Fighting through darkness and despair and pleading for the light is what opened this dispensation. It is what keeps it going, and it is what will keep you going.

I suppose it goes without saying that negative speaking so often flows from negative thinking about ourselves. We see our own faults, we speak--or at least think--critically of ourselves, and before long that is how we see everyone and everything. No sunshine, no roses, no promise of hope or happiness. Before long we and everybody around us are miserable.

Everything in the gospel teaches us that we can change if we need to, that we can be helped if we truly want it, that we can be made whole, whatever the problems of the past.

I ask for a stonger and more devoted voice... a voice for good, a voice for the gospel, a voice for God.

We should honor the Savior's declaration to "be of good cheer." (Matthew 14:27) Indeed, it seems to me we may be more guilty of breaking that commandment than almost any other!

The Book of Mormon is the keystone of our religion primarily because it is the most extended and definitive witness we have of the Lord Jesus Christ-of our Alpha and Omega, the True Vine, the Bishop and Shepherd of our Soul, he who is the Key Stone, the Chief Cornerstone of the eternal gospel.

Only when we see that sacred, unadorned child of our devotion-the Babe of Bethlehem-will we know why the giving of gifts is so appropriate