Personal examples of seeing God's hand in my life

The hand of the Lord is evident to me in my own life by my introduction and conversion to the Church. I was living in a time and place where the Church was very active, there was a strong youth group in the ward, we had a very youth-oriented bishop, and we had great missionaries. After I joined, the Lord lined up spiritual experiences and excellent teachers for me to help my testimony grow.

I have often marveled at how friends came and went in my life growing up. I had several good friends from whom I just seemed to naturally drift apart as their lives took turns in the wrong direction. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just happened. It was easy for me to become involved in the Church because I did not have a lot of strong negative influences in my life and I had virtually no friends holding me back.

My marriage to Evelyn was a great example of God's hand. Though we had lived all of our lives just a couple of miles apart, we went to different schools and had never met. She joined the Church while I was on my mission and was active in Young Adults when I returned. We were introduced through an ice breaker game at an activity where we had to find someone who drove the same car. She and I were the only two who drove Buick Opals. Even though our friends and even our priesthood leaders said we were wrong for each other, we knew differently. Thirty-seven years later, we know we made the right decision.

Here are some recent, small examples of tender mercies that I have seen in my life. I see daily the abundance of temporal things with which I have been blessed and recognize the poverty in which most of the world lives, and I know that I am in this blessed circumstance so that I can work for the Church and build up the kingdom every day. My Patriarchal Blessing says that I will have a unique career, and it is certainly unique and rare to be working full time for the Church.

In my work for the Church I see the hand of the Lord in bringing people to us with special skills just at the moment that we need them. I was involved ten years ago in designing computer systems that have made it possible for the Missionary Department to keep up with the unprecedentedly rapid growth of the missionary force in the past couple of months since the announce in October Conference of the reduced minimum age for missionary service.

I see the hand of the Lord in this new youth curriculum and the emphasis on raising the bar for the youth. I am blessed to be a part of the introduction of this program of learning because I have much to learn as well.