“Becoming a Covenant Person among a Covenant People,” Liahona, February 2022
Becoming a Covenant Person among a Covenant People
By Elder Neil L. Andersen
Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles
We are transformed when we accept and keep the covenants that God offers to each of His children.
Upon hearing the restored gospel, Charlotte and Morgan (top left) willingly followed the Savior; bottom left: Charlotte at her baptism. Right: Charlotte and Laurent while dating (top) and at their sealing in the Bern Switzerland Temple in 1995 (bottom).
Album background and photo edges and corners from Getty Images
I met Regis Carlus for the first time in 1995 in France. He was not a member of the Church. His daughter, Charlotte, was being sealed in the Bern Switzerland Temple the next day, and he had written, asking if he could stop by my office to meet me. He had heard that I often inquired about him, and he was perplexed as to why.
I knew and admired his two young adult children, Charlotte and Morgan, who had been baptized a few years earlier in 1991 while I was serving as president of the France Bordeaux Mission. After meeting Charlotte and Morgan, my wife, Kathy, and I were amazed at their goodness.
Morgan wrote me recently about his baptism and making covenants, saying: “Before [I found the gospel], I was an 18-year-old atheist, yearning for real happiness but not knowing where to find it. The Holy Ghost touched my heart so strongly that I didn’t want to disappoint my Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. That’s why I have kept my baptism and temple covenants and have worked to be someone who honors those covenants.”1
For Charlotte, her decision to live a life consistent with God’s law began even before joining the Church. Many years later, her daughter Amélie told me that when Charlotte was a teenager, “she felt different from her friends. Her friends drank alcohol, smoked, and did not keep the law of chastity, but Charlotte did not feel the desire to do any of these things.”
Regardless of their circumstances, when the opportunity came, Morgan and Charlotte chose to make covenants with the Lord and have been transformed because of it.
Following their baptism, Charlotte went to the United States for a master’s degree in language and literature and was endowed in the temple. Morgan served a mission in England.
I marveled that these two college-age students were so willing to follow the Savior. And I had hoped to hear that their parents would follow their example.
After being called as a General Authority and assigned to serve in the Europe/Mediterranean Area Presidency, I received Mr. Carlus’s request to meet and hoped that he would follow his children into the restored gospel.
The Lord’s Promise to Gather His People
As I anticipated meeting Mr. Carlus, I thought of the Lord’s promise to “gather [Israel] in from the four quarters of the earth” (3 Nephi 16:5) in the latter days. He would establish a covenant people who would “come unto the knowledge of the fulness of my gospel” (3 Nephi 16:12). In our dispensation, He said, “Zion shall flourish, … and she shall be an ensign unto the people, and there shall come unto her out of every nation under heaven” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:41–42).
While the voice of the Lord is unto all people (see Doctrine and Covenants 1:4), the Lord said that in the latter days His covenant people would be “few” relative to the entire population of the earth but “that the church of the Lamb, who were the saints of God, [would be] upon all the face of the earth” (1 Nephi 14:12). These Saints, bound by covenants to God (see Doctrine and Covenants 82:11), would stand in holy places and not be moved (see Doctrine and Covenants 45:32) as they prepared for the Second Coming of the Savior (see Doctrine and Covenants 45:43–44).
Nephi describes the covenant people of the last days: “I, Nephi, beheld the power of the Lamb of God, that it descended upon the saints of the church of the Lamb, and upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with the power of God in great glory” (1 Nephi 14:14).
Unfortunately, there will also be those “who will not hear the voice of the Lord, neither the voice of his servants” (Doctrine and Covenants 1:14).
An Invitation Declined
When Charlotte’s father was a university student in the 1960s, the missionaries had taught him the gospel. He was drawn to the restored Church and felt the power of the Book of Mormon. He decided, however, that joining a small, American-based church would not help his professional career.
Now, as I greeted Mr. Carlus and exchanged pleasantries that day in 1995, he asked why I had demonstrated such an interest in him.
After praying with him, I told him that these few minutes with him might be the only time in this life that I would see him. I complimented him on his remarkable daughter and son and told him I respected him immensely for raising two righteous children.
Then I spoke to him of the purposes of the Savior in restoring His gospel upon the earth, the role of the priesthood, the importance of family and the sealing power, and the gathering of a covenant people across the world.
I told him I felt that when the missionaries taught him as a university student, his righteous destiny was to join the covenant people of the Church. I asked that he not be offended as we read two verses that I felt applied to him.
Together we read in Alma about those “called and prepared from the foundation of the world … on account of their exceeding faith and good works; in the first place being left to choose good or evil; therefore they having chosen good, and exercising exceedingly great faith, are called with a holy calling … while others would reject the Spirit of God on account of the hardness of their hearts and blindness of their minds, while, if it had not been for this [for they were on the same standing] they might have had as great privilege as their brethren” (Alma 13:3–4).
I politely shared with Mr. Carlus that I believed he had been prepared to be with us, and when he refused because of the appeals of the world, the Lord continued to bless him with two choice spirits to be his children. They embraced the covenant path meant for his family. Then I invited him to accept the invitation he had been given 30 years before.
Regis Carlus did not join the Church in this life, but his children had chosen the covenant path, and they have remained on the path.
A Strong Testimony, a Vibrant Faith
Laurent and Charlotte with their first two children, Amélie and Valentine (center); on a hike in Utah (left); with their family in Rexburg, Idaho, in December 2008 (right).
The next time my wife and I saw Charlotte and her husband, Laurent, was in late 1998 in Salt Lake City, Utah, where Charlotte had returned to the University of Utah for a PhD in comparative literature.
Charlotte and Laurent were on the covenant path, but we learned that their finances were tight. Charlotte and Laurent would fill cracks in their apartment to keep out the cold air. They dressed their three children in warm clothes because they could not afford to heat their apartment. Their daughter Valentine had been born at home because they could not afford insurance or the hospital.
Financial challenges continued after they returned to France. Adequate employment was difficult for both Charlotte and Laurent. On one occasion, Charlotte asked a friend what they should do when they did not have enough money to feed the children and pay tithing. Her friend advised, “Pay your tithing first, and if you need food, go see the bishop.”
They faced other challenges too. Charlotte’s mother had opposed her baptism, her marriage, and her spiritual choices after she joined the Church. This opposition continued, but Charlotte trusted the Lord, nurtured her testimony, and kept her covenants.
In 2008, Charlotte was invited to interview for a position at Brigham Young University–Idaho. In the Rexburg Idaho Temple, she felt the Lord’s prompting to bring her family to the United States.
The decision to leave France was very difficult. Coming into a new culture in Rexburg was also challenging. While most people welcomed and helped the Passe family, at times Charlotte felt that some did not understand why she was working at the university rather than being home with her children.
When their daughter Amélie hesitated to attend Church, Charlotte told her: “Amélie, I go to church to take the sacrament and remember my covenants. Those [who do not understand our situation] do not affect my testimony.”
Charlotte taught her children the important distinction between the Church (with a capital C) and the church (with a small c). She said, “The Church is the Lord’s institution with His prophets and apostles. It will never fail us. The church is the members, and none of us is perfect.”
Her family could have chosen to stop attending because of these challenges, but Charlotte knew that being part of a covenant people means being a covenant person—someone who is faithful to the covenants she has made with the Lord.
Moving Forward on the Covenant Path
While doing her best to be a full-time mom, Charlotte helped with homework and homeschooling as Laurent advanced in his English proficiency. In one journal entry, she wrote, “There is too much work, and trying to take care of my house and my family at the same time makes it a great burden.”
But she moved forward, writing that the Spirit had told her in her prayers: “You must continue working. It will not stop right away. Make the most of the good income you receive to prepare yourself and your home … for what is coming.”
In 2016, Charlotte learned that she had breast cancer. With treatment, her cancer went into remission but returned in 2019. She continued to serve and strengthen others until she passed away in April 2021, at age 50.
Charlotte had joined the covenant people at age 20 in Montpellier, France. And while she would quickly say that she was far from perfect, she treasured her covenants and stayed on the covenant path for the remaining 30 years of her life.
During her struggle with cancer, Charlotte wrote in her journal: “I am so thankful, so grateful for the Holy Ghost and the ability … to receive personal revelation. I do not know what I would do in my life without it. I would be lost.”
When I read her words, I thought of President Russell M. Nelson’s counsel to all of us on the covenant path: “In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.”2
Connie Ruesch Cosman was a sister missionary in France as Charlotte entered the covenant path. They remained friends, and Connie came from Arizona to help care for Charlotte in her final two weeks of mortality. Sister Cosman wrote: “Charlotte never doubted and would do whatever the Lord asked of her. She sought for her own answers and received them. She continues to be an immense example for me and others.”
The day following Charlotte’s passing, her brother, Morgan, wrote to me, “I horribly miss her; we were very close.” He then spoke of a spiritual experience that came to him in the first night following her passing.
“[I know] she is happier than ever,” he said, adding that his spiritual experience “strongly confirmed what I already knew, and it healed my broken heart.”
Children of the Covenant
When we choose to fully embrace the covenants God offers along the covenant path, our life is transformed. Alma referred to our being “spiritually … born of God” (Alma 5:14). The Savior called this transformation being “born again” (John 3:3). And He said we become “children of the covenant” (3 Nephi 20:26). It is the same covenant that He made with Father Abraham: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee” (Genesis 17:7).
As children of the covenant, we see our life through the perspective of our Heavenly Father’s plan. We work to be obedient and increase our faith in Jesus Christ. We pray constantly. We know our weakness, but we have hope. We seek to let God prevail as we face our challenges, and we continually repent and never give up in our efforts to become more like the Savior.
As the Lord’s servant, I promise that His grace and goodness will redeem us as we keep our faith in Him and do our very best to keep our covenants with Him.