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 Mom
First off, I want to share with you something that we talked about in my Book of Mormon class that reminded me of you. It is the part of the Book of Mormon that talks about the Stripling Warriors and their mothers. I felt strongly that you would have been one of those mothers spoken of. In fact, you are one of those mothers, but a modern day version. You have taught us the ways of the Lord and we have become strong because of you. You are one of the main reasons why Nick and I (and Adrienne) served and are going to serve missions. Always remember that Helaman in Alma 56:47 is speaking of you.
Now, addressing Nick’s mission, I realized something that might give you comfort about him going to Russia. I know that you do not fear too bad that he is going to Russia, but no mother in their right mind is not going to worry about their son if he is in Russia. I was rereading in Helaman 5, and Nephi and Lehi were imprisoned by the Lamanites who wanted to kill them, but they were protected, in dramatic fashion as well. So, essentially he will be protected by fire if people try to mess with him. Just remember that God protects his servants.
We talked in class about these chapters, and there was one more set of ideas that I found incredibly beneficial to me. We talked about how Pahoran got a letter from Moroni sharing Helaman’s successes, and this came at a time when things were not going well on Pahoran’s end. The lesson that was shared is that we can celebrate the successes even during the failures. In the world today, we are taught the opposite. It even seems that way in the Church sometimes. We are taught to focus on what is bad so we can change it, but often times what we really need is to celebrate the successes to build us up. Pahoran shows us the model of humility as well when Moroni rips him a new one, which in and of itself shows Moroni is still human. Pahoran just takes it in stride and even asks what he can do to fix it. You know that I am terrible with all of these things, so it is not a surprise that these things stuck out to me.
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