--- title: Weathering Trials Through Faith date: 2025-11-10T09:37:00-07:00 author: Matt Bloomfield canonical_url: "https://www.mlj.one/church/talks/weathering-trials-through-faith" section: Blog --- [ ← Church Talks ](https://www.mlj.one/church/talks) Talk November 10, 2025 # Weathering Trials Through Faith I gave this talk on May 22nd, 2022 in the Snowflake 7th Ward Sacrament Meeting at the Pioneer Park Chapel in Snowflake, Arizona. My wife and I resided in that ward and spoke together at that time. We had recently moved from Layton, Utah to Snowflake. --- ### A Story of Trials Shortly after I returned home from my mission I purchased a used car. I had worked all summer to buy it and was excited to take it up to BYU with me so I wouldn’t have to ride a bike everywhere like I had the semester before my mission. As I was traveling across the reservation just before Ganado I got a text, looked down to read it, veered slightly off the road. When I dropped onto the shoulder I overcorrected which sent me spinning across the opposing lane and into a ditch. Feeling stupid, I got out, assessed the damage and, seeing a blown tire, got to work changing it on the side of the road. Soon enough I was on my way, good as new, or so I thought. By the time I got to Blanding my car was overheating. Unbeknownst to me, during the previous incident my radiator fan had sliced a hole in one of my hoses and it had slowly drained me of all my coolant. After a kind stranger supplied me with a few gallons of water I was able to get to Napa, replace the hose, and continue on my way. Finally, hours after I had expected, I made it to Utah. Well it wasn’t but a few days later as I was coming around a turn South of the BYU campus I was fiddling with my iPod to change the song, lost track of how long I maintained the turn, and plowed directly into the back of a parked truck on the side of the road. This time I had totaled my car. The entire front was smashed in, the radiator was spewing steam, and there was a very angry man outside who had just watched me inexplicably demolish his pickup. Embarrased and not knowing what to do, I called my Dad. Ever kind and patient, he said, “Well, you’ve paid the tuition. Make sure you savor the education.” Heeding my father’s advice, I stopped driving while distracted. Well, actually, I stopped driving at all! And I became very grateful for that bicycle from the previous semester. ### Faith Through Trials In life, we have trials. Sometimes, like in my story, they are self-inflicted. And in other times they just come as they please. But, in all cases, we need faith in order to make it through them. As I pondered the idea of faith, I wondered what it is about faith that is so enduring? What does it do for us in these moments of difficulty? In studying for this talk I read countless stories of those who had faith throughout their trials. I realized that faith provides a combination of hope and perspective: hope that there is something more, someone in charge who loves us, a greater plan than we can possibly imagine. And perspective: that this moment will pass; that life goes on, and in the worst case, that death is only a step into the next life. This hope and perspective gives us the courage and motivation we need to continue on our path; to not give up; and to not despair. To believe that the best is yet to come. ### Growing Your Faith So how do we grow our faith in times of trial? I believe it happens through prayer, effort, and adjusting your expectations. One of my favorite examples of faith in times of trial is Nephi. His life seemed to be almost continual trials. When he was tied up and abandoned in the wilderness by his brothers, rather than languish in his suffering he taught us how to have faith: *“But it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord, saying: O Lord, according to my faith which is in thee, wilt thou deliver me from the hands of my brethren; yea, even give me strength that I may burst these bands with which I am bound.” - 1 Nephi 7:17* Simply put, faith can be grown by saying a prayer, indicating our trust in the Lord, and then moving forward. In his October 2015 conference talk, Neil L Anderson said, “Your faith is either growing stronger or becoming weaker.” Interestingly, faith seems to grow as it’s tested. As Elder Holland pointed out in his excellent talk, “Lord, I Believe”, *“In moments of fear or doubt or troubling times, hold the ground you have already won, even if that ground is limited… When … moments come and issues surface, the resolution of which is not immediately forthcoming, hold fast to what you already know and stand strong until additional knowledge comes.”* We need faith to start the journey and we certainly need it to continue onward. As we see the results finally play out it becomes a confirmation that strengthens our faith for the next trial. In fact, as I was preparing this talk I realized I started referring to trials as “faith-building experiences” inadvertently. And, really, isn’t this the light they should be viewed in? Without them we become stagnant and cannot progress to become like our Father in Heaven. I think this is why sometimes the result of the trial isn’t what we want or expect. In my story I thought the result of the trial would still include me having a car, but in fact I had to take a step back and align my will with the Lord’s to see the experience I gained as a satisfactory ending. Thinking back to another faith-building experience Nephi had - when he was asked to retrieve the plates - we see again that he prayed for guidance and then moved forward. This time, however, he was forced to adapt his understanding and will to be in line with the Lord by killing Laban. By accepting the Lord’s will he was able to be successful in overcoming his trial and ultimately bless his entire family by returning with the plates. This pattern of faith is consistent with what I’ve experienced in my own life: communing with our Heavenly Father, continuing forward on the path, and learning to align our wills with God’s will. ### A Story of Faith In one of his last conference talks President Monson shared an example of a woman who weathered a series of trials through prayer and submitting her will to the Lord. After reading it I was struck with the positive impact of faith even in the darkest of times and felt the need to share it here. — This is the experience of a Church member who found herself in an area no longer controlled by the government under which she had resided. She and her husband had lived an idyllic life in East Prussia. Then had come the second great world war within their lifetimes. Her beloved young husband was killed during the final days of the frightful battles in their homeland, leaving her alone to care for their four children. The occupying forces determined that the Germans in East Prussia must go to Western Germany to seek a new home. The woman was German, and so it was necessary for her to go. The journey was over a thousand miles (1,600 km), and she had no way to accomplish it but on foot. She was allowed to take only such bare necessities as she could load into her small wooden-wheeled wagon. Besides her children and these meager possessions, she took with her a strong faith in God and in the gospel as revealed to the latter-day prophet Joseph Smith. She and the children began the journey in late summer. Having neither food nor money among her few possessions, she was forced to gather a daily subsistence from the fields and forests along the way. She was constantly faced with dangers from panic-stricken refugees and plundering troops. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks to months, the temperatures dropped below freezing. Each day, she stumbled over the frozen ground, her smallest child—a baby—in her arms. Her three other children struggled along behind her, with the oldest—seven years old—pulling the tiny wooden wagon containing their belongings. Ragged and torn burlap was wrapped around their feet, providing the only protection for them, since their shoes had long since disintegrated. Their thin, tattered jackets covered their thin, tattered clothing, providing their only protection against the cold. Soon the snows came, and the days and nights became a nightmare. In the evenings she and the children would try to find some kind of shelter—a barn or a shed—and would huddle together for warmth, with a few thin blankets from the wagon on top of them. She constantly struggled to force from her mind overwhelming fears that they would perish before reaching their destination. And then one morning the unthinkable happened. As she awakened, she felt a chill in her heart. The tiny form of her three-year-old daughter was cold and still, and she realized that death had claimed the child. Though overwhelmed with grief, she knew that she must take the other children and travel on. First, however, she used the only implement she had—a tablespoon—to dig a grave in the frozen ground for her tiny, precious child. Death, however, was to be her companion again and again on the journey. Her seven-year-old son died, either from starvation or from freezing or both. Again her only shovel was the tablespoon, and again she dug hour after hour to lay his mortal remains gently into the earth. Next, her five-year-old son died, and again she used her tablespoon as a shovel. Her despair was all consuming. She had only her tiny baby daughter left, and the poor thing was failing. Finally, as she was reaching the end of her journey, the baby died in her arms. The spoon was gone now, so hour after hour she dug a grave in the frozen earth with her bare fingers. Her grief became unbearable. How could she possibly be kneeling in the snow at the graveside of her last child? She had lost her husband and all her children. She had given up her earthly goods, her home, and even her homeland. In this moment of overwhelming sorrow and complete bewilderment, she felt her heart would literally break. In despair she contemplated how she might end her own life, as so many of her fellow countrymen were doing. How easy it would be to jump off a nearby bridge, she thought, or to throw herself in front of an oncoming train. And then, as these thoughts assailed her, something within her said, “Get down on your knees and pray.” She ignored the prompting until she could resist it no longer. She knelt and prayed more fervently than she had in her entire life: “Dear Heavenly Father, I do not know how I can go on. I have nothing left—except my faith in Thee. I feel, Father, amidst the desolation of my soul, an overwhelming gratitude for the atoning sacrifice of Thy Son, Jesus Christ. I cannot express adequately my love for Him. I know that because He suffered and died, I shall live again with my family; that because He broke the chains of death, I shall see my children again and will have the joy of raising them. Though I do not at this moment wish to live, I will do so, that we may be reunited as a family and return—together—to Thee.” When she finally reached her destination of Karlsruhe, Germany, she was emaciated. Brother Babbel said that her face was a purple-gray, her eyes red and swollen, her joints protruding. She was literally in the advanced stages of starvation. In a Church meeting shortly thereafter, she bore a glorious testimony, stating that of all the ailing people in her saddened land, she was one of the happiest because she knew that God lived, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He died and was resurrected so that we might live again. She testified that she knew if she continued faithful and true to the end, she would be reunited with those she had lost and would be saved in the celestial kingdom of God. — As I conclude my talk I want to reiterate how much God loves us, his children. He sent us here to gain experience and much of that comes in the form of trials. He will help us and will never leave us stranded, even if, for a time, we feel that we’ve entered a shadow of his presence. I leave you with President Monson’s words from his talk, “My beloved brothers and sisters, fear not. Be of good cheer. The future is as bright as your faith.” In the name …