This isn’t an easy decision and many Mormons choose college instead. However, Simms has a track record of putting God first. Despite the demands of high school and football, the Southe Point, South Carolina teenager got up early every morning to attend a before-school off-campus class about religion. The class, called Seminary, trains high school students in the scriptures canonized by Mormons. Two years are spent on the Bible, one on the Doctrine and Covenants, and one on the Book of Mormon. He has been preparing for this mission all his life by choosing to live a morally clean life despite the usual challenges of peer pressure and by studying his faith.

Initially, he intended to leave on his mission when he was nineteen, the minimum age for male missionary service. However, recently, Mormons lowered the ages of missionary service for both men and women. Men can now leave on their missions as soon as they are eighteen if they have graduated from high school. While they can also choose to leave later, Alex Simms decided to take advantage of the earlier date. His parents left the decision to him. Missionary service is encouraged, but not required. When he returns from his mission, he will choose a college and return to football.

Read about Alex Simms’ Mormon mission

Mormon missions are an important coming-of-age experience for young Mormons. At a time when most young people are focused on parties and dates, at an age when some are making choices that ruin or end their lives, young Mormons agree to spend a few years focused on nothing but serving Jesus Christ.  They live by very strict rules—no dating, no secular music or television, no internet except for church-approved online missionary work and weekly emails to their parents, and no video games. They rise early and work hard all day. They live on a tight budget and when not teaching the gospel or studying it, they are expected to serve others. They have one day a week off in which to do laundry, chores, and perhaps a game of basketball to stay in shape.

This time develops self-discipline, independence, and a sense of accomplishment that pays off in their adult lives. It helps to explain why Mormons do so well in business. (See Mormons in Business.) It also explains why young adult Mormons are more likely to remain active in their faith than are other young adults. They had the opportunity to spend a few years focused entirely on Jesus Christ and the teachings of their faith. Because they are never alone—they share an apartment with another missionary of the same gender and the two stay together at all times—and partnerships are rotated regularly, they learn to live with others who have different personalities and preferences. This enhances their relationship skills and prepares them for marriage, which requires the ability to share your life with someone who is not just like you. Mormons who marry in the Mormon temple have a lower rate of divorce than other segments of the American population. Living in a new country or state helps them to be more flexible and accepting of others.

However, the primary purpose of the mission is to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. Young Mormons are expected to learn about their faith and to pray to God for a testimony of it. Then they take that God-given testimony to the world and help others to discover what they know. It is a unique opportunity for young people to escape the self-centered life of young adulthood and focus on the greater good of the world.

Learn more about Mormon missionaries.

And he’s a Mormon. There is a Book of Mormon in his backpack and Jabari considers his religion more important than his basketball. He says that playing basketball is only what he does, not who he is. He finds a lot of people are surprised to find out he’s Mormon because he lives in Chicago and is black, so he says he spends a lot of time clearing up the stereotypes. His father is not Mormon, but his mother is and the children were raised Mormon. Jabari’s older brother served a volunteer two-year mission for the Mormons when he was nineteen and strongly encourages his brother to do the same, saying it was the greatest experience of his life. His mother also served a mission.

The Sports Illustrated story notes that Jabari is different from most other young stars. He’s just not that interested in the fame part of his life. When the reporter tried to catch him after a game, he couldn’t find him with the other players, who were flirting with girls and soaking in attention. Instead, he found him handing out water to the JV team, far from the media and the girls.

Jabari feels he has a moral responsibility to set a good example to other teens and to children who are fans. He knows they are watching and that some will make choices based on how he behaves. He knows he has the power to make a difference.

Jabari learned how to play basketball at the church. Most Mormon buildings contain a cultural hall which also doubles as a gym. The gyms usually have a basketball net and most congregation have teams for their teens, both boys and girls, and sometimes for adults as well. His father took him to the church early in the morning to practice and the boys had their own church keys so they could practice safely early in the morning or late at night. Because Jabari grew up in a very dangerous neighborhood, he found in the church building a safe harbor. Because the building was filled with pictures of Jesus Christ, he and his brother felt a strong spiritual spirit and found themselves unwilling to do the kinds of things they might do somewhere else. Their practices at the church kept them morally safe, as well as physically safe.

His parents helped set priorities. They made it clear to the high school coach that Jabari was a student and a Mormon first, which meant he was expected to get good grades and to attend church. Basketball had a lower priority than either of those things, an attitude which surprised their coach, who was more accustomed to parents who wanted to make sure their child became a sports star. Sunday practices are scheduled after Jabari’s three hours of church meetings and when he travels, the coach makes sure he gets to church. He has even skipped celebrations to get home for special church events, such as the day he received a priesthood advancement at church. (All worthy Mormon men can receive the priesthood at age twelve and advance through several levels.)

Mormon teens who achieve fame and success at a young age face a great many challenges, but the gospel helps teens like Jabari to focus on what really matters in the long run. A basketball career might last a few years, but his identity as a Christian will last forever.

Read the article on Jabari Parker in Sports Illustrated

The audience cheered for him as he made his announcement. He explained that no one had asked him to serve a mission. He had felt strongly that this is something he needed to do and he had learned to listen to these types of promptings when they happened. He did not announce where he was going but did say he’d be leaving after the first of the year.

Mormon missions are voluntary. They aren’t required, but many young adult men and women serve them. Men can serve for two years at age 19, and women serve for eighteen months when they are twenty-one. They pay their own way and serve wherever they are needed. Some serve in their own countries, but others go to foreign lands. During their time, they learn the language of their mission and live as the natives do, which means they sometimes live very primitively. They follow very strict rules, going to bed early, getting up early, and living on a tight budget. There is no dating and music and books are limited to a strict list of religious media. They spend nearly all their time teaching about religion, finding people to teach, studying their religion, or serving others in need. The men wear suits and the women wear dresses.

Why would any young adult want to live like this—and pay for the privilege—at a time most young people are dating, going to school, starting careers, or just having fun? They do it because they love Jesus Christ and want to share what they know about Him. They understand how God has blessed them and how being a Mormon has affected their lives and they want others to have those same blessings.

Although they aren’t paid for their work in money, there are other rewards for serving as a missionary. Missionaries develop a great deal of self-discipline because of the very strict rules they follow. Because they are assigned to a companion they room with and spend all their time with, and because those companions are regularly rotated, they learn to get along with all sorts of people and to adjust to being with another person all the time, a skill that is great preparation for marriage and parenthood. They learn to budget and to live inexpensively, as well as to take care of themselves and their homes. They develop leadership skills and learn to be comfortable meeting and talking to strangers. All these things make them valuable students, employees, and spouses when they return.

Spiritually, having a few years to focus exclusively on God and Jesus Christ is an amazing opportunity. Very few of them will ever again be able to give so much attention to their spiritual development. They learn the gospel extremely well, memorize scriptures, learn how to explain their beliefs, and strengthen their testimonies. They become comfortable talking about Jesus Christ.

How would it affect your life if you were to—at your own expense—spend two years teaching others about Jesus Christ or doing volunteer work under very strict rules. How would it make you different from your peers? David Archuleta is about to find out.

Jane Elizabeth Manning, black Mormon pioneer

Jane Elizabeth Manning didn’t have an easy start in life. She was an African American when slavery was still legal. She had never been a slave, but she was sent away from home to work for a wealthy white family when she was only six years old. She lived in the home of her employer and the adult daughter in the home raised her—as a servant, not a daughter. Can you imagine being sent to live away from home and to work full-time when you’re so little?

When Jane was fourteen years old, she wanted to join a church. She chose the Presbyterian Church, but somehow felt it still wasn’t quite what she was looking for. One day, about a year and a half later, she heard that some Mormon missionaries were going to be preaching in the area. She mentioned it to her pastor, who ordered her not to go hear them, but she went anyway. As soon as she heard the things they taught, she knew it was exactly what she’d been searching for and she asked if she could be baptized. After her baptism, she went to work and helped many members of her family to join the church as well. Even though she was only a teenager, she was already showing that she had great leadership skills.

Today, Mormons stay wherever they lived before they were baptized. They live all over the world. But then, when the church was new, it was different. There weren’t that many Mormons and it was hard to communicate with them if they were spread all over the world. Since the church was new, everyone needed a lot of education to really understand what their church taught. It was easier to keep them all in one place. When people joined the church, they usually moved to wherever the church was in those days. Since Joseph Smith officially opposed slavery, black Mormons were welcome to live among the Mormons.

Jane had helped bring eight other members of her family to join the Mormon Church. There weren’t many Black Mormons then—they might have been the only ones in their area, since they were the only ones who traveled to the Mormons in their group. They started out in a racially mixed group, but when they reached the ferry, the company wanted the black Mormons to pay up front instead of at the other end as the rest did. Apparently, they expected to have money for the ferry at the other end of the trip—perhaps Mormons there paid it—and so they didn’t have the money to go on. Although the white Mormons were allowed on the ferry, the black Mormons were forced to walk the rest of the way. It was an eight hundred mile journey. Without question, that was a difficult trip, although, since Jane would later join the trek to Utah, it was probably good practice.

They had not come prepared to walk so far. They didn’t have enough supplies or the right clothing. Still, they never thought to turn back. They were determined to get to the Mormons. It was Jane, still a teenager, who led the group, even though many of the people in the group—including her mother—were adults. Since she began the trip about a year after her baptism, I’m guessing she was about sixteen when she led eight other people on a long journey.

It was October and very cold. Their feet starting bleeding so badly they could make a complete footprint in the snow that was covered in blood. They stopped and prayed until the feet healed. They didn’t have warm enough clothing and they were often very hungry. Instead of complaining about the conditions or the way they had been treated, they sang hymns as they walked.

They ran into a very scary and dangerous situation in Peoria, Illinois. When the officials saw a group of black people in ragged clothing traveling on foot together, they decided the people were runaway slaves. They demanded to see their freedom papers, proof that they had been freed from slavery by their masters. However, none of them had ever been slaves, so they didn’t have those papers. They tried to explain they were black Mormons traveling to Nauvoo, but it took a long time before anyone believed them and they were allowed to go.

Now they were scared. Every day they worried that they would be arrested again, maybe even made slaves, but they kept right on going, singing and praying. Finally they reached Nauvoo, the Mormon city. The little group of black Mormons was exhausted and hungry. The first person they saw told them to go right to Joseph Smith’s house. When they got to the house, his wife Emma was at the doorway. She saw them coming and asked them to come into the house. Joseph Smith was home and quickly added chairs to his dinner table and made sure they were fed their first good meal in a very long time. He moved his own chair to sit by Jane, because he had learned she was their leader. He asked her to tell him the story of how the group arrived there and what had happened to them.

Joseph and Emma invited the group to stay as guests in their home until they’d found jobs and homes of their own. It only took a week for everyone to find a job and a home—except for Jane. There seemed to be no jobs available for this teenager with so much courage and leadership. When she realized she was the only one left without a home or job, she began to cry. Joseph found her crying and reassured her she wouldn’t be put out on the street. Then he and his wife offered her a job with them. Emma asked her what she could do and she listed all her homemaking skills. (Remember she had been a household servant since she was six. It was her career.) She offered to start right away, but Emma insisted she rest and start in the morning. Since Jane liked doing laundry, that was what she was assigned to do first. In later years, when she found herself having to support herself and her children, she would take in laundry to earn money.

Jane continued to live with Joseph Smith and his family. When Joseph was murdered, the black Mormon woman moved into the home of Brigham Young and worked for him. Her brother would end up working for both Mormon prophets as well. When the Mormons went to Utah, Jane traveled in a lead group with Brigham Young’s household and would be one of the first people in the state. Her child would be the first Black Mormon born there.

Jane Elizabeth Manning was an amazing woman. She was always giving to help with special church projects, and when her friend had no food, Jane insisted on giving the woman half of her own, even though she herself had very little to feed her family. She became such an important person that she and her brother were given reserved seats at the front and center of the tabernacle for all important meetings. When she died, the prophet himself spoke at her funeral.

But it all started because Jane Elizabeth Manning was a teenager with courage, faith, and leadership skills. She stayed active in her church all her life and said at the end of it that her testimony was as strong as it had been when she was baptized. She was proud to be black, to be Mormon, and to be a black Mormon…a Mormon who has become a treasured part of Mormon history.

Mormon history should be very interesting to teenagers because so much of it involves teenagers. How many teenagers do you know who got to make history? Lots of Mormon teenagers did. In past blog entries, I’ve talked about Joseph Smith, the first president and prophet of the Mormons. Mormon history begins with him, and he was only a teenager when the story began. I’ve also talked about teenage pioneers from Mormon history. Some of them kept journals and many of them wrote their stories later, so today, we know the important role of teens in Mormon history. They were often heroes and Mormon history is filled with stories of their sacrifices and challenges. But you won’t find any of those wonderful teenagers in the typical history book. In fact, school textbooks often overlook the amazing contributions of teenagers in general.

How do we know about most of these teenagers in Mormon history? We know about most of them through their journals and personal histories. They didn’t know, when they were pioneers, that they were becoming part of American history and they never guessed their journals would be read and admired in our time. Do you keep a journal? Your life might look pretty ordinary to you, but in one hundred years, your experiences will seem amazing to people living in that time. They will be amazed at the hardships you faced without their technology and at your ability to get through hard moral times with your testimony of Jesus Christ intact and your values strong. Do a good job with your journal—and tell the truth—and you might become part of history. If you’re Mormon, make sure your journal includes lots of information about your life as a Mormon, because you just might find yourself a part of Mormon history.

I’m going to tell you now a little about a Mormon teenager from Mormon history who kept a great journal. The next entry will tell you about another teenager, although she didn’t keep a journal—but she did dictate her history to someone before she died. But today’s story is about a teenager named Jebulon Jacobs, a pioneer driver. Yes, he became famous for driving—but only because he kept a really great journal. His journal shows he had worked hard to learn good writing skills and he understood how to tell a great story. If you want to be remembered in Mormon history, learn how to write.

Jeb, as he was known, was a driver. Brigham Young, the second Mormon prophet, knew teenagers loved to drive then, just as they do today. So when he needed people to drive, he chose teens. Of course, they weren’t driving cars back then. They drove wagons and carriages pulled by horses. But it was driving all the same, and teen Mormon boys loved doing it.

Even after the first Mormon pioneers came to Utah, there were always new pioneers trying to get there. Brigham Young was always trying to find the best ways to help them and one of his ideas was to try “down and back” wagons—someone would drive a wagon down from Utah, pick up passengers in Nebraska, and drive them to Utah. Sounds like a taxi or a bus, right? Well, Zeb, who was a teenager at the time, was one of the pioneer taxi or bus drivers sent to help bring pioneers to Utah. He kept a diary of the experience that is considered one of the best pioneer journals we have.

Going out, they carried passengers who wanted to go east for one reason or another and also supplies. They left supplies along the route to be picked up when they were returning, so they could live more comfortably on the trip back when they needed the space for passengers. In Wyoming, he and the other “Utah Boys” stopped at a spot where earlier Mormon pioneers had been forced to stop due to snow. They had buried a lot of their things in order to lighten their load, hoping someone could collect them later on. Jeb and his friends dug up an entire piano, still in perfect condition!

Jeb drove the down and back runs for eighteen weeks. You can read about his adventures on the trail here:

Diary of a Teenage Driver

Now, what about your own diary? Be sure to keep it up and think about things people in the future might like to know about your life. You just might become a part of Mormon history, or even world history yourself as a result.

Tyler and his father started to get up very early in the morning during the summers. For two hours before his dad left for work they would run drills at the church, which had a basketball court indoors. They drilled over and over again, doing a hundred or more free throws each morning, for instance, which isn’t exciting, but which helped him master the basic skills. Because he drilled so often he was able to do the right things in real games.

Not only did Tyler make the team, but he went on to become one of the best basketball players in the country in high school, being named Mr. Basketball twice, a rare accomplishment.

His dad feels that having to work harder than the other boys, and not being naturally talented at basketball, was probably a really good thing for Tyler. He learned that what helped him become a good basketball player could help him in all the other parts of his life, too. Setting goals and working hard could get him many of the things he wanted in his life.

One of the things he wanted was to serve as a missionary for his church. Tyler is a Mormon and most Mormon men give up two years of their life to serve God full-time at their own expense. When Tyler was just a child he set a goal to do this when he was nineteen, the youngest age men can go on missions. He worked hard to do the kinds of things that would make that possible. To serve a mission, a young man has to live a morally clean life, even in his teens. He needs to avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. He must maintain high moral standards in his dating life. He attends church weekly, studies and learns his religion well, develops self-discipline and builds a strong testimony. What Tyler learned from becoming a good basketball player also helped him become a good missionary. He’s now serving in the Philippines for two years.

People thought it was a little weird for him to leave the Brigham Young University basketball team to serve a mission. He was doing great, was important to the team, was following in his dad’s footsteps as a basketball star. Why give that up to serve a mission?

Because he’d promised God to serve Him first, and that meant a mission came before basketball. And his father served a mission, too.

Tyler admits it would have been a hard decision to make if he’d waited until he was an eighteen year old basketball star to make his decision. He was able to make the right decision because he made it young and devoted his life to working toward it. He says he has learned that when he puts God first, God blesses him.

And basketball will always be there when he returns. For now, Tyler is putting first things first, just as he always has.

Meet Tyler Haws by watching this video about him.

His parents credit his education for his accomplishments, but it’s his education at home that has made the real difference. Although Robert goes to a good traditional school where he learns a lot, his parents supplement what he learns at home. This is called afterschooling.

What did Robert do after school that made him able to win out over the professionals? He went to school and worked hard, but at home, he devoted a lot of his time to learning even more. Schools don’t have time to teach everything and a lot of times, they don’t teach what you are most interested in. You can do that at home on your own or with the help of your parents.

Robert spends a lot of his free time at the library looking for great books to read. He reads and writes when he doesn’t actually have to. When he was little, his parents took him on a lot of “field trips.” They went on family outings that were fun, but were also educational.

As he’s gotten older, he’s taken on more of the afterschooling himself. He started teaching himself HTML and CSS, both necessary for building websites. In fact, he built his very first website in third grade for his class. He’s been learning web development for five years.

Robert’s parents encouraged their children to learn more than the school requires them to learn and to do the best they know how to do. They watched to see what excited their children and then showed them how to learn about it themselves.

What do you want to learn that your school isn’t teaching you at all, or that they aren’t teaching you enough about? Just because your school doesn’t teach it doesn’t mean you can’t learn it. The library is filled with books on practically everything. There is a lot to learn on the Internet if you’re careful to choose reliable sources. There are people at church and in your neighborhood who would love to help you learn the things they love to do.

You might not end up inventing a popular app, but whatever your talent, there is a lot you can do. Some teens have written best-selling novels by learning how to write on their own. Other teens start charitable programs. Or maybe your goals are a little smaller. Maybe you love the Revolutionary War but your teacher only spent two weeks hitting the highlights. The really good parts of any subject aren’t usually found in the highlights. They come when you dig way down deep into the subjects.

Start then by figuring out what you would love to know more about. It might be a subject you’re learning in school or it might be something your school doesn’t teach. Then figure out how to get your hands on more information. Think about the museums near your home, libraries, bookstores, teen clubs, programs at colleges…there is more learning going on in most towns than you probably know.

Now think about how you want to learn the material. If you love to read, you’ll probably want to find the best books. If you intend to become a best-selling author someday, write a book. You don’t have to try to get it published unless you want to. You can start a website on the subject and put all your articles up there. Make a list of the places, people, and books you used to learn the subject, so other afterschoolers can use them, too. If you’re an artist, maybe you’ll want to draw or sculpt or build what you learn. Songwriter? Write a song about it. There are hundreds of ways to show what you’re learning. Choosing a project helps you figure out what you really understand and where your learning gaps are. Another good way to test your knowledge is to teach the material to someone else. You have to learn something really well to teach it. All these methods let you test yourself without taking a boring test.

How much do you need to study? Well, you’re in charge of your afterschool education, so it’s up to you. Sometimes I’ll read a few articles on a subject and decide I know as much as I’m interested in knowing for now. Other times I’ll get really excited about something and keep right on reading book after book.

But here’s how it usually works. I will read a book about George Washington. Then I’ll get curious about his wife Martha, so I’ll switch and read about her. That book talks about her friendship with a former slave and I’ll realize I’m kind of interested in the history of slavery, so I’ll study that for a little while. Along the way, I’ll find a novel by an interesting author and read more of her books and maybe a biography of her life. One of her books is about time travel and I start wondering if it is even scientifically possible to travel in time. I find some books on the science of time travel, which get me interested in…you get the idea. One subject gets me interested in another and after a year or two, I’ve explored all kinds of different things. I’ve studied some of it a lot and some of it a little, but my world just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

That’s what learning is really meant to do—to make your world more interesting, more exciting, and a whole lot bigger.

Finding a church to join is like a quest. You can just guess which church is true, but that’s pretty dangerous. If you’re going to commit to a religion, you want to be sure it’s the right one. The only way to know for sure which church is the true church is to ask God.

Today, we’re going to learn about a  teenager who did just that. We’ve talked about him before, but we’re talking about him today as an ordinary teenager who wanted some answers. He was fourteen when he started to worry about which church to join. He wasn’t alone in this, though. All around him, people were worrying about which church they ought to join. His area was suddenly filled with ministers and pastors holding revivals and competing for new converts. Everyone was talking about religion, arguing about it, worrying about it. People went from one revival to another, trying to figure out which church they liked best.

Joseph Smith, the teenager in our story, was just like the others. His mother and siblings were all attending these revivals and he went with them. His father didn’t attend, not believing that was the best way to choose a church. He preferred to study quietly at home for now.

Joseph went and his family seemed to be deciding on one particular religion, but Joseph just couldn’t be sure. He thought that religion sounded pretty good, but he felt like it was such an important decision and he didn’t want to make the wrong choice.

The problem was that every minister said he was teaching God’s truth and yet, each minister taught something different. Sometimes it was just little differences, but sometimes they were big differences. Joseph Smith felt that God would have one set of truths, not lots of conflicting ones. After all, the Bible says, “For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints” (1 Corinthians 14:33, King James translation of the Holy Bible.) Conflicting information was confusing.

But how was a person, especially a teenager, supposed to figure out who was right? While he was trying to decide, he started reading the Bible. One day he found a verse that caused him to stop what he was doing and to think about the problem in a whole new way. This verse was in the New Testament and was written by James, whom some people think is Jesus’ half-brother. The verse says:

5 If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

6 But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed (James 1:5-6.)

This made complete sense to Joseph Smith. People might lie to him or they might be mistaken, but God knew what was true and he wouldn’t lie. Joseph Smith had been raised to trust God, so he felt this was the solution to his problem.

He decided to go into the woods near his home and put this promise to the test. He wanted to be alone and he lived in a typical small home filled with parents and siblings. He also wanted to pray aloud, something he’d never done before. He went into the woods and knelt down and prayed.

Now, if you decide to put this to the test yourself, you probably aren’t going to get the results he did, but this was a special situation because God had plans for Joseph, so His answer had to be bigger than usual. First I’ll tell you what happened to Joseph. Then I’ll tell you what you will probably experience when you give your own prayer.

When Joseph prayed, Satan tried to stop him from continuing. Satan, like God, knew the plan and didn’t want it to happen. Once that ended, a light appeared in the air above Joseph. He saw two personages in the light. One was God and one was Jesus. He knew this only because God pointed to the other personage and said it was His Son, Jesus Christ, and that Joseph must listen to Him.

Jesus explained that Joseph Smith must not join any of the churches then in existence because none of them completely taught the truth. They had pieces of the truth, but none of them had the entire truth or the authority to carry out the complete program.

Why not? After Jesus died, His apostles ran the Church, but they eventually died or were killed. Because most of the people were more anxious to kill Jesus’ leaders than to listen to them, God withdrew His authority from the earth for a time. The small number of Christians remaining were very brave and did their best to keep things going but it’s hard to keep things going in a straight line without a prophet.

Even before the apostles died, various church groups were falling into apostasy. The apostles wrote many letters trying to straighten out false doctrine that developed. When they were gone, there was no one with that authority. And to make it worse, sometimes new issues came up and there was no way to find out what God wanted them to do about those things, so they had to guess. Over time, people didn’t agree on those guesses and they’d break away and start a new Christian church. Eventually there were a lot of churches all teaching different things and none of them held the whole truth because they’d all pieced together doctrine from other religions or what they thought the Bible meant.

God told Joseph to wait, so he did. Eventually, an angel named Moroni was sent to help prepare Joseph to restore the Church to what Jesus had established.

In the meantime, though, Joseph was a teenager trying to decide what church to join. The solution he chose is the same one you can choose, because that promise from James wasn’t just for Joseph. It was also for you.

Next post, I’ll tell you how to pray, in case you don’t yet know how, and what to expect from your prayer, since God and Jesus probably won’t come visit you in person.

“…representing the same strengths and values demonstrated by Army soldiers including loyalty, respect, honor, and integrity.”

Ryker has been officially invited to the prestigious Army football three-day learning experience featuring NFL and NCAA coaches, as well as to participate in game-week activities, culminating in the Army All-American Bowl scheduled for January 8^th, 2011 in San Antonio.

Last summer  Ryker participated at the Nike camp.  A  storm of division candidates and hopefuls blitzed around the playing field. One reporter stated:

“Among the top offensive lineman performers was Ryker Mathews. Mathews dominated in every category the camp had to offer. He was clearly the best offensive lineman in attendance.”

In spite of his imposing size and talent on the field, Ryker presents an unpretentious smile and genuine demeanor.  As one of the top linemen in the country, Ryker recently committed to play college ball for Brigham Young University.  He will transfer to the university mid-year to participate in spring practice for the 2011 season. Convinced to join the Cougars partly out of his respect for Coach Weber, Ryker said, “I love everything they have to offer. I love the atmosphere, the coaches, and the school. I have met some of the players and that also helped influence my decision.”

BYU students agree to adhere to a strict honor code which prohibits smoking, drinking, sexual liaisons, and cheating.  Ryker is comfortable with those standards, because he has always lived them.  His mother is most proud of the choices Ryker has made to bring him to this point.

After they were finished he hid them in the Hill Cumorah in New York State. Once they were hidden the second time—he came back and wrote more once-we don’t have any more record of him until long after his death.

The story of Moroni is one of an amazing teenager who changed history. Moroni’s story after death involves another teenager who would go on to change the world with Moroni’s help.

Joseph Smith was fourteen years old and living in upstate New York, in the town where Moroni had hidden the records of his people. Where he lived, people were pretty excited about religion. They were holding a lot of revivals (religious gatherings) meant to get people to join the church holding the revival. Joseph, his mother, and his siblings, attended many of them. His father preferred to worship privately at that time.

Most people, including some of his family, began choosing religions or changing religions based on what they learned at the different revivals and church services, but Joseph found they only confused him. His parents allowed him to make his own choice, so he listened carefully, but he was very intelligent and tended to think about the things he was being taught. The more he listened, the more questions he had and the more confused he became. How was someone supposed to know which church God wanted him to join? Every church claimed to be the true church of God, but they all taught conflicting doctrine. Truth was truth and they couldn’t all be right if they disagreed with each other.

One day he was reading in his Bible when he came across a scripture that gave him the answer to this complicated question. He was reading in the King James version of the Bible and found James 1:5, which is in the New Testament. It said,

“If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).

Joseph was amazed. Of course! This was the answer he’d been looking for. God knew which church was true and was the only person who could give him the answer he wanted. Everyone around him had answers, but only God’s was certain to be right. He went to the woods near his home and knelt down. For the first time in his life, he prayed out loud in the privacy of the woods.

Satan panicked at this turn of events. He tried to stop it from happening, but after a short time, Joseph saw a light in the sky coming toward him. In the light were Jesus and God, appearing above him. He was introduced to them and then invited to ask his question. He explained that he didn’t know which church to join. Jesus Christ asked him not to join any of them because none were entirely correct.

He accepted this answer and went on with his life. Since he mistakenly thought people would be excited to receive an official answer to the questions they’d all been asking, he talked to people about his experience, only to discover people were angry with him. Those who led other churches were especially angry. His teen years became a bit complicated at that point.

Later, he would pray to find out what God wanted him to do. He was now a young adult, and Moroni came to him. Moroni was now an angel and God had given him the privilege of preparing Joseph to restore the complete gospel of Jesus Christ. Joseph would be shown the plates Moroni had once hidden away, but not allowed to take them. First, he had a lot of learning to do and a lot of growing up to do.

Being given a chance to change the world with God’s help is exciting, but if we don’t do it properly, we’re wasting the opportunity. We have to be mature and responsible. Joseph would face many trials and temptations once his work began. He had to learn wisdom and responsibility and Moroni served as his private tutor. Several years of hard work began before Joseph was allowed to take the plates and begin to translate them into English, since of course, Moroni hadn’t written them in English.

When they were translated, they became The Book of Mormon, named in honor of Moroni’s father, who had started the process of condensing the records. The newly restored church started with only six people, but today, millions of people have read the Book of Mormon and changed their lives. Mormons around the world are changing the world with their humanitarian work and teachings about God.

Moroni changed the world as a teenager because he had the courage to face terrible trials with faith and to continue God’s work while coping with extraordinary grief. After his death, he came to another young man, whose life had changed because, as a teenager, he set out to learn and do God’s will, to help him prepare for the next step. Does it make you feel special that God started preparing clear back in Moroni’s day to give you an amazing gift? What do you learn from the fact that he used teenagers for this important work?

You might not be left in charge of sacred records or restoring the gospel, but God has a plan for you. He intends for you to change the world in large or small ways. It doesn’t matter if it’s as small as helping a seven-year-old with a learning disability master reading or as big as starting a world-wide organization. Every act of world-changing you get involved in matters to God.

Before you can change the world, though, you have to prepare yourself. Don’t wait for an angel. You can do this on your own. Become the kind of person God can trust with His work.