The Promise and Blessings of Eternal Families

by Amber Becker

Growing up, I had siblings who had left the Church. Members would encourage my mother not to worry, saying that her children would return to the Church after the resurrection. But we should never give up hoping or praying for the return of family members or for others to join the Church in this life. Thankfully they did return!

This week in Come, Follow Me we read Luke 15:11–32, the parable of the prodigal son. Shortly after being baptized, Wilford Woodruff left family and friends to join the Saints in Zion. Once there he received a note from his brother Azmon writing that he had left the Church, requesting his name to be removed from the records. Wilford exchanged letters with Azmon and penned his own reasons for staying in the Church, bearing testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel. 

On June 5, 1837, upon seeing his brothers again, Wilford recorded the following: “I called in the morning at Brother Azmon’s & conversed with him & also Brother Thompson upon temporal as well as spiritual subjects. . . . Both appeared affected. Brother Azmon said he was still seeking for light & truth & should not have left the truth or the Church of Latter day Saints had it not been for his temptations trials &c.”1

I bear my testimony that as we try to live the gospel and work to build up the kingdom of the Lord, we and our families will have His blessings upon us. We should never give up on any individual, family or not—we are all children of God. I am thankful that it is not for us to judge and that all can be made right through the blessings of Christ’s Atonement.

Amber Becker was born and raised in Modesto, California. When she was 24, she met her husband while riding the commuter rail into Boston, Massachusetts. They were one of the first couples married in the Boston temple in October of 2000. They are blessed with four children and one grandchild. Currently, she and her husband reside in Fort Worth, Texas, with two of their children.

  1. Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, June 5, 1837, p. 155, The Wilford Woodruff Papers, wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/journal/1837-06-05.