My two granddaughters each came home from their missions with a pit bull story.

The first girl and her companion were walking along a narrow road in North Carolina without sidewalks when a van began following them in a menacing manner.  The van was driven by a cursing and swearing woman.  Inside the van were four snarling and barking pit bulls hurling themselves at the windows trying to get at the girls.  The woman rolled a window down and out jumped a pit bull.  The dog landed on its chin.  The girls heard a loud pop, and the dog didn't move again.

The woman really began swearing then, and her curses only increased as a bus pulled up behind her and began honking for her to get out of the way.  The missionaries thought that the best thing for them to do was to just keep walking.

Her sister served her mission in Central America, in Costa Rica.  She and her companion found a fine family of six who wanted to hear their message.  But the family lived way out in an area that was dangerous for the girls to go through, and the family could only be taught in the evenings when the father was home.  Nevertheless the girls wanted the family to hear the lessons, so they set out to keep their appointment.

They got off the bus in an unfamiliar area, and immediately saw that they were in the midst of a crowd of threatening-looking men who were openly using drugs.  Around the corner came a huge pit bull, and headed straight for my granddaughter.  The bus pulled away.  The missionary girls were in a bad situation, and my granddaughter was petrified. The dog stopped in front of her, and she cautiously put out her hand to pet it.  They then proceeded on their way.  The pit bull went with them, and escorted them all the way to their appointment.  They taught the receptive family, made a return appointment, and stepped out into the night to retrace their steps.  There was the pit bull, waiting for them, and escorted them home.  She was grateful for the dog.  She thought it a wonderful coincidence that every time they went to teach that family the dog should meet them and escort them to the appointment and back again.  It wasn't until her companion told her that the dog's companionship was no coincidence that she realized that they were being watched over and protected.

I prayed and prayed to know what message the Lord would like me to deliver to you.  One morning I awoke with a four-word phrase in my head.  It was, "sheltered from the storm."  I knew that the phrase was in answer to my prayer, so that is what I'd like to speak about..

Those missionary girls were sheltered from hazards that would have otherwise harmed them--and so are you.

I really, really like Doctrine and Covenants 84:88.  The Lord says, "I will go before your face.  I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up."

President Nelson said:  “Every time you worthily serve and worship in the temple, you leave armed with God's power and with His angels having charge over you.”  (Russell M. Nelson, Ensign, November 2019, 78)).

President Heber J. Grant said that "I have little or no fear for the boy or the girl, the young man or the young woman, who honestly and conscientiously supplicate God twice a day for the guidance of His Spirit. I am sure that when temptation comes they will have the strength to overcome it by the inspiration that shall be given to them. Supplicating the Lord for the guidance of His Spirit places around us a safeguard, and if we earnestly and honestly seek the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord, I can assure you that we will receive it."

Think of that.  If you had a prayer before you left home this morning, you have unseen protections around you.  If you have prayer with your children each morning before sending them out into the world they have protections around them.

In your mind's eye, can't you see those dutiful missionary girls with angels round about them to bear them up?

Can you sense the angels round about you bearing you up through your own trials and hazards and temptations?  I think that we're not even aware of most of the troubles that we thus avoid.  We're sheltered from the storm.

I've found the word "calamity" used seven times in the scriptures.  It's used to describe what happened to the Jaredites.  It's used twice in relation to the destruction of the Nephites.  It's used in the Doctrine and Covenants in reference to the Civil War.  And it's used in the preface to the Doctrine and Covenants, section 1, verse 17, where it says, "Wherefore, I the Lord, knowing the calamity which should come upon the inhabitants of the earth, called upon my servant Joseph Smith, Jun., and spake unto him from heaven, and gave him commandments."

We've been through a pandemic, but it wasn't a calamity like these other events were.  It was a hardship, but it was also a blessing.

I believe that our hardships and afflictions are intended to be blessings, if we handle them correctly.  For instance:

Being kicked out of the country, and having to make a 1,000-mile trek through the wilderness to establish new homes in the uninhabited West was a huge hardship for the Saints, but that hardship became a blessing for the members of the Church in many ways.  Being expelled from the nation enabled the Saints to entirely avoid the calamity that was the Civil War.

The Jaredites had a many-year trek across a vast wilderness "where there never had man been" (Ether 2:5), followed by a 344-day float across the Atlantic Ocean on little barges whose only form of locomotion was a tempestuous wind that never ceased blowing.  That was an unimaginable hardship, but enabled the Jaredites to obtain the land which the Lord designated as "choice above all other lands."  (Ether 2:15).  The Lord then built them into "a great nation," and said, "there shall be none greater than the nation which I will raise up unto me of thy seed, upon all the face of the earth."  (Ether 1:43).

Lehi and Nephi had their own 8-year trek across the most forbidding desert in the world followed by a boat trip across two oceans.  They, also, obtained the promised land, and were also built into the greatest nation on the earth in their time.  We can't comprehend their hardships, either, but it is instructive to note how they handled those hardships.

Lehi said to his son, Jacob, "and (the Lord) shall consecrate thine afflictions to thy gain" (2 Nephi 2:2), to which I like to add, "if we resist the urge to complain."

It should be noted that, like the wind that never ceased to blow during the Jaredites' voyage, the brother of Jared's praises to the Lord never ceased, either.  (Ether 6:8-9).  It should also be noted that Nephi bore his hardships without complaint and claimed that he was highly blessed, while Laman and Lemuel went through the same experiences murmuring and complaining and were eventually cut off from the presence of the Lord.

One of our favorite hymns, God Moves in a Mysterious Way, says,

"Ye fearful saints fresh courage take;

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy and shall break

In blessings on your head."

The next verse says,

"His purposes will ripen fast,

Unfolding ev'ry hour;

The bud may have a bitter taste,

But sweet will be the flower."

We've been through a pandemic, but it wasn't a calamity.  It was a hardship, but it was also a blessing, just like our pioneers' trek to the West.

How could it possibly be a blessing?

It was a blessing because it was a shot across the bow if we will recognize it as such.  It was a warning to prepare for the calamity yet to come.  Doctrine and Covenants 1:17 says that it's coming.

The wise will sit up, take notice, and prepare.  The best preparation we can make is to be righteous.  We need to repent, be kind, be patient, be prayerful, help those around us, and quit murmuring.

Nephi is an example of how we should meet and endure our own trials, hardships, and temptations.  He also left a prophetic assurance and guide to tell us how we can be sheltered from the storm that's in our forecast.  He saw that storm in vision.  You can read about it in 2 Nephi 27:1-2.  He took pains to assure us seven times in seven verses in 1 Nephi 22:16-22 that the righteous will be spared.

All you have to do is to be good, be prepared, repent, quit complaining, and to recognize and to count the blessings that come to you through your hardships.

Please know that there are angels round about you bearing you up and sheltering you from the storm.

I'll give you some examples:

Back in the late 1970s we experienced a drought very much like the one we're in now.  In February I looked up at Red Mountain above my house, and noted that there was not even a hint of snow on what should have been a mountain many feet deep in it.  We had just purchased our farm, and it was critical that we should make some money that year.  While fasting and praying about the problem, I found a verse in the Bible which I had read many times, but had never focused upon.  It was the verse that follows Malachi's prophecy concerning tithing, in the third chapter of his book.  The verse says that if we pay our tithing, and give the Lord His due, then He says, "I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts."  (Malachi 3:11).

That was the exact blessing every farmer and rancher was hoping for.  I went to Marjorie and told her that if we paid our tithing, and faithfully observed the Sabbath, that we would come out all right, despite the drought.  Marjorie was skeptical.  She doesn't believe in what some people do, who, when they have a problem, go to the scriptures and let the book fall open to the answer.  But she says she went into her bedroom and tried it with her Book of Mormon.  She was shocked when the book opened to 3 Nephi, chapter 24, where the Lord in His visits to the Nephites, gave them the words of Malachi, which had been written after Lehi left Jerusalem, the exact scripture that I had quoted to her, but from another book.

She came to me and asked, "Did you pay tithing on the timber that we logged?"  I was dumb-struck.  I never forget to pay our tithing, but I'd forgotten that.  We had to scrape around and come up with $2,600 to pay our tithing.  At the end of the year we took our books to our accountant who told us that of all his farm accounts, we were one of only two farms that had shown a profit that year.

The protections round about us come in many ways and in many forms.

Another:  In 1968 I was in the U.S. Navy, and was sent to Japan to serve aboard the USS Banner.  On my way there, the North Koreans captured the Pueblo, the Banner's sister ship.  The two ships took 3-week turns being out on patrol.  The crew of the Pueblo was held captive for 400 days.

The Vietnam War was in full swing, and unbeknownst to me, my mother was beside herself with worry about her young son who was going to spend a year in that dangerous part of the world.  All she could do about it was to worry and pray.

One night her deceased father came to her, stood beside her bed, and told her, "You don't need to worry about Jamie.  He's going to be all right."  My sister told me just this year that that happened right in the very bedroom I currently occupy.  I never knew that.  That was the most sacred thing that ever happened to my mother, and it is sacred to me.  She ceased worrying about me.

In relation to that, President Joseph F. Smith said, "When messengers are sent to minister to the inhabitants of this earth, they are not strangers, but from the ranks of our kindred [and] friends. ... In like manner our fathers and mothers, brothers, sisters and friends who have passed away from this earth, having been faithful, and worthy to enjoy these rights and privileges, may have a mission given them to visit their relatives and friends upon the earth again, bringing from the divine Presence messages of love, of warning, or reproof and instruction, to those whom they had learned to love in the flesh. [GD, 435–36]

Another example of this took place in the bedroom next to mine.  It was the bedroom of my invalid mother-in-law.  Marjorie cared for her for nine years.  She was a total invalid for the last five.  Marjorie had to bathe her, dress her, and feed her.  Some of the care involved lifting.  Marjorie hadn't had a baby in six years, but suddenly found that she was pregnant.  Caring for an invalid mother was going to become a problem.

One morning Grandma resisted Marjorie's efforts to lift her.  Marjorie felt something rip in her tummy.  The next morning Marjorie entered the bedroom with trepidation, as she'd have to go through the whole routine again.  It had been many months since Marjorie's mother had said anything sensible, but on this morning, Grandma looked earnestly at Marjorie and said, "Dave was here last night."  (Her deceased husband).  "He says that you're pregnant.  I didn't know that you were pregnant.  He says that I have to help you."

Angels come in many forms.  Some of them are mortal.  Marjorie's two sisters each came and spent a month taking care of their mother, and of us.  They were followed by Marjorie's niece, Debbie, who moved in for several months with her two children.  We introduced her to her future husband.  Three months after baby Eli was born, she and her husband were sealed in the temple, and Debbie left us.  That was 26 years ago, and everyone has lived happily ever after.

Please know that there are angels round about you bearing you up and sheltering you from the storm.  All you have to do is to be good, be prepared, repent, quit complaining, and to recognize and to count the blessings that come to you through your hardships.