My call to serve in a branch presidency

During the year Claudia and I were courting, we both happened to live within the boundaries of the BYU 49th Branch. In those days, campus congregations were branches instead of wards. After our marriage, we moved into a basement apartment that was still in the 49th Branch. I was serving as the elders quorum president in the branch.

On Sunday, March 25, 1973, just four months after we married, our lives suddenly changed. At about 3:45 that afternoon my counselors in the elders quorum presidency and I were in a room in the Joseph Smith Building and were about to begin home teaching evalu­ations with the presidency of the 49th Branch when Pre­sident Merrill C. Oaks, a counselor in the stake presi­dency, called our branch president out of the room for a few moments. The im­pres­sion came that for some reason his leaving the room affected me.

Within five minutes President Oaks returned to call me out of the room. President Bruce C. Hafen, the other counselor in the stake presidency, was there and Gene Dalton of the high council. Brother Dalton took me into a room upstairs, asked me to tell him all about myself, and then told me he was to be the new pre­si­dent of the Eleventh Branch and wanted me as his counselor, since I came to him highly recom­mended of the stake presidency. Then we slipped down­stairs for President J. Duane Dudley to extend the official call.

Our next trick was to get Claudia to the Eleventh Branch sacra­ment meeting within five minutes. She was home napping. When I phoned I couldn't rouse her, so I called a neighbor to go pound on the door. Nothing.

Once more I tried to call and this time she awoke. I said, "Claudja, I have someone here who would like to speak with you," and handed the phone to Presi­dent Dudley. She was still asleep really. He told her of the call and, after a brief pause, replied to her, "Now why would I be kidding about a thing like that?"

We lived at the bottom of the hill just south of campus. With­in five minutes she was up the hill to the Joseph Smith build­ing for the sac­rament meeting. She was to meet me in the foyer, but she came in while I was in the restroom and we missed each other. She had gone into the meeting and I was pac­ing outside, waiting for her. Finally she came out to get me.

After the sacrament President Dudley released the former branch presidency and then sustained Gene Dalton as presi­dent, Bill Brooksby as first coun­selor, and me as second coun­selor. As we were invited to take the stand, Claudia leaned over to me and said, "I guess this makes me a widow now."

That night, as on similar occasions when the Lord has called, I found it impossible to sleep. My feel­ings were over­whelming as I pondered my new responsibilities. I had to agree with President Dudley that there was a rightness about the call, but I felt so in­adequate. President Oaks and President Hafen told me that as soon as they started con­sidering Brother Dalton as a branch president my name appeared along with his and they never could disassociate it from his.

Two days later Elder Boyd K. Packer spoke in the Tues­day devo­tional at BYU. Because of my work on campus, I had not attended a devotional since Christmas, but this day I felt constrained to go. The Spirit bore mighty witness to my soul as Elder Packer spoke of modern miracles, particularly the inspiration that comes when Church leaders are called, and I then knew that my own call Sunday to the branch presidency was a call from the Lord Himself. It was as though Elder Packer's message was for me alone.

A few weeks later a dream came that taught me even more about my new calling. In the dream, as a very young man, I was called to be an Apostle. I remember being weighed down with a heavy feeling of inade­quacy and an overwhelming convic­tion of earlier slothfulness in God's service. There were days and days of hell. As I started from the uneasy dream, I lay pon­dering the meaning. The Spirit then taught me: I had not been called to such a position, but I was being taught that my station in the priesthood—as second counselor in a branch presi­dency—was as vital a post as that of an Apostle. The Savior required of me the same quality of service, he required of me to live by the same Spirit as the Apostles. The lesson seemed clear enough: shape up, give my all and my best, with­out reservation or fear, and follow the Spirit.