On the first
Sunday of almost every month at the MTC, is “Mission Conference.” During this two-hour meeting, President Lon
Nally and his wife Kaye always speak, and one of his counselors and his wife, along
with one of the District Presidency members and his wife, also speak to an
audience attended by all of the missionaries and all of the Branch Presidency
members and their spouses—upwards of 2000 people. Uplifting and edifying discourses
consistently characterize these meetings.
During
Mission Conference on Sunday, February 2, 2014, the following story was told:
“Elder Nelson Cordova—a member of the Seventy who resides
in California—was just finishing his evening shift as a recorder in the Los
Angeles Temple. The phone rang; it was the LAX airport control tower. The
obviously stressed man on the phone asked, ‘Where
is Moroni?’ Apparently the light
that shines on the Angel Moroni atop the temple had gone out—and without Moroni
as a beacon, some of the pilots were worried about landing safely.
“Elder Cordova and others climbed to the top of the
temple to start the light again with a generator they kept on hand to use
during power failures. He said he was amazed that the caller actually asked for
Moroni by name—and that he learned a lesson that night—‘The temple is not only a beacon in the lives of the Saints, but for
others as well.’ ”
In the
context of the talk, the story was used as an attention getter for the theme of
the talk, “beacons of righteousness.”
At this month’s Mission Conference on March
2, 2014, President Nally mentioned, in passing, that the New York Times had posted the day before on the front page of the
internet edition, a lengthy article about two LDS Sister missionaries serving
in Korea. He indicated that he’d not had time to read the entire article yet; he
was merely commenting on its front page status.
My response
on hearing the Los Angeles Temple story was surprise that pilots and air
traffic controllers would know by name the Los Angeles Temple and the Angel
Moroni.
My response
to the New York Times article, which
I read online Sunday afternoon after Mission Conference, was also surprise—why did
the New York Times think that their
readership would actually be interested in LDS Sister missionaries? As for
accuracy, although their premise was somewhat flawed, so that what followed was
slightly off, the tone was neutral rather than negative. To judge for yourself,
go to:
Another
surprising article, titled “The Facebook of Mormon” appeared earlier this year
in The Atlantic magazine:
Why was I
surprised in each case? Mostly because for the majority of my life, people of
other faiths whom I have encountered in the world have either never even heard
of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormons, or, they have
heard only the distortions or skewed representations circulated by enemies of
the Church. Mocking, scoffing, and outrageous misrepresentations from the world
are what I have come to expect.
In January’s
Mission Conference, President Nally told us about an experience his
granddaughter had recently had while serving her mission in the Philippines.
One day, she and her companion were accosted by a North American man who
viciously spewed so much hatred at them and at the Church that they were
brought to tears. Afterward, their tears were replaced by smiles because of the
smiles and friendly greetings of the warm Filipino people, and by the comfort
that came to them from the Spirit.
The
monumental task of the MTC is preparing the missionaries for such varied
experiences. Sometimes, as they serve their missions, the missionaries will be “beacons,”
and sometimes they will be “targets.” And sometimes they will be surprised . . . . ~PLH
My Husband’s Take:
Inexpressible
Joy
One of the liabilities of being assigned at
the Provo Missionary Training Center, is that one loses contact with the
residential Ward and Stake within which one resides. I miss the members of the
Ward where I once presided as Bishop. I want to know how they are doing; my
affection for them has not diminished one whit during the past year. I feel the
same way about the members of the Stake with whom I worked closely while I
served on the High Council. I miss my former Stake President, Richard K.
Wilson, whom I love like a brother. I know that I am missing something of the
leadership blessings that I might have had with the recently called Stake
President, Jeff Robinson, whom I have known almost since the day that we moved
into our home here in Orem.
What I have felt for these two great men, I
have felt elsewhere in my travels with the Church Educational System. I have
enjoyed the fellowship and confidence of Stake Presidents for more than fifty
years and I am a better person for having known and worked with them. When I
have had eyes to see and ears to hear, I have invariably been edified by those
who preside in the Church and Kingdom of God. I have seldom gone to a Stake
Conference or a Stake Leadership meeting where I have not been edified and
blessed for having been in attendance. This has been pointedly true as I have
listened and conformed my life to the teachings of the various Stake Presidents
with whom I have served.
I knew that when I accepted the call to serve
at the Provo MTC that I would be distanced from people that I knew and loved.
That was one of the sacrifices that I was expected to make. I had watched
others make the same sacrifice when they had received similar calls that took
them outside of the Stake. I have to say that I grieved just a little as the
truth of what I suspected came to be realized. I was, however, not abandoned by
any means. I had simply changed venues.
For the past year, my wife and I have sat at
the feet of the MTC Presidency, rejoicing in the teachings that have been presented
to us as we tried to serve the young men and women who had responded to a
prophet’s call to serve. There have been training meetings of various kinds,
visits to our particular Branch where Presidency members have spoken, and, of
course, the monthly Mission Conferences that traditionally take place on Fast
Sunday. These have been rich experiences and I have taken copious notes on all
of the addresses that have been made. Of all of the speakers, the one I have
enjoyed the most has been President Lon B. Nally. In part, I think that I have
been particularly attentive to him because he essentially serves as my Stake
President, at least as far as my weekly experiences in the Church are
concerned.
I decided that I would review my notes from
these various conferences and training meetings so that I might share some of
the tremendous insights that I have gained as I have sat at President Nally’s
feet. Alas, I discovered that my notes are few, and those that appear are
almost unintelligible. As I turned the pages, I sorrowed at the lack of
adequate stimulus to remind me of the wonderful things that he had said,
principles that had touched my heart deeply. I decided to see if this lapse in
recording had affected the rest of my notes on the various talks that had been
given by others. To my surprise, I discovered that much of what had been said
by others had been preserved by my pen. Why had I not treated President Nally’s
words better?
As I have pondered the lack of detail in my
journal, I have settled on a couple of possibilities. First, during the
President’s talks I may have been so enthralled by what he was saying, the
sublime nature of his insights, that I simply could not take the time to write
them down for fear that I might miss something of what he was saying while I
tried to write. Frequently our visitors at the MTC will ask us not to take
notes that we might more readily feel the spirit of the Lord. I had not
understood what they had been suggesting until now. Perhaps the strength of the
spirit on those occasions was so strong that I unconsciously chose to abandon
my journal for a greater good.
Secondly, I have thought that maybe some of
the things that the President communicated to me personally, that is to say,
those things which I learned by the spirit, were too sacred to record. Perhaps
they were some of the unspeakable things of the Kingdom, things that could not
be written down, because there are no human words into which those thoughts and
feelings might be translated. The oddity was that I thought that I had written them down, that I would find them when I perused my
journal afterward.
Yet, for all of my ruminating on the matter, I
had not been able to intellectually explain why my circumstances are the way
they are . . . until this morning, the day after I began
writing my portion of this posting. I have concluded that the messages and
instruction that President Nally has delivered to the missionaries and their
leaders are written down, but in my most personal journal, upon the fleshy tablets
of my heart. I am a different man for having been in those meetings, just as I
have become a different man for having hearkened to my Stake Presidents
throughout the years. I cannot explain what specific doctrines or teachings
have influenced me, I just know that I am more determined than ever to be the
kind of person that the Gospel of Jesus Christ defines as a disciple of the Son
of God. It is a wonderful experience to be entrusted with what I think now are
unspeakable things.
In the light of this morning’s epiphany that I
had about my journal and the teachings and testimony of President Nally, I
finally understood what happened to me several months ago, as President Wilkins
and I walked out of a Mission Conference together. I turned to him and exclaimed,
“President Nally did it again! He hit the ball right out of the park!” The
President turned to me and asked, “In what way? What did he say that made you
feel that way?” I tried to explain myself and found that my usual glibness had
failed me. I felt like I had just had a stroke. I could not articulate in any
satisfactory way what I had been feeling and thinking as a result of President
Nally’s address. I have since decided that my heart does not have a playback
feature. I know how I feel; I know when I am being blessed; it is as real to me
as anything I experience in life. But for the present, I am unable to share
what I have gained in this particular venue. Perhaps these things are too
sacred to share; perhaps they are impossible to share with others for the time
being. All I know for certain is that I am looking forward to the next three
years; I am confident that they are going to prove as joyous and as precious to
me as the last twelve months have been. ~PNH
Thank you for sharing this wonderful and amazing experience. Paul, you gave me much needed insight today. Thank you for that!
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