Be Strong

“Don’t you dare just go blend into the amoral, telestial, hard-scrabble world of today,” Elder Holland challenged graduates at BYU—Hawaii, located in the Laie, Hawaii, during a commencement address.
“Don't go to your first job or first neighborhood or first staff meeting and just begin to act like everybody else.  Be strong.  Be true. …Teach—rather than being taught.  You can't control everyone's morals, but you can control your own. You can't control everyone's language, but you can control your own.  You can't control everyone's personal standards, but you can control yours.  And thus the light of the gospel—the figurative lighthouse of Laie—can shine in all the world to which you go. Don't give up and don’t give in.  Be strong if you are the only Latter-day Saint for a hundred miles in any direction.  Stand straight and true and firm.”

“It is incumbent upon us as students, as Latter-day Saints, and as children of God to see the divine potential in ourselves, to believe in ourselves, and to know that with God’s help there is quite literally nothing in righteousness that we cannot become,” Elder Holland said. “That is the parable of this school’s history and it ought to be the parable of your history.”