Maurice W. Harker, M.ed
Meet Maurice Wade Harker
Dedicated to helping others find joy, peace & healing
Over 18 years ago, I opened Life Changing Services (LCS) with the intent to provide a unique set of services designed to help individuals and families find joy, peace and healing through specialized training, recovery and self-mastery programs.
What makes LCS programs and services unique is that we are anxiously engaged in providing resources built upon a synthesis of the most accurate psychological concepts and eternal principles as revealed by prophets both modern and ancient.
Through the combined efforts of over 20 valiant and talented support staff and over 40 inspired and invested service providers, we have served well over 25,000 people over the years, and as many as 1,500 at any one time. Over 2,000 graduates of the Sons of Helaman self-mastery training program have gone on to serve LDS missions.
After 17 years as a Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Maurice W. Harker, M.Ed. now focuses on writing, teaching self-mastery, and guiding marriage repair through faith-based psychology.
For a limited time, he has opened a few hours each week for specialized individual and marital consultations. These are not routine sessions but advanced, personalized opportunities for those ready to heal, rebuild, and grow.
In the beginning…
This work was triggered 35 years ago when I was a young missionary in inner-city Detroit.
A little background first...
I was raised as the third of nine sons by my hardworking and spiritually minded parents, Ferrin and Wanda Harker.
I had made concerted efforts during my developmental years to acquire a decent amount of skill at playing the violin, to become serviceable in some sports, to demonstrate enough capability in school to get a full tuition scholarship to the local university and at the same time practice much needed social skills in dating.
At 19 years old, when I started my 2 year proselytizing mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I was motivated religiously, but, in retrospect, I would have to say my testimony was more of an academic confidence than any measurable amount of personal witness.
It was a psychologically and emotionally painful experience about 6 or 8 months into my young missionary life that can be accredited for initiating the work I have been hoping to fulfill for the past 35 years.
Back then, we missionaries in Detroit, Michigan didn’t have the opportunity to teach formal lessons very often. The people of the time rarely opened their doors to conversations with us.
During a rare teaching opportunity with a sincere investigator, the woman we were striving to teach asked, “Elder Harker, what does this stuff have to do with my real life problems?”
My answer horrified me and became the catalyst of my work for the next 35 years.
I replied, “I have no idea.”
This experience stimulated a great deal of discovery work.
With all the combined energy I had invested in sports and in music, and the years of delivering newspapers, and finishing all the merit badges and requirements to become an Eagle Scout, and graduating high school with a 3.7 GPA and a dozen AP class credits, I poured my heart and mind into finding answers to the question…
“How do the words of the prophets, both modern and ancient, apply to helping each of us find happiness and meaning while being flooded with the real, complicated, legitimate anxieties, depressants, temptations, torments and relationship turmoils frequently experienced in this life-time?”
To help find the answers, I started memorizing, pondering and re-memorizing over 450 scripture verses as I walked the streets of Detroit and nearby cities for the remainder of my 2 years.
Over the course of these many months, I was allowed to break through the veil and begin discussing, reviewing and refining my understanding of the Eternal Principles with the mentoring of the Holy Ghost.
It was (and has been) an honor
to use this learning to help many come unto Christ.
Re-entering the real world after my mission was quite a shock
I found myself humbled by my weaknesses and lack of wisdom during the “post-mission : pre-marital” phase of life. I started studying, almost to obsession, the most respected self-help books available at the time in the early 1990’s. At the university, I switched my major from engineering to psychology.
My father saw my drive and reminded (or warned) me, “But to be learned is good if they hearken unto the counsels of God.” (2 Nephi 9:29).
After pondering his counsel and seeking my own personal revelation, the unique combination of my humility and my ambition drove me to start studying all the General Conference talks I could get my hands on.
With a similar drive as the archeologists who were driven to find the tomb of Tutankhamen, I wanted to discover the true principles that are impactfully life changing for myself and all others who have “real life problems,” like the woman I had met in Detroit.
Thanks to those who worked to put together the Gospel Library app, we now have quick access to over 50 years of General Conference talks, all the way back to 1970.
Knowing it is my responsibility to make sure what we teach at Life Changing Services is both accurate and inspired, I have made it a point to carefully study and review every one of them at least twice.
It has been my habit to review an average of one General Conference talk per day for over 30 years now. And every 6 months, I am thrilled and grateful to use the newest General Conference talks to fine tune the principles and resources of Life Changing Services, the same way I would tune my violin back in my younger days.
During my 19 years of working with people in pain..."
…my wise and motivated young wife, Nanette, introduced me to a new way to learn and grow.
She introduced me to the experience of enlisting and learning from mentors and role models.
While delaying graduate school in hopes of being more available to my mother-in-law as she valiantly fought, deteriorated and died of cancer, I studied in great depth the lives of many servants to the world, including Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Joseph Smith Jr and Martin Luther King Jr. I had, and still have, a special affinity for MLK because we share the same birthday.
I am so grateful for what I have learned from the lives of these men.
Their thoughts, feelings and actions have influenced me
for so many years.
From them I learned to allow myself to become viscerally aware of the pain of the people, to the point that it drives me to do all in my power to find resolutions to that pain I now see
in individuals and marriages.
From these noble men, I have learned to have vision for possibility. Sometimes I hear in my mind the voice of Martin Luther King, “I have a dream!!!"
What if we could create a training system that empowered (young) men and women to transition from the shame of being undisciplined with sexual temptations, to become the confident and powerful Noble and Great missionaries, husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, they were born to become? And, “I have a dream!!”
I have learned from these role models to prepare for the possibility that many people along the journey will probably reject and even aggressively attempt to sabotage the efforts we make to bring goodness and change into the world.
I have learned that some will lie, distort the truth, bring false accusations and seek to stir up mobs in opposition to the efforts of those who are just wanting to fulfill their duty to serve their fellow men in a time of emotional pain and psychological crisis.
I have been reminded to exercise the faith of these exemplary men who infused in their hearts and minds during difficult times.
The words of Mark 4:37-39:
“37 And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.
38 And he was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a pillow: and they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not that we perish?
39 And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.“
And I have been reminded, thanks to messages provided in this most recent General Conference talks, “All things work together for good to them that love God.” (Romans 8:28).
In difficult times, I am reminded by what Christ said during his sermon on the mount, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;” (Matthew 5:44)
When things get difficult, I strive to turn my attention to the role models of resilience and the power of Eternal Principles.
I am reminded how to respond to these difficult circumstances.
“Notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God.” (Moroni 9:6)
Maurice W. Harker, M.ed