We interrupt Satan’s plan and instead present to you God‘s plan of happiness.

One night I was out about 1 AM and I got a ride to go 40 minutes north of Murray. That’s Clearfield folks! That’s a long ways away for a 1 AM trip but I decided to take it. It was in a pretty sketchy area and the app said it was some unknown dude. I always wonder why someone would leave their house in the middle of one of the coldest days of the year, let alone that it was happening at 1 AM. I pulled up and a girl came out of the house and got in the car. It is never a good thing in my opinion when a guy orders a car to bring him a girl in the middle of the night and she is all dolled up.

The two words to describe this girl would be happy and bubbly. She was a really nice girl and we started up a very pleasant conversation about how smiles are better than masks and how we can’t wait for the Covid mess to be gone. I mentioned to her that being happy and bubbly like she was is a gift.

I use the word gift specifically because I was prompted to and I also felt that we were going to be having a discussion about the gospel at that time and the spirit told me that this was an important passenger.

I asked her what other things she did, what other gifts she had. She said that she was good at art. She loves to paint people and she had received a scholarship to an art school in Chicago but for whatever reason she didn’t go.

She said she’d love to paint people and we talked about how for her, hands were more difficult than eyes or other facial features. We talked about other different things like that. I asked her if she’d ever heard of my friend Liz Lemon Swindle. I’m sure you all know that Liz is an amazing artist and paints the Savior among other church topics.

She said, “I’ve heard of her”, then on her phone she looked up some of her paintings and said, wow! Those are amazing. We started talking about how this girl painted from pictures and I said as far as I know that’s what Liz does too.

She really liked that and said that her grandma had painted paintings that were in a church building in Provo, she thought it was a temple but she wasn’t sure.

By this point we had a little bit of a rapport and I felt like I needed to start asking the questions that had been given to me in my heart by the spirit. I asked her where she was from and she said Lehi. I asked her how long ago she moved to Salt Lake and she said she was in the process of moving right now.

I asked her how long has it been since she graduated from high school. She said it have been a few years. I could tell by the promptings I had received she had fallen in with some unworthy people who had pulled her in bad directions. I felt right then that the decisions that sprung from this were the reason why she had given up the scholarship. She said, yes I kind of decided to take my life in a bit of a different direction.

I didn’t feel like I could say things directly in this conversation but I felt to ask her, “knowing that I am a member of the church and have no clue who you are, do you have any questions about God you would like to ask me?” She said “yes! This is easy! Why me?”

I had the impression that she had been through some injustices and some abuse. She felt like she had been abandoned and misunderstood. She had not felt love and felt a little prickly about a church leader. I asked her if this was true and she said that it was all true. The emotion from this had made it hard for her to stay with her family in Lehi even though she loves them very much. The spirit was strong in the car as we discussed this.

I taught her about the atonement and how it helps us look to God and makes us whole without taking agency the away that we need to grow. I told her, agency is a wonderful thing. It’s the reason why she can choose to move to Salt Lake City. She has agency! I told her that sometimes when we exercise our agency, we are unjust or not fair or hurt other people. I told her that when we do this we need to repent but also we need to understand when someone does this to us we need to turn to the atonement to take away the sting. Sometimes it almost seems like we need to cover ourselves in the atonement to soothe our pain.

I talked about how we think of atonement as confession in the bishop’s office and this is important but that this is only a small part of the power that the atonement provides and the miracle it performs in our lives. The atonement not only cleanses our soul but it eases suffering inflicted upon us by others and that we inflict upon ourselves.

I talked about how Satan uses the agency God gives us, he inspires people to damage us and then we get offended sometimes we look to satan and his path instead of turning to God. That is Satan‘s plan, to damage our spirits and souls while God stands there all the time ready with relief and love.

I told her that I had the impression she hadn’t prayed in a long time and that she pushed thoughts of God out of her head. She said yes and she had been wondering if God even cared. I told her that God stood ready to sooth her pain, relieve her suffering and lift her.

I told her about her relationship with God and that she had this relationship for thousands and thousands of years. I told her that she loved the feeling she felt in his presence.

The spirit was strong in the car and I asked her how she was feeling. She said that it felt amazing. I said she was feeling the spirit of God and that this is what she felt like in his presence and it was the thing she missed in her life.

I told her that she had felt a distinct emptiness lately and she said that’s right. I said, think about it, do you feel that emptiness right now? She looked like a light bulb came on and she said “No! The emptiness is gone”. I told her that it was gone because it was being filled right now by the spirit. I told her that this is why we need to make good choices so that we can have this feeling with us all of the time. I told her God loved her and he felt her pain. I said that I could feel that he loved her very much.

I asked her if she had been surprised by the things I said and she said “absolutely, how did you know those things”? I told her about how in the Book of Mormon the spirit had whispered the thoughts of the king to Ammon. Due to the fact that Ammon said these words, he knew Ammon had the power of God. Through my verbalizing of these promptings, she knew that the words I was saying were true and that they came from God just like King Lamoni did.

I talked to her about how in the atonement Jesus suffered all of the pain, angst, embarrassment, injustice, sickness and all the things, and then he suffered them all at one time. That’s why he bled from every poor and that’s why God sent an angel to give him strength so that he could finish that task. With that atonement Jesus Christ can lift us above the trials and suffering if we will just we look to him.

I asked her if she remembered the story of Nephii’s bow. She said that she did and I made the point that everyone was angry when the bow broke because they looked to their own strength and their own abilities instead of the strength and abilities of God. What Nephi did was look to the strength and abilities of God by going to his father and trusting that the Lord will deliver. I told her that we need to look to God and his ability and his strength instead of trying to do it on our own.

I told her that they were asked to do things that they could not possibly accomplish on their own. Their life was designed and their mission required that they look to God instead of doing it on their own. I told her that her life was no different and that she could not do it alone and be happy. I told her she needed to learn to look to God instead of her own abilities or finding others to condone the sin.

I talked to her about the people at church who she believed were judging her and she said that’s right. I said that their harsh judgements were their sin and we should hope that we are as tolerant of them and their sin as we want them to be of ours.

I told her that she controls how she responds to this. I said that it’s impossible to be harshly judging someone who comes and stands right next to you, smiles and is happy. She laughed and said yes. I said that you loving them in their sin and forgiving them of their sins is just as important as them being tolerant of your sins.

She told me that I was hitting all of the points and that she felt in her heart that the Lord had sent me that night to bring her this message. She said that for whatever reason, the spirit was opening her heart to the words I said. I agreed with her and told her that I felt the same way.

I asked her what she had learned that night and she said that she needed to reevaluate and correct her direction. She said that she wanted to have this feeling with her all the time. She told me that she would make the changes in her life. She couldn’t believe this ride and the beautiful spirit that was in the car.

I asked her for a firm commitment going forward. I asked “what will you do?” She said “start by reading the Book of Mormon and saying my prayers”. She also committed to go to sacrament meeting and start on the road back. God is great and he sure loves this little girl, his little girl, a full grown woman that still needs her father in heaven. Now she knows it

When we got there, her boyfriend or whoever that guy was came out and she said she didn’t want to leave the feeling in the car. I could tell that she didn’t want to go with him anymore. I think I ruined somebody’s plans but I think we carried out God‘s plan.