Believe!

I have 32 seminary students who come to class every morning at 6:15 AM to learn about the Book of Mormon.  They are awesome!  I just love these kids and the sacrifice they make daily to strengthen their testimony. 

I have always loved the Book of Mormon.  I don't remember the first time I read it.  I do remember my Dad reading a Children's version to Jody and I as we went to bed at night.  Maybe my first reading was when I was a Freshman in seminary, like some of my students.  I can still quote a few of the Scripture Mastery verses I memorized at age 14.

I have always thought it was a correct book.  I remember actually being surprised to learn that other people had doubts about it!  I just never have.  It's felt right to me as long as I can remember.  I have felt my life change by making this book part of my daily life.  When it's not, I feel an emptiness. 

My copy is pretty worn yet I just don't want to replace it.  It contains years and years of my study notes.  I have added some notes to my cell phone, but I still like the feel of opening my leather book, smelling the familiar smell, and knowing that I can flip to literally any page and see what I have marked.  These are special things that bring back memories and feelings to me.  Some of my markings are worn and I find myself wondering why I marked a particular verse many years ago?  But I love knowing that sometime in my life, that verse was meaningful enough to me that I marked it!  I have page corners turned down, lots of cross references, and even a  ripped page from one of my babies.  It makes me smile when I come to that page, remembering how hard it used to be to fit in a minute or two for personal study.

About 10 days before seminary started, I was looking frantically for my precious book.  I couldn't imagine where I would have put it.  I checked the lost and found at church.  I looked at all the normal places in my home.  I recruited Claire and Reid's help.  We looked under couches, in my car trunk, in closets that I hadn't even opened.  I was desperate.   I wrote to my other kids and asked for their prayers, and in our family prayers we would pray that "Mom would find her scriptures."  It came down to minutes before I had to leave for our Seminary Back-to-School night, with actual seminary starting the very next morning.  I sat down to dinner and asked Reid to pray for my book as he blessed the food.  I quickly ate and got ready to go.  And then, it happened.  A modern day miracle!  There it was, right on my desk in the kitchen!  The most obvious place of all and where all 3 of us had already looked multiple times.  I cannot describe this moment.  It was such joy and I knew I was the recipient of a miracle!  How did it get there?  Who put it there and when?  I have no idea but I am as positive as I can be, that it was not there the past 2 weeks, or even minutes earlier.  I sit at my desk every single day and had never seen it there before. 

I believe in miracles.  Small and large.  Modern and centuries ago.  Miracles are real.  God is in our lives.  Teaching, testing, blessing, providing, taking away, putting people in our lives and keeping us protected.  Reid and I got on our knees right then, next to the door out to our garage, and said a prayer of thanks.  Then we got in the car and drove away.  God took that miracle right down to the very second that I needed it to happen!