The following is excerpted from the Church News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
For 17-year-old Monica Schiess, the most memorable moment from a special seminary devotional on Wednesday morning, Aug. 24, occurred before any words were spoken.
She and roughly 2,600 other youth reverently stood as several general Church leaders — including two Apostles, the Relief Society general president and other general authorities — entered the domed auditorium of the Bountiful Regional Center.
“I could feel the Spirit very strongly knowing that I was not alone in loving and respecting the Savior and His gospel,” the high school student told the Church News.
Referring to himself and the three other general Church leaders who spoke during the morning devotional, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles asked seminary students to “let us bless you with our experience.”
Elder Holland, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Relief Society General President Camille N. Johnson and Elder Clark G. Gilbert, a General Authority Seventy and commissioner of Church education, all offered words of love and counsel during the devotional, which was streamed to an additional 3,600 seminary students throughout Davis County, Utah.
“The principal advantage we have over you this morning, if we have any at all, is that we’ve been your age and you’ve never been ours,” Elder Holland quipped.
Veteran Church leaders and young high school-age seminary students are all walking the same road, he said. “We’re sons and daughters of God like you are sons and daughters of God. And, like you, we often take two steps forward and one step back. We’re learning while you’re learning. As children of our Heavenly Father, we’re all on the same road, but we’re a little farther down the road than you are.”
Because of that, the leaders can call back when the curve is sharp or the path is dangerous or there’s a better place to run. “But we’re all in this together,” Elder Holland said.
‘It might have been’
To begin his remarks, Elder Holland shared a line from a famous poem by John Greenleaf Whittier:
“For all sad words of tongue and pen,
the saddest are these, ‘It might have been!’ ”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
