Death and Being Born Again

Tonight at Stake Conference we heard from four people who told of being raised by faithful parents but making unwise choices that led them into worldly practices, one changed course when he was a teen, the next took several decades of increasingly wasteful behavior before he joined AA and eventually found his way back.  The next was a young woman who had been perfectly complacent about her worldly ways, observing Tattoo Wednesday, and joking that her blood was half caffeine, until one day her mother died suddenly and when she found that her father intended to go to church a few days later she couldn't bear to think that he would be there all alone and she went with him and the way to repentance opened.  In September she will be sealed to her husband and daughter.  Her husband met her in a bar and must have liked her wild ways.  He never really lost his faith, he just didn't do what was needed to nourish it until his wife changed her heart.  Then we found that a slight disturbance at the beginning of the meeting was caused by a woman dying.  It really emphasized the meaning of the several testimonies of the wonder of being able to be born again.  I am grateful that I was born in the time and place and circumstances that put me where the Gospel is on the earth and in my life.