PROVO, Utah — While visiting several Primary meetings when she served as the Primary general president, President Camille N. Johnson noticed the children would face windows or a blackboard instead of a picture of the Savior. She felt impressed to encourage her ward’s Primary president to put a painting of Christ in the front of the Primary room and have a testimony of Him be given by someone each week.
The ward Primary president recounted the results to President Johnson, who now serves as Relief Society general president: “We have found a gentle shift towards Christ in not just our testimony bearing but in the rest of Primary as well. ... We talk of Christ and His love more often throughout our time in Primary.”
Speaking to training missionaries in a Tuesday, March 19, devotional, President Johnson said, “Sisters and elders, do you see with your spiritual eyes and hear with your spiritual ears the difference a focus on the Savior can make in your life and the lives of your friends?”
In the evening devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center, President Johnson testified that joy comes by focusing on and choosing Jesus Christ. Her husband, Brother Douglas R. Johnson, gave brief remarks as well.
“I testify that the Savior, whose Resurrection we celebrate this Easter season, is the source of our abiding joy,” she said. “... Expect miracles and joy in your mission service by focusing on Jesus Christ.”
Joy through a focus on the Savior
Church President Russell M. Nelson taught in 2016 that “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. ... Joy comes from and because of [Jesus Christ].”
To her missionary audience, President Johnson added: “We don’t have to be pain-free to have joy. We can feel a bit overwhelmed and joyful at the same time. We can enjoy abiding joy when our focus is on Jesus Christ.”
Missionaries can find joy through a focus on the Savior, she said, despite unfairness, pain or grief. They can find joy even in challenges that feel nearly impossible to overcome.
“The faithful — you amazing missionaries — are not exempt from adversity, but we all can find joy in our tribulation, in the overwhelming, in the scary, when we center our lives on Jesus Christ.”
President Johnson said that joy is possible because the Messiah has redeemed and delivered His people. This message is the “good news” that missionaries are set apart to share with the world.
“I testify of the joy that comes, even in challenging circumstances,” she said, “when we choose to make the Savior the focus of our lives. That joy is going to be abiding, and it will run deep.”
Joy through the Book of Mormon
Despite knowing little Spanish, President Johnson was called with her husband as mission leaders of the Peru Arequipa Mission from 2016 to 2019. She found solace in the Book of Mormon, reading it in Spanish, from cover to cover, three times in Peru.
“Spanish didn’t beautifully roll off my lips” as a result, she recounted, but she did get “the ability to communicate my love for my missionaries to them and my testimony of the Book of Mormon.”
She took every opportunity to testify of el Libro de Mormón, and her love for the book became contagious among her missionaries. “That is when we saw mission miracles,” she said. “Finding miracles. Baptism miracles. All in our collective commitment to study and use the Book of Mormon.”
The Book of Mormon provides examples of joy in Jesus Christ, said President Johnson. Ammon’s heart was “brim with joy,” for instance, after thousands were converted (Alma 26:4, 11). After his son Jacob suffered “afflictions and much sorrow” in the wilderness, Lehi counseled, “Thou knowest the greatness of God; and he shall consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain” (2 Nephi 2:1-2).
“I invite you to do your own study in the Book of Mormon,” President Johnson said. “Which of the Book of Mormon people were joyful? Why did they experience joy in the midst of heartache and trial?”
Joy through a covenant relationship
A powerful result of God’s love and desire for His children to have joy is the opportunity to make covenants. Sharing a teaching in 2022 from President Nelson, President Johnson said that through covenants with Heavenly Father, “He will never tire in His efforts to help us, and we will never exhaust His merciful patience with us.”
Among the blessings of a covenant relationship, said President Johnson, are love, mercy, inexhaustible patience and joy — and a missionary’s role is to help their brothers and sisters access these blessings by making and keeping covenants of their own.
President Johnson said: “The future is bright because you are good and noble and brave and reflect the Light of Christ in your countenances. You have the abiding joy of the Savior and the power that comes with it.”
A covenant relationship is made possible through the Atonement of Jesus Christ. And that is why a missionary’s work is joyful, she said.
“I joyfully share my testimony that in a covenant relationship with God and with a focus on Jesus Christ, we can find joy.”
