Ruth Acland:  

Life I graduated from high school in 1980, with no direction for my life. Less than a year later, I was baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and things began falling amazingly into place. In 1984 I moved to Provo, Utah, and made many of my best friends. After heeding the call from LDS Church President Ezra Taft Benson, to read the Book of Mormon, I did so for the first time. I became anxious to share this with others and soon afterwards was called to serve a mission in the England Manchester Mission. The best experiences of my entire life, up to that point, occured on English soil. At the conclusion of my mission I met my future husband and we were soon married in the LDS Temple in Provo, Utah, and had our first child there less than 2 years later. My husband graduated earned his Master's Degree from Brigham Young University and our dream of living and raising our family in a small town became a reality. We moved to Iowa and have never looked back. Between babies I continued my education; first, at Graceland University, learning French. This was supplemented by BYU Independent Study, where I've taken Russian History, Humanities, and Shakespeare. I married into a family of avid readers and I've thusfar read many works by Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, the Bronte Sisters, John Donne, Edmund Spencer and James Harriott, the famed vet from Yorkshire. My father-in-law took me to all the places in Yorkshire that were featured in the All Creatures Great and Small series. Being married to an Englishman, it is inevitable that I would return to England and venture onto the European Continent. I've been to Normandy, France, where we stayed near Omaha and Utah beaches; and Amsterdam, and will one day stretch to Russia, Poland, and Germany, and perhaps the Czech Republic. However, I have been all through the English countryside, up the width and breadth of the British Isles, as far south as Portsmouth and as far north as Scotland. I'm completing my Sophmore year at Graceland University, having studied German and World Civilization. My life is far better than I imagined it. I was raised to live a life of depression and failure, but it hasn't been that way at all. I can best sum up my life with the words of Ezra Taft Benson, late President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; " Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, increase their opportunities, comf...Expand for more