My Father’s Love for the Book of Mormon

By Mariah Dunyon

The author lives in Colorado.

Remembering my father’s love for the Book of Mormon helped carry me through the difficulty of his passing.

The author’s parents not long before her father died.

As a child, I always loved spending time with my dad. To me, he was the funniest, smartest person in the world. In my young eyes, he was a lot like Moroni, “a strong and a mighty man … of a perfect understanding” (Alma 48:11). He was one of my greatest friends.

One of the things I remember most about my father was how hard he worked for his family. It was not always easy to support a wife and six children, so he would often juggle three jobs at a time to give us the things we needed. He definitely did “labor exceedingly for the welfare and safety of his people” (Alma 48:12). Even at a young age, I could see that my father’s biggest concern was making his family happy.

Time spent with my busy dad was always time well spent. Some of my fondest memories with him include the nights we watched old Western movies on the couch and the weekends we spent at our favorite campsites.

I especially loved gathering as a family in the evenings to read from the scriptures. My father had a great love for the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon. He wanted all his children to know and treasure the Book of Mormon as well.

He often used my brothers’ action figures to reenact classic Book of Mormon stories like those of Samuel the Lamanite, the stripling warriors, and the brother of Jared. He brought to life a book that for me as a child was sometimes hard to understand. My father’s love for the Book of Mormon was contagious. Not only did he share the captivating stories, but he also taught our family to live its teachings.

When I was 14 years old, my family received a visit from two police officers telling us that my father had passed away in a car accident on his way home from work one night. At first it was hard for me to believe that it had actually happened. I felt that we saw things like this only in movies. But it soon became very real and extremely difficult for my family. For some of us, it was easy to wonder why a loving God would take such a great man from a family who needed him so much.

Shortly after his death, my mother gathered us kids around the table that my father had made just a few years before and said something that I have never forgotten. She told us, “Now it is time to put into practice everything that we believe.”

My mind went back to my father’s love of the scriptures, and I began to read them more diligently on my own. Over time, I felt greater peace in my life. Certain verses brought me hope that I would see my father again because of the Resurrection of the Savior. I experienced personally that “the sting of death is swallowed up in Christ” (Mosiah 16:8).

Reading the Book of Mormon has taught me that our loving Heavenly Father knows each of us and speaks to us in times of need through the holy scriptures. I have come to understand that we will all experience trials no matter who we are, but that Heavenly Father loves us enough to give us tools to find peace even during our darkest times. For me, one of these tools has been the Book of Mormon.

I will forever be grateful for my father’s example and for the way his love of the scriptures has changed my life.