In church, I have two callings. I am the second counselor in the Stake Young Men’s Presidency and I teach Valiant boys, aged 9-11. In our small ward, when the boys turn 12, they age right into the Youth Sunday School. I currently have 7 of these boys. I’ve worked with them on Articles of Faith, on the living Prophets and Apostles and the Latter Day Prophets. We’ve covered the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants and now the Old Testament. Next year, we will go over the New Testament. I do a Valiant Activity outside of church every other month. I call it Pre-Young Men’s but it’s actually Activity Days for Boys. (We also have Cubs in our ward, but Cubs doesn’t include the 11-year-olds.) Anyway, I thought it was important for these pre-young men to have a chance to start their friendships with each other as soon as possible, especially in an area of the world where they will likely be the only members of the Church in their class or grade. I try to remind them to, “Choose your friends carefully. It is they who will lead you in one direction or the other. Everybody wants friends. Everybody needs friends. No one wishes to be without them, But never lose sight of the fact that it is your friends who will lead you along the paths that you will follow.” (Gordon B. Hinckley)
I know this will be a challenge for them, because I grew up in this town and I was one of two members of the Church in my grade growing up, the other was a distant female cousin. This wasn’t an issue for me until High School. I was at that age where you start testing life, wanting to experience things, and those experiences were taking me down a path I didn’t really want to go down. My friends weren’t bad people, so I struggled with the decision, but I finally chose to not hang out with them anymore, not that we stopped being friends, but I didn’t spend time with them outside of school anymore. It was a lonely time. A lot of cruising around town in the old Chev. One day, while killing time before Mutual, I drove past the house of a buddy from church who was a year older than me, someone I never thought to hang out with. He was doing something sciency and destructive. As a boy, I was instantly interested. We got along well enough and I drove him to Mutual that night. In the weeks and months that followed, we hung out nearly everyday. He came over for lunches and I drove him home after school. My home became his second home. We played sports, camped, went on dates with girls, and got into mischief. He lived at my house for several weeks after making a mess of his mom’s brand newly renovated kitchen. He was doing an experiment with black powder that went awry and it got everywhere, or was it when he was trying to figure out which year Canadian pennies stopped being made out of copper? He found the year, but dropped the red-hot penny and it rolled around before melting into the new linoleum. Either way, his friendship came at a critical time for me and it’s one friendship I will always be grateful for. I know I was made better for the time I spent with him.
After the first few months, we connected with my distant cousin and her friend. The four of us represented three years of Latter Day Saints at school. We didn’t necessarily do everything together, but we did do a lot. We’d go to the theatre in the next town over. We’d play games, go for long drives and even committed some minor condiment graffiti. We had some fun times together, mostly just being together. But, those three might’ve had the biggest impact on me growing up, aside from my family.
As life progressed, some of us moved away, went on missions, got married, traveled the world and had families. I can’t speak for the others, but I think it’s been months if not years since I have spoken to any one of those three, (hopefully they are better at keeping in touch with each other than I am,) but one cool thing is that we are all still active members in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I’m not saying we are all active members of the Church because we were friends, but I’m also not saying we would all still be active members if we hadn’t been friends. I think there was very real value in our friendship at such an impressionable age. That friendship helped me.
My hope for these Valiant boys is that they will form friendships with each other that will last into their teens and they will help reinforce the Gospel in each other’s lives. In fact I am counting on it, as two of the Valiant boys are my own sons. I want them to have what I had: friends who will love and support them, who will have their back, and encourage them.
There are a couple other friendships I want to talk about. The idea behind the next friendship was instilled in me at a young age, from my parents, who are two very different kinds of people, but are the best of friends. I wanted that in a spouse, someone who would become my best friend. I dated a lot in High School and by that, I mean, I went on a lot of first dates, but could never connect with anyone the way I wanted. There were none that I could talk to. Well, none that I could talk to who would go on a date with me anyway.
I’ve had three girlfriends in my life. Well, four if you count Sarah in the 3rd grade. These girls made the cut not simply because of looks, social status, ability or anything other than the connection I had with them; we could talk and we could just be. Things didn’t work out with the first two but, luckily, I got a third chance and the Lord saved the best for last. When I got engaged, I knew I was making the right choice because when we were together, it was like the whole world had disappeared. My wife and I dated and were engaged for a total of nine months. For members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, that was excessively long. But for those nine months, and every day since, we’ve been happy to just be the two of us. Not that we haven’t had problems. We’ve been accused of having the perfect marriage, which came as a surprise to us, but I can say that the last 15 years have been the happiest of my life. I love and need my friends. I enjoy a good guys night, or hockey game. Couples nights are a lot of fun too and we appreciate our friends that we have as a couple. But my wife is my best friend; she makes me better, encourages me, reminds me of who I am and who I can be. She is invested in my life like no other. Thomas S. Monson has said, “Choose your love, love your choice.” My wife makes it easy for me to love my choice. She is my greatest friend and no one else comes even close.
Well, almost no one. When looking at what a friend is, there’s one person that each of us have who personifies what a friend is. He is compassionate. He is thoughtful. He is concerned about us. He is always encouraging. He is our advocate. He makes us better. He is loving. He knows each of us. You matter to Him. He is genuinely interested in you. He is uniquely qualified to understand what you are going through. He is Jesus Christ and He is begging for us to come unto Him, to take advantage of the Atonement, to learn and grow, to glorify God in all things, and to be better than we have been. 
Just as any friendship on earth, in Jesus Christ, we find someone we can connect with. He is an eternal friend who connects us all by giving us something we could not do for ourselves.
He will always be there for us, no matter where we are in life, no matter what we have done, no matter how we feel about our standing before God, we can always rely on Jesus Christ to help us through it, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the End…” (Matthew 28:20) He is the very best friend each of us could hope to ask for. He is the most important friend we could come to know.
~Todd Bruce
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