Submit Your Personal Story
We'd like to extend an invitation to you to write and submit to us, your own account of any way in which you have felt the personal impact of the Savior's atoning love, grace, and influence in your life as you've moved forward in your journey of life, or as you've faced a particular life challenge. It doesn't matter if the story revolves around a small moment, one event, or a long struggle. Selected accounts will be published on the site.
If you're interested, please fill out the
following form with your story. Stories should be approximately 350-1200 words. While we can post some stories anonymously, we'd also like to receive those from guests who would like to include a photo and first name, with their post, to keep the site inviting, real, and personal for our visitors.
Thank you for your interest and for all you already do to share your voices online in positive ways.
Please submit your stories using
this form.
Stories Archive
When we think about what it means to be born, we usually think of being given life and a mortal body from a father and a mother. Therefore, when asking “What does it mean to say that Christ is the Firstborn?” another question usually comes up: “How can Christ be the firstborn if he lived in what is sometimes called the meridian of time?” In order to answer these questions, we must rethink our definition what it means to be born.
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The scriptures speak of receiving a rebirth when one receives a remission of sins. But since Christ never sinned, this cannot be the case. “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick” (Matthew 9:12). At any rate, when people are born, they are thought of as receiving life. Hence, to be reborn is to receive life anew. One way in which Jesus is the firstborn is because he “is risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20). By calling Christ the Firstborn... Read the rest of this entry »
Before Jesus Christ was born, even before the world began, Jesus Christ committed Himself to taking on the role of our advocate to the Father. An advocate is someone who pleads for another person.
John explained this role in 1 John, chapter 2 of the King James Bible:
1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
God is a just God. He’s given us laws we’re expected to obey. However, He is also a loving God and He knows us perfectly. Because of this, He knows we will not keep all the laws and will sin during our life. Justice would require us to be punished for every sin, including the punishment of being unable to return to God’s presence. The scriptures teach us no unclean thing can enter into God’s presence. Since it would be impossible for any fully... Read the rest of this entry »
A Personal Experience by Terrie
I grew up in a lightly religious non-LDS family. I recited a bedtime prayer, read Bible stories, and attended church once or twice a year. Morality mattered, but we were told to decide what was right. It was only after I joined the church that I learned to use the example of the Savior as a measuring stick for my own choices.
When I was a teenager and new to the church, I was invited to teach an unusually large group of preschoolers. Several had disabilities and the others were just a major handful. I was offered the volunteer job because I was the only person available who knew sign language and could communicate with the two deaf children. Having no teaching experience, I found myself unable to control my class. Week after week, I struggled to get through a lesson, and usually ended the class in tears after the last child had been retrieved. I didn’t have the confidence to admit I needed help.
One day, one of my leaders found me in my classroom after... Read the rest of this entry »
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By Steven O’Dell
I was raised by good parents who cared for their children, seeing to their needs and education in all ways within their means. We were rich in love, if not in money. I attended the occasional church meeting over the years, but not enough to say I was religiously inclined or informed. My grandparents on both sides of the family were worthy of being called saints, if ever there were any. They were God-fearing and -respecting believers. No better people existed than them.
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By Tessa Joy McMillan
As an eight year old, I was extremely excited to have a room of my own. But it was not like other rooms. It was an attic: twenty foot vaulted ceilings, exposed wooden beams, spider webs, protruding nails, hard wood floors, and a column of brick created an exciting atmosphere. But to make my room even more amazing, my dad hung an attic swing from one of the large wooden beams. During severe thunderstorms, I would sit on my swing and move to and fro to the pitter-patter of the rain. Life was good on my swing.
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It was my freshman year in high school. I loved every minute of it. I had lots of friends, I was getting good grades in all of my classes, and I was to be in the spring play, Winnie The Pooh. Life couldn’t have been better, except for the fact that because I was a member of the LDS church, I was impatiently waiting to be the big “one six” to start dating. But, all that mattered at the time was what was happening right then and there.... Read the rest of this entry »
Scott Livingston
It was a cold February morning when my wife, Kristina, and newborn, Cameron Van, set out through Logan Canyon on the 40 mile drive from our home in Bear Lake to the hospital to get Cameron’s bilirubin level tested. We arrived safely in Logan on time and checked in with the receptionist. They called us in, gave Cameron a small poke on his heel and the nurse sent us on our way, saying they would call us at home with the results. This had become a daily routine since Cameron’s birth a week earlier. He was born with high bilirubin levels and the doctor wanted to monitor it until he was confident that Cameron’s body would take control. Read the rest of this entry »
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by Kristin
I don’t remember my mom. Sometimes I’ll catch the smell of Channel No. 5 and my brain takes me back – way back – and I can see fuzzy shadows of people I knew then but I just can’t find her face. I know she made juice popsicles in ice trays with toothpicks. I also remember the really ugly sheets she must have bought for my bed (they were so seventies . . .). I remember with crystal clarity the day my sweet Uncle Fred pulled up outside my Grandma and Grandpa’s house and said something friendly to me before he went inside. I was eating a carrot. A few minutes later I was invited in, too, and he told me mom was dead. She had died in a car accident on her way to get me and my sister. I was only four, but I immediately knew we needed to pray. I don’t know what we prayed for – as if there was anything that could help – but the adults there knelt with me and prayed. I don’t know how I knew it was time... Read the rest of this entry »
Keith Brown
In Jeremiah 29:11-13 we read these words:
For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you. And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.
On March 10, just a a few short days from now, I will celebrate eleven years as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I actually began investigating the Church in late 1980. I had seen several television commercials about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and each one normally ended with how one could obtain a free copy of the Book of Mormon. Read the rest of this entry »
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The Garden Tomb in Jerusalem was found not long ago. It is located right across the street from Golgotha, the place of the skull. The skull is clearly visible in the side of the hill today. My guide said that Romans always crucified at street level so passersby would have to look into the eyes of those crucified, see their suffering, and be less likely to commit a crime that warranted that fate. So it
is most likely that Jesus was not crucified at the top of the hill as goes the hymn and common belief, but at street level which today is quite a bit lower than is visible.
A part of the garden overlooks Golgotha across a narrow street, a place where tour buses park today. There is posted an old photo that shows the bottom of the skull more prominently, but it takes no imagination to see the eyes and nose of a skull today, small caves in the side of the rock hill.
Scriptures reveal that one had to “stoop” to get into the tomb where the body of Jesus was laid. Today you can walk... Read the rest of this entry »
I have personally experienced a lifelong struggle with depression, which came to a head during my training as a physician in a pediatric residency. Basically, I came to the point where my own strength absolutely wasn’t going to cut it anymore. I was dragged into the psychologist and officially diagnosed with Major Depression, though I now recognize I had weathered several major depressive episodes before.
I was referred to a Psychiatrist and started on anti-depressants. At that point in my life, I felt totally defeated. I wanted to be mentally strong. I didn’t want my secrets out. I didn’t want the prejudice. I felt this occurrence and diagnosis affirmed all the image problems I fought all my life. I felt like my medical career and dream was slipping away, now that the pretender was caught. Read the rest of this entry »
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