TESTIMONY 2020

It was New Year's Day, 1963.  My husband, Carmon, and I were living in the older part of Mesa, one-half block from the Mesa Temple. Little did we know on that day what the new year would bring. We would soon find out.

Madelyn Murray O'Hair went to the Supreme Court and, because she was a self-declared atheist, brought suit that it was unconstitutional for children to pray at school.  She won, taking away the right of public prayer from everyone else's children.  

The Beatles topped the chart with their twin songs She Loves You (Yeah, yeah, yeah) and I Want to Hold Your Hand (ooo ooo ooo!) This opened the door for British singing groups, long hair, and the drug culture that would come out of hiding at Woodstock six years later.  

President Kennedy was assassinated in November of that year, followed a few years later by his brother Robert and the Reverend Martin Luther King, all men who proposed peaceful solution to our countries problems. The Vietnam war escalated under President Lydon Johnson. Many of my friends from high school were drafted. Carmon had been honorably discharged from the Air Force the year before so we were spared the agony of families whose boys didn't come home.

It seems as if the world had been turned upside down.

1963 was a monumental year for me for other reasons.  Carmon and I were expecting our first baby. He worked from dawn to dusk and I was alone a lot.  As I began to sense the baby moving, it came to me clearly that I was responsible for someone other than just myself.  I had been born during World War II to a Latter-day Saint family in Provo, UT, and had been an active member of the faith my whole life.  However, my husband, while a member of record, was not active and Sundays became just another day.  I didn't realize just how far I had slipped away until the day I had the above mentioned epiphany: I was responsible for another soul.

I had studied (tongue-in-cheek) the Book of Mormon in Seminary, but had never read it through cover-to-cover on my own. I knew it was time I did. If the Church was true, then I needed to mend my ways.  If it wasn't true, I didn't want to teach my child superstitions.  What it amounted to was that I had been living on my Mother's testimony for close to 19 years.  I needed to find one for myself.

We were so poor, I couldn't even afford a 50cent paperback copy of the Book, so I walked the 4 blocks to the Mesa Library and checked out a copy.

I read it and prayed and read it and prayed and read it and prayed.  As I did so, I began to feel the need to repent of my slothful attitude about the gospel.  When I closed the book on the last day, I read Moroni's promise in his book, chapter 10 verses 3 through 5.  I took that challenge.  It is difficult to express in words the feeling that I had.  It wasn't a glimmer; it was if a full-blown testimony was instantly downloaded in my brain. I felt it throughout my whole being! In that moment, I knew three important truths:

• I knew the Book of Mormon was  true scripture and another testimony of Jesus Christ.
• I knew that Joseph Smith was, indeed, a prophet and that he had translated the book from ancient records.
• Because of that, I knew for sure that the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Church that bears His name are true and the only way in which I can return to live with my Heavenly Father.

I went back to Church and when my children were born, I took them with me.  I read the scriptures and prayed and my testimony grew and is still growing today. That testimony was the one things primarily that got me through that crazy year of 1963 and all of the roller coaster of years since then.  

As we study the Book of Mormon in Sunday School and our homes this year, I would challenge anyone who has not already done so to prayerfully read that precious book, cover-to-cover, and take Moroni's challenge.  As scary as the world seemed in 1963, it if far scarier in 2020, as moral boundaries collapse right and left and people sway wherever the latest wind (or meme) blows.  I know that my testimony of the scriptures and the knowledge that Jesus is the Christ,  saved me.  If I can hand all my worries to Him, I know 2020 will be a good year.

© Dr. Kathleen Rawlings Buntin Danielson January 1, 2020