Delivered by Nancy Harward in a sacrament meeting of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Montgomery Ward, Cincinnati Ohio East Stake
Sunday 22 March 2026
The General Conference held in April 2021, like the one coming up in a couple of weeks, took place on Easter weekend. In that conference, Dallin H. Oaks shared the following experience:
Dallin H. Oaks, April 2021
In a Saturday evening meeting at a stake conference many years ago, I met a woman who said her friends had asked her to come back to church after many years of inactivity, but she could not think of any reason why she should. To encourage her, I said, “When you consider all of the things the Savior has done for you, you have many reasons to come back to worship and serve Him.” I was astonished when she replied, “What’s He done for me?”[1]
President Oaks went on to explain that Jesus Christ “has done everything that is essential for our journey through mortality toward the destiny outlined in the plan of our Heavenly Father,” and invited us to consider specific ways the Savior has served and blessed us. Today I’d like to share a few of the things Jesus has done for me.
First, Jesus Christ created daffodils. Christ himself declared that he is “the Son of the living God, who created the heavens and the earth.”[2] That means that Jesus Christ is responsible for creating the chipmunks, the chickadees, and the cherry blossoms that bring me so much delight every spring. He created the mountains and oceans and the star-studded skies that fill me with awe when I travel through the world. I am grateful for the wonders that surround us, but I am even more grateful for the opportunity God has given me to come to this beautiful earth, in a physical body, with the freedom to make my own choices. It is Jesus Christ who assured that each of us would retain that God-given agency, and reassured us that he would provide not only the direction we would need to make good choices, but also the means to correct our mistakes when the choices we make are not so good.
My first experience with repentance came when I was in third grade, about a year after I was baptized at age eight. At the time, my best friend and I were styling ourselves as tomboys and decided it would be more fun to spend our recess time playing kickball with the boys instead of hopscotch with the other girls. Although neither of us was as strong nor as skilled as the boys, they tolerated our presence as long as we stayed in the outfield. As the games went on, I noticed that several of the boys would swear when their kicks went awry or when they got tagged out while running to the next base, so, eager to prove that I was just as tough as they, I started to swear, too. No one was profaning the Lord’s name, but we were using obscenities that—as I understand now—profane our God-given bodies and their procreative powers. As a nine-year-old, however, I had no idea what these words meant, but I did know that they were “bad words” and that I shouldn’t be using them. Some of the other kids who were swearing were in my Primary class as well as my grade at school, so we should have known better. Nevertheless, we let the bad words spew from our mouths and joined in the giggling that resulted. After about a week, it seemed that our daily kickball game had devolved into a competition to shock each other with increasingly appalling words as our collective vocabulary of vulgarities grew.
Finally, Doug Jackson decided that it was time to stop. Doug was not a big kid, nor a particularly good kickball player. He wasn’t the most popular boy in our grade, nor the smartest. But that day he demonstrated a strength of character I’d never seen before in a nine-year-old. Just after someone let loose a long string of obscenities, Doug came out from behind the backstop and shouted, “I’m ashamed of you! I’m ashamed of all of you! And you Mormon kids, especially! You should know better than to use the kinds of words you’ve been using! It’s wrong, and you know it’s wrong. You need to stop, and you need to stop NOW!”
I was stung. Doug was absolutely right. I knew that what we had been doing—what I had been doing—was wrong. It was particularly painful to realize that we “Mormon kids” had been called out by a non-Mormon kid with more courage and a better sense of what Jesus would have us do than we had.
That night, when I knelt beside my bed and said my prayers, I very humbly asked Heavenly Father to forgive me for swearing and for setting a bad example for my friends at school, and I promised that I would never use those words again. And then I felt the sweet relief that comes because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ to all those who truly repent. Because of Jesus Christ, my guilt was swept away.
Something I’ve learned in the decades since that first personal witness of the power of the Atonement is that the Atonement of Jesus Christ is not limited to forgiveness of sins. Alma taught that the Savior would “go forth, suffering pains and afflictions of every kind,” that he would “know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities.”[3] Sometimes those infirmities are physical; other times they are mental, emotional, or spiritual. No matter what our affliction, Jesus Christ can provide the divine strength we need to meet our challenges because, as Moroni assures us, his “grace is sufficient for all” that humbly ask in faith.[4]
One of the greatest challenges I’ve had to face occurred when a superior at my workplace demanded that I be the one to censure a coworker at a meeting that all employees were supposed to attend. I knew that my coworker, Tom (not his real name), had already humbly and sincerely apologized to the person he had offended, and I did not feel that he deserved to be publicly humiliated by being presented to his coworkers as a bad example. I also knew that my boss, Mr. Boyd (also not his real name), had a personal vendetta against Tom. So this was not a situation where I could simply tell Mr. Boyd, “Sorry, I’m not going to do that,” because I knew that if I refused to reprimand Tom at the meeting, Mr. Boyd would do it himself. He’d done things like this before: putting others down, belittling their work, asserting his authority in the way insecure people do when they think they can’t command respect by any other means.
I knew that to stop Mr. Boyd from following through on his scheme to humiliate Tom in front of the entire company, I would have to confront Mr. Boyd directly before the meeting took place. Such a confrontation was risky, especially because I’ve never been very good at diplomatic discourse, and there were all sorts of ways this conversation could turn out badly. But I knew it had to be done, because Mr. Boyd’s plan was wrong. It was hurtful. It was merciless. It wasn’t Christlike. So just before I left the office on the day Mr. Boyd had issued his demand, I sent him an email requesting a private meeting. And then I went home and began praying—hard.
Any hesitation I may have felt initially about confronting my boss dissipated as I prayed to know what I should say and how I should say it. I felt a calm reassurance that my task was a righteous one, and that the Spirit would guide me through it. As I entered Mr. Boyd’s office on the morning of our meeting, I felt confident in a way I’d never felt before. I felt like Abinadi shrugging off the priests of wicked King Noah who tried to restrain him from delivering the message God had sent him to deliver. I was filled with the Spirit, and I spoke to my boss with power. “I will not do that to Tom,” I said, “and I will not allow you to do that to Tom, either, because it’s wrong.”
Then, like Abinadi with King Noah, I perceived that Mr. Boyd was cut to the heart because I told him the truth.[5] He rescinded his demand, and nothing about Tom and his offense was said at the company meeting the next day.
What I experienced in that stressful situation was grace, the divine help and strength “that is made possible because of the Atonement of Jesus Christ.”[6] Tom, too, was blessed by Christ’s mercy because he was spared further pain for an offense he had already repented of.
Preach My Gospel, the guidebook for missionaries, instructs us to help those we teach to understand that forgiveness of sins is only one aspect of the Atonement. In addition:
Jesus Christ offers comfort, hope, and healing. His atoning sacrifice is the ultimate expression of His love. All that is unfair in life can be made right through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.[7]
In his response to the skeptical woman who asked him what Jesus had done for her, President Oaks offered many more ideas, summarizing the main points this way:
Under the plan of our Heavenly Father, [Jesus Christ] “created the heavens and the earth” so that each of us could have the mortal experience necessary to seek our divine destiny. As part of the Father’s plan, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ overcame death to assure each of us immortality. Jesus Christ’s atoning sacrifice gives each of us the opportunity to repent of our sins and return clean to our heavenly home. His commandments and covenants show us the way, and His priesthood gives the authority to perform the ordinances that are essential to reach that destiny. And our Savior willingly experienced all mortal pains and infirmities that He would know how to strengthen us in our afflictions.
Jesus Christ did all of this because He loves all of the children of God. Love is the motivation for it all, and it was so from the very beginning.[8]
I can testify that the love of Jesus Christ has been manifest in all that he has done for me, and invite you to consider what he has done for you, too.
[1] President Dallin H. Oaks, “What Has Our Savior Done for Us?” General Conference, April 2021.
[6] “Grace: God’s gift of love and mercy,” Gospel Study Guide, Topics and Questions.
[7] “Heavenly Father’s Plan of Salvation,” Preach My Gospel, Chapter 3, Lesson 2.
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