When Paris was fourteen, Mormon missionaries were tracting through the neighborhood. This means they were going door to door asking people if they’d like to learn about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is the real name of the church. Mormon is just a nickname.

His friends teased him about having two white men coming to the house, thinking they were police officers. Paris wasn’t interested in the gospel message the missionaries were giving his family, but finally the missionaries told him that if he wanted to know what was true, he needed to ask God, who is the only source of truth. So Paris did. The answer he got was a feeling of joy, love, and peace, a new experience for him.

How did this change Paris’ life? As he built his testimony and learned more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, he started to understand he was on earth for a reason and God had a plan for him. His brother had died at age eighteen and he hadn’t felt there was much hope for himself either. Now he knew differently. He knew who he was—a child of God—and why he was here.

His mother had lost two sons but she can see she isn’t going to lose Paris. He’s back in school, doing well, and making something of himself. He says he does not want to blame his circumstances for anything—he’s better than his circumstances. In fact, he feels the poverty and the homelessness, the grief of losing his siblings and having a father who was arrested…all those things that often make people give up…have actually made him stronger and helped him become the good man he is. He hopes he can help other people who face similar challenges to move beyond those trials and into something better, just as he is doing.

Meet Paris for yourself. He’s a man worth meeting.

At first, he thought his life was pretty much over because he could never be happy again or do anything important. But then he decided that if he was alive, he was going to be really alive. He was married and had children, so he went back to being a father and a husband. He even wrote a book.

His son was sixteen when the accident happened and was bodysurfing with his father when the accident happened. His life changed a lot too that day and many teens in his situation would probably think their life was pretty unfair now, too. He had to spend a lot of time taking care of his father. Probably there wasn’t as much money in the house either. Instead of whining though, he worked at getting really good at taking care of his dad and then decided to use those new skills by choosing to become a doctor working in emergency rooms. He noticed that his dad was willing to work hard and have a good attitude during trials, so when he faced trials of his own, he would remind himself to do the same.

How do you handle the hard stuff in your own life? Do you whine and feel sorry for yourself or do you look for a way to get something good out of it? I think most of us whine sometimes, but if that’s all we ever do, we’re really going to waste a great life. Mormon beliefs teach that God created us to have joy. That’s easy on the great days, but no one has great days all the time. The real test of how much we trust God to help us be joyful is on the bad days.

Would you be joyful if you knew you’d never be able to move again? What if you had to spend your teen years taking care of a disabled parent? What if you had to cope with a learning disability, or being poor, or losing a parent? None of those things are easy and it’s natural to be sad or even angry for a while about all those things. That’s called the grieving process and it’s important. But it’s also important that eventually, you move on and go back to being joyful, even if your circumstances don’t change.

The scriptures are full of stories of people, including teenagers, who had hard lives and went on to do great things. Sometimes having trials gives us that extra courage, strength, and motivation to do things we never thought we could, if we decide that’s what we’re going to let the trials do for us. Reading those stories and the stories of modern people with trials can give us examples to follow. Sometimes, when life is really too hard, we need to talk to a responsible adult, like a parent, church leader, or school counselor. Some problems really require some extra help.

Try it today. Whether your trials are big or small, choose one of them. Ask yourself what you could learn from the trial to make you a better person. Ask yourself if there is something in that trial that you can use to help others. (The author I mentioned wrote a book to help people like him and his son became a doctor to help people like his dad.)

Now decide how your attitude about your trial is going to have to change. For instance, I have learning disabilities. Instead of saying, “Oh, I have dysgraphia so I can’t do much,” I say, “I have dysgraphia. I can do anything other people do, but I might have to do it differently and work harder at it. But that’s fine. It will help me learn to find creative ways to solve problems and to learn not to give up when things are hard.”

Can you see how that attitude can change the way you attack your life? Attack it with joy and a great attitude and you’ll be surprised how much more fun it is to get up every morning.

This is what happened to a teenager named Moroni. His instructions came through his father, the prophet Mormon, who started the project, but who was murdered before he could finish it. Knowing he would be killed, he passed along the assignment to his son.

This was his assignment: Since his people had come to the Americas, the prophets had kept records of the history of the people and had recorded God’s instructions and interactions. These records were not given to their own people, however. The prophets were instructed to record only those things which would be of value to people in a time no one could even imagine.

However, over the centuries the records had become too large. Mormon was told by God to condense them, which means to take out anything that wasn’t important or that was repeated too often. The entire record needed to fit onto one set of metal plates, since they didn’t have paper books then.

Mormon’s people were called the Nephites. Their ancestor, Nephi, had been a prophet, receiving his first revelations when he was just a teenager. His older brothers, however, were nasty people and were mad that an angel had told them Nephi would one day rule over them. They were so mad, they regularly beat him, tied him up, and even tried to kill him. Can you imagine being part of that family? Eventually, after the boys grew up and the parents died, they split into two groups. Nephi’s group became known as the Nephites and they were usually, but not always, the people who obeyed God. His brother’s group was called the Lamanites, after the oldest brother, Laman. They were mostly as mean as Laman. In time, both groups became giant civilizations, but they were always at war. Just like their ancestors, the Lamanites wanted to do away with all the Nephites.

God promised the Nephite prophets that if their people did what they were supposed to and obeyed and loved God, He wouldn’t let them be completely destroyed. Unfortunately, by the time Mormon was a prophet, the Nephites had pretty much stopped caring about God. Since they weren’t making good choices, they lost God’s protection and the Lamanites started a terrible war against them. Almost all the Nephites were killed. As the numbers got smaller and smaller, Mormon and Moroni spent a lot of time taking care of the survivors, but eventually Mormon died. Since the record doesn’t mention Moroni’s mother or siblings, we can assume they died earlier in the battles. Moroni mentioned he no longer had any family or friends.

Moroni was only a teenager when all this happened. He had already been a soldier in the wars. He had buried his entire family and seen all his friends die. Now he cared for the remaining survivors until they were also killed.

Moroni couldn’t leave, though. His work still wasn’t done. He went into hiding and took out the records his father had been working on. He finished creating the shortened version and added more information of his own. Try to imagine being hidden away, perhaps in a cave, all alone. You have to sneak out at night to find your food, because everyone who is left alive wants to murder you. Sometimes angels pay you a visit and take care of you in ways you can’t do yourself, but mostly you’re alone, missing your family and friends, wanting to have fun…and not being able to do anything but your work.

What did Moroni think about in those hours? Did he look at the book and wonder why it was so important to go through this terrible trial just for a book? He wrote that he felt like he knew all of us because God had shown our day to him. We became his friends, even though we lived in very different times. His entire reason for living was to give us an extraordinary gift that would change millions of lives.

He wrote that once the record was done, he didn’t know if God would allow him to continue living or not, or where he could go, but that he was so lonely, he didn’t care. What mattered was to finish God’s work. When it was done, he placed it in a box and secretly buried it in a hill in what is now New York State. Then he slipped away. We don’t know where he went during that time, but eventually, he secretly slipped back into the area to discover he was still being hunted, that people still wanted to kill him. He dug the book back up and wrote more of God’s instructions, mentioning that he was surprised he was still alive.

Then he hid the book one last time and went away in the dark of the night. We don’t know what happened to him during the rest of his life or even if he got out of town safely. We do know what happened to him long after he died.

The next article will tell you about that.

Sometimes it’s fun to read those stories and wonder how we’d react in the same situation. Would we stay true to what we believe even when our lives were threatened? Would we continue to live the way God has taught us to live no matter how much pressure there was to stop living that way? Would we be cheerful in the face of adversity?

We may not be asked to walk across country or flee our home while murderers chase after us. Some of us won’t face open prejudice and hatred. And yet, there will always be people who think our standards are old-fashioned and stupid, and who will pressure us to give them up. The pressure might be less noticeable, less violent, but it is there. In many ways, it’s harder to fight the less fierce forms of prejudice and pressure than it is a mob with guns. It’s sometimes said that it’s not nearly as hard to die for our religion as it is to live for it.

What does that mean? It means that if someone says, “Deny your religion or I’ll kill you,” you are likely to find that moment of courage to say, “I won’t deny it.” You’ll die, but it only takes a moment of courage and then you’re with God. However, when someone pressures you day after day to smoke or drink or dress immodestly, when people all around you are swearing or cheating or gossiping, when everyone but you gets to go play on Sunday…that can be hard. The little day to day pressures can wear you down faster than a gun pointed at you for a few minutes.

Today’s pioneer is asked to blaze a new trail, not a physical one leading west, but a trail of faith and morality. There used to be one, but it’s become overgrown with weeds and brush and so-called civilization. It’s up to those of us who still care what God teaches to clear that path, get on it, and stay on it. We can set an example that will encourage our friends to join us. If enough people do that, there can be more people on the trail than off it.

There is a story in the book of Mormon about a man named Lehi. He saw a vision in which there was a beautiful tree that represented God’s love. Anyone who made his way to the tree and ate the fruit that grew on it would enjoy more happiness than anyone could imagine. There was a path and many people got on it. However, a deep fog came up and many got lost, wandering off the path. There was an iron rod, representing God’s word, that the walkers could grab onto. If they held on they couldn’t get lost. Not everyone did, but those who did got to the tree and ate the fruit.

But then something interesting happened. There was a large and fancy building on a hill nearby. At the windows of the building were people in fancy clothes and elegant hairstyles. They stood there making fun of all the people who ate the fruit. Some people wisely ignored them, but others got embarrassed at being made fun of. They rushed off the path and ran to the building to join the people in it. They became mockers, too, wanting to be part of the rich “popular” crowd more than they wanted to be part of God’s inner-circle. They were willing to give up all the eternal blessings of Heaven to get a few years of popularity.

How about you? If you were on that path, would you give in to the mocking or would you stay on that path and do what you knew was right? Would you settle for a lifetime of pretend happiness or hold out for an eternity of real joy, even if it meant being made fun of today? Are you willing to be lonely if necessary for a while, remembering that someday you’ll never be lonely again? Are you willing to put up with the teasing or a less popular crowd if that’s required? Most importantly, are you willing to hang on to a good attitude even when your trials aren’t your fault?

All those things can set an example for others. You’ll be the one leading the way and you may be surprised to discover others find themselves anxious to join you when they see how happy and fulfilled you are on your special path. You never know who is watching, so be brave and be a pioneer.