Unlocking the Secrets in My Personal Liahona

Fifteen years ago I started this blog. Why? 

The Bee goes from flower to flower collecting pollen, and while doing this, helps produce fruit. This is my goal. The study of my patricarchal blessing has produced abundant fruit in  my own life. 

I want to share the benefits of studying your patriarchal blessing more often and deep diving into it, recognizing it as your own personal scripture or "Liahona". I am not an accomplished writer, but want to share my insights with my fellow associates and friends. It is your own personal Liahona.  Over the many years after receiving mine, I've drawn closer to Jesus Christ and received daily revelations to guide my life.

On December 28th, one of those came "bursting" through the veil. God asked me to start writing Bev's Psalms. Oh, my goodness! "But, I'm not a writer!" I said. Then came the command, "Just DO it." The 2026 theme that I've chosen from studying my blessing is "Serve" and combining these two has led me to begin posting here again. 

Miraculous Monday

A Strenuous Saturday

     You sometimes wonder if God really does know your every need and then a miracle happens and you see his hand in your life. Saturday I searched for and found, then organized my photos taken between 1995 and 2001 when my family lived in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico, because I said I would on my last blog post. What an overwhelming task.  No I hadn’t written dates or people’s names on the back. I’d taken them to the FamilySearch History Center where they have a world class scanner. But it took me hours just to sort them by year, mostly using the paper package they came back in after developing. Most of them at WalMart. Yes Guadalajara has a WalMart. Fortunately they wrote the date on that package. By this time I realized I could only scan a few things before my energy ran out: the cover and a page from three books, a photo of my mom and her friend and a couple pages from a booklet from the 1980 World Conference on Records held in Salt Lake City.

     Remember how in my last post I hadn’t really felt my life worthy of telling about; I’m just a plain regular person. While hunting for Mexico photos I found this booklet from the 1980 World Conference on Records by George D. Durrant entitled:

THE IMPORTANCE OF PERSONAL AND FAMILY HISTORY by George D.Durrant: Born in Utah. Resides in Salt Lake City, Utah. Director, Genealogical Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Ed.D., Brigham Young University. Author, lecturer, teacher.

He says, “When I was asked to talk about the importance of a personal and family history, my first thought was, "Why me?" Why not get someone whose life has been filled with excitement and accomplishment and whose family has been among the elite?”

I suspect everyone has this same reaction. Durrant has become quite famous and influenced many students at BYU over the years. He now has 37 more years of personal history and stories to tell. So I begin my personal history by blogging starting with my family's life in Mexico.     

A Sacred Sunday

     Saturday was exhausting and left me in a great deal of pain. So much so, that I wasn’t sure if I could attend all of my meetings on Sunday. I am our Ward Employment Specialist so I attend Ward Council a couple times a month at 7:15 a.m. But recently I noticed that if I am found doing the right thing, am in the right place, at the right time, I am blessed to be physically sustained to endure the day better. Usually this occurs on Sundays.

     It was fast and testimony meeting Sunday and I’d attended the council meeting, and was praying that God would help me to serve others, remain positive about my circumstances and help me on the anniversary of my husband, Bob’s, death on May 9^th.

     You never know how an approaching date can affect you. Brother Platt told the story of his brother’s tragic death a year ago and how he’d never understood why people reacted to this type of anniversary, until this year. With tears, and anguish on his faith he said he kept reviewing all the events leading up to his death. It was hard. You could tell his heart was broken, even knowing the Plan of Salvation and that he was spiritually still alive, just on the other side of the veil.

     This reminds me of how Heavenly Father must have felt watching his son, Jesus the Christ, during that week leading up to his death and resurrection. How important it is for us to remember those events. They are sacred to God, and to us. We remember them every Easter.

Cast of Characters

Here is a photo of our family of five taken in Ontario, California just before we left for Mexico in 1995. It is the cast of main characters for my Mexico stories that I’ll be sharing on this blog over the next months.

Bev, Bob, Brianna, Ruthe and Harriett the cat

A Miraculous Monday

     In just one hour, my life changed and I saw God’s hand in my life! There definitely are stories that only I can tell. Here is the one that made a Miraculous Monday.

     Two months ago the Pima Council on Aging sent a representative out to my house to assess my needs. This past month my physical needs changed drastically. I can hardly walk safely and am using walkers, walls, door jambs and furniture to get around in my house, so I don’t fall. On Monday morning Gerry, their representative and my case worker ran late for her appointment with me because of the Ina Road closure at highway I 10. This construction work is disrupting traffic for the next two years. Sigh. She called at fifteen minutes after the hour saying she’d be at my house located seven miles west of I-10 in another fifteen minutes.  Why do I tell you this timing? This is where the miracle begins.

     Mandy, my ward Relief Society President called minutes after Gerry called, asking if her family could come over at 6 p.m. for Family Home Evening and give service for me ie., dusting, vacuuming, doing dishes and cleaning floors. Wow, sure I said. I’d no more hung up from her call, when my landlady, Kim, who lives next door, called and said it was a hard thing to have to say, but that I would have to move out of my house in July. Of course, my heart plunged and I asked if she could come over and meet with the PCOA lady who was just then walking up to my door, so we could all talk.

     The short of it is that Kim has a smaller house right across the street from us where her tenant’s lease will be up July 1^st.  Because they need to refinance this property where we live, I need to move. They will gut this place and use it as a place of business. She said I could take anything from this place that I needed to use at the new house. This includes ramps, window air conditioners, raised toilet, etc.

     Gerry had already looked at my bathroom and said it was dangerous for me to be getting in and out of the tub to bathe. The new house has a master bedroom with a bath that has a walk in shower! Problem of safety solved. AND ALL OF THIS FOR $120 LESS A MONTH FOR RENT. NO FIRST AND LAST MONTH RENT AND NO SECURITY DEPOSIT REQUIRED EITHER. My prayers have been answered.

Further Potential Miracles May Follow

     Timing and communication are so important. Monday evening I was able to relate to the RS President what was going on so she could present the circumstances of my housing to the Ward Council. Kim has a single wide trailer at the front of my new address, and the tenant there will be leaving also. It is my hope that through my LDS network, we can find her a new renter and help them get moved in and I'll have a lovely neighbor.

     Gerry’s needs may be met because PCOA is hunting for Direct Home Care Workers who live West of the I-10 freeway. They will screen and train them. Right now, they are having trouble serving me or the people in this area because it is too far to drive and they don’t pay mileage. As Ward Employment Specialist and through the LDS Employment Center, I may facilitate connecting people with needs to those who have solutions. So Cool. Whee!!

     My daughter who is now 30 and living in another state is overjoyed because I have a deadline to get rid of some of my “stuff.” I’ll be selling and donating a lot of household items to pare down into a 2 bedroom place.

     Miracles happen, many needs are met, and many people are served because God sees the whole picture and inspires people to call and react at exactly the right moment in time. Don’t you just love it when everything comes together just like that A-team slogan?

This is an introduction to the stories of my life in Mexico interspersed with stories where I see miracles occuring in my daily life.

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD, HE COMFORTS ME

On Grieving

     Recently, the teacher in Relief Society handed me a slip of paper to either share my thoughts and experiences relating to the topic or invite others to share experiences and lead a discussion. My question was “How has the Holy Ghost helped you in the midst of difficult times or when faced with opposition?”  The young widowed mother of three sitting next to me got a question about how the Holy Ghost helped her in her home. She said that she didn’t think it applied to her and didn’t know how to answer it. I told her that just from what I knew about her recent decisions to extend a class at the University for her autistic 13 year old son, that she made a prayerful decision to go ahead with it even though logically, it was going to be quite time consuming. She said, “Oh, well I guess I do rely on the Holy Ghost, don’t I ?” Another woman shared that she kind of felt that we were like swimmers immersed in water. When we came upon something in the water, we’d just swim around it. As Latter-day Saint women, we are immersed in the Holy Ghost if we are living lives worthy of it.

THE HOLY GHOST AND PERSONAL REVELATION

     Then it was my turn to share and I said, I’ve always lived making decisions prayerfully for both the large and small details of my life, so the swimming analogy really made sense to me. I told the women that I really didn’t have many difficulties in my life, but tried to live every day and every hour praying for guidance and wishing to do the Lord’s will; and I invited others to share experiences. One lady shared how when she was first married to a naval man she had a new “friend” come visit saying that she’d been told her that her husband was a Mormon, was she also a Mormon? When she answered yes, the woman began to rail against her and brought up every anti-Mormon  topic she’d ever heard. This young married woman, who also happens to be wheel chair confined, kept thinking and praying silently, ”What do I do?” and kept smiling calmly, not saying a thing. When the women finally ran down and quit talking, my friend simply bore her testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel, and what she believed. The other woman quietly left the house not saying another word.

     Our Relief Society President then commented about me, saying that she felt that taking care of a sick husband and then his dying, was for most people a “difficult time,” but the way I lived my life in proximity to the Lord, the Holy Ghost comforted me and helped me through it so that it didn’t seem so difficult. As I reflect back, there were many promptings that helped me during those last months of Bob’s life. For instance the thought came into my mind that moving a comfortable chair from the living room to replace one  in his bedroom, (one that if I sat in it more than ten minutes, my back would start to hurt) This occurred during what was to be the last ten days of his life. This act allowed me to spend much more time with him. You see at this point, I was using a walker to get around and so was either in a chair or my bed when I wasn’t cooking, cleaning, etc. I really had only enough energy to barely keep up simple daily tasks around the home, monitor Bob’s drugs and pain medicine, and personal hygiene tasks.

I SAW THE HOLY GHOST PROMPT OTHERS TO HELP US 

     Kind friends came over and helped with vacuuming the house and my daughter helped with dishes and mopping floors once a week. I saw the Holy Ghost working in other’s lives as they were prompted to come to visit and help us during the last months of his life. Bob didn’t think he was dying, and I certainly didn’t know when he might die, so we basically lived every day, one day at a time.

     I turned to my friend sitting next to me and said, “I guess my advice to you relates to my own situation, doesn’t it?”

ALL THINGS TESTIFY OF GOD

Leaving Church that Sunday to go home, I was driving through farmland and the truth's that I'd learned about grieving were visually pointed out to me. God was telling me that He is my Shepherd and he will comfort me and lead me.

I called out the window of my car, and this sheep heard my voice and looked up

     On the way home, I saw a flock of sheep grazing on what used to be a rice field or pasture where I’d never seen anything but crops. I love sheep. But I’d never seen any at all around here, much less this close to a road. 

There were sheep of all ages from baby lambs to large wooley sheep.

     

THE LORD IS MY SHEPHERD

     

     All the baby lambs were with their mothers and I thought to myself… the Lord really is “my shepherd” and He does “maketh me to lie down in green pastures” and He does “restoreth my soul.” He leads me in paths of righteousness. Indeed, this last year I did “walk through the valley of the shadow of death” and He comforted me. His “rod”, His words in the scriptures, helped me through it all. I can testify that “His goodness and mercy have been with me all the days of my life.”

Calling out to the sheep, many heard me and looked up.  They came in all sizes and colors including black faced and white faced sheep. Some had been sheared and others had not. If I kept calling out I was afraid they would step over the little mound of earth that seemed to be the boundary to the rice field. You can see how easy it would have been for them by that little guy in the center that is standing on the mound. These mounds are used for flooding the rice paddy during the growing season.

     

     The Holy Ghost is the Comforter and  I have been comforted during this time of grieving. My grief has been light and often poignant, and never has been that crushing horrible pain that debilitates. This comes from the knowledge that I know where Bob is right now, and that one day, I will be with him again. He is my eternal companion.This life is just a moment, compared to the eternities that we will be together because of the sealing ordinances performed in the Lord's temple. Our vows were not “until death do you part” but were “for time and all eternity.” What a joy this thought brings. How grateful I am for the gift of the Holy Ghost conferred upon my head that long ago day after I was baptized. God’s plan is perfect. Christ’s atonement was the crowning event that provides this glorious promised  future for all those who will humble themselves, have faith in Christ, receive the ordinances of the gospel, live worthy, serve others and seek to do God’s will. THEN ENDURE TO THE END.