Merle Shares Good Counsel about Children

My friend and mentor Merle Hoffman, who is yet a spry young man at age 90, recently shared the following with me:
"You parents of the wilful and wayward! Don't give them up. Don't cast them off. They are not utterly lost. The Shepherd will find his sheep. They were his before they were yours-long before he entrusted them to your care; and you cannot begin to love them as he loves them. They have but strayed in ignorance from the Path of Right, and God is merciful to ignorance. Only the fulness of knowledge brings the fulness of accountability. Our Heavenly Father is far more merciful, infinitely more charitable, than even the best of his servants, and the everlasting Gospel is mightier in power to save than our narrow finite minds can comprehend" -LDS Apostle Orson F. Whitney, in Conference Report, April, 1929.
"The Prophet Joseph Smith declared - and he never taught more comforting doctrine -...Though some of the sheep may wander, the eye of the Shepherd is upon them, and sooner or later they will feel the tentacles of Divine Providence reaching out after them and drawing them back to the fold. Either in this life or the life to come, they will return. They will have to pay their debt to justice; they will suffer for their sins; and may tread a thorny path; but if it leads them at last, like the penitent Prodigal, to a loving and forgiving father's heart and home, the painful experience will not have been in vain. Pray for your careless and disobedient children; hold on to them with your faith. Hope on, trust on, till you see the Salvation of God." -LDS Apostle James E. Faust, April 6th, 2003.