“S.M.I.L.E.” New Era, June 2004, 47

S.M.I.L.E.

To commemorate the beginning of another year of early-morning seminary, a friend and I decided to extend a challenge to the eight students in our seminary class. The challenge was for all of us to wear our youth conference T-shirts on the first day of school.

Our youth conference theme had been S.M.I.L.E., which stands for “Spiritually Minded Is Life Eternal” (see 2 Ne. 9:39), and the youth conference leaders had given us yellow shirts with smiley faces on them. We knew that wearing the T-shirts would be difficult for some of our seminary classmates because they would really stand out.

With six of us wearing those shirts in the same school, we got odd looks. During the day many teachers and students asked questions about the shirts, which gave us an opportunity to explain our values and beliefs.

By the day’s end, I think we were all standing a little taller. After spending a whole day of standing up for what we believed, we all had smiles on our faces—like the ones on our shirts.