“I Saw Christ. I Saw Him”: Sylvie Coutin's Vision While Reading Third Nephi (1995)

In August 1995 Sylvie Coutin was living with her boyfriend, Samuel Poussin, in Saint-Gilles, Réunion. They were deeply in love, but she knew God wanted family relationships built on a firmer foundation. Feeling distraught, she walked along the beach one evening to calm her mind. "I was gazing at the horizon along the beach and I had tears flowing down my cheeks," she remembered. "I prayed with all my heart and with fervor. … And I remembered a verse in the Bible that said, 'But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.'" That night she told Samuel she was moving back to her parents' home, and she promised God He would always come first in her life, no matter what.

Exhausted and uncertain of her future, Sylvie felt drawn to open a book her friend Nathalie Manné had given her two years earlier — a Book of Mormon she hadn't been interested in at the time but had kept. As she opened it, her eyes were drawn to the passage where Christ visits the Americas (3 Nephi 13:17–25). "As I started reading those verses, I saw Christ. I saw Him," said Sylvie. "It was as if my spiritual eyes were opened and I saw Him … teaching His people."

The next day she asked Nathalie where to find the Church. The closest branch was in Le Port, 20 kilometers away; when the missionaries failed to meet her as arranged, she wandered the unfamiliar town alone until she found a house with the Church's name on it. "As soon as I entered," Sylvie recalled, "a feeling of serenity spread through me. I felt like I was at home despite not knowing anyone." The Book she had ignored for two years had opened at exactly the passage she needed — and her spiritual eyes were opened.