What we are shines more brightly than anything we say or do. If we are to fill the world with light, we must first face any tattered remnant of darkness that remains in our own souls.

We are making our appearance on the stage of mortality in the greatest dispensation of the gospel ever given to mankind, and we need to make the most of it.

To you who think you are lost or without hope, or who think you have done too much that was too wrong for too long, to every one of you who worry that you are stranded somewhere on the wintry plains of life and have wrecked your handcart in the process, we call out "Jehovah's unrelenting refrain, "My hand is stretched out still" (Isaiah 5:25: 9:17,21). "...His mercy endureth forever, and His hand is stretched out still. His is the pure love of Christ, the charity that never faileth, that compassion which endures even when all other strength disappears".

I hope I have a few years left in my 'last days,' but whether I do or do not, I want it absolutely clear when I stand before the judgment bar of God that I declared to the world, in the most straightforward language I could summon, that the Book of Mormon is true, that it came forth the way Joseph said it came forth and was given to bring happiness and hope to the faithful in the travail of the latter days.

No one of us is less treasured or cherished of God than another. I testify that he loves each of us--insecuritie s, anxieties, self-image, and all.

He has, He reminds us, "graven thee upon the palms of my hands" (1 Nephi 21:16). Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion, Christ is not going to turn His back on us now.

Faith draws the poison from every grief, takes the sting from every loss, and quenches the fire of every pain, and only faith can do it.