‘Miracles Can Be Found Everywhere,’ Sister Browning Tells Missionaries

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Sister Tracy Y. Browning, Second Counselor in the Primary General Presidency, poses for pictures with missionaries following the Tuesday, January 14, 2025, devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. Photo by Adam Fondren, courtesy of Church News.Copyright 2024 Deseret News Publishing Company.

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With examples of her conversion as a teen in New York City, her missionary son recovering a lost retainer and a Latter-day Saint family finding peace and comfort after losing a young daughter in a school shooting, Sister Tracy Y. Browning underscored the reality of miracles and the importance of seeing the Lord’s hand.

“I want to testify to you that the gospel of Jesus Christ is glad tidings, it is good news,” said the Second Counselor in the Primary General Presidency in a Tuesday night, January 14, devotional at the Provo Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.

“It’s that miracles do exist. It’s that the Lord knows who you are. It’s that He wants to show you His hand and that miracles can be found everywhere in abundance as you exercise faith in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — even here in the MTC.”

She was accompanied by her husband, Brother Brady Browning, who also spoke briefly.

Sister Browning recounted that as a 16-year-old in New York City, she was “feeling lost in a sea of a lot of people” when two full-time missionaries taught her about the Savior and the restored gospel.

“I all of a sudden started to feel very seen in a place where there were millions of people — I felt very known of God,” she said. “I count that season of my life as one where I was able to see the hand of the Lord very clearly and that the Lord knew who I was. I saw that the Lord was extending His hand to me — He rescued me, and I count that as a miracle.”

And the “very consequential decision” to be baptized a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints “has made all the difference in my spiritual momentum, in my future,” she said, listing the impacts not only in her life then and beyond but also with her marriage, her children and future descendants, and her ancestors.

Sister Browning cited President Russell M. Nelson from his April 2019 general conference address: “Pray to have eyes to see God’s hand in your life and in the world around you.”

She said she strives to have her spiritual eyes open, looking to see the hand of the Lord. “He wants you to know He’s there. ... He desires for us to know Him, to understand His nature, to understand His character so that we can receive the richness of the blessings in our effort to become like Him and in our efforts to share with others who He is and why they should want to bind themselves to Him through covenants.”

She spoke of her missionary son, who, several months earlier, reported from the Provo MTC of having experienced a miracle in finding his lost retainer — his described miracle being a feeling of comfort and reassurance that he would recover the missing dental apparatus. The related experience initially seemed routine and unimpressive to Sister Browning.

She explained she eventually recognized the miracle being “that God decided on a Monday in Provo, Utah, He was going to let an 18-year-old boy who lost his retainer know that He knew him, He saw him, He was on his side and was going to help him — and wanted him to know that it was Him who caused this to be so. … Miracles can be so small and so specific that you can only know that it is God who is helping you, that otherwise would not sound impressive to other people.”

Sister Browning also showed a Church-produced video, “Hidden Miracles: Life After the Sandy Hook Tragedy,” of two parents speaking of miracles — a family feeling peace, comfort and reassurance through knowledge of the plan of salvation — while grappling with the heartbreaking loss of their 6-year-old daughter in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut.

Sister Browning told her listeners that as they strive to fulfill their missionary purpose, “you will be a conduit for which people will be able to experience miracles because they will see the hand of the Lord in their life as you open your mouth, as you teach, as you preach the truthfulness of the gospel.”

She concluded: “I know that the Lord invites miracles into your life because He wants you to know that He knows you and He loves you. And if we follow the admonition of President Nelson to seek and expect miracles, they will transform us. They will invite more momentum into our spiritual life, and they will also allow others to understand and come to know that God is still a God of miracles.”

In his brief message, Brother Browning reiterated a question and response from President Nelson in his October 2024 general conference address: “I have learned that the most crucial question we each must answer is this: ‘To whom or to what will I give my life?’ My decision to follow Jesus Christ is the most important decision I have ever made.”

Brother Browning encouraged his missionary listeners to ask themselves two questions each morning of their missionary service — why they are there and whom they are serving. “I believe that if you will — before you have companionship prayer each morning — consciously make that decision and understand who you serve that day, that there is nothing that you cannot do and that you will see the blessings of that service.”

What Missionaries Were Saying

Following the evening devotional, missionaries spoke of their learnings from listening to Sister Browning.

Sister Chandlyr Noble of Ogden, Utah, assigned to serve in the Germany Berlin Mission, said, “The Spirit taught me that as I fulfill this great work, I will affect the lives of those in their generation, their ancestors and their generations after.”

Sister Madelyn Christensen of Moroni, Utah, also preparing to serve in the Berlin mission, said, “The Spirit taught me from this devotional that Christ is aware of all of us and that He shows His love to us and all of His children through miracles.”

Elder Evan Prescott of Buckeye, Arizona, preparing for his assignment in the Dominican Republic Santo Domingo West Mission, said he learned of “the power of miracles in our lives and God’s power in lives — how He’s present in our lives and shows that and His love for us through miracles.”

Elder Hudson Giles of Murtaugh, Idaho, assigned to the Bolivia Santa Cruz North Mission said, “We need to recognize miracles in our lives, that they aren’t luck or coincidence, because our Heavenly Father wants us to know that He’s there and that these things He does for us is for a reason.”