Ordinary believers

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week covers the Sunday Morning Session of the April 1997 Conference.

Ah, Elder Ballard and the pioneers. I'm sorry to say there was a stretch of years there where I tuned out his talks because I assumed they were all going to be about "boring pioneer stuff." So what happened to make me feel differently? I guess an increasing realization that the pioneers were real people like me, and a decreasing sense of my own role in any of my blessings. Sometimes I look out over Salt Lake Valley now and feel almost overcome with how much I've inherited—spiritually, yes, but even just physically!—from the people who built this place. And as I've watched my children start to become adults, I have a new perspective on the longing for one's descendants to receive—really receive—the gospel for themselves.

I think I'm also better now at listening to what Elder Ballard and the other leaders were actually saying about the pioneers. This, for example:

Those 19th-century pioneers to whom we pay special tribute during this sesquicentennial year never set out to be heroes, and yet they accomplished heroic things. That is what makes them Saints. They were a band of believers who tried to do the right thing for the right reasons, ordinary men and women who were called on to perform an extraordinary work. At times, they gave in to discouragement and allowed themselves to murmur and complain. But ultimately their faith in God and the man they sustained as their prophet and leader prevailed, and they righted their vision and attitudes along with their wagons. In the process they found joy amid the hardships and trials of the trek.

It sounds so relatable (giving in to discouragement! Allowing themselves to murmur and complain!) and I love the idea that ultimately these ordinary, imperfect saints could "right their vision" and press on. I want to be someone like that, finding joy amid trials and walking with faith—all those phrases that used to sound like clichés to me, but have taken on real meaning through life experience.