Pure Religion Moment: Book of Mormon Scripture Answered My Prayer
Contributed By Dickson L. Williams, Church News contributor
Heavenly Father can communicate with us through His holy scriptures.
Article Highlights
- The Book of Mormon can provide answers to our prayers.
“He didn’t give me the sign I wanted. Instead He answered my prayer using the Book of Mormon.” —Dickson L. Williams
In 1963 I was a 20-year-old deacon, married, and working as a logger in eastern Oregon. I had been totally inactive in the Church for years and had taken up the use of tobacco and alcohol.
In November 1965 two men from the Church drove 50 miles to find me and my nonmember wife where we were living at the woods camp of the logging company I worked for. It was at night and snowing when they arrived. They said they had come to visit us and asked if they could come in. I said no, it wasn’t a good time. However, I agreed to a visit in the future.
They came again the next month, and we let them in. I rejected their invitations to come to church because my church was the mountains and my religion was hunting and fishing. After nearly three years of marriage, my wife unexpectedly passed away from the effects of systemic lupus on April 24, 1966. I was totally dazed and confused about life and wondered what happens after we die.
The men from the Church found out about my wife’s passing. They came to see me and brought a Book of Mormon. They answered my question about life after death by having me read Alma 40:11, which is about where people go when they die. After they left, in my awkward and feeble way I prayed to God to give me a sign that Carolyn was in a good place. He didn’t give me the sign I wanted. Instead He answered my prayer using the Book of Mormon.
One evening while alone in our trailer at the woods camp, I opened the Book of Mormon that the men had left and began to thumb through the pages. I stopped on page 500, and my attention was drawn to verse 6, which reads, “Faith is things which are hoped for and not seen; wherefore dispute not because ye see not, for ye shall receive no witness until after the trial of your faith.”
When I read that verse something happened to me that I had never before experienced. A warm, wonderful feeling came over me and my chest filled up with air, and I almost couldn’t breathe. I then knew that God had answered my prayer. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but I knew it came from Him.
I moved to my wife’s hometown of John Day, Oregon, and started to attend the small branch. I became active in the Church, and in December 1966 I sold everything I owned and was called to serve for two years in the Southern Australian Mission.
—Brother Williams is from the Logan 10th Ward, Logan Utah Central Stake.
