followHIM - Doctrine & Covenants 12-17, JSH 1:66; Part 2 • Dr. Wendy Ulrich • February 17 - 23 • Come, Follow Me

Episode Date: February 12, 2025

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Keep listening for part two with Dr. Wendy Ulrich, Doctrine and Covenants, sections 12 through 17, and Joseph Smith history, verses 66 through 75. I love the idea of what you're saying, Wendy, about we have access to this power. And it's a different sort of power where you may think you have, it's like the liahona, that's what I like to compare it to. The liahona only worked if you were righteous and you don't have priesthood power if you begin to exercise, what are the words, control, dominion, compulsion. No, amen, or in other words, sayonara to the priesthood authority of that man. It's different than being a boss where if you're the boss, you're always the boss. You can lose priesthood power by being a bossy or domineering.

Then you don't have priesthood power anymore. I remember my wife once serving as young women's president and she was counseling with the young men's president, the two were having a discussion and making a decision. This man, I'm sure he's a great guy, he just said, well, I hold the priesthood, so I'll make this decision. Wrong in so many different ways. On so many levels. Yeah.

He didn't preside over her in any way, shape or form. What did you say earlier, Wendy? Having the priesthood does not make us the decision makers. I think amen to that power, that it's gone. Yeah, there's a story that it's in my mind and it's a good example and I hate it at the same time, but Elder Hugh W. Pinnock tells of a time when a couple came into his office. He gave a talk at BYU, I think it was called 10 Keys for Marriage or something, and this was the 70s, the 80s maybe? A long time ago, but he said this, tell her she has to obey me because I have the priesthood. You just showed that you don't.

Yes, I do. Let's see, when was that, Ethel? Yeah, when was that? When was I ordained? He said, you don't have the priesthood. And I guess I don't know what you mean. And he opened section 121 and said, you do not have the priesthood. Amen. I just hate that that sort of thing ever happened.

It's such a misunderstanding of what this means. Oh, I remember being a, my husband and I were dorm parents at BYU back in the early 70s, mid 70s, I guess it is. I can't even remember the details of the thing, but I remember we had a woman who was over us. She was the boss of the dorms there. There was a man who was over us. She was the boss of the dorms there. There was a man who was over her, and she made it very clear to us that we were going to have a meeting with this man and that we needed to

understand that he held the priesthood, so he was in charge. That what he said was what we needed to do. And I was like, even then, I was like, he doesn't have the priesthood over me. He's not my bishop. He holds a leadership role over the dorms as his job, but that has nothing to do. The fact that he holds the priesthood doesn't give him keys or authority in my life. We've come a long ways. On the other hand, I've heard a lot of women say, you're telling me I have authority and power?

I don't want that. I don't want that responsibility. And I think that's sad too. I don't really relish the idea of having a lot of extra duties and responsibilities, as I've heard women say, I've got enough to do. The men need to do something too. Let them have that. I ask myself, well, why do I want this

responsibility? Why do I want authority? Why do I want power in the priesthood? Because I do. And it's not about me. It's about my children. It's about my students. It's about my friends. It's about my students. It's about my friends. I want righteous influence in this world. I want to make a difference for good. And that's what the priesthood allows us to do. And that's what makes it worth it to do whatever we can to make and keep those covenants, to read the scriptures, to pray, to establish a personal deep relationship with God and his Son and the Holy Ghost so that we have the power in our lives to do the things that matter most to us. I think that's what it's all about. A couple of weeks ago, my daughter was driving her children to school and they have a ways

to go because of where they go to school. So they have 20 or 30 minutes, I think, every morning. She is not a morning person, neither am I. I've gotten better. She's back where I was when I was her age. She does not do well with mornings. Her husband has a flexible job. He could drive those kids to school at 7.30 in the morning

and let her sleep. And he does get them up and feed them and get their lunch ready and get them dressed and get them ready to go. But she drives them to school because she wants to use that half hour to teach them, come follow me every single morning. She did not get that from me. We had trouble even having family home evening when she was growing up. She loves teaching those two kids the gospel. She called me last week at about quarter to eight. I was still asleep. And I heard my phone ring and I was like, not answering that. And the phone announced my daughter's name

is calling. My phone has not set up to do that. I have never had it do that before. I didn't even know it did that. But it announces this person is calling as the phone is ringing and I'm like, how is this even happening? So, I pick up the phone. I think, is there an emergency going on? What's going on here?

And I pick up the phone and I say, hi, how are you? She's fine. We're driving to school. We're doing Come Follow Me. We're learning about angels. And I really wanted you to be a part of this conversation, mom. I really want you to hear this story. Because where we left off yesterday was right before we were learning about angels coming to people and that angels minister to us. And we had to stop and I told the kids, I wanted to tell them today about a time an angel ministered to me. So I want you to hear the story. So she proceeds to say, when I was in a really hard, dark time in my life, she would say the worst time of her life and I would agree. Really discouraging, really hard time.

She had lost something very, very precious to her. She was feeling really like she might never get the opportunity to have some of her most important dreams come true. And she was alone in a hotel room. She was at a professional conference. She's at this little crummy hotel room and she's just telling the Lord how sad she feels and how she's just grieving over this loss and how hard it's been for her. And she's just in so much turmoil. And suddenly she feels like there are two women standing there. One of them is her great-grandmother's on my side and one of her great-grandmother's

on my husband's side. Her children know their great-grandmother and one of these women would have been that person's mother. So this was the mother of the great-grandmother that these little kids that she's teaching who are 11 and 13, this was somebody that was connected to them in some way. She feels like these two women are standing there. One of those women had gone through the same thing that she was going through. She didn't know that woman, but she knew of her story. The other one was her great-grandmother. When she was a little girl, she was six at the time, I think, that woman died.

She said, they just were there to comfort me and to bring me peace. And I felt this peace that I couldn't figure out where it had come from, how I was ever going to feel peaceful in these difficult things I was going through. And she said, the interesting thing was that I remember this great grandmother, even though I was very young when she died, because she gave me this little doll and it had a music box in the bottom of it. And I used to play that music box because it gave me comfort then when I was even a little kid of five or six. And it played this little song. And the song was Edelweiss. I don't know how when the last time was you heard Edelweiss, it's a little simple song about Edelweiss is a flower and it's a beautiful flower and

every morning you greet me. And she said, Do you know now why I was crying when we got in the car this morning? And they were like, Oh, what had happened when they got in the car that morning, right before they called me? When they got in the car, they always turn on Pandora and she's got an I Am A Child of God channel, so it always plays, you know, primary songs and Christian songs and all those kinds of things. She turned it on and it was playing Edelweiss. She said, I've never heard the radio play Edelweiss on any channel, let alone I'm a Child of God channel.

It's not a religious song. But that was the song that was playing and that I knew I was going to be sharing with you this morning was the song my great-grandmother gave me a doll that played, who then appeared to, not physically appear, but who came to me in my dark hour and gave me peace. And I think this morning she wanted you to know she will be there for you as well, as will your great-grandmother, who's passed away last year. They are angels. They will be with you. And then she asked me to tell a story about my father after he passed away, coming to me in an hour of need, which I was able to share with them as well.

There is power available to us, not because we want to tell people what to do, but because we want to be people who can testify to them of truth, and that angels are real and that the plan is real and that God is real and that he cares about us in our hour of need enough to play Edelweiss on the radio for us when we're trying to teach our children that the power of God is with them and his love and peace and joy really are available to us even in our darkest hours. That's beautiful. That story about her great-grandmother's being there, I think there's lots of different definitions of who are angels and who can act in the stead of angels, but I love that it's our ancestors. My favorite John Taylor quote, Hank, this is my only John Taylor quote

that I know. But he said, God's eyes are over us and his angels are round and about us and they are more interested in us than we are in ourselves. And then he said, 10,000 times more interested, but we do not know it." That's a great statement to think that they are interested in us and God is interested in us. As you said, raise your hand if you feel like you've had an experience with angels and what did you say Wendy? Most of the room. Yeah. Almost every now. Mine too. Mine too. Yeah. Yeah. Those are beautiful moments, moments you need to record. I hope we do. My daughter asked me then if I would share an experience. She remembered me telling her that I had forgotten about a time when I was traveling with some friends. That friend had just died that week, actually. We were in Europe

traveling and I was trying to help people get out of a van, the people we were with quickly because we were trying to get into church. We'd gotten lost. We were late. I had my hand up on the inside of the van helping somebody get out and somebody slid the door closed. And it not only closed on my thumb, it closed. I remember looking, the one thing I remember specifically was looking at the

line of the metal, lining up completely, solidly, completely shut. And I thought, I think I've just cut my thumb off. I had to yank on the handle to pull it open before I could even open the door. It was closed. And when I opened it, my thumb was not only not missing, it wasn't broken. It was bleeding and I put something around it and we rushed off to the building and I kept waiting for it to just start throbbing. But it wasn't throbbing. I packed it a little bit, didn't have any ice or anything. I just wrapped a washcloth around it wasn't throbbing. I packed it a little bit, didn't have any ice or anything. I just wrapped a washcloth around it, I think it was. We went to our church meeting. It never started to throb. I've got a little tiny scar, but I can barely

even see it. And later in the day, we were on a boat going someplace, I can't remember, we had to take a boat to get to this place. And I was thinking about my dad a little bit because he would have loved that. And suddenly I knew he was standing there. I knew he was there. My father was not an active member of the church. Not at all. He's standing there at this time and he says to me, the words were just clear in my mind. I'm sorry about your thumb. I wasn't allowed to stop the accident from happening, but I was allowed to help it so that it wouldn't hurt. And I thought, okay, why? And then I started remembering what had happened.

I'm telling the story to my grandchildren because my daughter asked me to. And then I started remembering more what had gone on earlier in that meeting. When we had attended this meeting, it was in Genoa, Italy, and the two men who were traveling with us had both served in Italy as missionaries. One of them was a young man that I had brought into the church when we were 16 years old. I had taught him about the church. He'd ended up being baptized and going on a mission to Italy, and he had served in that city of Genoa. At the end of that meeting, a man came up to him and said, I remember you. This had been 50 years now. I remember you. Your companion was this person. You were teaching this person. She joined the church. She's now here in this city, still an active member.

He remembered all these things about this friend of mine, whom I had felt like needed to come to Italy. Who has that kind of photographic memory for a missionary you met 50 years ago? It meant so much to him. And this is the friend who had died that week that I was having this experience where my daughter asked me to tell this story to her children. And I remembered this story, and I had just been asked to speak at his funeral. John, I don't know if you remember, we had Derek Sainsbury here probably three and a half years ago. Do you remember you and I, and he were just talking and we were talking about angels, our loved ones, visiting us and he mentioned, he said, well, you know

what Nephi says, angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost and you and I both went Wait, what and we went to second Nephi 32 and he said yeah These angels that our ancestors they're gonna they're gonna feel a lot like the Holy Ghost second Nephi 32 Angels speak by the power of the Holy Ghost. And then all of a sudden you realize how many times an angel might have been speaking to you. Wendy, you're right. When you have these experiences, you write them down. There is an experience Sarah and I had that we immediately wrote down. Whenever we're together and someone mentions the ministering of angels we just share a look because it was an experience that

both of us had at the same time it's one of those most treasured experiences when you know. It's interesting to me that what allowed that experience to happen was that years now of regular every morning driving my kids to school, taking the time to teach them the gospel for a few minutes. And oh, by the way, this morning, we're going to talk about angels. Oh, I'll tell this story. Oh, Edelweiss comes on the radio. Oh, my mother has a story to share. Oh, she needed that story for a talk. She's given it a funeral later that week. Those are the dramatic moments where we see that wide arrow. But there are lots and lots of moments where it's hidden in plain sight. And we don't even recognize

that it's going on, but it's real. That was, I think, happening a lot for these early members of the church as well. Speaking of angels, I think this might be a good time to transition over to the Whitmer family and the Knight family. When Joseph Smith needed angels to help him, these two families were there. So John, I'm going to lean on you a little bit here and ask you what you know about the Knight family and the Whitmer family, because I know you do church history tours. You take people back east, right, John? Tell us what you know. And then, Wendy, feel free to jump in, of course.

Well, I heard a great scholar named Hank Smith, let's see, he said once, you just made an observation once that I remembered about three families and three small branches, kind of at the beginnings of the church. We had the Knights in Colesville and the Smiths in Palmyra. And I just remember, it's interesting how these beginnings were these families at first. Here we've got these, the Whitmers going, what should we do? What should we do? What should we do? These sections of the Doctrine and Covenants coming forth that are as applicable to us today

as they are to them. When you look at that early New York period, these are our first three families of the church. And Martin Harris as well sits there in the Smith family, I would say. But you're right, you have the Whitmer family in Fayette, kind of in the middle. You have the Smith family in Palmyra, which is further west. And then further east of Fayette is where Emma is from, Harmony, Pennsylvania, and Colesville, New York. They're right next to each other. And those are our three little branches of the church. Yeah, I think when you ask most members of the church about original members, the Whitmers come up, but not the Knights. But they are one of the original three families, you would say. And really stalwart too.

All the way to the end. Yeah. Yeah. I was reading about them, Hank, trying to prepare for this a little bit. I'm not a church historian, but I was stunned to learn that not only Joseph Knight and his wife, but all of his kids and all of their spouses and many of his and his wife's siblings and their spouses, all of them, their family was the first real branch of the church, the Colesville branch. And I'd heard about the Colesville branch and, oh, they were amazing, but I had no idea. They were all the Knights. That's who they were. Pete And the Knights still play a significant role in the Church today. I teach most of my classes

in the JKB at BYU, which is the Jesse Knight building. Jesse Knight I have to interrupt interrupt one of my dear friends in my elders quorum is Jesse Knight, who is a descendant in my ward. Yeah, a descendant of the Knight family. They're still going. There is a family foundation called the Joseph Knight family. You can go to josephknightfamily.org because John, when we go back east and we take families back east to Harmony, we try, if you can get a bus back there, to go to some of those Knight family historic sites. The original Joseph Knight home is still there.

It's this beautiful little home. It's owned by the Joseph Knight Family Foundation, but you can go there and look at that original home where this is special to me that this family believed him, Joseph Smith, before there was a church, before there was a Book of Mormon. And they go all the way to Salt Lake. This is a family we'll continue to talk about this year. Do we want to look at Section 12? One of the things that was fascinating to me about Section 12 is the Lord tells Joseph Knight, if you want to go, go. Don't wait. If you have a desire to serve, then don't wait around.

You're called to the work, which was quite different in some ways from what he had told Hiram Smith just the section before where he says, no, don't think you're called until you're called. Just slow down, study, prepare. You got some work to do, which I thought was quite interesting. And then I had to remember Hiram Smith was in his twenties at this point. Joseph Knight is 55. I looked up. He's kind of being given free reign. You know, the Lord is saying, you know enough, you've got enough. If you want to serve, go do it. Hiram is told, you need to just take a little more time studying

and preparing before you. Don't think you're called until you're called, which was interesting at different stages of our lives or our circumstances. You get that personal part of this along with the organizational principles that still hold for all of us, which I thought was fun. Which what you said earlier is the Lord is setting up a massive work, but he's still working with individuals one at a time. I noticed in section 12 verse 6, the Lord says we're going to bring forth and establish the cause of Zion. He's planting a little seed right there. He's not saying we're

going to build a city or a people. That's the cause. He's just laying a little bit of groundwork for what's yet to come. When we talk about Jackson County, which by the way, the very first Latter-day Saint buried in Jackson County is Joseph Knight's wife, Polly Knight. The cause of Zion here in this little section is the cause of Zion. Maybe a little foreshadowing to how important the Knight family is going to be. And then if we go over to section 14, we get this other family, the Whitmer family. John, what do you know? Tell us

about the Whitmers. Yeah, we love that site, the Peter Whitmer senior farmhouse, the formal organization of the church. I want to say that because if you're talking to Carl Anderson, he would say it was organized in Kirtland, but the formal first meeting in that Peter Whitmer farm there, I believe it was David Whitmer who was a friend of Oliver Cowdery and thought, Oliver told him about this work Joseph was doing in Harmony and I should go down there and what was Peter Whitmer saying, hey, you got to plow that plaster of Paris in the field. And then suddenly they wake up and it's already plowed for him. Speaking of angels or three Nephites or whatever,

I sense the Lord's hand in this. He says something like that and then sends David down. So it seems that when Oliver gets to Joseph in April, what, of 1829, he has told the Whitmer family, David, at least his friend, he'll write to him and let him know what's going on. And when he writes to him, he'll write to him and let him know what's going on. And when he writes

to him, he says, this is the real deal. David, this really is the work of God. And he gets the entire Whitmer family involved. Let's go to section 14. Then Wendy, why don't you just point out a couple of things from section 14 that you like we can talk about. Well, one of the things that's interesting about 14 and 15 is how different are they? 14 and 15. Not one iota. Kind of weird, but you've got two sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that are absolutely identical. 15 and 16. Yeah. 14 is a little bit different, but there's a lot of repetition even in 14 with the other two, which I think is kind of curious.

And yet I had to stop and remind myself, well, I go to sacrament meeting next to my husband every week and we hear the identical same things from whoever is speaking and yet we apply them to our own lives in different ways and they're applicable to both of us. It would have been really easy for somebody to say, this is kind of embarrassing. They think of these as being really personal to them, but they're both identical. Maybe we shouldn't put them both in the Doctrine and Covenants. But they're not hiding anything.

They're saying, no, this is what it was. And neither of them were complaining about it. Neither Peter nor John, who were the two who got the exact same things, were complaining about it. They seemed to feel that those blessings were accurate and helpful. Pete That's a beautiful point, Wendy. Joseph Smith is here putting the Book of Commandments together, and he puts both of them in because I think in his mind, he's saying, look, they're both from the Lord. Wendy This is what it was. Yeah. Pete If he was wanting to hide something, he would say, oh yeah,

take one of those out. But I think he's saying, look, this didn't come from me. I'm putting it in as it came. It's always been fascinating to me that the first thing Joseph really writes down and puts in the Doctrine and Covenants is being chewed out. Right. is being chewed out in section three. He's not trying to hide that he's not perfect, that he had some tough times or that he was struggling with something. And I'm really grateful for that. As the Whitmers are getting involved in the work and the Book of Mormon is being completed and is going to go to press here in the fall of 1829. Each of these sections has something like this in it. The thing that I want you to do is to declare repentance unto this people. It says

it obviously again in section 16. This is what I want you to do. This is of most worth. Declare repentance unto this people. In your experiences, why is the Lord so focused on repentance? I'm pretty sure he made it the second principle of the gospel, in fact. He's like, I want you to come back to this one over and over and over. Yet, to me, I sometimes think, do we really want to talk about repentance again. Well, if you look at somebody and say, repent, you are saying you are a sinner, which is true. But I really like the Bible dictionary saying declaring repentance is giving people a wonderful fresh view about God about themselves and about the world and another thing these sections I'll talk about is sharpness

but I have in my margin clarity with clarity you can clearly declare a New view a fresh view about God about oneself and about the world. I like repentance. I love the principle. I'm so thankful for it. I'm also thankful for that very positive side of it, which is what the whole restoration gave us as we talked about. That's so beautiful, John.

And I think President Nelson has helped us see repentance in kind of a fresh view. We all have these human weaknesses that we're struggling with and we don't just change our mind and never do them again. We have to grow, we have to learn, we have to change. And I think that's what the word repentance, I mean the word repentance just means to change your mind. And that's what I think President Nelson has sort of redefined for us. I mean, if we're talking about repent every day, repent every day, feel horrible about yourself every day, you know, regret your life. No, that's not what he's saying.

He's just saying learn. Keep trying. Improve a little bit, you know, try again. It's okay. It's an invitation to grow and to become closer to the Lord and to just keep at it and not give up even though We're struggling with these weaknesses and Hank I know that you will be heading northbound on I-15 tonight now once you round point of the mountain

You don't even have to touch your steering wheel again the whole time because it's going straight, right? Yeah. No, I will be Correcting yeah, you make constant little corrections. That's repentance whole time because it's going straight, right? Yeah, no, I will be correcting, yeah. You make constant little corrections. That's repentance. We can become converted to daily repentance. I remember Elder Bednar saying that the temple can be very instructive on our morning prayers and our evening prayers, where we can create our day

spiritually in our opening prayers. And then at the end of our day, we can create our day spiritually in our opening prayers, and then at the end of our day, we can return and report. The problem is they always do exactly everything they were supposed to do the right way. And it's always good and perfect, and our days are not like that. I would like for once they go back and say, we did nothing. We messed up. We messed it up.

Because that's how my evening prayers are sometimes. Remember that awesome idea we had this morning? Well, I had these big plans. Yeah. It didn't work. John, who was it that taught us? They said, look, look at the four principles and ordinances of the gospel, faith, repentance, baptism, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. We celebrate faith. We celebrate baptism. We bring our family around and we gather everybody for giving the gift of the Holy Ghost. We celebrate faith, we celebrate baptism, we bring our family around, and we gather everybody for giving the gift of the Holy Ghost. And then we kind of look at repentance like, oh, it's over there. It's over there in the corner. When it should be celebrated, improvement, change, a fresh view of God, these are things to be celebrated.

Yeah. What was Elder Holland's statement? Repent is perhaps the most hopeful and encouraging word in the whole Christian vocabulary. So we got to frame it that way. This is such good news that we can repent. You know, to be a Whitmer or a knight, you got to think in our day, it's relatively, I don't want to say it's easy, but it's much easier to join a very well established religion that's got buildings and temples and structure. But you're believing this 20 something year old kid and you're putting literally your entire life is going to be different because you believe him. To me, it's just astounding. I love the church, but we have such sound structure. We've got the general conference and this beautiful conference center. You're joining something pretty big. Whereas here it's, this is just a baby. here, it's, this is just a baby. Wendy, I have a question for you. You've been a member of the church for a while, you've served in quite a few leadership positions, you've been the mission leader. What creates stick-to-itiveness?

And like, the Whitmers are going to struggle later on and Martin Harris is gonna struggle, Oliver Cowdery is gonna struggle, all of these and we'll talk about that later. The Knights, however, where the Whitmers vacillate a little, the Knights don't. Can you give us some insight, maybe not on them specifically, but on members of the Church from your background? 05.00 It's such a complicated process, I think, because this is one of the reasons I think God tells us not to judge each other. Some of it is our personality, some of it is our support system, some of

it is our history and our prior experience. We talk a lot about trauma these days, but one of the things we've learned about trauma is that soldiers who develop post-traumatic stress disorder have usually had early trauma in their lives that changes the way their brains develop. They become hypervigilant to things going wrong. Well, we have a lot of things that happened to a lot of us when we're young that set us up to see the world differently than other people do. What's interesting about the Knights, for example, is all of them join the church together and they stick it out, they stay, and maybe that community, that sense of solidarity, of helping each other and sticking by each other was part of what gave

them the strength that they had to move from place to place just became everything that happened to the whole church happened to them from the very beginning. They went every place, they died on the way, all of the stuff. Some of it I think is that support that we get from other people. Some of it is our own personal experiences and our history and our personalities and our DNA and who knows all the other. Some of it is learning to be really humble. I think one of the things that got in the way for some of them was even for Oliver. I think he got to feeling like, well, I'm the second elder of the church and what you're doing is wrong. You're only a year older than I am. What do you think you're up to? And it's hard to stay humble when we see the frailties and the things that other people do that we don't

understand and we don't agree with. It's hard. I think it's still hard today when somebody who is in a leadership position does something we don't agree with and we don't like and we don't understand. And they do, and sometimes they are wrong, and sometimes Joseph was wrong and he'd admit it. But it's that principle of humility is just, boy, that's a tough one. That's part of why I'm grateful to remember even God is humble. I think too just the uncertainty and the chaos around us. Some of us see uncertainty as just this huge sense of threat. We've got to finish it up, close it off, get an answer. I'm

going to go crazy if I can't figure out if this is true or it's not true. It's one or the other, and we don't live well with uncertainty. But uncertainty is a part of the mortal condition. It's prerequisite to agency and creativity and learning and all kinds of important things, even though our brain doesn't like it very much and sees it as a threat. So somewhere learning to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, not just try to get them closed off and finished up so they don't feel so scary to us, but trying to say, no, I want to learn to tolerate uncertainty. I want to learn to tolerate ambiguity with a little more patience and a little more humility. That's not easy, but great stuff we can learn about ambiguous losses and ambiguous problems, then how do people manage those? That's what we're

trying to do. I don't know why it's so important because I get the impression that there's not a lot of uncertainty in where God lives, that He's got it all figured out and He knows the end from beginning, and that's kind of what we're looking for too. But for some reason, uncertainty seems to be something we need to learn to be more patient with. Don't be in such a rush to decide it's either right or it's wrong or it's true or it's false. If I had made the decision earlier in my life, I wouldn't be here. I had to learn to just tolerate sitting with the uncertainty and the ambiguity of things I didn't understand. Sometimes for years, that drove me crazy, but eventually came to some resolution that I was like, okay, I'm

still here and I'm so grateful. I think because so many things in the gospel do make sense, we want everything to make sense. If I could add a line to a scripture, I will prove them they are herewith to see if they will do whatsoever the Lord their God shall commend them. If I could add, even when it doesn't make sense, I think it's part of the test. What will they do when not everything makes sense? Will they stick with it, like the Knights? Yeah. And Wendy, you mentioned agency. Isn't that pretty crucial? The agency is not knowing. That's why you need to make a choice. If you knew, there wouldn't be much of a choice.

Oh, absolutely. Step after step in our lives, we talk about going as far into the light as you can. You can't see the end. You do the next step that you can think of. I love Matt Holland, older Elder Holland son, now still Elder Holland, when he was a kid and they're hiking together and they come to the end of the trail and got to get back and they're turning around and they can't remember which way to go. They get to a fork and they don't know which way to go. Elder Holland turns to his young son and says, well, you know, what are we going to do? And let's pray about it. And so they pray. And he says, I think we should go left, Dad. And he said, you know, I think we should go left too. And so they go left and they don't go very far before there's a cliff that

goes to nothing at dead ends. And so they turn around and they go the other way and they eventually get back. But young Elder Hall, the young boy then, says to his dad, why did we both feel like we should go the wrong way? And he says, you know, son, I've been wondering the same and I'm not really sure, but I think maybe that was just the quickest way for God to let us know we were on the wrong trail so we wouldn't be worried as we held it down that long trail to the right that maybe we'd made the wrong trail so we wouldn't be worried as we held it down that long trail to the right that maybe we'd made the wrong choice. He showed us the wrong choice as quickly as possible so we would be confident in the right

choice. There's principles like that that I think can be helpful, but sometimes we don't have a clue when God tells you to go on a mission when you're 21 and you want to get married that you need to go on this mission to get what you want, even though I'm not going to tell you, take the next step. And I'll show you after that what the next one is. Hmm, that's awesome. Wendy, before we let you go, we'd love to glean from you a little bit more.

Here we've got miracles and the beginning of a beautiful work. We have individuals. Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Peter Whitmer, Peter Whitmer Jr., John Whitmer, Martin Harris. I think you would say you have the miraculous with the human interacting, sometimes more human than miraculous, sometimes more miraculous than human. In your experience in church and in leadership and as a psychologist, you've just talked about ambiguity. How do we move forward knowing that it can be both sometimes it can be very human, it also can be very miraculous. I think Bruce Hafen said, you have to keep your eyes open so you see the humanness, but you have to keep your heart open so you can see the miraculous. How does someone do that? Boy, that's a great question and I think it's a daily process of staying as close as we can to the

spirit and of coming back when we get away. I had an interesting experience a few years ago. Now, I had a dear friend who bore a testimony during a very difficult time in her life that I'd never forgotten. She said she was going through this really tough time and let me tell you, this woman is Job. She's gone through a lot of really hard things. And she was in the middle of one, and she said, I was saying to the Lord, Heavenly Father, I am trying to trust you. And the words that came back into her mind were,

daughter, I'm not trying to trust you. I do trust you. I trust you with this. I'd never forgot that and just not all that long ago in my own life. I was out walking and I was thinking about that and thinking about some hard things in my life and I thought, do I really trust the Lord or am I just trying to trust him? And I thought, no, actually, at this point in my life, I can say, he's not always there, at least in my awareness, but I trust him to always come back. He has always returned. He has always shown up again. And sometimes it feels like a long time before that prayer is answered or that

sweet thing happens that gives you comfort or whatever it is. Sometimes it's immediate, but lots of times it's not. And we can sort of wonder, where did he go? Have I dreamt this all up on my own all this time? But I was feeling that. I think I finally got to the place where I really do trust that even when I'm not feeling him right now, he's still there. I felt this little voice in my head say, and yes, Wendy, I trust you too. And I was like, oh no, no, no, no, no, that is a very bad idea. No, do not trust me. That was just an immediate reaction. The words that came into my mind again were, I don't trust you to never go away. I trust you the way you trust me to come back. I trust you to come back. And I thought, well, I'm still here, so I guess that's true.

That was comforting to me to realize the Lord knows we're human. He knows we're going to struggle. This is what this is for. He does trust us, and that trust in us grows when we keep coming back because we believe He'll keep coming back even if we can't feel it right now. Now I look at these wonderful early Latter-day Saints so human experiencing such miraculous incredible things and such hard horrible things and they're young people that's what I have to keep reminding myself. These guys are, most of them are in their 20s. They're having to do all of this. And they did it. And it unfolded. And we're sitting here enjoying the fruits of it.

A couple of hundred years later, it's incredible. Wendy, I think our listeners would love to hear from someone who sat on the Release Society General Advisory Council, her and her husband mission leaders in Canada, Montreal Mission 2002 to 2005, a PhD in psychology and education, a management consultant, a mother of three, a grandmother of 10. So a couple of things. One, what would you say to our listeners who are struggling? We have wonderful folks who write in who are going through the most difficult things from grandmothers who write in who say, I have a grandson in prison. My spouse just passed away. I had a child pass away. My parents are getting divorced.

I mean, there's just so many people who are suffering. I would love to speak to that. And then second, I think those same people would love to hear how you feel about the restoration, about Joseph Smith, and about the church. So could you take both of those on? Sure. I think there's a lot for us to find comfort in, in knowing that you don't have to be something wrong with you or a bad person to have a lot of bad things happen. As we've talked about today, Joseph Smith lost their first four children, three children, and then one of the twins that they adopted. So many hard things, so many ways they felt they disappointed God, so many ways they were betrayed by people they thought were their friends. There's

not very much that happened to them, that happens to us, that didn't happen in some version to them. And yet somehow they keep going and somebody else picks up the ball when they can't and they help some out and they have these things happen and we can too. There are people who are ready to help us if we're willing to let them. The Lord is who are ready to help us if we're willing to let them. The Lord is willing to comfort us if we're willing to receive it and let it be enough. I don't know exactly how we all get through all these hard things and why some of us have a more difficult time than others, but some of us do have a more difficult time than others. That I do know. But I don't think any of us get through Scott Free or without doubts or without problems or without challenges or wondering if any of this even makes sense. I think the two things are the Lord tells us we don't judge others in these things because we

have no idea what somebody else really is dealing with underneath the surface. But I think another thing that's been helpful that comes to my mind from a psychologist, this is in the scriptures, a great man who says, people are not the problem. The problem is the problem. So figure out the problem and work on solving the problem. And I think that's true in our relationships with each other. I think it's true in our relationship with God, and I think it's true in our relationships with ourselves. That person I'm mad at, that person who drives me crazy at church, that person, that leader I don't agree with, they're not the problem, personally. So what is the problem? Let's fix the problem. Let's see if we can just focus on trying to see what we're going to do with this

problem and not make it so personal. And I think that's one of the places we can get in trouble, is when we're trying to fix you or fix me, and then shame and blame and all that stuff and anger and all these things get in the way. If we can see each other with curiosity and with compassion and be a little calmer about it and do that peace building that we just lack so many skills for but we can keep trying, then we can learn from these things and we can keep going. We don't have to just fall apart. I love the idea that the Lord will take us where we're at, but he probably won't leave us where we're at. He wants us to grow and get better, but he'll take us where we're at, but he probably won't leave us where we're at. He wants us to grow and get better, but he'll take us where we're at. And I have to look around and think he's

taking all of these people where they're at right now too, but he won't leave them there. He's going to invite us higher because he always does. Isn't he impressive? He's just so impressive as you start to look at how he's working with these very human people, young people, and yet he's keeping a promise that he made to Abraham. Look what he says in section 14 verse 10, oh, this is the fullness of my gospel going from the Gentiles to the house of Israel. He's doing this grand majestic work with these very simple human beings. So you're reminding me of a story from when we were serving as mission

presidents. We'd only been out a very short time. We were doing, I think, probably our first or second transfer. I can't remember which, maybe the second one. And we had a missionary who was new to the mission. We'd met him even back in the MTC. We knew he was coming and we knew he was going to have a hard time. He was French. He didn't speak English very well at all. And we knew he was coming and we knew he was going to have a hard time. He was French, he didn't speak English very well at all and we knew that was going to be hard. So we had put him with a French companion when he'd first come in, but he was just having a horrible time. He didn't have a real strong history in the church. He'd never read the Book of Mormon through when he was reading it for the first time and he didn't disbelieve it. He just was miserable. And he was trying, but he just wanted to go home. He'd

left a girlfriend behind and he just wanted to go home. He talked to my husband for a while and they'd sort of talk about it. And then he talked to me for a while and we'd sort of talk about it. We could tell he was just slipping through our fingers and there didn't seem to be much we could do about it. And it was so sad. He even told me at one point in time that his patriarchal blessing said to him to serve a mission and to serve the entire 24 months. It said that. Wow. In words, in his patriarchal blessing. Who gets that? But he was like, I'm done. I can't

do this. I can't do this for two years. I just don't want to be here. We were getting ready to do this next transfer. We didn't know what to do with him. We were getting nowhere. And we were really concerned about him. His companion, who was also French, was leaving at that time. So we didn't really want to move this guy too, because you don't like to take everybody out of an area, you lose a lot of continuity, but we kept talking it through and finally, I think it was me, I said, let's just send him to Alma. And Alma was this little tiny branch way up north in our mission. I don't know why that came to mind. It's a long way away. Maybe he'll just get on the bus and he'll go up there and then he'll stay for a while and maybe things will calm down and he'll

be okay. And for some reason, we all just, you know, kind of laughing about it like this, you know, and we all kind of felt like, you know, that feels pretty good. Let's try it. Yeah, let's try it. You know, we pray about it all and we're just like, okay, he's going to Alma. So we call his companion was the senior and he's calling it, we're calling out the changes that are going to be made that night. And he tells him, you know, you're going home, we know, and your companion's going to be going to Alma.

We heard the story later from the missionary that was going to Alma, because he did, that when his companion came in and told him this, he was sitting there reading, trying to read the Book of Mormon, you know, he was a good guy. And he put the book down, got down on his knees by the side of his bed and started to pray. He didn't say a word, and his companion was like, you know, what's going on here? But he got on the bus and he went to Alma. Later I said, what was that about? What was going on? Because I heard that you got down on your knees and prayed and then you're here and why are you here? It was what we were. And he said, well, Sister Ulrich, she's telling me this in French,

I had told the Lord when that transfer was happening and I knew it was happening, that I was going home. I couldn't do it anymore. And I was going home unless you sent me to Alma. And I said, why Alma? And he said, oh, I had this guy in the MTC who was my teacher in the MTC when I was trying to learn English who had served in Montreal in this mission and he had been in Alma and he loved Alma and he used to talk all the time about his mission experience in Alma and I wanted that experience. So then I thought, well, maybe if I went to Alma, you know, it'd be okay. And so that's what I told the Lord. I was going, and anyway, I knew you didn't like to really move

two people at the same time. So I figured I was safe. No way you were going to send me to Alma. So he was just so shocked that he went, and he served the whole 24 months. And in fact, the girlfriend that he left behind was thoroughly left behind, and he ended up coming back to Quebec very shortly after he went home and marrying a woman in Quebec and as far as I know, still lives there. I haven't heard from him and lost track of him, but the Lord knows where we are. He takes this missionary that he's already told to serve the whole 24 months and who's determined to go home anyway. And he works with him and he loves him and he helps him and I hope and pray that he's still doing that in this young man's life as he is in all of our lives if we'll give him any chance to do so. Hmm, that's just a beautiful story. With

all that you've read, all that you've done, where does the restoration fall in all your experience? Well, first of all, I know the Lord loves missionaries and is sending them around the world and takes care of them one at a time. And I don't think he's going to do that, send them out to fail with a mission and a message that isn't true. I have had my struggles. I was inoculated with anti-church literature by a Sunday school teacher when I was in high school who was reading this stuff and would teach us about it so we'd know that this is out there, don't panic. And I really appreciated that.

Oh, and my kids were teenagers because I was teaching seminary at the time. And I started reading a lot more of some stuff that was coming out. And I was just horrified at some of the things I was reading. You know, I was like, wait a minute, this can't be right. This is horrible. I mean, I was just really upset by it. And I was struggling. And even though I thought I had a really strong testimony of the gospel, I was hurting about it. I was praying a lot about it. I was struggling with the whole thing. Was there really a God? Was Jesus really the… I mean, all of it. And it went on for a long time. As I say, I didn't worry about the church not being good. I know there were problems, but I also saw a lot of good. So I was doing my best to keep my

kids from knowing that I was struggling and to keep doing what I was asked to do and just praying that the Lord would help me do what I can here. And decided with my husband, we were going to take our seminary students all down to Independence, Missouri, after we'd studied the Doctrine and Governance in church history like we're doing right now. His parents lived in Independence, Missouri, of all places. So we decided we were going to do that. And I'm just praying the whole time, help me stay out of this, teach them whatever you want to do. And I don't know what's going on here, but I'll try to not get in their way. And we went to the Carthage jail, I remember,

and we were watching the little church movie. I was sitting there thinking, you know, history is so crazy because it's all told by somebody's perspective. Either it's told by the perspective of people who were absolutely convinced he was a prophet, or it's told by the perspective of people who absolutely thought he was insane. And I remember sitting there thinking, I wish I'd known him. I wish I could have known for myself. And all of a sudden, in my mind, clearly, clearly, after years now of getting nowhere with this question, let me make that clear, I felt Joseph Smith standing next to me saying, Wendy, you know me. And somehow I knew that I did, that I had known him. In fact, I came to in that moment think, we all knew him. And if we stay on his side, if we stay with him,

it's because somehow we get a sense of that, that we trusted him once, just like we trusted God once, and we trusted the Savior once to complete his missions that would make it worth it for us to come here and take the risks we take to be stupid and weak and sinful and bad, struggle and doubt. And what was fascinating was it was so real to me that it felt like for the rest of that

tour he was walking by my side telling me, yeah, this is where they locked me up in this part of this place and this is the room that I was standing in, and I could hardly breathe. It felt so real to me. And I walked out and I was standing there looking at the place where that well is, and it was like I could see his body start to fall. And his spirit soared. He'd completed his mission, and I was standing there just absolutely in awe because I had no way to even understand what the Lord could do for me that I would trust as really being true. There wasn't something somebody could teach me or tell me that was going to make all my problems go away. But that experience was so real. And I'm standing there looking at this,

trying to take this in, and just I can hardly breathe because I don't know how suddenly I'm okay again. But my daughter, one of the teenagers in that class that we've brought down with us, she's standing a little ways away and I see her over there and I walk over to her and I just can't wait to say the words that I finally can say. And I said, Carrie, Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I know he was a prophet of God. And she looked at me with this stunned look on her face and told me later, I said, well, you look so surprised when I said that. She said, yeah, I was surprised. Why? Because I was standing there, she said, saying to God, I want to know, Heavenly Father, if this man was a prophet of God and I want to know right now, please answer me right now. And that is exactly when you walked over to me and said those words.

And I knew he'd heard my prayer and was answering it. I said, well, what's really remarkable, Carrie, is I didn't know that until 10 minutes before I said those words to you. I learned from that that one of the quickest ways God answers the prayers that we have is when we're trying to answer the prayers or need to answer the prayers of somebody else. Sometimes we get answers we weren't expecting. Yeah. What a beautiful story. Yeah. That's where you were an angel too. Yeah. The ministering of angels. Some really wonderful angels had ministered to me, really wonderful angels had ministered to me. But it's never just about us. It's always about

who we can help to. You know the Lord is in it when you don't know if you're giving or receiving. And when everything that is happening has some further application that goes to others as well. You're a servant or a deaconess, right? Yep. We're all trying to be deacons. What is it? Section six we looked at, John. Be diligent, stand by my servant Joseph faithfully. His name will be known for good and evil. And here we are, declaring the good, I hope. I hope so too. Thanks to both of you for all you're doing in that capacity. I mean that. Well, we are very blessed to have you join us today. Wendy, thank you for your time. It's a pleasure. It's an honor.

It was so much fun. In fact, Wendy didn't ask me to do this, John, but when you mentioned her book, Live Up to Our Privileges, I just quickly looked it up. I thought, oh, I haven't I heard of this one? And I was reading. And again, Wendy did not ask me to do this, but I just really liked this review that someone left. Christine Packard left this review. She says it was perfect timing for this book. She says we are learning to expand our thoughts about many aspects of gospel living and seek for deeper revelation to ground our lives. Wendy

Ulrich's beautiful new book provides a fabulous opportunity to reflect on our thoughts and beliefs about priesthood and about women's place in it. The author has such a gift for applying deep doctrinal principles to the routines of daily life. Her voice is vibrant and real throughout the pages and her encouragement for us all men and women to first contemplate more deeply, second make connections we've never imagined existed and finally live up to our privileges. In bringing the power and authority of the priesthood into our daily activities and significant relationships consistently and through time.

This book is worth every moment of time you spend with it. Again, Wendy did not ask me to do this, John, but I hope everyone will take time to grab a copy of Live Up to Our Privileges, Women, Power, and Priesthoods. Hopefully that doesn't embarrass you too much, Wendy. Thank you. Thank you for. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for the good you're doing. We are all in the same team, aren't we? We're all fellow servants.

Those of you who want to leave a message for Wendy, come onto YouTube and we'll make sure that she sees all of those comments that you leave. And with that, we want to thank Dr. Wendy Ulrich for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer, Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors, David and Verla Sorensen. And every episode for the last four years and some change, we remember our founder, Steve Sorensen. We hope you'll join us next week. We have more of the Doctrine and Covenants and Church History on Follow Him. Today's show notes and transcript are on our website, followhim.co. Of course, none of this could happen without our production team, David Perry, Lisa Spice,

Jamie Nielsen, Will Stoughton, Crystal Roberts, Ariel Quadra, Amelia Cabuica, and Annabel Sorensen.