“Guiding You Home,” Friend, July 2011, 2–3
Guiding You Home
From an April 2010 general conference address.
Our loving Heavenly Father wants each of His spirit children to return home to Him again. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to make safe passage possible. He has also placed guides and rescuers to help His children along the way. Parents, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, and uncles are powerful guides and rescuers.
Primary workers also help guide children. One Primary teacher, as a younger person, was on the Primary general board that helped create the CTR motto. She taught in the Primary of her ward until she was almost 90 years old. Little children could feel her love for them. Above all, because of her example they learned to feel and recognize the Holy Ghost.
One afternoon my wife had taken our oldest son to the home of a woman who was teaching him to read. I was to pick him up on my way home from work.
His lesson ended earlier than we had expected. He felt confident that he knew the way home. So he started to walk. After he had gone about half a mile (0.8 km), it started to grow dark. He was still very far from home.
The lights of the cars as they streamed past him were blurred by his tears. He realized that he needed help. So he left the road and found a place to kneel down.
Through the bushes he could hear voices coming toward him. Two young people had heard him crying. They said, “Can we help you?” He told them he was lost and that he wanted to go home. They asked if he knew his home phone number or address. He didn’t. They led him to the nearby place where they lived. They found our family name in a phone book.
When I got the phone call, I rushed to the rescue, grateful that kind people had been placed along his way home. And I have been ever grateful he was taught to pray with faith that help would come when he was lost.
I testify that the Lord loves you and every child of God. As you follow inspired direction in this, the true Church of Jesus Christ, you can be delivered safely to our home with Heavenly Father and the Savior.
Illustrations by Jennifer Tolman