Nephi Answered My Question

Judy M. Smith, Kansas, USA

I was born in the Church, but my family rarely attended while I was growing up. Despite this, I always found a way to get to church on my own. In the early 1970s I was serving as a seminary teacher in Pittsburg, Kansas, USA. When we studied the Book of Mormon, I challenged the class—myself included—to read the entire book. One day while reading, I received a powerful testimony that it is true.

A few years later my parents came for a visit. While they were visiting, my father brought up some subjects we disagreed on that I didn’t want to discuss with him. He persisted, however, until I was close to losing my temper. I excused myself for a moment and went to my bedroom, where I knelt and prayed to Heavenly Father and asked Him for help in dealing with my father. The answer came in the form of a thought: the account of Nephi and the broken bow.

I turned to the story in 1 Nephi chapter 16. I thought about Nephi being humble enough to go to his father, who had murmured against the Lord, to ask where he should go to obtain food (see verse 23). With that thought, I felt prompted to go to my father and ask for his guidance as well as for a priesthood blessing.

When I returned to the living room and asked Dad for a blessing, his heart was touched and he began to cry. “Let me think about it,” he said.

Over the next few days he fasted and prayed. Then, before Dad and Mom left, he gave me a beautiful blessing.

After that experience, Dad began to turn his life around. On their way home from Kansas, my parents visited Adam-ondi-Ahman, Missouri, USA, where my father had a powerful spiritual experience.

Before long, my parents became active and committed Latter-day Saints. Over the next several years, they served two missions together—one in Germany and one on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Dad was serving as a stake patriarch when he died in 1987.

The Lord knew that Dad was a good man. It was through the Book of Mormon that I received my answer, and it was through my acting on that prompting that Dad came to know he needed to be a leader for our family. This experience changed everything for us.

I have learned that the Book of Mormon truly is another testament of Jesus Christ and that it is written for our day. I know that I can turn to it whenever I am discouraged and in any situation. The answers are there.

Indeed, the “words of Christ will tell [us] all things what [we] should do” (2 Nephi 32:3).