Elder Gerrit W. Gong Of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said in the Sunday morning session of October 2022 general conference:
. . . True, enduring joy and eternity with those we love are the very essence of God’s plan of happiness.
Friends, dear brothers and sisters, do you remember believing, or wanting to believe, in happily ever after?
Then life happens. We “grow up.” Relationships get complicated. This world is noisy, crowded, pushy, with pretense and posturing. Yet, in our “deep heart’s core,”1 we believe, or want to believe, somewhere, somehow, happy and forever are real and possible.
“Happy and forever” are not the imaginary stuff of fairy tales. True, enduring joy and eternity with those we love are the very essence of God’s plan of happiness. His lovingly prepared way can make our eternal journey happy and forever.
We have much to celebrate and for which to be grateful. Yet, none of us is perfect, nor is any family. Our relationships include love, sociality, and personality but often also friction, hurt, sometimes profound pain.
“For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”2 Alive in Jesus Christ includes immortality—His gift of our physical resurrection. As we live with faith and obedience, alive in Christ can also include joyfully abundant eternal life with God and those we love.
In a remarkable way, the Lord’s prophet is drawing us closer to our Savior, including through sacred temple ordinances and covenants coming closer to us in more places. We have a profound opportunity and gift to discover new spiritual understanding, love, repentance, and forgiveness with each other and our families, in time and eternity.
By permission, I share two sacred, unusually spiritually direct experiences told by friends about Jesus Christ uniting families by healing even intergenerational conflict.3 “Infinite and eternal,”4 “stronger than the cords of death,”5 Jesus Christ’s Atonement can help us bring peace to our past and hope to our future.
When they joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, my friend and her husband joyfully learned family relationships need not be “until death do you part.” In the house of the Lord, families can be united eternally (sealed).
But my friend did not want to be sealed to her father. “He was not a nice husband to my mother. He was not a nice dad to his children,” she said. “My dad will have to wait. I do not have any desire to do his temple work and be sealed with him in eternity.”
For a year, she fasted, prayed, spoke a lot with the Lord about her father. Finally, she was ready. Her father’s temple work was completed. Later, she said, “In my sleep my dad appeared to me in a dream, all dressed in white. He had changed. He said, ‘Look at me. I am all clean. Thank you for doing the work for me in the temple.’” Her father added, “Get up and go back to the temple; your brother is waiting to be baptized.”
My friend says, “My ancestors and those that have passed on are eagerly waiting for their work to be done. For Elder Gong’s complete talk click. . . ‘Happy and Forever’ or turn to page 83 of the October (general conference) issue of the Ensign.
