Homecoming Talk - January 11, 2026

Courtney's Homecoming Talk given on January 11, 2026 in the Peacefield Ward.
 
Good morning brothers and sisters! I am so excited and so grateful to be with you all today! For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Courtney Stringham and a few weeks ago I returned home from my mission in the Washington Vancouver mission! I am sure many of you immediately think of Vancouver Canada, but my mission actually covered the very southwest corner of Washington state. I like to brag that I have the prettiest mission in the world. It’s as green as green could be and there are beaches and mountains and quite literally anything you could ask for! Before I opened my call, I told my parents that I really just wanted to go somewhere warm, which I got for about 3 months of the year in Washington. Besides that, it just rains! Rainy season in Washington starts in about September, October ish and it ends in about May or June. As weird as it sounds, being in the rain helped me grow a lot on my mission and taught me a lot of things! As I was thinking about what to talk about today, I kept thinking about these rainy days and what got me through them, and the thing that kept me going and helped me stay happy through these gloomy months was Jesus Christ! My mission brought to life the idea that Jesus Christ is our light! In Doctrine and Covenants 6:21 it reads:

“Behold I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God… I am the light which shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not.” 

I have seen Jesus Christ become a light for so many of my friends and so many friends became lights to me on my mission. I wanted to share with you today some people who brought the light of Christ into my life and who helped me experience more of the joy of the gospel. 

The first friend I wanted to talk about is a lady named Tami! I love Tami so much! I taught Tami when I was about 8 months into my mission. I was serving in an area called Elma where I actually spent 6 months of my mission! This area is the very north of my mission, up near Olympia area and it covers 3 tiny little towns, each of which has a population of about 3,000 people, and we were blessed to see so many miracles in this area! And Tami is one of my favorite miracles from my time there! My companion and I were out knocking doors at 10 am one morning and it was one of the slowest mornings ever! No one was answering, and if they were answering they just weren’t interested and the time was kind of dragging on. While we were working, we got a referral from comeuntochrist.org, which is basically people filling out a form requesting for the missionaries to come visit them! So we texted her and immediately she responded that she would love for us to call and talk more! We called her and asked her why she filled out this form and she explained that her son had just recently been baptized in another state and that she had noticed such a huge change in him and wanted to know if that would be possible for her too! We taught her about baptism and what it really means and right from this first call, she expressed a desire to be baptized. Our first lesson with her, we taught her about Joseph Smith and the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. She cried throughout this whole lesson and she told us that this is what she had been looking for. She felt as though she really related to Joseph Smith, and expressed that finding the gospel and finding missionaries had been an answer to her lifelong prayer. Tami had been searching for Jesus Christ for her entire life! She told us about all of her experiences trying different religions and different paths and trying to find joy in her life, but every single time, it didn’t feel right. She was completely lost and didn’t know where to go next. But the first time we went over she told us that it felt different and that it felt good and she knew she was heading in the right direction. A month later, she was baptized and it was one of the sweetest baptisms I attended in my entire mission. 

Jesus Christ came to Tami to guide her and to be a light showing her the path she needed to take. She had been searching and searching for years, but was stuck in the darkness and couldn’t find a way out. As soon as she started meeting with us and coming to church, the path became so clear and she was able to find so much more meaning and joy in her life. Tami now has the opportunity to be a light to her family, most of which are not religious at all and who also at times experience that same lost feeling. She is able to share with them the peace and joy that she has experienced and help them feel rays of that light as well. 

The next friends I want to talk about are my friends Tim and Lisa. I taught them in my second area and I truly came to adore them. I had the opportunity to train a new missionary really early on in my mission and it was a pink wash into an area which means two sisters replacing two elders so we knew nothing about the area, except that they were teaching Tim and Lisa. So we got to teach them and they were so much fun to teach! I was able to grow so much in teaching them. They have had extremely hard lives, yet they were so joyful and had such a good outlook on life. This taught me a lot at this point in my mission! I would always say about my friends that I needed them a whole lot more than they needed me, and I feel that so strongly about Tim and Lisa. At this point in my mission, I was extremely overwhelmed and was having a hard time finding the light in a hard situation, but for me, Tim and Lisa were my light and they brought me so much happiness. This ward did something special where they would have a small family home evening at a members home every Monday night for members and friends to come join. Tim and Lisa attended this almost every Monday and it made my heart so happy every time! To see them interact and become friends with the ward members was incredible, but what was even more incredible was seeing them participate in lessons and share their own individual light with the people around them. Later on in my mission, Lisa ended up passing away and that was so hard for me! They are some of my favorite people and I relied a lot on the lessons they taught me. But even in this hard time, I was able to find peace knowing that Lisa knows where she’s going and that Christ is so proud of her! 

The last friend I wanted to talk about is my friend Ray. Meeting and teaching Ray was such a life changing experience. He is simply a miracle! His story is one of my favorites from my mission. We met Ray when I was about 13 months into my mission. He lives in a town called Longview, another area that I spent 6 months of my mission in. Our first interaction with Ray was one of the most spirit filled first contacts I have ever experienced. We were out knocking doors and saw what we call an i-dot on our map. These are dots that have basically no information except a name so his said “Ray from Denny’s”. We decided to go knock on his door and at first, he was super hesitant. He shared with us that he had talked to missionaries about a year earlier and he was in a dark place in his life and wasn’t particularly interested. But after talking with him a bit more, he came outside, sat down on his porch, and we talked for nearly an hour. He shared with us a lot of personal experiences he has had. It quickly became clear that  he was very in tune with the spirit and had a really strong connection with God. After our conversation, he had softened up and told us he was finally ready to come check out the church. We were able to meet with him about 3 times a week and he is just such a light! He loves the gospel! Every time we met with him, he would share with us the opportunities he had that week to share his testimony. I have never met anyone so excited and so proud to share his story and his testimony with everyone he met. The Sunday before I came home, he gave me an envelope with his story written down and I wanted to share that with you all today. 

[read ray’s letter]

“A Dot on A Phone by Raymond Rutherford
Sept 26, 2024 I lost my son to an overdose.  This spiraled me to a bad place of anger and hate for a few. 3 weeks to 1 month after he passed, some missionaries came knocking and they started with “What has Jesus done for you?” Right then I had to say 3 weeks ago I lost my son.  The one girl pulled out the bible and shared a verse about losing a loved one. We talked for a few more minutes.  The girls asked me if I would like to visit the Church and if I would read a pamphlet “Plan of Salvation.”  I politely said I wasn’t ready to visit the Church, but I would read the pamphlet.  We will stop by in a few days to see what you think.  No one returned till one night almost 10 months later.  This time when I heard the knock it was two sisters from The Church.  I came out to the porch and this time I was ready.  We must have talked an hour sharing stories and when they invited me to visit I was ready. 5 months ago I was a dot with a name on a phone.  Now my faith has grown into a beautiful flower from a seed that the missionaries planted.  Now I know the Church and the Bible of Mormon are true and blessing the Sacrament is one of the best feelings ever.  I love the family I’ve been introduced to and I will always be thankful for those who answered a dot on a phone.”

The gospel completely changed Ray’s life and being able to witness that changed my life. I was able to stay in that area for about 4 more months after he was baptized and it was such an incredible experience. I saw him change and grow from the very first introduction to the gospel, to him being baptized, to attending the temple, and to passing and blessing the sacrament. It is so powerful to me that the gospel is a constant progression and that through every step along the way, we gain more light and more knowledge and more joy! I saw this so evidently in Ray and I feel so grateful that I was able to meet and teach him because his testimony changed my life forever. One of his favorite conference talks is “Peacemakers Needed” by President Nelson and he exemplifies this talk perfectly. He does all that he can to be a peacemaker in every situation he is in, and every time he shares it with us, he shares how good he feels. Ray taught me that when we are peacemakers, our light grows shiner. 

Not only did the friends I met bring light into my life, but so did my companions. Every single companion I had was placed in my life when I needed them the very most, and they have become some of my very best friends. It isn’t always easy to live with someone 24/7, but I feel extremely lucky to have had the companions I had because even when it was hard, we were able to have so much fun together and that for me is a huge blessing! 

I also feel extremely blessed for the mission leaders I had! I was so lucky to have two different mission leaders throughout my mission! My first mission leaders taught me the importance of knowledge and how crucial it is to study and to learn. They helped me understand that when I do my part in anything, the Lord will meet me where I am and magnify my efforts way beyond my own. My second mission leaders helped me to see the joy in growth! They helped me see that even in the midst of frustrations and disappointments, there is so much joy and so much happiness as we look at things with a broader perspective. I know that I was called to my mission to serve with the mission leaders I had and I will forever be grateful for the Manns and the Pulsiphers! 

These are just a few of the countless experiences I had on my mission that brought me closer to my Savior. These are also some of the huge experiences and miracles I saw. These big miracles didn’t happen everyday, but there was some kind of miracle every single day on my mission. Whether that be me praying for a soda and someone offering me a soda, or sharing a scripture that someone really needed, or the sun shining a little extra on a gloomy day, I truly came to know that God is in every detail of our lives. In fact, He is in every detail of everybody’s lives. In Alma 30:44 it says “all things denote there is a God”. I know that there is a God! And I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior! I always say that before my mission I knew of my Savior, but my mission has helped me to know my Savior. Elder Dale G Renlund came to my mission, and one of the things he invited us to do was make Jesus Christ more real in our lives. For a lot of us, Jesus Christ is someone we talk about and someone we learn about, but if we want Him to be, He can be so real and so involved in our lives. He is my best friend and was the strongest source of light on my mission. There were so many days where it would be grey and cold and dumping rain and the last thing I wanted to do was be outside working, but I learned that as I did my part and put in the effort, the Lord magnified those efforts a million times and He allowed for there to be joy and light in even the darkest of days. President Nelson said “the joy we feel has little to do with the circumstance of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives”. As we focus completely on Jesus Christ, there is joy! And there is a joy that is unlike any other! I am grateful for the time I had to be 100% focused on my Savior every day. It may not have been the best or the easiest 18 months of my life, but they were definitely the most life-changing, transformative, and valuable 18 months of my life and I will forever be grateful. 

The scripture I chose for my mission plaque is a scripture that I relied on a lot on my mission. It is Alma 26:12,

“Yea, I know that I am nothing; as to my strength I am weak; therefore I will not boast of myself, but I will boast of my God, for in his strength I can do all things; yea, behold, many mighty miracles we have wrought in this land, for which we will praise his name forever.”

None of the miracles I saw on my mission were because of my own doing. The Lord’s hand guided me every step of the way and I am grateful for the relationship I have built with my Savior.

https://youtu.be/1OFN3gx8b1w