Despite Indescribable Suffering

Despite indescribable suffering
The Donner party survived
To never forget the first morning
When they knew they had finally arrived

The winter had been to the utmost
A mountain of blinding snowdrifts
And though what they did was ferocious
T'was but their means of staying alive

Unto a single glorious dawn
Where all of their pain was swept away
Midst the signs of Spring in a green lawn
Inviting the birds to greet the new day

How can that brutal dark winter
Be replaced in a single bright day?
Well this is just as the worst sinner
Who repents and the memories soon fade

For then their long winter of guilt
And spiritual starvation is blotted
With a new foundation having been built
Where they're clean no longer to be spotted

For they having hungered as one truly empty
Had felt eternal torment of soul
With a harrowing up to the greatest degree
Till being replaced with joy exceedingly full

And though this may seem to happen over night
It is a rigorous and lonely climb
There to find eternal life's within sight
And the torment has been left behind

The Brilliant Morning of Forgiveness
President Boyd K. Packer
Ensign, November 1995,18