Life’s troubles can train us to give up, but with God’s hep we can find the motivation to overcome, learn perseverance, and enjoy the pay off that comes as a result. Perseverance means more than endurance—more than simply holding on until the end. A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a baton is in the hands of a conductor as one interprets the score created by a composer in a manner which is reflective of the specific indications within that score, set the tempo, ensure correct entries by various members of the ensemble, and shapes the phrasing where appropriate. To convey their ideas and interpretation, conductors communicate with their musicians primarily through hand gestures, baton, and eye contact with relevant performers. A conductor’s directions will almost invariably be supplemented or reinforced by verbal instructions or suggestions to their musicians in rehearsal prior to performance. This is similar to how God uses the scriptures, church leaders, and people who are will to follow the commandments to prepare of for eternal life, as we are here on Earth rehearsing, shaping, and molding our behavior to become more like God and make life as easy as possible. God is trying to fine tune us until his purpose is insight. We must entrust ourselves to God’s score. #RandolphHarris 1 of 11

To endure to the end, we need to be eager to please God and worship him with fervor. Faith is not some weak and pitiful emotions, but is strong and vigorous confidence built on the fact that God is holy love. Our ability to stand firm and true and follow the Savior despite the vicissitudes of life is greatly strengthened by righteous families and God centered unit in our homes and churches.  Our personal journey through life provides us with many special experiences that become building blocks of faith and testimony. Faith is the supreme effort of our lives—allow ourselves to have total confidence upon God. However, there may be areas in our lives where faith is still building and has not be completely reformed by the life of God. These experiences come to us in vastly different ways and at unpredictable times. they Can be powerful spiritual events or small enlightening moments. Some experiences will come as serious challenged and heavy trials that test our ability to come with them. No matter what the experience may be, each gives us a chance for personal growth, greater wisdom, and in many cases, service to others with more empathy and love. “All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good,” reports Doctrines and Covenants 122.7. If we take this view, life will become one great romance—a glorious opportunity of seeing wonderful things all the time. #RandolphHarris 2 of 11

God is disciplining us to get us into this central place of power. Character is a choice. It transcends education, training, and position. It is built rather than bestowed. People of good character are admired because they consistently do the right things for the right reasons. They do well in life. Character is synonymous with integrity, maturity, and moral wholeness. Those who have already placed their faith in the Lord and who understand the workings of the Lord’s grace, as experiences accumulate in our lives, they add strength and support. Just as the building blocks of our homes support the rest of the structure, so too do our personal life experiences become building blocks for our testimonies and add to our faith in the Lord. “And we rejoice in the hope and glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us,” reports Romans 5.2-5. God is not telling us to be happy because we may be having a hard time at work. Instead, the Lord is telling us to rejoice in the assurance of his grace and provision in the midst of out trials and tribulations. #RandolphHarris 3 of 11

Exalting God in the heat of our trials will produce perseverance which is the opposite of coping or resignation. Perseverance is engagement with the expectation of victory. We can master our next trail, persevere rather than quit, triumph rather than fail. It is our God-trusting perseverance that will ultimately build our character. God guarantees it. The Heavenly Father knows and loves us personally. As we contemplate such special experiences, they give us a sense of gratitude and resolve to go forward with renewed faith and determination. The development of character will be they by-product of facing our trails in the spirit of God. Character develops during our trials and not before. Just as victory requires fighting a battle, the development of our character requires persevering through the battle just like the Americans did in the Revolutionary war. Even at the end of the way, the difficulties of sustaining American liberty was evident. And the experience of the next half decade added to them. Whether struggling to survive in a hostile Atlantic environment or trying to cope with economic distress and political turmoil at home, Americans continued to argue about their experiment in republicanism, above all about how democratic it could safely be, and to wonder whether it would actually work at all. #RandolphHarris 4 of 11

At the same time, the American people retained an immense reservoir of optimism about the future. Had we won the mighty war? Was not their revolution destined to change the course of history and preserve liberty for all humankind? Did not America’s wonderfully rich interior contain a limitless promise of economic and social opportunity for all? Most Americans, still filled with enthusiasm of their new beginning answered “Yes,” and persevered. They allowed their character and faith in God lead them because much depended, of course, on their relationship with God and their new Constitution and the government soon to be created under it. As the ratification debate subsided and Congress prepared for the transition, the American people looked eagerly and anxiously ahead. “Therefore, the promise comes by faith, so that it may be by grace and may be guaranteed,” reports Romans 4.16. God is the author of our character and the object of our hope and the Lord does not disappoint. We must use our trials as opportunities to build our character. Persevere with the expectations of victory. From the late 1790s until the late 1830s, a wave of religious revivals that matched the Great Awakening in the 1730s and 1740s swept through the United States. Prominent Rochester, New York USA citizens invited Charles Finney to come to town in 1830 to deliver some sermons. #RandolphHarris 5 of 11

During the Second Great Awakening, one could not go upon the streets and hear any conversation, except religion. Charles Finney preached nearly every night and three times on Sundays, converting the first city’s business elite, often through their wives, and then many workers. For six months, Rochester went through a citywide prayer meeting in which one conversation led to another. The Rochester revival was part of the wave of religious enthusiasm in America that contributed to the tremendous growth of the Methodists, the Baptists, and other evangelical denominations in the first half of the nineteenth century. By 1844, for example, the Methodist church had become the largest denomination in America, with over a million members. To bring large masses of people to accept God and the Savior, revivalist preachers deemphasized doctrine in favor of emotion, softening strict Calvinist tenets such as predestination, original sin, and limited atonement. As a preacher, Charles Finney understood that the human agency of the minister was crucial in causing a revival. Few could match Minister Finney’s powerful preaching style. The hypnotic effect of his eyes and voice carried such power that he could dissolve an audience into tears. When he threw an imaginary brick at the wicked adversary, people ducked. #RandolphHarris 6 of 11

When Minister Finney’s finger pointed the descent of a sinner into hell, people in the back row stood up to see the final disappearance. A former lawyer, Minister Finney used logic as well as emotion to bring about conversations. However, conversation and salvation were not the end of religious experience but the beginning. Minister Finney believed that humans were not passive objects of God’s predestined plan, but moral free agents who could choose good over evil, convince others to do the same; and thereby eradicate sin from the World. Minister Finney idea of the utility of benevolence meant not only individual reformation, but also the commitment to do one’s sacred duty in reforming one’s society. Americans were urged to look inward and to nature for self-knowledge, self-reliance, and the park of divinity burning within all people. To acquaint people with themselves, would inspire reverence for self and others, which would lead outward to social reform. What person is born free, but to be a Reformer? This brought up some troublesome question about the quality of American life. They questioned not only slavery, an obvious evil, but also the obsessive competitive pace of economic life, the overriding concerns for materialism, and the restrictive conformity of social life. This helped to end slavery because we cannot love God and abuse people. #RandolphHarris 7 of 11

Americans started to focus more on the romantic spirit, celebrating good emotions over reason, nature over civilization, and virtue over self-interest. The truth of the human life portrays more authentic than the calculating minds and schemes of the ungodly. Nathaniel Hawthorne influenced the generation of reformist American intellectuals coming of age in the mid-century and helped inspire artists, writers, and the community. He was one of the Transcendentalists because of his belief that truth was found beyond experience in intuition. In his greatest novel, The scarlet Letter (1850), Mr. Hawthorne sympathetically told the story of a courageous Puritan woman’s adultery and her eventual loving triumph over the narrowness of both cold intellect and intolerant social conformity. “God had the power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to the Lord as righteousness,” reports Romans 4.21. Because Mr. Hawthorne was such a wonderful person, telling powerful stories, Herman Melville dedicated his epic novel Moby Dick (1851) to Mr. Hawthorne. At one level, a rousing story of whaling on the high seas in purist of the great white whale, Moby Dick was actually an immense allegory of good and evil, bravery and weakness, innocence and experience. #RandolphHarris 8 of 11

In Mr. Melville’s other novels, he continued this sea voyage setting for making a powerful statement on behalf of the lowly seaman’s claims for freedom and just social relations against the tyranny of the ship captain. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville mirrored the tensions of the age as they explored issues of freedom and control. On 4 July 1845, Mr. Emerson’s friend Henry David Thoreau went to live in a small hut by Walden Pond, near Concord. There he planned to confront the essential facts of life—to discover who he was and how to live well. When Mr. Thoreau left Walden two years later, he protested against social injustice and the Mexican War by refusing to pay his taxes. He went to jail briefly and wrote an essay, “On Civil Disobedience,” (1849), and a book, Walden (1854), which are still considered statements of what one person can do to protest unjust laws and wars and life a life of principle. “Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of a sinful person is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by sinful nature cannot please God,” reports Romans 8.5. #RandolphHarris 9 of 11

In the decades before 1860, many emigrants heading for the West stopped to rest and buy supplies in Salt Lake City, Utah USA, the heart of the Mormon state of Deseret. There they encountered a society that seemed familiar and orderly, yet foreign and shocking. Visitors admired the attractively laid out town with its irrigation ditches, gardens, and tidy houses. However, as they noted the decorous nature of everyday life, they exchanged sleezy gossip about polygamy and searched for signs of rebellion in the faces of Mormon women. Emigrants compared the position of the Mormon wife with that of the African salve. They were amazed that so few Mormon women seemed interested in escaping from the bonds of plural marriage. Violent events had driven the Mormons to the arid Great Basin area. Joseph Smith’s murder in 1844 marked no end to the persecution of his followers. By the Autumn of 1846, angry mobs had chased the last of the Saints out of Nauvoo, Illinois. As they struggled to join their advance groups at temporary camps in Iowa, Mr. Smith’s successor, Brigham Young, realized that flight from the United States of American represented the best hope for survival. The Saints must create the kingdom of God anew, somewhere in the West, far removed from the United States because it had become that Babylon of corruption and injustice. #RandolphHarris 10 of 11

Starving and sick Mormons strung out along the trail between Missouri and Iowa and helped finance the impending great migration. Mr. Young selected the Great Basin area, technically part of Mexico, as the best site for God’s future kingdom. Years of persecution had nourished a strong sense of group identity and acceptance of Church leadership. Organized by the Church leaders, who made the essential decisions, farming became a collective enterprise. All farmers were allotted land. All had irrigation rights, for water did not belong to individuals but to the community. During Sunday services, the local bishop might give farming instructions to his congregation along with his sermon. As Mr. Young explained, “I have looked upon the community of Latter-day Saints in a vision and beheld the organized as the great family of Heaven, each person performing his or her several duties in one’s line of industry, working for the good of the whole more than for individual aggrandizement. In this vast communal effort, every Mormon was expected to work for success, men and women alike. “We do not believe in having any drones in the hive,” one woman said tartly. Promised land shall be a land of liberty reports 2 Nephi 1.7. #RandolphHarris 11 of 11