My Testimony – Before

I want to let ya'll know that I know and believe this church is the true church on Earth. I know Joseph Smith restored this Gospel through divine foreordination. He asked God about which church to join and Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him in a vision. Jesus is the Christ and is my older brother, Savior, Redeemer, and best friend. He was born of Mary the virgin and was the most perfect being on Earth. He atoned for everyone's sins in the Garden of Gethsemane. Not only were our sins suffered for, but our sorrows, pains, loneliness, and every bad feeling in this world. Christ did that for me because he loves me. He loves you, too. The Book of Mormon is a wonderful, beautiful, and true book about principles that can be applied from before Christ all the way until many, many years from now. I know I'm here on Earth for a reason. Although that reason may not be known to me for many more years to come, I trust the Lord to place me in the right places at the right time for me to figure out my purpose. Thomas S. Monson is our living prophet today and leads us towards our God and Lord and will never lead us astray. Tender mercies are real and happen to me every day. I know that if I do what is pleasing unto the Lord that I can live eternally with my family and can be happy forever. I know, although am sometimes lost and forget, that I'm loved and can pray whenever I need and want to. I'm grateful that families can be forever through the Plan of Salvation/Happiness. I know that I can have the Spirit with me when I try to be more Christ-like every day. I know temple work is important and I'm so excited for this opportunity to gain a stronger testimony of this wonderful and marvelous work coming forth (both here on Earth and in Heaven).

Pilot

I'll introduce myself first. My name is Toriann Pickens. I'm eighteen years old and am a freshman in college at BYU-Idaho. I feel I'm sometimes very creative but at other times I'm just plain not. I have two loving parents who support what I do and make me laugh quite often, even if they are my parents. Just kidding. Ha. I have two brothers and a sister and I'm the second oldest in the family. I feel I'm musically inclined and just love music in general. "Music speaks to the soul when words cannot."

Enough of that (: Now, onto the reason why I'm creating this blog. In my religion class, I'm taking Intro to Family History. In this class we will be indexing, researching, collaborating, and my end goal is to try to bring at least 3 names into the temple to give my ancestors an opportunity to become a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. I feel genealogy is important considering we have so many lost family members that need to be found. Maybe I can find them. I have been wanting to do family history for a little while now but have not yet had the chance to really do so because I didn't have the time nor the knowledge to fulfill this yearning. I'm grateful for this opportunity to learn about where I have come from and who I come from. I'm required to either make a website or blog to make this happen and since I'm not that smart to make a website and I've blogged before, I'll be blogging. So here's to my first post and to a great adventure in this class! :D