By Jonathan Ward, Highland 11th Ward
A few days before my son Sam came home from serving his mission in the Honduras Tegucigalpa Mission, our family had the chance to join a Zoom call with his mission president, President Gonzalez. It was meant to be a simple thing — a chance to check in, talk about goals for Sam’s return home, and share testimonies together as a family. But it turned into one of those quiet, sacred moments I won’t forget.
President Gonzalez is from Guatemala. During the call, he interviewed Sam about his mission experiences and talked with him about what it would look like to transition well back into life at home. Then he invited each of us to share a thought or a testimony.
When it was his turn, he shared something deeply personal. He told us he was baptized at age 11, growing up in the Church from a young age. But as a young teenager, he drifted away and became less active. Life happened, the way it does for so many of us, and he stepped back for a time. Then, in his late teenage years, he found his way home again — a return that led him to serve his first mission as a young adult.
What struck me most wasn’t just that he came back — it was why he wanted us to hear it. He explained that through his own conversion, he came to understand something he now teaches every missionary he serves with: the worth of a soul in the sight of God. He said his life had been blessed because of that return, and that his children’s lives had been blessed because of it too. A mission president, a husband, a father — all because someone, at some point, didn’t give up on him, and he didn’t give up on himself.
That phrase, the worth of a soul, comes straight from the Doctrine and Covenants. In section 18, verses 10–11, the Lord says:
“Remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God… for, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.”
I love that this isn’t abstract. It’s personal. The Savior didn’t suffer for “the world” in some distant, general way — He suffered for souls. For a teenage boy in Guatemala who would one day drift and one day return. For a missionary son finishing two years of service. For each of us, exactly as we are, wherever we are in our own coming and going from Him.
I think that’s part of what made this experience so meaningful to our family. Here was a man entrusted with the spiritual welfare of dozens of missionaries — Sam among them — and the thing he wanted us to carry home wasn’t a program or a policy. It was this: that God does not measure our worth by our streak of activity, our resume, or how consistent we’ve been. He measures it by the fact that He was willing to suffer for us. That kind of love doesn’t waver when we do.
I’m grateful Sam had a mission president who led not just with counsel, but with his own story of coming back. And I’m grateful for a Savior who sees each of us — including the versions of us that wander, and the versions of us that return — as worth dying for. No matter where any of us are on that path right now, our worth in God’s eyes has never changed.
I testify of this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.