LDS Living

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Channel • 5 Shows

Christianity

Christianity

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Christianity

Christianity

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Religion & Spirituality

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History

History

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Religion & Spirituality

Religion & Spirituality

Updated weekly

24/09/2025

Jamin and Ann Rowan: Becoming Saints

Throughout history and across religious traditions, countless individuals have been honored for their holiness and devotion. As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we have this word in the name of our church—it is what we purport to be. But do we fully understand what that entails? Jamin and Ann Rowan recently led a study abroad trip exploring what it means to be and become a saint and on this week's episode, they share what they learned. 2:20- A Study Abroad They Couldn't Refuse 12:07- Peacemakers Needed Everywhere 22:15- The Sacrifices Saints Have Made To Follow Christ 26:34- Unreasonable Hospitality 33:55- Mission Calls Centuries Apart 38:10- Coming Back and Trying Again 39:59- Martyrs 42:41- The Magic of Real Places and Real Stories 46:23- President Hinckley's Mission Letter 52:07- Modern Latter-day Saints in Europe 57:55- The Power of Storytelling 1:04:12- What Does It Mean To Be All In the Gospel of Jesus Christ? "These differences within our families—our immediate families and within our larger human family—are what help us become like God is. We have to come in contact with people that are different than us and listen with those ears of the heart and learn to love each other better..." -Ann Rowan

24/09/2025

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1h 14m
10/01/2024

Tony Martin: Country Songs Written By a Seminary Teacher

Tony Martin, a Nashville songwriter who has written 16 #1 country music hits, is a believer as a songwriter that anything you're immersed in will show up in your writing. So, when you know that Martin has been called to be a seminary teacher three times and has taught Sunday School, it comes as no surprise that religious themes have, at times, snuck into the country songs he writes for a living. But on this week's episode, Martin talks about writing deliberately spiritual songs for the first time. 2:55- 'Just What My Dad Did' 6:37- A Songwriter's Process 12:40- Writing From Experience and Imagination 15:40- Criticisms and Evolution of Country Music 20:37- 'I Believe Him' 23:47- The Book of Mormon—An Addition 25:18- 'Old Man Said He Saw a Tree' 29:36- Jacob's Ladder and Working Out Your Own Salvation 33:03- The Horn Player 35:05- God Needs Drummers 38:56- The Lord Speaks To Everyone Differently 41:30- Giving Something Away For Nothing 45:31- What Does It Mean To Be All In the Gospel of Jesus Christ? "The Lord…wants good people to make music, the Devil doesn't need to have all the good things." —Tony Martin Witness: A Nashville Tribute to The Book of Mormon Spotify Deseret Book "Just to See Your Smile" See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

10/01/2024

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49 min
17/05/2023

Gaye Strathearn: Finding the Sacred in the Sabbath

Growing up in Australia, Gaye Strathearn faced a dilemma familiar to many faithful families: how to balance Sabbath day observance with the demands of the world. As a young girl, she worried that her non-member father might feel left out as the family spent hours at church. But as she grew older, Gaye began to see the Sabbath not as a burden but as a sacred opportunity to connect with God and with loved ones. Now, as a respected gospel scholar, Gaye has compiled a collection of essays exploring the commandment of the Sabbath from its origins on Sinai to its relevance in the 21st century. "If this is a part of our covenant journey, all of us are at different places on that covenant journey and our understanding of the Sabbath is going to be at different places. And so let's have people grow into their understanding." —Gaye Strathearn 8:39- Assumptions 11:34- The Way We Ask Questions 14:18- Why the Study of the Sabbath? 22:37- The Sabbath as a Covenant 31:40- The Modern Sabbath 36:48- Be Still and Know 43:42- Praise 49:24- The Opportunity to Worship 52:40- What Does It Mean To Be All In the Gospel of Jesus Christ? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

17/05/2023

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56 min
12/08/2020

Randal Wright: Learning and Improving through Life

Years ago, while sitting alone in a hospital waiting room as his wife had an emergency C-section, Randal Wright made a commitment to God as he called upon the powers of heaven to help his wife safely deliver their newborn child. In that commitment, he promised that for the rest of his life he would look for important lessons. Not only would he look for those lessons, he would record them and share them. The Lord protected and preserved the lives of Randal's wife and child, and in return, Randal has kept his promise to God. On today's episode, Randal reveals the power of sharing our experiences and learning from the experiences of others to inspire us to be better and live life to its fullest. "The first thing I say in the morning is 'I'm alive.'" Show Notes 3:21- Why Teach in Stories? 10:04- 3-Word Journal 18:24- Using Stories in Teaching Effectively 29:49- Integrity=Doing What You'll Say You Can Do 39:05- Early to Bed, Early to Rise 59:49- What Does It Mean to Be "All In" the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Find the full episode transcript at ldsliving.com/allin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

12/08/2020

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1h 3m
11/03/2020

Tshoper Kabambi: A Filmmaker's Dream

Carrying a television with a VHS player to school every day became second nature for Tshoper Kabambi. He and his classmates studied film by watching movies on that little TV, discussing everything from lighting to plot. Kabambi believed that if he could learn to tell a story through film, he could finally tell the story of the Congo through the eyes of someone who has lived it. "What I want is to show my people how beautiful they are—to show them how they can change their situation." Show Notes: 1:40- Life in the Congo 4:37- Conversion Through Dreams 13:02- A Latter-day Saint 15:07- A Big Ticket Premiere 18:20- The Power of Film 24:39- The Significance of Your Story 27:00- Challenges and Blessings as a New Member of the Church 29:34- What Does It Mean To Be "All In" the Gospel of Jesus Christ? 31:00- Testimony in French Find the full episode transcript at ldsliving.com/allin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

11/03/2020

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33 min
20/01/2020

Who Do You Think You Are?

Stories in this episode: When Christie and her brother are left to their own devices after school, their daring adventures at a local hospital lead to a little bit of trouble and a lifelong understanding of their true identity; Artist Kate struggles with her self-worth until an unusual assignment from her stake president leads to a different perspective about who she really is to God. SHOWNOTES: This episode is sponsored by Gospel Day by Day To see Kate Lee's artwork and Christie's books, check out our shownotes at LDSLiving.com/thisisthegospel. TRANSCRIPT: KaRyn 0:04 Welcome to "This is the Gospel," an LDS living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host KaRyn Lay. When I was a little girl, I had a deep sort of angst about my name. It's pronounced KaRyn, but if you're looking at it all written out, you'd probably read it, Karyn, at least all of my teachers did. In fact, when I introduced myself to people now, I always tell them that my name looks like Karyn because if they meet me in person, and then they get an email from me later, they're like, who is this Karyn lady? I've never even met her. So there's a capital 'R' in the middle just to make things even more confusing. And even though my parents swear that this name is an Irish name, I have literally never met another Irish KaRyn spelled the way that I spell it. And to be honest, I've never been to Ireland, and I don't know very many Irish people. So, if somebody is listening in Ireland, and you've met another KaRyn, please, please please email us. I would love to know that. Needless to say, when I was six years old, I decided that I needed a different name, a better name, a more beautiful name. And the most beautiful name that I could think of was Rose. I honestly don't even know where that came from. I don't know anyone named Rose. We don't have any Roses in my family. But I distinctly remember telling people that if they wanted me to respond to them, then they had to use my new name, my real name, Rose. And while clearly my renaming didn't stick, it stuck with me enough that I remember it even to this day. My longing to be someone other than plain old KaRyn lasted probably through middle school. And by the time I finally reconciled myself to my first name, and actually started to think it was pretty cool, it was my last name that wasn't cool enough. I mean, someday I was going to be discovered and taken to Broadway where I would star in Les Misérables and I definitely needed a cooler name than Daily, So I spent what seems like hours doodling my stage name, which was KaRyn Cavanaugh. Doesn't that sound so romantic? The good news is that I never made it to Broadway. And I eventually grew to love all the parts of my name, especially as I got older, and took on a new family name through marriage, I now see my name as this beautiful tribute to every single person who's ever loved me, and all the things that kept me grounded and make me who I am, and couldn't we all use just a little bit more grounding, a little more sense of ourselves in a world that is constantly challenging our identity in more ways than one. Well, today, we've got two very different stories that explore the question, the spiritual question, "who do you think you are?" And how claiming that true divine identity, our true divine identity, can give us strength and power to fulfill our personal mission here on this earth. Our first story comes from Christie whose unique childhood set her up for a lifetime of possibility. Here's Christie: Christie 3:07 In the middle of downtown Salt Lake is a neighborhood called the avenues and it's built on the hills, right above the valley. There are old houses all the way back to pioneer times -- big houses, little houses, old but they all look Victorian and kind of beautiful. To me it reminds me a little bit of Boston when you get right outside of the city. And that's where I grew up. I was older. My brother was four years old, and I was eight years old when we moved into this beautiful old house that had been in our family for years and years and years and was owned by my great uncle. He lived in a house about three blocks away. And this was just the house where he had raised his family and he wanted to keep it in the family. My mom was a recently single mother and that was a recent development. And here we were this mom in her 20s with these two little kids and she was just trying to make her way in the world. So my uncle was sharing his home with us. My great uncle was the most eccentric man you've ever met. He had a farm in downtown Salt Lake, he had terrorist the mountain all the way down into city Creek Canyon, which is this canyon right by the Capitol building, and he raised chickens and goats and had sheep in the middle of downtown. It was bizarre, but he was a really well known surgeon, and he was a cancer surgeon, and that's what he did. And he was just the most amazing man. He sang in the Tabernacle Choir with this huge voice but everyone who was anyone knew this guy. My great uncle and aunt were the closest to grandparents that I had near me; My grandparents all lived far away. And we were happy that in the middle of this really challenging time for our family, where we were going through the divorce of our parents, we had this additional family close by. So my mom worked a full time job and was trying to support these two little kids. So because our mom was away a lot working, we kind of had the house to ourselves a lot and we were left to our own crazy devices. And so my brother and I would go to school, and when he was in kindergarten, and I was in school, I would stop at the babysitter on the way home from kindergarten and pick him up. And we would go home and wait until our mom got home from work. So my brother and I would come home from school and have a lot of time to ourselves. We would do our homework, watch TV, we would practice the piano and then we had to make ourselves Dinner, so macaroni and cheese, tuna fish sandwiches, whatever leftover happened to be in the refrigerator. But unless we went over to our uncle's house, we didn't really get hot meals at night. But making stuff like that doesn't take too much time. And so, we had some extra time on our hands. And we were both little entrepreneurs so we would come up with all different ways to make money and we decided to start a business selling things to our neighbors. So we would cut all of the flowers out of our neighbor's garden and then bring them home and we knew that having a dozen roses was the thing. So we would put them in groups of 12 and then put them in our little red wagon and drive around and sell the neighbors their flowers back that we had just cut out of the yard. We would paint rocks and sticks and create things with a hot glue gun and then take those and sell them. We sold any canned good that we had, and we would take those door to door and sell them, and then we would share the profits and depending on who came up with the scheme, they got more of the profits, but I think if you asked my brother, he would probably say that I took the lion's share most of the time, so sorry to my brother. We didn't really know a lot of our neighbors. We knew some of them, but really not a lot. And we just had guts and would go right up to the door and try to sell our wares. And my brother and I just had a lot of hutzpah. We really never had any neighbors get mad at us for what we were doing or our crazy antics, or anything we decided to do when we put on plays in their yard, or we had a surprise party for our mother once where she had worked a full day at work a single mom, she comes home and her living room is full of these random neighbors from all around the Avenues who had no idea who she was, but we had hand delivered invitations to her birthday party. So I think she spent her 30th birthday party with total strangers. One time we sold some flowers to a family that we had cut out of their yard and the mom invited us in, she gave us some money, they were getting ready to leave, and there was just a little chaos in their house, and I think they forgot that there were these two children sitting in their foyer, and then everyone left and we went to their playroom and it was awesome. It had all of the best toys that we did not have at our house and it had this butcher paper that you could pull out of a roll from the wall and you could color all over it. And we just played and played and played and the people weren't even home and we didn't know them. And they were 18 blocks away from our house. We just decided we were done when it started to get dark and so we left the house grabbed our little red wagon -- wagoned home. So, with all of our sales, we really felt like we were making some money here and what did we want to do with it? We would go and buy penny candy at the Eighth Avenue store, and when that got to be old and we weren't so excited about buying penny candy anymore, we thought we don't want to make ourselves dinner anymore. Across the street from our house was a big hospital, LDS Hospital in downtown Salt Lake City. Let me describe this hospital. It's right in the middle of the Avenues. It's surrounded by houses, and I actually grew up with the sound of ambulances and helicopters landing medical helicopters to the point where when we finally moved from this house, I could not sleep. We moved to a neighborhood that was quiet and dark, and I missed the sound of the ambulances and the landing helicopters. And it kind of was a hub to us. We rode our bikes in the parking lot of the physician's office building. And it was kind of just a home base there. One day we decided to go into the hospital. And we started wandering through the halls and looking at everything and to our litt

20/01/2020

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40 min
17/07/2019

Corrine and Neil Stokoe: Finding Healing From Pornography Addiction

Mint Arrow is a well-known fashion deals blog and brand. Husband and wife duo, Neil and Corrine Stokoe, are the power couple behind the operation. But in a social media world that frequently presents the ideal as day-to-day reality, the couple recently opened up about an underlying struggle that couldn't be seen in their smiling faces: a battle against pornography addiction. "I had to get to know Jesus in a way that I wouldn't know Him if I hadn't gone through the steps and if I didn't feel so desperate that I really was saying, 'I will do anything to overcome this and to feel better and to find peace.'" -Corrine Stokoe Show Notes: 1:40- First Contact With Pornography/Talking With Kids About Pornography 7:21- Telling Corrine 20:10- Intimacy Vs. Lust 25:36- ARP: AA Meets The Gospel 37:18- Why Do You Need A Sponsor? 42:06- Why Do the 12 Steps as the Spouse of an Addict? 46:27- Surrendering to the Savior Through the 12 Steps 49:08- Grateful for Addiction 52:46- A Message to Those Struggling With Addiction Now 54:18- A Message to The Spouse of an Addict 56:55- What Does It Mean To You To Be All In the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Listen to the Mint Arrow Messages episode featuring Kristen Jenson, the author of "Good Pictures, Bad Pictures" by clicking here. Purchase "Good Pictures, Bad Pictures," here. Watch: What Should I Do When I See Pornography? for families Watch: The Church's new series about combating pornography Watch: Videos specifically for parents Watch: Videos specifically for spouses of pornography users Read Neil and Corrine's Real Life Love Story on Mint Arrow. Read Part Two of Neil and Corrine's Real Life Love Story. Listen to their story on Mint Arrow Messages. Listen to Part Two of Neil and Corinne's podcast episode about their experience. An introduction to Mandi and Court Gubler's story from the Deseret News. Listen to Corrine's recent interview with Mandi Gubler on Mint Arrow Messages. "We don't have to take things so personally. We take things to heart that we have no business taking to heart. For instance, saying "If you loved me you wouldn't drink" to an alcoholic makes as much sense as saying "If you loved me, you wouldn't cough" to someone who has pneumonia. Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same. When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don't love you—they are saying they don't love themselves."-Melody Beattie in "Codependent No More" Visit the Church's "Addressing Pornography" website. "We need to be more patient with the process. We need to worry less about the speed at which we are moving and more about the direction we are going. We will not fully realize our divine potential in this life. And while we need to make wise use of our time in our mortal existence, we should remember that God does not deal with time in the same way we do. In fact, time as we understand it may not bind Him at all. As Alma noted, 'Time only is measured unto men.' Because speed is a measure of distance over time, if time becomes less relevant, so does speed. Thus, in eternal things, such as our ongoing progress in becoming like God, direction is more important than speed. In the long run, the direction we are headed matters much more than the rate at which we are moving." Kevin Worthen, "Knowing Who You Are." Read Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's "Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence." Of all the illustrations of faith in the Lord, few stories are more powerful than that told of the pioneer who years later stood to defend the decision of the Martin Handcart Company to start for the Salt Lake Valley late in the year of 1856. He had been one of the nearly 3,000 Saints who walked from Iowa and Nebraska to Utah between 1856 and 1860 in one of 10 companies pushing and pulling handcarts loaded with their belongings. In a Sunday School class there was sharp criticism of the ill-fated Martin and Willie Handcart Companies, which met with tragedy because of their late start on the trek to the Salt Lake Valley. An elderly man arose and said: "I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts … give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. Mistake to send the Handcart Company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife … too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but … we became acquainted with [God] in our extrem[i]ties. "I have pulled my handcart when I was so weak and weary from illness and lack of food that I could hardly put one foot ahead of the other. I have looked ahead and seen a patch of sand or a hill slope and I have said, I can go that far and there I must give up, for I cannot pull the load through it. … I have gone on to that sand and when I reached it, the cart began pushing me. I have looked back many times to see who was pushing my cart, but my eyes saw no one. I knew then that the angels of God were there. "Was I sorry that I chose to come by handcart? No. Neither then nor any minute of my life since. The price we paid to become acquainted with God was a privilege to pay, and I am thankful that I was privileged to come in the Martin Handcart Company" (as quoted in David O. McKay, "Pioneer Women," The Relief Society Magazine, Jan. 1948, 8). Shared in the January 1997 Ensign. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

17/07/2019

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1h 1m
23/10/2018

Zandra Vranes of "Sistas In Zion" and Laurel Christensen Day: Racism In the Church

Zandra Vranes and Laurel Christensen Day's friendship requires a conscious, deliberate effort to create trust. In this episode, they talk with "All In" host Erin Hallstrom about why they have chosen to create a strong relationship and understanding with one another by refusing to shy away from difficult conversations. Vranes and Day discuss how racism is manifest in the Church today and what we can all do to help each other feel at home in the gospel of Jesus Christ. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

23/10/2018

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50 min
02/09/2020

Jared Halverson: Giving People the Benefit of Their Doubts

While pursuing a doctoral degree from Vanderbilt Divinity School where his studies have been focused on anti-religious rhetoric, Jared Halverson has simultaneously sought to help students who wrestle with questions and doubts about the restored gospel. And while many say that divinity school tends to weaken faith, he says he has only become more convinced of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. "The Father of every prodigal is still staring out the window waiting for any movement home." Show Notes 3:30- A Desire to Understand People's Questions 7:05- How Do People Attack One Another Over Issues of Faith? 10:42- Is There Such a Thing as Anti-Religious Rhetoric? 13:54- "Where Faith and Doubt Mingle" 16:19- Lowest Possible Floor, Infinitely High Ceiling 19:38- Stages of Faith 25:28- "How Deep Do the Cracks Go?" 32:25- Starting From Ground Zero 38:54- Still the People We've Always Loved 42:41- "We Believe that He Will Yet Reveal…" 50:26- What Does It Mean To Be "All In" the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Find the full episode transcript at ldsliving.com/allin. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

02/09/2020

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54 min
11/11/2019

The Kindness of Strangers

Stories in this episode: Crishelle and her friends' trip through Europe is threatened by a traveler's worst nightmare until a group of Swiss sisters steps up to help; When Elisha's newborn is hospitalized, prayers from a local Baptist church help her to keep going; After moving to the US to fulfill her dream of attending BYU, Michelle receives unexpected help in her search for a place to live; Lillie gets a second chance at a life-long goal thanks to a complete stranger. SHOW NOTES: Today's episode was sponsored by TOFW. To see pictures, and find links to things mentioned in this episode, go here. Special thanks to Davi Johnson. TRANSCRIPT: KaRyn Lay: Welcome to This Is the Gospel, an LDS Living podcast where we feature real stories from real people who are practicing and living their faith every day. I'm your host, KaRyn Lay. If you spend any amount of time reading, watching or listening to the news, you may like me, find yourself wondering, "Where is the good in this world?" I don't think that it is overstating things to say that the way that we consume media has changed and sometimes it can feel like all we're getting is the bad news. Well, a few years ago, in response to some particularly difficult or traumatic time, there was this meme that started to make the rounds on social media. Maybe you'll remember it. It had this picture of Mr. Rogers from "Mr. Rogers Neighborhood," looking as kind and as thoughtful as he ever had. And it said, "When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, 'Look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping.'" While this quote was specific to helping our children process traumatic events in the news, and was meant to be part of a larger conversation, I was moved by the reminder that in times of darkness, we can find the light if we open our eyes to see it. The helpers. Look for the helpers. Well, today we have four short and sweet stories about those moments when the helpers show up. Moments when our collective kindness trumps our fear or discomfort and offers us opportunities to show God's love to someone we might not know. Our first story comes from Chrishelle. You may remember Chrishelle from one of our earlier episodes, she has such a unique name. It was called "The Strength to Forgive." And in that episode, she shared a lovely story about the power of forgiveness to heal us. Well, this time she has a story about a different kind of spiritual adventure. One where she had to accept the kindness of strangers when she was traveling in a foreign land. Here's Crishelle: Crishelle: After I graduated from college, I had an opportunity to join two of my friends that I had worked with through college, to go to Europe. And we were going to be gone for a whole month. And what was really awesome about this trip is we were going to travel all through Europe and see all of these amazing things that we'd all wanted to see. But we were also going to get to do some work with the refugees. My friend's sister worked for a refugee organization in Greece, and we had the opportunity to take supplies over to them and to spend some time just meeting some of the families that they'd been working with. It was so humbling to meet these families that had lost everything and to sit with them as they told us about their story and as they told us about their lives in Greece. And they told us how they were waiting to hear if they could join family and loved ones in other parts of Europe and throughout the world. It was just really a beautiful experience, so humbling and truly wonderful. Probably the highlight of the trip. Because we were taking these supplies over, it worked best to rent a car and to take our luggage around that way. That way we weren't checking bags all the time. And so we traveled through Europe in a car and it was such an adventure. We left Greece and went to Italy. And we decided to spend three days in Rome seeing everything we possibly could and it was so fun. We ate tons of gelato, we saw everything we possibly could. And our last day in Rome, we packed up our stuff to leave our hostel. And I had this thought while we were packing up, "Maybe we should leave our stuff at the hostel." And then I was like, No, that's silly. That will take so much time to come back. Like, let's just pack our stuff up. We'll go to the Vatican will be super smart about where we park, we'll make sure that it's not a sketchy area and it will be fine. Everything will be fine. And so we packed up all our stuff in our car and we drove to the Vatican and we drove around the Vatican a couple of times just to find the safest parking spot. And we did, we found one right next to the Vatican police and the Italian military were across the street. And while we were parking couple policemen drove by. And maybe that should have been a sign, but we took it as like, you know, heaven-sent, we're like "Oh, we'll totally be good. Everything will be wonderful. Let's run in and toward the Vatican." And we went and saw the Sistine Chapel, which was as beautiful as I imagined and St. Peter's Basilica. I am still blown away as I remember how big and grand that cathedral is. We were feeling a little anxious so we quickly left after our tour was over and we came back to our car and as we turned the corner, something felt off. We like hesitantly approached our car and as we did, we noticed that one of the little windows had been broken. Everything was gone. Everything. They'd taken all of our luggage, and all we had left was what we were carrying. That meant that one of my friends lost her passport. We lost laptops, I lost my retainer, which is so silly, but that was the worst thing ever because it's just gonna be sitting in a dumpster somewhere like that doesn't even matter to anyone. And it was so heartbreaking. In the moment, we lost everything. And we had no friends in this area, we had no one to reach out to, we couldn't just like call our parents. It was earth-shattering. It was one of those moments where like, please tell me that this is a joke. Unfortunately, it wasn't. We were so grateful that it wasn't like our lives or anything worse than that, but this was pretty tragic for us. We still had two and a half weeks of this trip. And we now just have what we're carrying. And so we prayed, we went and asked the Vatican police and they told us, "No, we don't help with those kinds of things." We went and asked the military guys across the street and they're like, "No, we don't speak English." And we found the police station and they weren't the most helpful or kind. And it was really hard. And we felt so lost and we felt so alone. Being robbed, I didn't think that it would be such a violating experience, but I felt so violated. I felt so vulnerable because these things that I had brought in order to take care of myself were now gone. We regrouped, we tried to go to the embassy, we weren't able to get to the embassy that day. And then we decided you know what, the most important thing for us to do right now is to go get some gelato, and to buy some toothpaste, and three toothbrushes and to leave Rome. We need to just leave Rome and we'll figure everything else out tomorrow. And so we did that. We went and got our gelato, and we found a pharmacy that thankfully somehow had the contacts that my friend needed. It was such a miracle, just the exact right prescription for her. And we left, we left Rome behind us. We traveled up to northern Italy and spent a couple of days up there. And it was Baptism by fire in minimalism. We went from having everything we possibly needed to, we were washing our clothes every night. It was such an adventure. Just that time it was just so funny, it was like the joke is always on us because we lost everything and it's okay, we were making it work. We eventually left Italy and we went up to Switzerland and we were getting to Switzerland on a Sunday. We had been planning on camping in Switzerland, but all of our stuff had been stolen, so that plan was out the window. We thankfully were able to make some arrangements for sleeping. Mostly, we were just determined to continue on and to have a good time. We went to a farmer's market and got little dresses and skirts super cheap. And I'm sure we looked like bums and stuck out like sore thumbs. And we went to church the next day. After sacrament, the Relief Society president came up to us and she said, "Are you the girls that got robbed?" And we were like, "Yeah, we did. We are those girls." We'd reported it and told her story on social media, mostly in like joking terms of we got robbed and Joke's on us, but we're still having the best time. As the Relief Society president explained, she had heard about us. She'd heard that we were coming and that we were planning on coming to church. And she had asked all of the women in her ward of early society to bring their extra clothes that they're getting rid of, and to bring anything that three girls traveling through Europe that didn't have anything might need. And she took us into this room and there were piles of clothes, and a suitcase and shoes and socks. Switzerland was a bit chillier than everywhere else we'd been. And we didn't have our jackets and coats like we'd packed. And she said, "This is for you girls, take what you need." It was really difficult to receive it. Our first reaction was to be like, "No, we don't need this." Somewhere in my head, and looking back, it was probably the spirit reminded me that often the greatest gift we can give to people is to receive the help that they're offering. And I just looked her in the eyes and I said, "Thank you." And it was so humbling. And in that moment, I also thought of the refugees that we had seen and I remembered how difficult it was for them to receive the help that they so desperately needed. And in no way were we refugees, in no way were we in the same situation as those refug

11/11/2019

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39 min

LDS Living podcasts bring you faith-filled stories, ideas, and inspiration from Latter-day Saints around the world who are practicing and living their religion every day. From interviews with Latter-day Saints about what being “all in” means to them to beautiful stories of faith, you can trust LDS Living podcasts to bring important conversations and powerful examples of discipleship directly to you—whenever and wherever you need it most.

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