Where This People Are, There is Good Society

Joseph and Hyrum Smith Leaving Nauvoo

Even though I don't have any classes, this seems like it has been one of the longest semesters of my life, but all of the sudden I am getting ready to receive student finals on Saturday and begin grading.  All of the sudden, it is 90 degrees outside and the car is uncomfortably hot when I get into it after it has been in the sun for a few hours.  All of the sudden, I am realizing that I will be home in Utah within a little more than two weeks.

With some of these thoughts on my mind, I've experienced an interesting mixture of emotions and memories today.  Almost three years ago when I came to Texas, it was the most difficult move I had ever been asked to make.  When I first visited TCU in January 2011, I knew that it was where I was supposed to be.  I felt comfortable with the professor who was to become my advisor and I felt comfortable with the city.  Still as the time to move to Texas that August drew near, I became more and more aware of the fact that I was being asked to step out into the unknown and move to a place where I knew only a few people and had no family.  My Dad kindly drove down with me (a drive he and I have made together several other times since) and helped me to get situated.  A few days later I had to drop him off at the airport and I was on my own.  I must confess that many times between that day and now, I have felt quite lonely and I have wondered if my time in Texas would ever come to an end--despite spending summers and the Christmas holiday at home.  Knowing how challenging it was for me to be geographically isolated from my family, my Mom often told me that the time would come when it would be time to leave and it would feel as though I was leaving home.

I generally doubted my mom's prophecy, yet today as I thought about all these things, I found that my Mom had been right.  As I bore my testimony in my ward today (we have stake conference next week), I realized how many wonderful people I had met here and how important this time in Texas has been to my life.  And I recalled a couple of quotes from the Prophet Joseph Smith which seemed to describe what I have experienced.  Less than a year before his death, Joseph spoke to the Saints and said, "Where this people are, there is good society.  What do we care where we are, if the society be good? . . . Friendship is one of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism; it is designed to revolutionize and civilize the world. . . . Let us pour forth love" (TPJS, 316).  Then, as he was leaving Nauvoo for the final time, Joseph stopped at the Temple, admiring it and then gazing back towards Nauvoo, and said, "'This is the loveliest place and the best people under the heavens'" (TPJS, 379).  I couldn't help but feel that way about the members of the Colleyville YSA Ward, the Fossil Ridge Ward, and the Highland Station Ward who took me in and loved me as a brother in the gospel.  I wasn't always fellowshipped perfectly, but I didn't always open myself up to fellowship and certainly didn't fellowship others perfectly.

Among the many principles that I have learned during my sojourn in Texas is the truth that where people strive to live the gospel of Jesus Christ--falteringly and failingly as we do--there will be friendship, love, and good society.  Of course there are failings among the Saints and even in the Church.  People are not always what we wish they would be and this is true of ourselves.  But such imperfections allow us to learn the principles of repentance, forgiveness, love, and mercy, taking turns as both the sinner and the sinned against.  At the end of the day, and often to our surprise, God will open our eyes and our hearts to the goodness of our fellow Saints.  He will show us that even among strangers in new ward, we can find "good society."  He will make for us a home where it had seemed we were alone.

For all these blessings, and for good society among the Saints, I am indeed grateful.

Brett