This day I greet you wherever you a

This day I greet you wherever you are as friends.

Someone has said, “A friend is a person who is willing to take me the way I am.” Accepting this as one definition of the word, may I quickly suggest that we are something less than a real friend if we leave a person the same way we find him.

There seems to be a misunderstanding on the part of some men today as to what it means to be a friend. Acts of a friend should result in self-improvement, better attitudes, self-reliance, comfort, consolation, self-respect, and better welfare. Certainly the word friend is misused if it is identified with a person who contributes to our delinquency, misery, and heartaches. When we make a man feel he is wanted, his whole attitude changes. Our friendship will be recognizable if our actions and attitudes result in improvement and independence.

It takes courage to be a real friend. Some of us endanger the valued classification of friend because of our unwillingness to be one under all circumstances. Fear can deprive us of friendship. Some of us identify our closest friends as those with the courage to remain and share themselves with us under all circumstances. A friend is a person who will suggest and render the best for us regardless of the immediate consequences. Sir Winston Churchill became Great Britain’s greatest friend in his country’s darkest hour because he was courageous enough to call for “blood, toil, tears, and sweat” when some would have accepted him more readily as a friend had he advocated peaceful surrender.

President Abraham Lincoln was once criticized for his attitude toward his enemies. “Why do you try to make friends of them?” asked an associate. “You should try to destroy them.”

“Am I not destroying my enemies,” Lincoln gently replied, “when I make them my friends?”

Are we not within our rights as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to regard our prophet, seer, and revelator, President Harold B. Lee, as a close personal friend as he leaves us improved daily by his willingness to reprove, admonish, love, encourage, and guide according to our needs? President Lee is our friend; I bear witness he is, in the fullest and most noble sense of the word, and he will lead us by inspiration and by his courageous character.

I invite you to be his friend. What a pleasure it was for me this morning to raise my arm to the square and sustain my friend, President Harold B. Lee! His friendship with me down through the years has met the test. He has always been willing to take me the way I am and leave me improved. What a joy it is to join him and my friends among the General Authorities, and all of you, in building the kingdom of our Heavenly Father here upon this earth!

I love President Tanner and I love President Romney because they are my friends. I am happy to have Elder Bruce R. McConkie seated at my side because he too is a friend.

As we more fully strive to comprehend the significance of friendship, the more our appreciation should increase for the truths found in the following quotation:

“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27.)

It is well for us to be reminded that we are friends to ourselves when we keep our lives unspotted from the sins of the world and leave ourselves better tomorrow than we are today. It is a worthy daily goal to be a true friend to one’s self. Our responsibility to the widow and the fatherless is to accept them as we find them, but to not leave them without improvement. Ours is to lift the heavy heart, say the encouraging word, and assist in supplying the daily needs.

Aren’t we something less than a friend if we have the gospel of Jesus Christ and are unwilling to share it by word and example with a family, a member, neighbor, or the stranger? Aren’t we something less than a friend if we have a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ and ar