More than Coincidence: Remembering Jesus Christ in Your Story

Like Dews Distilled from Heaven with Steve

• Lily • Season 1 • Episode 6

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From personal struggles to a profound temple experience about the crucifixion of the Savior, Steve shares the accumulation of small moments that have ultimately solidified his testimony of Jesus Christ. 

Please reach out to me if you are interested in sharing your story! I would LOVE to hear from you. :)

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Lily:

Hello everyone and welcome to. More Than Coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your Story. As the author and finisher of our faith, our Savior writes personal experiences into each of our lives which can later strengthen, empower and bring us peace upon reflection. This podcast is dedicated to sharing these anchoring memories from everyone's unique stories in order to collectively remember and testify of the reality of Jesus Christ and His presence in our lives. I'm your host, lily, and I'm very excited to share these experiences together. Okay, tonight we have Steve. Thanks for joining us.

Steve:

You're welcome. Glad to be here.

Lily:

Would you mind introducing yourself a little bit.

Steve:

My name is Steve and that's how people know me. I'm 73 years old and I'm married. I have four kids and 14 grandkids. A lot of our life rotates or revolves around the grandkids and family things. It's all very, very important to us. As we talk more about testimony, I'll talk more about my life and what all it means. But I'm retired, I'm semi-retired. I still do some consulting. That's what keeps me going. I also work in the Saratoga Springs Temple and enjoy that immensely. So that's kind of me.

Lily:

Awesome. So what memories in your life do you have that you reflect on, that prick your heart and remembrance of our Savior Jesus Christ?

Steve:

So that's a big question. As I've thought about this since we talked earlier, I feel like it's hard. It's hard for me to separate testimony from this question. In other words, testimony is an outfall of these kinds of experiences In my life. I guess I got to start earlier. My parents were always very active in the church and my dad's a convert. They were always active. We moved a real lot. As a young person and kind of a construction brat person, I like how you say construction brat.

Lily:

That's awesome.

Steve:

Yeah, you're used to military brat.

Lily:

Yeah, I am. I've never heard construction brat, so that's cool.

Steve:

By the time I turned 19,. I moved 19 times, so I'm a brat, that's cool. I've had some variety. But I always knew my parents knew the church was true and I also always knew that they had taught me true things. I came to realize by the time I was probably 15 or 16 that whatever I did was my responsibility, that my parents had taught me all the things I needed to know and if I was doing something was because I was stupid. I was certainly able to accomplish quite a few stupid things, but I knew that my parents had taught me the truth and said a really good example. So I knew where the truth was. And as I got older I got more mature and firmer in aligning myself with the teachings of the gospel, at first as a teenager and even as I started out as a missionary.

Steve:

As Paul described, one of the gifts of the spirit is to have faith in other people's faith. That's where I lived. I had a testimony, my parents' testimony. I trusted them and I trusted this whole process and as I went through and through life and had more experiences than I, started to have my own testimony. So sitting at this point now, looking back, I realize that my testimony is as described in Doctrine and Covenants, section 121, that is that he says the doctrines of the priesthood will distill upon our souls as they do from heaven, actually interacted with some do. This morning it comes up on you. You don't see it coming, it just kind of appears and is there and it's an accumulation of all these water molecules that make things wet. So I can recognize now that that's what my testimony is and I can get granular with it, which is what the intent of tonight is is for me to go back and look at things that contributed to that thing. But my testimony is not based on a big event like some people have had and many people want to have but maybe never get. My testimony is more like I've never had Morone. I show up in my bedroom. That's not ever happened. So here we are. But I can start out on my mission.

Steve:

I served a mission in Fiji for a while, then in Hawaii and the last 14 months of my mission I was in Laiea, working primarily with college students. What was then the Church College of Hawaii is now BYU Hawaii and we focused on that and in fact I had it was in that same place and had the same companion for most of those 14 months and we never had a crossword. He was a great companion. His name was David Matthews and he was an amazing guy and certainly helpful to me. So the kids, the students, all went to school during the day and they all worked at the Polynesian Cultural Center at night. That's how they survived. So as missionaries, our life was very different. We didn't really start teaching people until 7.30 or 8.00 at night and we sometimes went to midnight and one o'clock in the morning teaching people, Because no one was home.

Lily:

everyone was in school.

Steve:

Everyone was working their home or doing something. So, yeah, that's what we did and we had the college president's office was right in the very front and he turned over his office to us to hold missionary discussions in. So the students who all did in dorms would come over to the college president's office and we'd have our discussions there and had the privilege of teaching people from many different nations and different nationalities and races and basically every kind you can imagine. I looked through my records and during my mission I was involved in one with the baptism of people from 60 different countries or races.

Steve:

That is so cool Because it's such a crossroads there, you know the west and the church college had a really strong teaching English as a second language.

Steve:

So people came from all over the world to learn how to deal with English as a second language, and so it's pretty cool, anyway. So during the day we didn't have a lot of things to do. I mean, we didn't get up when missionaries got up. We got up at like 9 o'clock or 10 o'clock or something, but during the day we didn't have a lot to do. So we would often go over to the library and during that time one of the things to do is I read the book Jesus the Christ. You know there's a lot of reading, suggested reading for missionaries, you know, marvelous working on wonder and all those kind of things, and we read all that stuff. But I read Jesus the Christ and I took to, as James Tommy's made footnotes. I took to going to those footnotes and making a mark in my scriptures of what JC in the page number that that scripture was talking about. So in my missionary scriptures, which I still have, there's a bunch of these little red notations that I wrote. They go back to Jesus the Christ.

Steve:

Now that was probably when Jesus actually turned into a person. For me became alive. For me was to get into his life so much and to read so much, and I had a lot of really tender experiences of reading about things that he did. The scope of his life was very meaningful to me the idea that he stood up at the first during the Council in Heaven, said, here am I send me. And he's been actively engaged with us since then. Right, and it's been a really. We don't know about it, we don't know the details, but I know that it's been a really really big thing. He's been very actively engaged and my life is a testament to those kinds of interactions that have happened, and there's been lots of in my life where that's been the case. So I guess I need to say here that a lot of these interactions have been with the Spirit. You know the Spirit has interacted with me in a way, but I've always understood that the Spirit was representing the Savior, correct and doing that. So those things are from the Savior.

Steve:

There's been so many interventions in my life. I think Elder Bednar would call them tender mercies, but it's been more than that. It's been actual interventions of things. For example, when I got home from my mission, I went to my sisters. My parents were still living in the South Pacific, where I'd come from, and we had moved. That was one of the moves. We had moved to the South Pacific, wow. So yeah, I lived in Tonga for a while.

Lily:

Oh man, that's so cool.

Steve:

It was very cool. It also gives you a reference for what a hard thing is and what hard things are not. You learn pretty quickly, right? So I got home from my mission and went to stay with my sister and first Sunday back, and those days you had priesthood meeting in the morning and then Sunday school and the second meeting at night.

Steve:

So we got a priesthood meeting called Elder's Quorum, and in those days they also had a role that they passed around Elder's Quorum, and it asked you some questions besides checking you there, and there was two columns. One of the columns was do you know of a job opening that's available? And the second one and you put a check mark in there if you know that. And the second one was do you know of somebody who's looking for a job? And so I sit down next to people I don't know and this thing I just got home, you know and so I was next to this guy and, like the role comes to me and I check a mark, I know somebody looking for a job. It would be like me.

Steve:

And so I hand it to this guy and he fills it. I sing it and he checks the box. I know somebody who has a job and he hands the role back to me and lets me see that. And I found out I was sitting next to a guy named Gene Moffat who owns Gold Cross Ambulance in Salt Lake. Truly a great man.

Steve:

And so I started driving ambulance with them, like the next day and that I was one of the first EMTs west of Mississippi and one of the first paramedics in Utah. I was part of the group that went to California to learn the paramedic program. And that all stemmed from me sitting next to Gene Moffat and having those experiences. So that's one of those things where a person may call it serendipity, but if that's the case, I've had a lot of amazing serendipity things. I mean, it's like this is crazy, oh yeah, I don't believe in coincidence.

Lily:

No, there's no way.

Steve:

There's no coincidence so no, there's just too much. So, for example, I'd been home for my mission for a couple of years and was trying to go to school in pre-med at the University of Utah and driving ambulance at night. So I tried dating and it was a horrible experience and I hated it and so I stopped dating people. I was just going to school and working and keeping your head down. In those days there wasn't a lot of good call dispatching, so you went on a lot of calls. It was not unusual to go on 15 or 20 calls in 24 hours. You're kidding? No, that's what we did and it was crazy stuff. So, uh, I had not been dating anybody and had a guy I worked with there and he says I've been dating this girl, she has a roommate and we think that you guys would be good, so we want to line up with this roommate.

Steve:

And I said no, I'm not, there's no way I've sworn off girls for now. Too much trouble, too much insane. So finally they were warming down and they said they said we'd like to do this thing. So, okay, we'll do this thing, We'll arrange that. So we both rode motorcycles, we love motorcycles, so we're going to go pick up these girls and take them up in the canyon and do a little cookout.

Lily:

Oh, that's so fun Motorcycles.

Steve:

It was very fun. So, anyway, we get to the house and go to meet the girl. We're going to meet the blind date victim and she's sick, she can't go. So there was another roommate in the place and they said, how about another one?

Steve:

I go, we're here, or whatever you know, I'm just trying to, it's all the same to me, I'm just trying to get through this thing and go home and go home. And so they went and asked the other gal and she said, well, I don't want to, but okay, I'll go. And it was, who is now Elaine Kane.

Lily:

There it is.

Steve:

So we refer to it as a double blind date, because we actually need blind date. We got the replacement blind date.

Steve:

So you know, it's another tender mercy thing that is just too big. So it's another intervention. I know God's working in my life and you think of all the things that have come, that have happened since we've been married, and things we've gone through together and all that kind of stuff. It's just, it's incredible and we actually never from that night. We, you know, we were pretty close and we, we. It took me a while because I'm a dense guy to figure out that she was right when she says she knew the first night that I was the guy. But it took me through the summer to figure that out.

Lily:

Yeah.

Steve:

And then, and then I I got kind of clammy for a little while and I came to and and we got engaged in in December and this is December of 1973.

Steve:

So we had in the same. In the same time this was happening, the Utah Paramedic Act was passed and they, they gathered together a group of people to send to California to go learn the paramedic business and come back and set up in Utah. So we were married on Tuesday February 12th and on Saturday we left to go to California to go learn the paramedic business and I was gone for six weeks. And so four days after we got married I left and and we, we did the, did some training, and then we came back and in Salt Lake did some hospital training for a few weeks and went back and did, did six more weeks in California, yeah, Running with paramedic units and that kind of stuff, right. So and then when we got back there weren't enough paramedic units to go around. So there's only three of them in all of Salt Lake County. You think about how many there are now.

Lily:

And oh yeah, that's not very many.

Steve:

And no dispatching. So at the time there was only four of us to cover 24 hour shifts. So we did the two at a time, 24 on 24 off and no days, no other days off. So 24 on 24 off. We did that for 18 months until some more paramedics that get drained, oh my goodness so if a paramedic got sick, then one of us had to work 72 hours, and we were.

Steve:

It was not uncommon to do 15 calls in a day, sometimes more, yeah, and so you'd get pretty tired after a while. I was gonna say that sounds exhausting, but it also means that Elaine was working, so so you both were doing this at the same time together. Well, she was working and I was not. I was doing paramedic stuff. Okay, so I would see her every other night. Every other evening, yeah, and so it was.

Lily:

It was I was gonna say that's really rough for newlyweds.

Steve:

Yeah, it was. It was tough, but she's pretty tough she is, and turns out we like each other and so we got through it Okay. And but those that that made us love each other a lot and want to be together, so we still do things together, sometimes in a terribly inefficient way.

Lily:

I'm gonna nap over here, You're gonna nap over there, but we're together Well that's right.

Steve:

If you've got errands and I've got errands, we don't go separately and do errands, we go together and do all the errands together and even though it's less efficient. We just that's how we've done that We've always done that, even when we're raising the kids. All the whole family went grocery shopping. It's horrible, as that was, and that's what we have to do.

Steve:

We all did all things, and yeah and that kind of stuff, but, but, but that intervention in my life, of bringing her into my life under those circumstances stood out as one of those, one of those, the many, many things where it's been very clear that that have me, father the savior, intervened in my life to help something come to pass, you know, correct.

Lily:

And, uh, well, I think, even give you the strength to even get through that, because I can't even imagine that that's an insane schedule. It was it was interesting, really adventurous Get pretty tired.

Steve:

So, um, after a few years of doing that, um, I began to get worried about, uh, what was happening. Because of so many calls, some of the paramedics were getting burned out, and they were. They were treating patients harshly. So, uh, I worked out of right downtown and and more than 50% of the calls that we took were alcohol or drug abuse related. And uh, so you can only go on so many drugs before you get tired of doing that. And and I was worried about about me treating, uh, treating the patients coarsely, what some paramedics had begun to do. And so I thought I gotta make a change. And so we didn't know what to do, um, but we, we uh, fasted and prayed about it, and then, at the end of the fast, we both knelt at our couch in our little house and I had this super strong feeling that I was not supposed to go on. I couldn't.

Steve:

The stupor of thought came I couldn't see myself continuing on this path that there was another path for me. I didn't know what it was, but I was going to make a change. And so I resigned from the fire department. And it was kind of amazing the very next week I got really, really sick, I got something called sarcoidosis, which is a thing that, in my case, involved my lungs and was, according to the doctor, was fairly life-threatening at the time.

Steve:

But it was interesting. I mean, it set me up for other things to happen in my life. I wouldn't have thought that, but the fact that I was led to leave the fire department and the security of the fire department and go on this other path actually led me to all these other things that happened in our lives, and so I have continued the construction brat thing. Our family, since we got married, and our kids. They moved a lot of times and one of the things we did was move out in the winter basin and go out there and establish a life following employment. But that was a great time for us to raise our kids out there in Vernal and, to you know, have to stand on our own two feet basically, and especially with regard to testimony.

Lily:

Because all of your family was still back in Salt Lake County. Quite a bit.

Steve:

Yeah, I mean, they'd been scattered around a lot, but there was a lot of them. My parents had come home and they were there, and her family was in Salt Lake County and then she's from a place called Oak City, so they're in Millard County and between those two places. But we had a lot of great experiences out there and that's probably where I learned to stand on my own feet. Relative to my interactions with the Savior and testimony, I wanted to talk about a particular experience that I had, and I had this one not terribly long ago, but a while ago, and then I'll do something else here.

Steve:

But in the temple we learn about the crucifixion of the Savior and we learn about the idea that the Savior was put on the cross. Now, we don't know if the cross we assume the cross was laid down and he was laid on it, and then his hands and feet were nailed to the cross and they put nails in his palms of his hands out. His arms were outstretched on the cross, and then they stopped and they had a discussion about whether or not that was going to work, and so they then proceeded to put nails through his wrists. The wrist bones were stronger, so they put nails through his wrists.

Steve:

I had this profound experience thinking about this in the temple one time, about the Savior being the Jehovah of the Old Testament, of being the creator of the world.

Steve:

He created all the universes. We know it and he created all these things and all these opportunities for us. He came down, he did all the Old Testament stuff, all the cool Jehovah Old Testament stuff. He came down, was a little kid in the world, you know, born in very humble circumstances and raised in the worst possible time in the worst possible circumstances, and ultimately was crucified and had gone through the agony of Gethsemane and all the trials and the beatings and the whipping and all that kind of stuff, and then had laid down on this rough beam and had to lay there while they had this conversation about whether or not they should put more nails in him. And I came to realize what a supreme thing it was for him to not. He didn't even think about quitting, because if you just thought about it, the whole thing would have stopped, it would have unraveled, it would have, would have been done right, it would have been right, he just had to say the word.

Steve:

He just, he just had to think them, think them. Yeah, you had to say it. He just had to think I want to quit, and it would have stopped.

Steve:

Yeah and he didn't do that. And Abinadi talks about the great temptation that the Savior Endored. And that's the great temptation that Abinadi talks about is the fact that the Savior did not quit at that time. And I don't know if he knew that he had to go through all the assembly stuff again on the cross later, but he probably knew and and I just am. So I'm so amazed and grateful and in awe and I don't understand how he could do that, how I could stay there and do that. And, of course, his, his motive, like his father's, is love. He loves us so much he's willing to do all that stuff for us. So that is, that experience of having that little interaction in the temple is a profound one for me that I still have deep emotion associated with it and and and and you know that's that's a very tender thing for me, to realize that that's what he did and and I guess I really connected with him as much as we can.

Steve:

Yeah, in a circumstance like that you know Another set of things that has happened that is like that. It has to do with callings that I've held, and I've had a lot of callings. As example, when we lived in the Winnebason I served as a scout master for five years and and we had a lot of scouts and it was a lot of fun. And you know, you imagine camping out there where the world, the world, goes to camp and you went to basin. Oh, we lived out there. That's where we, you know right, and all these kids knew how to camp. It was not a stressful thing for me to do camping, it was just fun.

Steve:

Yeah, it was great, and but the thing that was amazing to me was was how I felt about these young men as we work together, as I served them as, and so even now. So that was in the 1980s, so it's 40 years since then and I'm, I'm, I'm. I know that they are married and some of them have grandkids now, and I saw one street I wouldn't know them because they're old, old guys. The love you have for them, it persists today, after 40 years. I mean, the love I have for those young men still exists. So I, yeah, but as I think about them, I think about how much I love them and how valuable they are to me, and that has only the phenomenon, is only magnified, as I have done other kinds of things. So I've had the great blessing us of Serving a lot of youth callings and those kind of things.

Steve:

But serving as a bishop twice and and Serving as a bishop, it is a, it is a very special thing. You connect with the people and you feel the Savior's love for them in a very special and strong way. So, more than anything any other calling I've had, by quite a ways and I'll just give a couple examples I had a Sister come in who had been let's have it several times, but a sister come in who is it was unfaithful to her husband and had cost damage in their family and and instead of being anger or you're stupid or how that this wave of love came over me. That certainly exceeds my capacity for loving somebody and I could feel how much this lady, who was very, very broken-hearted, how much the Savior loved her and it was very clear that's what that was. I could feel a portion of the Savior's love for her and that was a very profound experience and and I've had a lot of times Seemed to be the strongest with the people who were in the worst places Came out into the hallway near the Bishop's office on one occasion and there was a sister sitting there I'd never seen before and the spirit clearly told me that she was someone special and the same love thing came with that and so I started working with her and I worked with them quite a bit. She's a lady who was, you know, not keeping her covenants and Her, her marriage was damaged and the person she'd associated with that marriage was damaged and a lot of damage and stuff. But I could feel the Savior's love for her and she's. She's not back acting in the church, she's doing better in a lot of ways in her life. But Even why I see her now because I still associate with some of these people or have it, I interact, I Intersect with them yeah, I still feel that. So, even if I see her in a store, Some I can that that same love is there and it doesn't go away. It's been the most phenomenal thing, the most amazing thing, and I served as a bishop the first time 20 years ago and In a ward that we don't live in anymore. We've been gone for a long time, but I'll see those folks and the same love them, even even just hearing about them and talk about them, that same love is present and it's it's quite amazing, and I know that it's not a love. Then I can generate of myself. That is a gift. So so, even sitting as a bishop on the stand, as I especially if you've been doing it for a little while You've had interactions with each of the families for a long time, you know, and and I got so that I couldn't Sit there and just look at the families or I would start to to weep I start to have. It may be emotional because of how I felt about them, and so it was. It's amazing. So I attribute that all to the Savior. That's not, yeah, not me, and so that's that's. I swear a lot of my testimony comes from these tender experiences.

Steve:

Now back to Doctrine and Covenants. Section 121, it says the doctrine of the priesthood shall dispel upon my souls as it do from heaven. The doctrine of the priesthood is the doctrine of Christ, as it's been referred to, which is the fact that we have a Heavenly Father and he loves us. He's prepared a plan for us. That plan is administered and executed by His Son, jesus Christ, who did and still executes the Atonement on our behalf, and we are to have faith, repentance, be baptized, receive the gift of the ghost and stay on the covenant path and doer of the end. Right, that's our deal, that's the doctrine of Christ, that whole thing, and I've come to realize how important that is. If these people who struggle with things would recognize that they're children of a loving Father in heaven, they would not act the way they act, they would not decide the way they decided. It's so important to help people come to understand that and as a grandfather I feel very strongly about that about teaching my grandkids. Okay, this is who you really are.

Steve:

There's the real deal and hopefully it'll help them a little bit. I strive to be a person that my family and others maybe could while they struggle with their faith. If they want to have faith on my faith, they can do that, and of course that means that I have to keep the commandments, I have to stay close to the Spirit, I have to set an example of behavior and kindness and how to treat people and how to react to things, and those kind of things Struggle mightily my whole life to try to get myself more in that position where I could be relied upon.

Lily:

I guess. Well, so I guess I have this question for you. So in the Passionate Conference, they talked about the Ten Virgins, right, and they talked, and we often hear, with the parable of the Ten Virgins, that the women who didn't have the oil, it was they lacked testimony or they lacked faith, they lacked something, so that when they went to meet the bridegroom, he said you know me not or I know you not. So when you say, though, that one of the spiritual gifts that you've personally experienced and you strive to be someone that other people can have faith in other people's faith, almost I guess I'm just. What would you say about that parable?

Steve:

So the Ten Virgins are people who are invited to the wedding, right? So not everybody. So that's people who have been exposed to the gospel, perhaps been baptized or something like that. And the question is after their invitation to the wedding, what's their orientation? What are they looking towards? You think about the iron rod. How close are they on the rod? Are they facing the right direction? Are they looking away? Are they letting go of the rod and trying to go away from it? It's not.

Steve:

They don't want to pursue that, you know, even though they've been on the rod, like some people did, you know, and then left it and went away from it. So that's a good thing. The Savior is going to figure all this out.

Lily:

It is important for us to see when we think about these things. I love how you talk about that. It's okay to have faith in other people's faith as long as it orients you towards Christ and as long as you really are saying you know what. I might not know everything, I might not fully understand everything, but there's something here and this person that I deeply care about, who deeply cares about Christ, is oriented this way and that's the way I want to orient myself, and I think that that's actually really powerful. And I don't. I don't really feel like we talk about that a lot. I feel like we usually say you know, you need to make sure you know it for yourself, which I think is is very much. Yes, we all need to be converted to Christ, but I think it is okay to be uncertain, because human beings are uncertain, right.

Steve:

Yeah, I don't know, maybe that's. I don't know if that's too off base, but that's just kind of no, that's that's so I'm, I'm, I'm an old guy, and I've gotten to the point now where I I know the church is true, I know the savior lives and all the priesthood is real. I know, I know those kinds of things because it permeates my being Right, Not because I had a frying pan moment. You know, you know all those kinds of things happen, but but uh, but because of the due principle.

Steve:

but I but I haven't always been thus and and it has, it has come like to do, has come a little tiny bit of time and it's feel it's infiltrated slowly over time. So we got to get people time to do that Right. Also, I trust the atonement and I'll give a as quick as I can example of of that. So many years ago I've gone, I've associated with many pioneer treks and we were doing a pioneer trek in this particular stake and uh, uh, we were.

Steve:

We'd. We'd worked for a year to prepare for it. So we got the kids books about pioneers, wow. And we had Martin Hancock, martin.

Lily:

William.

Steve:

Hancock companies, um stuff and their experiences, and people had to learn that we had all kinds of practice treks and reenactments, all these kinds of things. Wow, one of the things we were going to do was, on the third day, we were going to go over Rocky Ridge, pull handcarts over Rocky Ridge. The plan was for each ward to go up as a ward and then you go up and there's a false summit and a little dip and then there's the real summit of Rocky Ridge right, you remember those two things. And so we had it all laid out and the wards were spread apart by sometimes. The plan was to go up on top and have a really short, not a test wing, but a meeting where I was the bishop, where I could talk to them and share the spirit and that kind of stuff. And very impactful. I'd done it before and it was very, very strong. I was really excited about it. I was very excited about this.

Steve:

And so we get up to the false summit. After all the stuff, all the agony and crying and people dying because of the angels were killing them and all this other stuff was going on and I was like it's bad. And then we get up to the false summit and a stake had come down from the other way and it occupied the summit and they were having a meeting up there and we couldn't get going. So we had to stop there. And the bad news is is that youth kids are very youthful and they re-energized like in 10 minutes. They were all happy and good. It was. All the sadness was gone. I was going this is so bad. I've been waiting for this moment for a year to get all my little sheep up there and stick them on this summit and talk to them about this and have them feel the spirit. And it's all gone. It's all totally gone. I was absolutely, totally brokenhearted and so finally, the other stake left. I was thinking unkind things and they left.

Steve:

So we go over to the summit and get everybody sat down and the most amazing thing happened the spirit came in like gangbusters and it was as if the other thing had never, ever happened and we had a great, powerful experience or everything I hoped for, and it was amazing and I realized that the atonement and the way the Savior operates makes up for all of our weakness. So it doesn't matter where we are on the iron rod. He's going to fill in the space that we can't occupy. He's going to take care of that. That's the atonement.

Steve:

And so we worry about all this stuff, a lot of most of what we shouldn't worry about. We just do our best. So if you're on the kind of weekend, about the weekend of the line of how I feel, about my testimony, the weekend of the spectrum so I'll be a better way to say that and I feel so weak, I feel so broken, so imperfect, the Savior understands that and you don't have to worry about it. You just do your best and try to get your head and heart where it can be, and the Savior will come in and fill in all the space that you are lacking. He'll take care of all of that stuff and that's the amazing thing about this whole life experience is that he is accounted for. All the things we cannot do and the things we fail to do, and our stupidity and personality defects and everything. Mental illness, all those kinds of things, physical problems, all that stuff is all accounted for. He's made up for it. You just do your best, keep going.

Steve:

Orient yourself towards Him Orient yourself towards Him and don't be so hard on yourself. That's the thing, just keep going.

Lily:

Don't be hard on yourself, though, because I feel like that's one of my biggest struggles. It's always like, oh, I could be better. Oh, there's always something I could be doing right now, but I'm choosing to sit down and watch a show because I'm tired and I need to numb my mind rather than read my scriptures. Right?

Steve:

You can only do so much. You can only drink out of the fire hydrant so much. Sisters in the church are very guilty of doing that in mass.

Steve:

That's a very common trait. So stop it. But that is when you are second guessing yourself. That is not trusting the Atonement. So it takes a lifetime to overcome that. Nobody's going to just say I'm going to trust the Atonement from now on. You've got a lot more stuff coming, so don't worry about that. But that's what it is. When we trust the Savior more, when we do our best, He'll accept our offering, no matter how pitiful it is. Just do your best, You'll be fine. You know President Enckley says you know, just keep doing your best, Keep moving forward, You'll be fine.

Lily:

Well, and I think that that's really comforting now, because I feel like there are a lot of things and a lot of areas where there is a bunch of uncertainty and so I think if we, you know, slow down, face towards Christ and just take that literally every day, step at a time, I think then that and just wait for the do, just notice the do, then that's literally all he asks. But it's hard to sometimes remember that and focus on that, because you know life and expectations so well. I really really appreciate all your time. Is there any other things that you would like to do? Or maybe leave us with a quick testimony or any other?

Steve:

final thoughts I'm okay with testimony. Yeah, I've probably talked too much already.

Lily:

But no, this has been fantastic.

Steve:

And. But I do have a testimony of the doctrine of Christ, the fact that our problem, heaven, lives and exists. And the more I learn about the universe, the more it. The accountants says all things testify of him, and they do, and he has delegated all this to his son. I am profoundly in awe of the idea that they together have created all these individual universities for each one of us. Each one of us is in our own university and it's unique, and I'm totally convinced that someday, when we get a chance to visit with them, one of the great sources of our worship and adoration will be the fact that they went to so much trouble for each one of us to have our own university thing. I mean, they, they.

Steve:

You think of all the little details that happen in your life that aren't coincidences. They went to a lot of trouble to pull this off and this is amazing, and so the gratitude for that. I'm thankful for the restored gospel, where we can have access and awareness of the truth, of what this really is. I would hate to go through these days and these times without apostles and prophets and the the full canon of scripture. That would be very, very difficult, and I'm grateful for the temple, as I I'm a newbie in working at the temple, so I learn stuff every time I go and and I love the feeding there, I love of working with the patrons in the temple. It's just that's where that love thing comes back again. It's quite profound and and I just love the heck out of it. So I do bear that testimony that these things are true and that we can rely on them and do that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lily:

Amen. Thanks again for tuning into more than coincidence, remembering Jesus Christ in your story. Please follow us on social media or share us with a friend. If you have an experience you'd like to share, feel free to reach out to more than coincidencerememberhimatgmailcom. I can't wait to hear all of the amazing memories you all have of our savior. See you next time.