5 Quotes about Change and Growth: Who Said It?

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by Marci McPhee

Ready for a quiz? Here’s five quotes that I love. Who said it? Answers below. How many did you get right? Tell us in the comments!

Here’s your choices (alpha order):

1) Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Apostle

2) Sister Chieko N. Okasaki, former counselor, General Relief Society Presidency

3) Rev. Dr. Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming, authors and speakers

4) Joseph Smith, Prophet

5) Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Apostle

A) “How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn’t get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew?”

B) “‘We believe all that God has revealed’— that’s often the easy part. It takes a special kind of faith to: ‘believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom,’ and then to be ready to accept them, whatever they are. His thoughts and His ways are certainly much higher than ours.”

C) “Be spiritually independent enough that your relationship with the Savior doesn't depend on your circumstances or on what other people say and do. Have the spiritual independence to be a Mormon--the best Mormon you can--in your own way. Not the bishop's way. Not the Relief Society president's way. Your way.”

D) Regarding 2 Nephi 26:33: “he inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.” “If modern-day readers were to create their own list of categories used to divide people…we would probably add heterosexual/homosexual, transgender/cis-gender, and immigrant/citizen, among others. Regardless of which groups are named, the message is the same: All are alike unto God.”

E) “There has been great difficulty in getting anything into the heads of this generation… Even the Saints are slow to understand. I have tried for a number of years to get the minds of the Saints prepared to receive the things of God, but we frequently see [that] some of them, after suffering all they have for the work of God, will fly to pieces like glass as soon as anything comes that is contrary to their traditions.”

ANSWERS:

1-B (or B-1, pun intended): “All that God will reveal” is Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, Apostle, Ensign, "Making Your Life a Soul-Stirring Journey of Personal Growth,” December 2018

2-C (pun intended): “Your way” is Sister Chieko Okasaki, former counselor in the General Relief Society Presidency, from her book Lighten Up, 1993

3-D (I didn’t plan this, but look how these are coming out): “All are alike” is Rev. Dr. Fatimah Salleh and Margaret Olsen Hemming, The Book of Mormon for the Least of These, Volume 1, 89-90, 2020

4-E: “Fly to pieces like glass” is Joseph Smith, History of the Church, 6:184–85, Jan. 21, 1844

5-A: “Massive iron gate” is Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf, Apostle, "Acting on the Truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ," February 2012

All quotes appear in the free book GayLDSCrossroads.