LeRoy,
You ask great questions. Let me share something with you and I would like to invite you to kneel and pray about this, and ask God if this is true.

One of the first and most important eternal laws of happiness and of the gospel is what is called “Agency” or “Freedom of Choice.” To truly, truly progress in this life, we have to have the free will to decide between right and wrong, truth and error. If we were compelled or forced to do what was right, for the sake of doing what was right only, we would never learn, never progress. We would be spiritual robots, at the whim of some other agent’s will. That is the plan of Satan. He wanted us to be forced to obey ‘him.’ But you and I and all of us who are sons and daughters of God and who lived in His presence who are here on earth, vetoed Satan’s plan. We, instead, agreed to the Father’s plan and the Savior’s offer to come to earth to pay for our sins and mistakes, which we would make, while “KEEPING” our right to choose good and evil. This way we could progress and overcome our own poor choices and sins as well as the effects of others’ poor choices and sins. The Savior provided a way for both keeping our ability to choose and therefore to grow, and to keep our agency in tact which is needful for that growth. He is, therefore, truly our Redeemer.

Much of the bad, the ugly, the terror and the trials of mortality, comes from misuse of this divine gift of choice. Again, without it, we could not grow. With it, we also have pain and disaster. BUT the Savior’s plan provided a healing, an atonement for all that happens to us. It works, as Paul said, towards a greater glory for us as we endure. It does not mean that the Savior or the Father is absent or does not care for us. That is a misunderstanding based on a wrong conception of God and the Savior and their plan. If we look at Gethsemane and the cross, we know that Christ suffered, bled from every pore, while carrying our sins and infirmities and weaknesses and temptations and sorrows and grief of every kind. He felt each pang we have, every loss, every consequence of our sins and others against us and against our loved ones. He is therefore the most loving of all, with the Father. His plan is perfect. It does require that we pass through trials that He will work to our ultimate good. He does not cause evil but he allows evil, that those evil may be judged, and that we may be able to grow in love and in knowledge of Him as we overcome evil.

Some trials also come from simply the mortal experience and are part of our tutorial. They help us become more Christlike as we become sensitive to God’s voice and the lessons of compassion they teach us. We often become “partakers of Christ’s sufferings,” and learn of Him. Again, our goal is to know Him, to become more like Him, and the Savior uses our most difficult experiences to refine us.

I hope this helps.
God’s children have power to choose; they had this ability even before they were born. In the premortal life, Heavenly Father presented His plan, which included the principle of agency. Lucifer rebelled and “sought to destroy the agency of man” (Moses 4:3). As a result, Lucifer and all those who followed him were denied the privilege of receiving a mortal body. All who have been or will be born on earth chose to follow Heavenly Father’s plan.

In this life, people continue to have agency; even if their personal freedoms are restricted or taken away, they can choose how to feel and react. Their use of their agency determines their happiness or misery in this life and in the life to come. People are free to choose and act but are not free to choose the consequences of their actions. The consequences may not be immediate, but they will always follow. Choices of good and righteousness lead to happiness, peace, and eternal life, while choices of sin and evil eventually lead to heartache and misery.

Readings on Our Sites:

Did God Create Evil?

Why Doesn’t God Stop Evil

The Nature of Evil

Agency & God’s Love

Deuteronomy 11:26–28; 30:15–20; Joshua 24:14–15; 2 Nephi 2; Helaman 14:30–31; D&C 58:26–28; 101:78″Our Moral Agency”

L. Lionel Kendrick, Ensign, Mar. 1996, 28–32
Modern revelation makes it clear that agency is a gift from our Heavenly Father to allow us to choose obedience, which leads us to eternal life.

“Agency: The Gift of Choices”
Spencer J. Condie, Ensign, Sept. 1995, 16–22
While the freedom to choose involves the risk of mistakes, it also offers the opportunity, through our Father’s plan, to overcome them.