English was hard!

Have you ever felt that some subjects in school just aren’t for you? Like you’ll never be good at history, or your mind just wasn’t meant to do math?

As a young boy in Germany, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf felt the same way. He said, “I believed that my mouth was simply not made for the English language.”¹

He studied English for years before his US Air Force pilot training in Texas. When he arrived, the local accents sounded very different from what he had learned in school! Again he found himself struggling to catch up.

But Elder Uchtdorf knew the importance of learning. He prayed for Heavenly Father’s help. And after lots of hard work, he became fluent in English and finished at the top of his flight class!

In a BYU–Pathway Worldwide devotional, Elder Uchtdorf said, “If I could go back in time and talk to that young boy … I would say, ‘Dieter, it’s not going to be easy, but you can do it. You will be all right.’”²

Notes

1. “The Adventure of Mortality” (worldwide devotional for young adults, Jan. 14, 2018).
2. “Call for Heroes!” (BYU–Pathway Worldwide devotional, July 14, 2020).

This post is contributed by BYU-Pathway Worldwide, which provides spiritual, reduced-cost, online higher education in more than 150 countries. Find out more at www.byupathway.org.