpose was. 

I know that the youth felt the spirit and felt the power of their message. I know I did.