“A Conversation about Precious Stories,” Liahona, July 2022, United States and Canada Section.
A Conversation about Precious Stories
From the RootsTech Discovery Day keynote speech, March 5, 2022.
These are some of the important experiences that formed our family and faith.
Elder and Sister Soares use their tradition of cooking and eating together to strengthen their family.
Photographs courtesy of the Soares family, except as noted
Elder Soares: In many Latin American families, memories are made around the dinner table—and that’s how it was with my family. Any opportunity was taken to get together, cook, and eat incredible food. Birthdays, holidays, and even Sundays were spent together as a family. It was a tradition that passed down; and even when we started our own family with our three children, we visited my family every Sunday—we cooked together, shared a meal together, and spent hours and hours together in love and support for one another.
Sister Soares: These family stories and traditions are part of who we are. Some of the stories and traditions are passed down and some of them are discovered. As we engage in family history and discover more about those who came before us, we can find power in that discovery—power that can lead us to a better understanding of who we are and where we belong.
Elder and Sister Soares were married in the São Paulo Brazil Temple in 1982.
Elder Soares: What family stories do you draw strength from? What traditions do you keep alive? If nothing comes to mind, do not be discouraged. We encourage you to discover them. And remember, family history isn’t all about the distant past. You can look to your own recent experiences and stories or history as it unfolds right here in the present. You can establish your own traditions. It is a combination of the past and the present that makes you uniquely you.
Stories of Childhood
Elder Soares’s brother as a child
Elder Soares: I had a brother two years older than me who had a hearing problem. He had a lot of difficulty communicating, and I can remember how I essentially became his companion, helping him to do things and communicate with people. I had to learn to communicate with sign language at church. For example, he once received an assignment to give a talk in church. However, he wasn’t able to speak. But I sat with him, and I, speaking to him with signs, helped him to write a talk. In sacrament meeting, he stood beside me at the pulpit as I read the talk that he prepared.
My parents were very faithful, and their conversion to the gospel changed their lives forever. It created a new perspective for me because they worked hard so that my life might be different in the future. They felt so much joy because of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that as soon as they were baptized, they began to invite their neighbors to come hear the missionary lessons in our home.
Sister Soares’s parents
Sister Soares: My father and the rest of us in my home were not religious. But my dad always said prayers, every night, kneeling, and I would watch him from when I was very little. He did not teach me with words, but he taught me by action. And when I was little, I also remember that sometimes I said the name of God in vain. I did not know that I was doing something wrong, and my mother taught me that I should not speak in that way. She wasn’t religious but knew what was right and wrong. When I was nine years old, a girl in my neighborhood, who was also nine, invited me to go to Primary for the first time.
Elder Soares: You grew up in the Church without your parents in the Church and still you built your faith in the gospel, and now you have decided to dedicate your life to teaching our children that same faith.
Stories of Creating a Family
Elder Soares: I met Sister Soares at a church dance six months after I had returned from my mission. She had also just recently returned from a mission.
Sister Soares: I could see you look at me, and something began to stir within me too. And as soon as the music stopped, you came over and asked me to dance.
Elder Soares: We continued as friends, but it was that night when our eyes were opened. We each saw a faithful young Latter-day Saint and the potential for a relationship. And two weeks later we began to date. That was 41 years ago.
I remember what a challenge it was during those first five years after marriage when we were trying to have children.
Sister Soares: Those years were very difficult. I couldn’t get pregnant.
Elder Soares: We had many health challenges after so much effort. That’s when we received a priesthood blessing. Later you had a surgery, and a few months later …
Sister Soares: Our dream came true.
Elder Soares: You got pregnant.
Sister Soares: We trusted so much in the Lord, and we recognized tangible blessings. It was not easy for the two of us, who were so inexperienced, but it has also been marvelous.
Elder Soares: While we were dealing with life, the Lord provided for our spiritual needs, giving us the peace that we needed, the comfort and ability to work, to continue on, to finish our education. It was a significant time in our lives that completely changed the direction of everything we thought we’d be doing.
Children of God and the Temple
Elder Soares: Remembering our culture, heritage, and traditions is important. Together with the experiences that make up our life story, they contribute to our understanding of who we are. But you cannot fully understand the breadth of who you are without understanding whose you are! Do you understand that you are literally a child of God? Have you discovered what that divine heritage means for you? For me, that discovery—that beginning of my testimony—started at a young age but has continued to develop and strengthen through the course of my life.
Sister Soares: Going to and returning to the temple can help each of us reconnect with our spiritual roots. It is there where you can learn and relearn of God’s plan for us. It is there where you can escape from loud voices that so desperately try to distract you from who you really are. It is there where we have the opportunity to assist in the greatest cause of the gathering for those in our family who never had the chance to receive sacred ordinances in their lifetime.
Elder Soares: On every latter-day temple throughout the world, these words can be found: Holiness to the Lord, the House of the Lord. When you walk through the doors of the temple, you are in His house, and you are that much closer to Him and to the Father. Everything that takes place within these sacred walls is focused on bringing all safely home to Him whom we call Father.
The Soares family when Elder and Sister Soares served as mission leaders in the Portugal Porto Mission.
Sister Soares: I know that there are many who are waiting on the Lord for the opportunity to be united as a couple or be sealed to their parents or children for time and eternity.
I also eagerly hope for the sweet opportunity when I will have the chance to be eternally united with my beloved parents in the house of the Lord. There is no other place on the earth where the connection with God and Jesus Christ is more clearly felt and understood than within the walls of the temple.
Understanding who we are, from where and whom we came, can bring to our lives the greatest feeling of peace, perspective, and purpose.
Elder Soares: It is in the temple where you can discover not only who you are and whose you are but also who you are meant to become. It is interesting to recognize that while discovering who we are highlights our unique individuality, discovering whose we are highlights how we are the same. We “all are alike unto God” (2 Nephi 26:33), and no matter our differences, each of us has the same divine heritage and an equal chance at a glorious celestial destiny.
Sister Soares: The discoveries of which we speak can have a powerful, lasting effect not only on our individual lives but also on the lives of those with whom we share our heritage. We each play an important role in passing down our family stories, heritage, culture, and traditions. We are each a link connecting the past and present to the future. Passing on these important aspects of who we are and whose we are can fortify the rising generation in a time when they most need it.
The Most Important Story
Elder Soares: Just as important, if not more important than passing down culture and heritage, is passing down our testimonies of the gospel of Jesus Christ and our testimonies of Him and His Atonement. That legacy of faith passed down from generation to generation is the ultimate heritage we can pass on to future generations.
As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we should not be surprised by this principle. The Book of Mormon, after all, was written for the benefit of our children, that they “may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins. Wherefore, we speak … that our children … may look forward unto that life which is in Christ” (2 Nephi 25:26–27).
Parents, share your heritage so that your children may know who they are and whose they are! It can be as simple as a testimony, a story, a tradition, or even a meal.
The Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) statue in Rio de Janeiro, where Elder and Sister Soares served their missions.
Photograph by Alex Dantes
High upon Corcovado Mountain stands the Cristo Redentor. This majestic statue depicting the Savior with His arms outstretched has become one of the most recognizable images of Brazil.
There are days when you can clearly see this monument towering over the city, but there are times when the clouds roll in, keeping the statue from view. In those moments, to see requires rising above. To see requires an uphill climb. How true this is with our Savior, Jesus Christ. To discover Him, to know who He is, requires each of us to rise above and take that uphill climb.
The path to discovering who He is certainly is individual and has its share of ups and downs. But that discovery will ultimately and undoubtedly lead to purity and peace, perspective and purpose, and power and place in the family of God.
We read of His life, His perfect example, and His commandments. Discovering these aspects of who He is sets the ultimate standard of how we should live, the example we should set, and the commandments we should follow. In that quest to become as He is, we discover our dependence on Him and His Atonement. It is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that we can find purity and peace as we strive to submit our will to the will of the Father, as the Savior did.
Elder and Sister Soares with their grandchildren
Coming to know Him leads to perspective and purpose, even in the darkest moments. In one of the most grief-filled periods of my life, I tragically lost my father to an unexpected heart attack. What added to this grief was the imminent loss of my brother and, shortly after, another brother. During this struggling time, my dear wife and I also suffered the loss of two children—one was born prematurely and did not survive, and the other we lost to miscarriage. In these dark moments—moments of grief and pain, moments of loss and despair, moments of trial and tribulation—coming unto Christ is the sure way to bring back even a flicker of light that can grow within you, little by little, and in time lead to hope and healing.
You can discover, as you come to know Him, that power and place in the family of God are available to you. He will take you the way you are, and as you come unto Him and learn of Him, you can and will become ever more like Him.
Part of that becoming includes joining the cause of the gathering on both sides of the veil. Speaking specifically of temple and family history work, as you assist the Lord in bringing “to pass the immortality and eternal life of man” (Moses 1:39), the scriptures teach that we literally become saviors on Mount Zion (see Obadiah 1:21). But what does that mean? Just as the Savior sacrificed His life for all humanity, we in small measure become as saviors to those who have no way of receiving the ordinances of salvation and exaltation without help from those of us here on earth. In essence, engaging in this work helps us in our quest to become more like Jesus Christ.
I promise that as you join Him in accomplishing the work of our Father, helping those who never had the chance to receive Him to make steps along the covenant path, you will begin to see Him as He is. You will be like Him, and you will discover who you are and just how extraordinary you can be!