In the June 2015 Ensign, Matthew Holland wrote an article about Joseph Smith and the tribulation that his family experienced prior to Palmyra. I love Matthew's words:
Remember this as perhaps the first lesson of Joseph's life and the coming forth of the Book of Mormon. In spite of failure, mishap, and bitter opposition--and in many cases precisely because of those things--Joseph Smith got exactly where he needed to be to fulfill his mission....So, if now or on some future day, you look around and see that other perhaps less-devoted acquaintances are succeeding in their jobs when you just lost yours; if major illness puts you on your back just at the moment critical tasks of service seem to come calling; if a call to a prominent position goes to someone else; if a missionary companion seems to learn the language faster, if well-meaning efforts still somehow lead to disaster with a fellow ward member, a neighbor, or an investigator; if news from home brings word of financial setback or mortal tragedy you can do nothing about; or if, day after day, you simply feel like a bland and beaten background player in a gospel drama that really seems made for the happiness of others, just know this: many such things were the lot of Joseph Smith himself at the very moment he was being led to the stage of the single most transcendent thing to happen on this earth since the events of Golgotha and the Garden Tomb nearly 2,000 years earlier. Your lives do matter to God, and your eternal potential and that of every soul you will meet is no less grand and significant than that of the Prophet Joseph himself. Thus, just like our beloved Joseph, you must never give up, give in, or give out when life in general, or missionary work in particular, gets utterly painful, confusing, or dull. God is shaping and directing you every single day to ends more glorious than you can know.
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