Emily Belle Freeman - Dont Miss This in the Doctrine and Covenants

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Book design Deseret Book Company

Art direction: Richard Erickson

Cover design: Heather G. Ward

2020 Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Freeman, Emily Belle, author. | Butler, David, author.

Title: Dont miss this in The Doctrine and Covenants : exploring one verse from each section / Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler.

Description: Salt Lake City, Utah : Deseret Book, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: Authors Emily Belle Freeman and David Butler continue their Dont Miss This series by examining one critical verse in each section of the Doctrine and CovenantsProvided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020024876 | ISBN 9781629728094 (trade paperback) | eISBN 978-1-64933-014-7 (eBook)

Subjects: LCSH: Doctrine and CovenantsCommentaries. | LCGFT: Meditations.

Classification: LCC BX8628 .F74 2020 | DDC 289.3/23dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024876

Printed in the United States of America

LSC Communications, Crawfordsville, IN

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To S. Michael Wilcox, whose powerful testimony of the Restoration on a fall day in the Sacred Grove strengthened mine.

EBF

To Scott, whose friendship, insights, and gifted scholarship have helped me discover treasure in scripture I never would have found on my own.

DB

Contents

Our Hope for This Book

We dont know how you will use this book, but maybe it will help if we tell you how we use it. We leave it out near the kitchen table. We like to read one verse a day with its accompanying devotional at dinnertime and then talk about the question at the bottom while we eat. It is helping us to make the Come, Follow Me program part of our everyday routine.

This book is not meant to be a reference manual. It is more of a simple help for learners of all ages to find meaning in the scriptures by focusing on context, culture, and application. On some pages you will read the story from a historical point of view. On others you will meet one of the heroes of the Restoration. Sometimes we will share our own life experiences with applying insight from a particular verse or chapter. Hopefully the combination of all of these teaching techniques will help make your study of the Doctrine and Covenants more meaningful this year.

We absolutely love studying with you!

David and Emily

Introduction

Usually, if you sign up for a Church history tour, you know something about the Church whose tour it is. That was true for almost all of the forty-five people on our bus. There was just one who wasnt a member of our faith: Daniel, the bus driver. He knew nothing about our church when we met him outside the airport in Kansas City.

He didnt know what he was in for.

He had no idea that people would buy his dinner every night, or that everyone would jump in to help load the suitcases under the bus every time we started off (even though that was his job), or that he would be invited to come with us to visit every single site. That man with the gentle heart simply thought he would be driving a religious group across the country. He didnt know we would all be fast friends by the end.

We spent the week talking about Joseph and Emma, Oliver and Sidney, Hyrum and his mother, Lucy. He listened as he drove, and Im sure he wondered what it was all about. On our first night in Nauvoo, he accompanied us for a walk down the Trail of Hope. I told him about the Saints forced out of their homes during that cold February, many of whom walked down this street as they fled their city. He stopped to take a picture of the journal account of the woman who swept her entire house before she left.

Its just like you described it was, he said, looking at me with compassion in his eyes. I got a picture of that. I dont want to forget.

It was a hard time for us, I told him.

You know, he said, when you dont know someone, you can be careless with them. And then you spend time with them, and they say, let me show you my Jesus. My Jesus, he repeated, touching his heart. Then he looked at me carefully and said, If theyd just spend time with you, they would know you know Him.

I thought of the dinners bought and the suitcases loaded and all the invitations extended to just come be with us. I thought about how many conversations had been filled with Jesus.

Ive driven religious groups for fourteen years, Daniel said as we got back to the bus, and Ive never driven a group like this one.

We gave him a gift at the end of the trip: a Book of Mormon signed by everyone on that bus, filled to bursting with words of gratitude and love for Daniel.

His reply?

I was thinking to purchase one of these.

It is a Church history tour I will never forget.

We are about to start off on our own journey through the Doctrine and Covenants. We will talk about Joseph and Emma, Oliver and Sidney, Hyrum and his mother, Lucy. Those early Saints will become our travel companions, and we will become better for it. This journey will soften our hearts and strengthen our faith. It will give us glimpses of understanding and flashes of insight. We will discover the stories behind the sections and some of the ways God answers the simple questions of His people.

Just like Daniel, maybe we will take small snapshots in our minds of the things we dont want to forget.

This is a journey that will help us come to know the Lord.

It is interesting to study in detail the life of a prophet so many people question. Truly his name is had for good and evil around the world, even still today. Perhaps you wonder at the details of his story. Maybe you know some who have walked away in unbelief. Joseph himself once said, I dont blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.

There is something about walking through his story from beginning to end that instills a belief in its truth. We will see in Joseph an obscure boy, a stalwart husband, a doting father, a faithful friend, a loyal son, and a dedicated brother. We will also read of his faults, his doubts, and his failures. It is the combination of the two, the full picture of that prophet, the working of God within the weakness of a man, that endears our hearts to him. That is the work of restoration. It didnt just happen in a church, it happened in a boy.

I once sat on a picnic bench just outside the Sacred Grove and listened to a man bear testimony of the young boy who had walked into the middle of those trees and prayed. My heart was filled with the truth he witnessed of. At the very end, that humble man said one sentence I will never forget: Next to Jesus, I love Joseph most.

It is a phrase I have repeated hundreds of times. At the foot of Cumorah. In the midst of the grove. From a window in Carthage.