BYU (Brigham Young University) is operated by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, often mistakenly called the “Mormon Church.” BYU students take nearly a semester of spiritually uplifting, stimulating religion classes.
In this series (see below), students enrolled in scripture study classes have shared their thoughts, insights, and reflections on the Book of Mormon in the form of letters to someone they know. We invite you to take a look at their epiphanies and discoveries as they delve into the scriptures.
In publishing these, we fulfill their desire to speak to all of us of the relevance, power and beauty of the Book of Mormon, a second witness of Jesus Christ and complement to the Bible. The Book of Mormon includes the religious history of a group of Israelites who settled in ancient America. (The names they use are those of prophets who taught the Book of Mormon peoples to look forward to the coming of Christ—Nephi, Lehi, Alma, Helaman, and other unfamiliar names. We hope those names will become more familiar to you as you read their inspiring words and feel the relevance and divinity of their messages through these letters.)
Let us know if you’d like to receive your own digital copy of the Book of Mormon, and/or if these messages encourage and assist you spiritually as well.
Mormonism: Letter to my Little Sister
Hope school and dance have gone well for you this week! I wanted to ask you if you started reading scriptures on your own yet. I didn’t start until after I got my patriarchal blessing. I read the Book of Mormon twice before I came to BYU. Now I’m using my religion class to count for my personal study. Right now we are in Helaman and it stinks! The Nephites start messing up big time, even after all Helaman, Alma, and Captain Moroni have done. What stuck out to me this week that I thought I could share with you is how fast the Nephites fell back into their habits after being severely humbled.
Nephi, son of Helaman was given the power to do pretty much anything he wanted from God. The people begin to war with each other, so instead of having them focus their hatred on each other, Nephi asks for a famine to humble them. The famine was pretty severe; thousands of people perished in it. The people were humbled and they begged Nephi to plead with God. Nephi did so and the famine was lifted. The sad, sad thing is it’s only four years after this famine that they begin to mess up again. The Gadianton robbers began taking over and all these wars, murders, and plunders happened. Helaman 12:1 says, “And thus we can now behold how false, and also the unsteadiness of the hearts of the children of men; yea, we can see that the Lord in his great infinite goodness doth bless and prosper those who put their trust in him.”
The lesson of the day is do not forget the blessings and the wrath of God. Of course this is pretty much the whole story of the Book of Mormon, but this instance stood out to me because it happened so fast after a horrible and tragic event occurred that the Nephites went back to being evil and forgetting God. Never forget to be humble, Cat. It’s easy to get angry and stubborn when bad things happen. It’s also easy to forget all the great things that have happened to you and get a little cocky. But I know you and I know that you are a good girl and usually you can handle things like this. But it never hurts to have a reminder. The Book of Mormon is our reminder of what and what not to do. Just keep the reminder in mind and everything will be okay! I love you and hopefully we can spend a stress-free weekend together.
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