Susan H Porter | Lessons at the Well | April 2022 General Conference

Lessons at the Well
By Susan H. Porter

First Counselor in the Primary General Presidency

We can turn to the Savior for the strength and healing that will enable us to do all that we were sent here to do.

What a joy it is to be gathered with each of you in this women’s session of general conference!

I grew up in western New York and attended a small branch of the Church about 20 miles (32 km) from our home. As I sat in Sunday School class in the basement of our old rented chapel with only my friend Patti Jo, I never could have imagined being part of a global sisterhood of millions of women.

Five years ago my husband, Bruce, became seriously ill when we were serving with the consecrated Saints in the Europe East Area. We returned home, and he passed away only a few weeks later. My life changed overnight. I was grieving and felt weak and vulnerable. I pled with the Lord to direct my path: “What would Thou have me do?”

A few weeks later, I was going through my mail when a small picture in a catalog caught my eye. As I looked closer, I realized it was an artist’s rendition of the Samaritan woman with Jesus at the well. At that moment the Spirit spoke clearly to me: “That is what you are supposed to do.” A loving Heavenly Father was inviting me to come to the Savior and learn.

I would like to share with you three lessons I am learning as I continue to drink from His well of “living water.”1

First: Our Past and Present Circumstances Do Not Determine Our Future
Sisters, I know that many of you feel as I did, unsure how to face difficult challenges and loss—loss because your life is not unfolding in the way you had hoped for, prayed for, and planned for.

No matter our circumstances, our lives are sacred and have meaning and purpose. Each of us is a beloved daughter of God, born with divinity in our souls.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, through His atoning sacrifice, made it possible for us to be cleansed and healed, enabling us to fulfill our purpose on earth regardless of decisions of family members, our marital status, physical or mental health, or any other situation.

Consider the woman at the well. What was her life like? Jesus perceived that she had had five husbands and was currently not married to the man she was living with. And yet, despite her life’s difficulties, one of the Savior’s first public declarations that He was the Messiah was to her. He said, “I that speak unto thee am he.”2

She became a powerful witness, declaring to those in her city that Jesus was the Christ. “And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman.”3

Her past and present circumstances did not determine her future. Like her, we can choose to turn to the Savior today for the strength and healing that will enable us to fulfill all that we were sent here to do.

Second: The Power Is in Us
In a familiar verse in the Doctrine and Covenants, the Lord encourages women and men to be “anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them.”4

Sisters, the power is in us to bring to pass much righteousness!

President Russell M. Nelson testified, “Every woman and every man who makes covenants with God and keeps those covenants, and who participates worthily in priesthood ordinances, has direct access to the power of God.”5

I have come to know that as we strive to honor sacred covenants made at baptism and in holy temples, the Lord will bless us “with His healing, strengthening power” and with “spiritual insights and awakenings [we’ve] never had before.”6

General Conference Saturday Womens Session April 2022

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