“We’re Here to Help Each Other,” Liahona, June 2023.
Portraits of Faith
We’re Here to Help Each Other
The Lord takes care of my needs. He has blessed me with my home and everything in it.
Photographs by Richard M. Romney
Leonard: I had become an alcoholic. I didn’t have a home. I wore the same clothes day in and day out. I slept in the bushes and ate out of trash cans. I didn’t have anything or anybody.
Elder Olsen: How did you change?
Leonard: I decided to pray. I asked the Lord for help, and somehow I found the strength to stop drinking. I kept thinking about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had felt at home there before. I thought I might find hope there again.
Elder Olsen: You’ve told me you started feeling urges.
Leonard: Yes, the Lord brought me along, and when I followed Him, He started blessing me.
Elder Olsen: How did local Church leaders help you?
Leonard: I had been excommunicated, but they helped me understand what I needed to do, and to do what I needed to do in order to come back to full fellowship. Little by little, I made my way there. The day I was rebaptized was the happiest day of my life.
Elder Olsen: Today you live just down the hill from our chapel [the Dennehotso Branch meetinghouse in Kayenta, Arizona, USA]. Your home is a small trailer, with no electricity and no running water, but you say you consider yourself fortunate?
Leonard: The Lord takes care of my needs. He has blessed me with this home and everything in it. I love having a quiet place where I can study the scriptures and pray. My sister lives nearby, and that’s where I get water. Sometimes when I need electricity, she lets me run an extension cord over from her house.
Elder Olsen: How else has the gospel blessed you?
Leonard: The Lord showed me there is meaning in this life. That’s something I had been missing for years. Now I want to help other people, just as He has helped me.
Elder Olsen: I see you helping people all the time. The other day, you helped a woman whose car got stuck in the sand.
Leonard: I just got a couple of other Church members and a couple of shovels. We started digging and pushing. Pretty soon she was on her way again.
Elder Olsen: What about that time you kept feeling an urge to visit your niece, who lives miles away in Farmington, New Mexico?
Leonard: I wasn’t sure why I was supposed to go, but I knew the Lord wanted me there.
Elder Olsen: So, you acted on the prompting, you found a way to get there, and you arrived just in time to give her some urgently needed assistance.
Leonard: The Lord knew she needed help, and He knew I could help her.
Elder Olsen: In your calling in the branch presidency, you help me with ministering assignments, meetings, branch activities, and the Church’s addiction recovery program. What would you say if someone asked you, “How do you love your neighbor?”
Leonard: With all my heart.
Elder Olsen: How do you show that love?
Leonard: I just give back to them what the Lord has given to me. People need to feel loved. They need to feel comforted. They need guidance. They need to understand what the Lord can give them. When you’re at the bottom of the pit, you need to feel that if you reach out, someone will be there.
Elder Olsen: You live in a little trailer, but your heart is as big as the great outdoors. You live humbly, without worldly possessions. But you are Christlike, always helping those in need.
Leonard: That’s why we’re here, isn’t it? To help each other.
Leonard lives in a small trailer without electricity or running water, but he considers himself blessed.
Leonard enjoys having a quiet home where he can study the scriptures.
Elder Olsen (left), a Church-service missionary who serves as branch president, discusses branch needs with Leonard, who serves as his first counselor.
How does Leonard love his fellow man? “With all my heart,” he says.
Leonard and another Church member assist a woman whose car got stuck in the sand.
“In the scriptures,” Leonard says, “we learn that when we serve others, we are serving God” (see Mosiah 2:17).
The Dennehotso Branch meetinghouse in Kayenta, Arizona, where Leonard serves in the branch presidency.