Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin “You may feel singled out when
adversity enters your life. You shake your head and wonder, ‘Why me?’ “But the
dial on the wheel of sorrow eventually points to each of us. At one time or
another, everyone must experience sorrow. No one is exempt. . . . “Learning to
endure times of disappointment, suffering, and sorrow is part of our on-the-job
training. These experiences while often difficult to bear at the time, are
precisely the kinds of experiences that stretch our understanding, build our
character, and increase our compassion for others” (“Come What May, and Love
It,” Ensign, Nov. 2008, 27).
Elder Orson F. Whitney of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles:
“No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to
our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith,
fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially
when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts,
expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be
called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil
and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire” (in
Spencer W. Kimball, Faith Precedes the Miracle [1972], 98).
