Two Testimonies Of Prayer

While I was on my mission I met a young girl named Antoinette Palmièri. It was in the city of Toulon, down on the Mediterranean.

When I arrived there my companion and the Elder I replaced had met Antoinette and had been teaching her. Long story short, she eventually got baptized, but not until after I had been transferred. There is much more to that story, but I will save that for later.

After my mission I attend Brigham Young University and at one point I decided that Antoinette was the one for me. I had been back to my mission field and had seen her there, and now I wanted to marry her.

I began the usual process of fasting and praying about this.

One day a few months later it occurred to me that I had not only stopped praying about Antoinette, but in fact I hadn't even thought about her for a long, long time.

I knew then what the prophet was talking about when he described the "stupor of thought" that comes upon us when Heavenly Father is trying to tell us something. In this case the answer to my prayer was "no", and He accentuated that answer by making my mind go blank on the subject.

The second testimony has to do with Mildred. We had an on-again off-again relationship going on for a full year, from the beginning of one school year to the beginning of the next school year.

I didn't want her to be "the one" :) She was (I felt) still too young, and she clung to me like glue, etc. Finally I decided that we could pray about it, we would get the answer "no", and I could move on from there.

We didn't get that answer :)

So when someone asks "How will I know if it's a real answer or just what I want the answer to be", I tell them "You will know". Twice in my life I have known - once when I really wanted it to be "yes", and it was "no", and the other when I really wanted it to be "no", and it was yes.