Hope letters

Finding hope through noticing God's fingerprints in our lives.

  • Hope letters

    Wings of Faith

    I wanted to make my son’s Christmas wish come true and see in his face the joy I desperately wanted for myself. My three-year-old squeaks with excitement. His response is an innocent reply to my offhanded question, “What do you want for Christmas?” I mutter a hesitant “We’ll see” before putting him to bed, relishing the rare moments I get to spend with him. I’ve been too out of sorts to be present most of the time. The unceasing screams of his sister, suffering from colic, keep pulling me into the black hole of postpartum depression. I feel like a…

  • Hope letters

    Mom’s Empty Chair

    My husband and I lived in the same ward as my angel mother. Each Sunday, as a member of the Relief Society presidency, I sat at the front of the Relief Society room, facing the sisters. My mother always sat in the same place on the front row. I enjoyed watching her responses to the lessons and hearing her comments. After each meeting, she kissed my cheek and squeezed my hand. My mother and I were close, so it broke my heart when she passed away unexpectedly. After her funeral, my emotions remained tender. When Sunday arrived, my husband asked…

  • Hope letters

    Stuck

    One winter while I was driving home from a wedding reception for several hours in the middle of the night, the snowy weather became frighteningly intense. I was driving through a canyon, with 30 icy miles (48 km) stretched between me and my home. Almost instantly, it seemed, the road got slicker, the night sky darker, my eyes heavier, and the falling snow much thicker. Having foolishly forgotten to put my mother’s sport-utility vehicle into four-wheel drive, I realized there was little traction, but that thought arrived too late. I completely lost all control of the vehicle and began sliding across…

  • Hope letters

    Sister, I Love You

    During an interview while I served in an elders quorum presidency, I asked a fellow quorum member if he had ever felt and acted on a spiritual prompting. He thought for a moment and shared an experience. One afternoon he was washing dishes when he received a strong impression to go knock on a neighbor’s door. He did not understand why, but the prompting was powerful and urgent. He stopped what he was doing and left right away. He arrived at his neighbor’s door, not knowing what to do or say, and knocked. No one answered. He knocked again. There…

  • Hope letters

    Letting Go

    The other day, I felt prompted to write a very difficult story down in which I lost $21,000 dollars.  This was a hard experience to go through losing that money I didn’t have, and the lesson was just as hard,  that money really doesn’t matter to God, it shouldn’t matter so much to me.  He asked me to let go, and I, after quite a while, conceded.  Not initially because I felt I was really ready to let go of that money, but I needed God back in my life.  That was the more important thing. Through time, I was…

  • Hope letters

    Healing the Issue of Blood

    With Easter a few weeks past (but still on my mind) I’m remembering the Miracles that Jesus performed here while He was on this earth.  Each miracle had a purpose in healing, but, with all of His parables lies additional truth for us to find. In this story, this woman made great efforts to get close to the Savior for this healing.  She didn’t just hope for healing, she sought Him out.  We don’t really know her name, but Jesus knew her, calling her “Daughter.”  Many times we feel forgotten, unknown, unloved or broken.  Friends.  He knows your name.  It…

  • Hope letters

    A Miracle Through My Struggles

    On January 7, 2023, I woke up to complete blindness in my right eye and only about 10 percent vision in my left eye. The world had suddenly faded to gray—literally. Color and light were gone. I was left in darkness, fear, and doubt. As an artist, all I ever wanted to do was add to the beauty of the world through art—a passion I have had nearly my entire life. What would I do if I could no longer see, participate in, or appreciate beauty in the world? A few days earlier, my eyes became sensitive to light, and sharp…

  • Hope letters

    It’s not much of a story, or a miracle. Still, It’s a hammer stroke that helped forge my testimony in God. I think I was 10, and I was playing a Sherlock Holmes computer game. It was one of those old games where you clicked on the screen, and if it was there was a clue there, it would light up. I had been looking for clues to get through a locked door for what felt like hours (it was probably only a few minutes). It felt impossible, and I was ready to give up. I remember saying a prayer,…

  • Hope letters

    A Prayer of a Child

    Some years ago, some close friends of ours loaned us their cabin in Island Park, Idaho. When we arrived at the cabin, we found that the key that we had been given to unlock the front door didn’t work. We tried to undo windows and pry open screens, all to no avail. Suddenly our son Steven, who was about seven years old at the time, shouted to us that he had just successfully opened the front door. Steven, with a big grin on his face, was standing triumphantly inside the front doorway. I was amazed. I asked him how he…