On Miracles

Good morning, brothers and sisters. It’s great to be with you. I’ve been assigned by the stake presidency to speak in your ward today... and next week at stake conference! So consider this your trial run to see if you really want to show up next week!

But really though, stake conference will be wonderful, and we'll have an opportunity to hear from our leaders, especially President Osguthorpe, who holds keys to receive revelation to help us all individually in our lives. I'd like to extend an invitation to you all to ponder on a question to bring to conference next week. I have faith that the Lord hears your prayers and will answer them in the messages given. It is the Lord's intention to minister to you one-by-one in that conference. I pray that He can do so today as well.

It really is good to be here. This is the first talk I'll give on assignment as a high councilman. Its a little interesting to speak in a ward where its members are unknown to me and I likewise am unknown to them. But our Heavenly Father, the Savior and the Holy Ghost know us all and we them, so I find peace in that. I hope to be able to meet with some of you and make friends here. That's one thing that I have found to be so wonderful in the church, it doesn't matter where you are in the world, if you're a member of the church you will always have friends!

As it was announced, my name is Joseph Sanns. I grew up in a small town that is relatively unknown to the world but known to all of us, Rexburg, Idaho. I loved growing up there, it was a perfect place to be a boy, I had many adventures. I am currently a Psychology student at BYU and have loved living in Provo the last few years. I intend on getting my PhD in Clinical Psychology and pursuing a career as a therapist, researcher, academic and author. Perhaps the most defining experience of my life came in the two years I served as a missionary. I left to serve a mission in the summer of 2019 and labored in the Argentina Santa Fe Mission. After about 10 months and because of Covid, I was sent home and reassigned to the Missouri Independence Mission - I absolutely loved both missions. The word's of President Holland ring true for my experience in the years since I have been home, "my mission is the portal through which I receive every blessing."

It is of such a blessing, miracle and lesson from my mission that I would like to frame my message around. I pray for the assistance of the Holy Ghost as I share this message with you. In December of 2019 I was serving in an Argentine suburb, a city called Santo Tome. My mission President had invited all the missionaries in our mission to study the miracles the Savior performed and to reflect on how the Savior similarly performs miracles in our own lives. My companion and I would study these stories in our companionship study and we began to pray for opportunities to be vessels through which the Lord could bless and perform miracles among His children in our area.

One hot morning just after Christmas my companion and I were walking down a street we had walked hundreds of times when an elderly woman, neither of us had ever seen before, called out to us from her little porch patio. We walked over to her and she asked us, "Are you men of God?" to which we joyfully responded, "Yes!" She then asked us if we could heal her! The Lord had heard our prayers and had led us to her! We asked her what she would like to be healed from. She lifted her long skirts to the knee and revealed a nasty, infected wound on the calf of her right leg. She explained to us how a feral dog had attacked her and taken part of her leg with him.

Argentina has a complicated medical system. At the time of my mission, there were laws in place that required general medical services to be free. The downside of this was that the treatments are often poorly performed and even the most competent doctors don't have the equipment they need to properly care for their patients. Great, private healthcare was available, but incredibly expensive. Our new elderly friend, I'll call Blanca, was quite poor and couldn't afford private healthcare. The best the government physicians had to offer her was amputation before the infection could spread and kill her. She pleaded with us to heal her and save her leg.

My companion and I knew we had been sent to represent the Savior and heal her as He would have. My heart yearned to help Blanca and ease her pain, the Lord gifted me with a portion of His love for Blanca and gave me vision to see her from His perspective. My companion anointed her with consecrated oil. I sealed the anointing and offered the blessing, pleading in my heart that the Lord would heal this hurting woman. To my great joy the Spirit spoke to me as I had my hands laid on her head. The Spirit said these words to my mind, "Say unto her, by your faith in Jesus Christ, you are healed." And so I said those exact words, "By your faith in Jesus Christ, you are healed," and finished the blessing.

Now I hope you can imagine my surprise as I then looked down at her leg to see it looked exactly the same as before the blessing, severely damaged and infected. My heart sank, perhaps, I thought, I didn't have enough faith to have healed this good woman. Perhaps, I had not prepared myself enough to have the Lord perform such a miracle through me. However, the Spirit rested upon us collectively, and Blanca thanked us for the blessing. We gave her a copy of the Book of Mormon and invited her to join us at Church the following week.

That week I remained confused and disappointed by what had happened. Was I not good enough? Was I not faithful enough? Was the priesthood even real? Why wasn't she healed? I thought that since we weren't able to help her as per her request she would be disinterested in learning more about our Church. However, to my amazement, she walked on her injured leg to Church on Sunday. Blanca's first Sunday at church just happened to be the first Sunday of 2020. During our second-hour meeting everyone in attendance was given a copy of the Come, Follow Me booklet for the year, which focus of study was the Book of Mormon. In the following days and weeks, we would walk on Blanca's street and would often see her on her little porch, with the Book of Mormon in one hand and Come, Follow Me in the other.

After a few weeks of teaching her, I realized that she was walking around better. I asked her if the doctors had found a treatment that had been helping that wouldn't require the loss of her leg. I can still remember her smiling at me and saying she hadn't been back to the doctor since she had met us. She showed us her leg, it wasn't completely healed but it was looking quite a bit better. Then the Spirit opened my mind to understand what was happening, the words of my blessing were true; she was being healed at the same rate that her faith in Jesus Christ was increasing, by her faith she was being healed! What a miracle, and what an insight!

It was soon after that interaction with Blanca that we realized that she didn't live in our area. Our area was too dangerous to actually live in, so we lived in a different part of town, and we just happened to walk down her street to get to our area most days. We passed her on to be taught by the correct missionary companionship and I'm not sure what exactly happened but she didn't make it to church the next week. Blanca did not have a phone or a computer; when I was transferred I was unable to say goodbye and I had no way of knowing what would become of her.

Skip ahead to when I had just four months left on my mission. I was serving in my reassignment in a ward in Kansas. I received a phone call from my mission president. He told me that Argentina had reopened its borders to allow non-citizen residents back into the country. As one of the few missionaries who had lived in Argentina long enough to obtain residency and still have some time left, the brethren approved me to join 49 other missionaries in returning to Argentina for the remainder of our missions. After quarantining in Argentina for 10 days or so, I received an assignment from my original mission president to serve in none other than Santa Tome.

My new companion and I did not get to go out much, as covid restrictions were still very tight, but one afternoon we stepped out to pick up lunch from a member family at their home. I once again found myself walking down the street called Hipolito Irigoyen. As we passed by a small market, I remembered Blanca and the experience I had had with her some 15 months before. To my utter amazement there she was, across the street. Despite my mask, she recognized me and ran - she ran over, and gave me a hug. (Which I might add was the only time I broke the mission rule regarding hugging someone of the opposite sex). She was surprised I was still in this town. I told her I had been sent back to America and had just very recently returned. Blanca shared that she had moved to a different province to live with her son when the pandemic started and was just back in town for the day to pick up a few last things. I was struck by how perfectly the Lord had orchestrated our paths crossing again in that exact spot. As she hurried off, I called out to ask about her leg. Lifting her skirt, she showed me it, it was completely healed—the miracle had come to pass!

To this day I have no idea whether or not Blanca joined the church or what she is up to in life but the miracle of her healing has some important lessons for all of us.

The Lord is good for His word. Just as He promised Blanca that she would be healed by her faith in Him and followed through on His promise, so will He follow through on every promise He has given us. Every single one. He said to the prophet Moses, "Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations"

And staying consistent He has said in our day "What I the Lord have spoken, I have spoken, and I excuse not myself; and though the heavens and the earth pass away, my word shall not pass away, but shall all be fulfilled."

Many, if not all of us, are pleading with the Lord for the fulfillment of many blessings, some of which we anxiously are awaiting to receive through entering a new covenant relationship with Him. As Latter-Day Saints we are privileged and blessed to have entered into many covenant relationships with the Lord, whether it be through baptism, receiving the priesthood or going through the temple, we are specially bonded to Him. As Sister Yee of the Relief Society General Presidency taught recently, "He will not abandon His covenant relationship with you."

I find myself to have often misbelieved that all the miracles Christ performed happened immediately. This idea of miracles coming to pass over time is taught beautifully in the first vision. In the Sacred Grove, after Joseph Smith's encounter with the adversary he said, "I saw a pillar of light exactly over my head, above the brightness of the sun, which descended gradually until it fell upon me. When the light rested upon me I saw two Personages, whose brightness and glory defy all description, standing above me in the air." We know the rest, and the rest of that experience is the most important part, but for today's purposes I want to focus on these sentences. Joseph said he saw a pillar of light which descended gradually. The word gradually is so important and inspired. It was not immediately after he saw the pillar of light that he understood the source of it to be Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, it was after a space of some time, and after the light had completely settled upon him that he understood what the source was. So it was for Blanca. And so it is for us as we struggle along on our earthly journey. I promise you that as you continue to live in the light of the gospel and live in repentance, you will see God and Jesus Christ, you will feel Their love, and you will know Them.

I'll finish up with one final thought from my experience witnessing the Lord provide a miracle to my friend Blanca in Santo Tome, Argentina. Remember the questions I had after I gave her the blessing? I thought the reason she hadn't been healed was my fault. It was not! Perhaps you too wonder if the Lord can or wants to use you in His work. I testify and witness to each of you that He does. It is His work and He wants you to take part in it. Be worthy to do so, and when you are, don't doubt yourself for one second, He has many errands for you and many of His children are waiting to be embraced in the arms of His love through ministering only you can offer. Even if you will only be here for a short time, remember that the Lord invited us to "act on the land as for days." Don't be afraid to plant your roots here, even if just for a few weeks or months. Don't let where you'll be tomorrow stop you from receiving the Lord's blessings today and offering those blessings to each other. "If you have a desire to serve you are called to the work, he that thrusteth in his sickle with his might, the same layeth up in store that he perisheth not, but bringeth salvation to his soul." It is my prayer that we can all stand as I have, amazed by the glory of our God, as He works mighty wonders and miracles among us, as He heals our souls, mends our hearts and gives us peace.

In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen