The fifteen-foot Polynesian woman

One of my children's favorite stories from my growing up years involves what our daughter Anna refers to as the Fifteen-Foot Polynesian Woman. I do not remember with any certainty when or exactly where this incident occurred, likely sometime during the mid-1960s, when I would have been 15 or 16 or thereabouts.

My brother Jerry, who is eleven years older than I am, was a milk man and would make home deliveries in Nampa and the rural areas near town. During the years I was in high school, I would often go with him in his milk truck on Saturday mornings or, when school was out, on summer mornings.

Late one spring or summer morning, along toward midday, as we were concluding our rural deliveries somewhere south and west of Nampa, out near Lake Lowell, we were driving along a remote road in our dairy truck. There were tall weeds or bull rushes growing along the ditch or borrow pit to the left of the road. As we were driving along, we saw a woman standing off the side of the road. Just standing there. A gentle smile on her face. She was dressed in a long blue dress, perhaps a muumuu, or some other flowing gown of some sort. She appeared to be somewhere from the islands—perhaps Hawaiian or Polynesian.

It startled us both. "Did you see that?" we said to each other. We looked out the mirrors behind us and saw no one. We stopped to investigate further. Still nothing.

As we tried to process what we had just seen, we thought the woman in the blue muumuu, who was standing out among the growth in the borrow pit, would have had to be very tall—perhaps eight or ten feet tall—for her to be eye level with us in the truck. (Her height, in later tellings of the story, grew to fifteen feet.)

Kind of spooky.

Yet we both had seen her. And it was broad daylight. And to this day, nearly half a century later, I have no clear explanation of what Jerry and I saw that day. Or why.

One small step for a man

On December 17, 1903, less than 12 years before my parents were born, Orville Wright flew the first powered airplane at a wind-swept beach at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered a mere 120 feet. Three more flights were made that day with Orville's brother Wilbur piloting a flight that lasted 59 seconds and covered 852 feet. Americans consider the Wright brothers the fathers of aviation.

Brazilians, those dear people among whom I served my mission, consider one of their own countrymen as the father of aviation. Santos Dumont [Alberto Santos Dumont, 1873–1932, born in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais] designed, built, and flew the first controllable airship, a small blimp, around the Eiffel Tower in Paris on October 19, 2001. Five years later, on October 23, 1906, he flew a fixed-wing airplane, the first such aircraft to be publicly witnessed to take off, fly, and land in Europe. He was one of the most famous people in the world in the early years of the twentieth century.

Even though he died in 1932, he was still very famous and very revered in Brazil when I was there serving my mission in 1969 and 1970. The smaller of two airports in Rio de Janeiro was named after him, and while I was serving in the mission office I went there at least once to meet someone flying in from São Paulo. Arriving and departing missionaries flew into and out of the larger, newer Galeão International Airport. The smaller, older Santos Dumont Airport primarily handled domestic flights to and from other Brazilian cities.

And so I guess it was appropriate that I was in Brazil for one of the most significant events in the history of mankind: man's first steps on the moon. And although the Apollo 11 spacecraft actually reached the moon on my 20th birthday, Saturday, July 19, 1969, the space module Eagle did not actually land on the surface of the moon until what in the western hemisphere of our planet was Sunday, July 20. But that seemed appropriate: July 20 was the 96th anniversary of Santos Dumont's birth.

"A dream of ages was fulfilled tonight," I wrote in my missionary journal for Sunday, July 20, 1969, "as man stepped onto the moon. Ever since the project was given the final go-ahead a few days ago, I have prayed for the mission's success and for the safety of the astronauts. But the moon is no longer virgin soil. The two Americans stepped onto the moon just a few moments before midnight Brazilian time, about 40 minutes after we gave up the vigil and went to bed. Probably every television set in the world was tuned to the coverage of the moon shot. Part of the goal set back in 1961 by John F. Kennedy has been realized: having a man on the moon before 1970. The other part? To bring them safely back to earth."

The next day, Monday, July 21, I wrote in a letter to my family back home in Idaho: "Yesterday, July 20, man first stepped onto the moon. A dream of centuries has been realized within 66 years after man’s first heavier-than-air flight at Kitty Hawk on that Dec­ember morning in 1903. In just a lifetime fantasy has become reality. What will that many more years bring? We are living in an exciting age, in adventurous times."

Three astronauts were a part of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the moon. Aldrin was second. As Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon, he uttered the words, "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." After a couple hours on the lunar surface, the two rejoined their third companion, who had been orbiting above in the spacecraft. And then they returned home to earth.

It was a heady time. For days afterward we missionaries, being Americans, were hailed on the streets as heroes, as though we had played some personal part in the historic drama that played out before the eyes of all the world.

On Thursday, July 24, which was being celebrated back home as Pioneer Day, I made one final journal entry: "Appropriately America's modern pioneers, the three astronauts, safely returned from their journey to the moon. Although they went into incubation confinement immediately after leaving the space cap­sule, President Richard M. Nixon was aboard the naval carrier that picked them up to give them an appropriate heroes welcome."

Encounter with a priest

On Saturday evening, July 12, 1969, my missionary companion, Elder Monte Stewart, and I had our first direct confrontation with a priest. We had entered an apartment building somewhere in our assigned area of Rio de Janeiro to ask the síndico [the building manager] for per­mission to speak with the residents of the building. After giving us permission, he agreed to respond to five questions, a pesquisa, that we often used in a door approach.

Do you believe that God lives? Yes, he replied.

Do you believe that God spoke with prophets anciently? Another yes.

Do you feel that God has the power to speak with men today? I suppose so.

Do you feel a need for a prophet in these days? Yes, he said again.

At this point a priest who was a dinner guest in the home came to the door. We continued with our last question: If you knew that Jesus Christ had returned in these latter days and restored His Church, would you like to know more about it? The man squirm­ed, looking kind of silly at the priest, and ventured a timid yes.

"Oh, so you are the Mormons," broke in the priest. Since the man originally at the door indicated interest, Elder Stewart began bearing his testimony.

"Wait a minute," interrupted the priest, "you cannot go around telling people you know that this is true. You should say I have the im­pression that this may be true, but you cannot go around forcing your­self on people. This man has free agency. You may invite him out to a meeting if he wants to come, but you cannot stand here in his own doorway and force yourselves upon him by saying you know your message is true."

That was too much. I stuck my finger up in front of the priest's face to make him stop talking and replied: "We speak what we must. We know the message of the Restoration to be true and are therefore under responsibility to say that we know it is true."

The priest retorted: "You cannot know. That is subjective."

Elder Stewart indicated that we knew by the power of the Holy Ghost and then continued explaining briefly about the apostasy and Restoration. All the time the priest was bothering us, interrupting, spouting off childish and foolish little remarks.

"Are you afraid of our message?" asked Elder Stewart. He said no, but still would not let us continue.

He started ranting that Christ's church had been here 20 centu­ries. Why should we be going around saying it had just been restored a hundred years ago? As the Jews did to Christ, he was trying to pro­voke us to argue. We would not argue. The Spirit moved me to bear testimony. But the message fell on deafened ears. Seeing they do not see, hearing they do not hear.

"By what authority do you say these things?" he demanded, echo­ing the same interrogative thrown against the Savior by the Pharisees.

"We bear this testimony by the power of the priesthood of the Almighty God and in the name of Jesus Christ," explained my com­panion. Again the priest began his ranting and raving. At this point we once more invited the other man to accept of our message and thanked him for permission to tract the building. Then we left.

Naturally we discussed the incident the rest of the evening. The interview was what we had always pictured such an encounter might involve. We noted in his haughty manner, in his uncivil demeanor, in the very framing of his questions and taunts, how much it was like the opponents of Christ when He was here on the earth.

A visit with the Hinckleys

Mondays were preparation days in our mission. I remember one preparation day in the late winter of 1969, just before my companion and I were completing our seven months together in the mission office. It was a cold, rainy day in Rio de Janeiro. Most winter days in Rio were actually quite pleasant, unless it was raining. The winter rains could cause the cold to sink into our bones, it seemed, and there was no good way to get warm.

This particular Monday, September 8, we found a good way to get warm. We were being warmed and enlightened by the power of the Holy Spirit.

I wrote in my journal, "This afternoon I participated in one of the most uplifting spiritual experiences of my life. Twelve of us were sitting in a casual circle in the living room of the mission home, receiving precious insights and sharing testimonies of a special and holy nature. Among our number was an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, Elder Gordon B. Hinckley."

President Hal R. Johnson was running the show because, as Brother Hinckley had earlier pointed out while we circled the dinner table, he believed in being obedient to the mission president. However, as soon as the President had called us together and had called upon his assistant to offer the opening prayer, he turned the time over to Brother Hinckley.

He remained sitting in the easy chair he was in and suggested that each of the eight young elders present take about three minutes each to express a few thoughts. Some very touching testimonies were borne during those few minutes. It was a rare privilege and oppor­tunity to bear testimony to an Apostle.

Sister Virginia Johnson spoke next. She brought tears to my eyes as she told of how her parents had finally caught the vision of the gospel just before they, the Johnsons, were called to Brazil and had turned from inactivity to go to the House of the Lord.

Sister Marjorie Hinckley shared a few thoughts. She is an able and gracious companion to her husband. She spoke of her joy in be­ing with us and of the miracle of the great missionary system. She never worried about her sons while they were serving missions, she said. Only when they returned home did she begin to worry about them again.

Finally President Johnson bore his strong witness to us that he knew that this was the work and kingdom of God, expressing his overflowing gratitude and love for all those associated with him in this grand work.

Then all eyes turned to Brother Hinckley. Now it was his turn. He asked if he might remain seated because he wanted to talk casually and intimately with us, not wishing to preach. I saw true manhood and great humility as he sat there before us saying that he felt un­worthy of the office of the apostleship. As he meets with mission­aries across the width and breadth of the earth, he feels unworthy of the office. As he received such a warm welcome at the airport at 11:00 the evening before, he felt unworthy of the office. As he sits in meetings of counsel with the other Brethren in the Salt Lake Temple, he feels unworthy of the office.

He shared with us a few touching and close associations he has had with our beloved prophet and leader, President David O. McKay. Just last year the Brethren of the Twelve and First Presidency met in President McKay's apartment a few days before Christmas. As they each bore their testimonies, they expressed their love for President McKay.

Tears came to the Prophet's eyes, and he said, "I am not worthy of your love and trust." That was the Prophet speaking!

There is no doubt that he is a prophet, Brother Hinckley said. It was appropriate for him to speak of the Prophet—that very day was President McKay's 96th birth­day.

Often we sing, "We thank Thee, O God, for a prophet to guide us in these latter days." But if we would really follow the Prophet, the Church would be twice as strong as it is, and we would be twice as blessed as a people. Brother Hinckley assured us that the Lord was preparing a successor to President McKay—a man who would have wide and deep experience, years of long service, of capable judgment, of character molded by life and tempered by the Holy Spirit of God. He felt the Lord was taking His time in preparing such a replacement. President McKay's body is old and worn and weak, but his mind and spirit are firm and clear. When he passes away, there will be no poli­ticking, no power plays—the Lord's choice will be evident.

Brother Hinckley spoke of missionary work and the great miracle it is. He told us of how the Church is growing in the Far East, which was his res­ponsibility for eight years, of how it is surging forward in California. He said he felt a special spirit about Brazil. Years of slow and long preparation will be giving way to a time of rich and fuller harvest.

At times he feels concerned, in fact, about São Paulo baptizing too fast. Twelve years ago (when President Sherman Hibbard, now president of the Brazilian Mission, was working there), São Paulo had one branch of eighty mem­bers, seven of which were active. This year over 2,000 converts will swell the wards of the two stakes there now. It is difficult to integrate so many new members.

Brother Hinckley shared other missionary experiences with us. He has worked directly with the missionary effort since 1933. He mention­ed a letter from their son, who was called from the North Argentine Mission to open up the missionary work in Spain. One thing that im­pressed me from this letter was that he mentioned their most effective missionary tools were fasting and prayer.

He closed his brief remarks with an admonition to remain virtuous and faithful. He bore his witness, as a living Apostle, that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is indeed His church and kingdom here upon the earth today.

Brother Hinckley is a great man. He carries with him the Spirit of the Lord. He is intense in his untiring and devoted service. The Spirit bore witness to every soul that here was indeed a servant of the Lord.

Our meeting closed with a brief word of prayer given by our dis­trict leader.

Brother Hinckley then walked around the circle, shaking every hand, piercing into every soul, offering his best wishes. Tight schedules and other business beckoned, but our hour and a half with this great man is an experience I will long cherish.

Earlier in the day we of the mission office staff also ate dinner with the Hinckleys and the Johnsons. The meeting in the afternoon was planned for all the missionaries in Rio, but since it was preparation day we couldn't reach any of them by phone.

The Hinckleys had arrived from São Paulo at eleven o'clock the previous night. He had presided over two stake conferences there during the day. This morning Brother Hinckley had sent a telegram to President McKay with birthday greetings from the 60,000 members in South America and the missionaries of the ten missions. In the evening the Hinckleys left for Lima.

My love of reading

For as long as I can remember I have always loved to read. In fact, when I was a preschooler, from even before I remember, my mother said I used to be full of questions, and she would send me to look in encyclopedias or other books to find the answers. She said I might sit for long moments pondering an upside-down page in a book trying to figure out the mysteries of life.

I had a little picture book that I do remember. It was a prized possession from before I could read, I think. It was the story of when Jesus fed the five thousand people from the few loaves and fishes. As a child, I loved the stories of Jesus.

When I started school at Adrian in 1955 we read the Dick and Jane books. There were also books about Alice and Jerry. Years later I came across what Robert Fulgham wrote about Dick and Jane in a little piece I used to read to our children every August before they started another school year: "And then remember the book about Dick and Jane and the first word you learned, the biggest word of all: LOOK. Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and sane living" ("All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," from the Kansas City Times, Sept. 17, 1986).

I didn't go to Kindergarten. I started with the first grade. I got a late start. But not really. Most of what I needed to learn was there in the books. And in the lives of the numerous people that have influenced me along the way.

When I was twelve years old, sometime in 1961 or 1962, thanks to encouragement and inspiration from my Grandma Batt, I read the Book of Mormon all the way through. That was a first reading in what I would now have to list as the one single book that has most influenced my life. It was the early start of what has blossomed into a life-long love affair with the holy scriptures.

By the time I was in high school I recognized my great love for history, particularly American history and Church history. I read B. H. Roberts's book The Missouri Persecutions, which chronicles the unjust treatment, the drivings and the mobbings, of the Latter-day Saints in Missouri during the 1830s, culminating in their expulsion from the state during the winter of 1838–39. The book had a remarkable influence on me.

In my teen-aged years, probably near the end of my senior year of high school, in the spring of 1967, I discovered A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh for the first time. I had done a lot of reading by then, from all the works that were required in my English classes in school to all the stuff I read on my own. It was a delightful discovery. This was still before Walt Disney's people acquired the rights to the Pooh Bear and began marketing them in cartoons and short children's books and such. The original stories came from the pen of a British author in the 1920s.

During my first year of college, 1967–1968, I read The Hobbit and the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien. Few books have so engaged me or had such a profound impact on me. I cried after I finished reading the final chapter. I felt homesick for a place and a people I had known only in imagination. Other than the scriptures, there are few books that I take the time to reread. There just isn't enough time in my lifetime to read everything out there I might want to read. But I have read the trilogy that comprises The Lord of the Rings three times since that initial reading.

Another book I read a second time was Herman Melville's Moby Dick. I did not appreciate it the first time I read it when I was a sophomore in high school, but so many people insisted it was the great American novel that I had to find out what I missed the first time through. So I read it again the following summer. I still didn't find it. I think if you edited out everything that detailed nineteenth century whaling, perhaps it might make a good short story.

My nomination for the great American novel would have to be Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Even though I love to read, I don't read as much as I might like. I have averaged over the past many years a little more than a book a month, usually twelve to fifteen a year.

Many years ago in a Sunday School class we were discussing the Lord’s admonition: “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith” (D&C 88:118). The teacher invited class members to mention books they had read, beyond the scriptures, that had profoundly influenced their lives. The responses were varied and interesting.

As I contemplate the works, beyond the scriptures, that have had a significant influence on me, or that I thoroughly enjoyed, or that gave me fresh insights into the world, I would have to list (in no particular order) at least the following pretty high on my list:

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
• The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• John Adams, by David McCullough
• 1776, by David McCullough
• Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph J. Ellis
• Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West, by Stephen E. Ambrose
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
• April 1865: The Month That Saved America, by Jay Winik
• FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression, by Jim Powell
• Truman, by David McCullough
• King Lear, by William Shakespeare
• Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
• Lord of the Rings, by J. R. R. Tolkein
• The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis
• Approaching Zion, by Hugh Nibley (I pretty much like anything by Brother Nibley, but this represents what I consider the finest collection)
• Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith
• To Draw Closer to God, by Henry B. Eyring
• The Missouri Persecutions, by B. H. Roberts
• Fire of the Covenant: A Novel of the Willie and Martin Handcart Companies, by Gerald N. Lund
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
• Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen
• Wuthering Heights, by Emily Bronte
• Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
• Anne of Green Gables, by L. M. Montgomery
• A Child's Garden of Verses, by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, by A. A. Milne

This list is undoutedly incomplete. I have probably forgotten as many worthy candidates as I have listed. Compiled at other times, in other seasons, there might well have been other titles added, or even some of these deleted.

In the end, it is worth remembering what the Good Book says: "And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh" (Ecclesiastes 12:12).

Childhood pets

During the years I was growing up in eastern Oregon, we had a family dog named Red. I do not know what breed he was. Like most dogs, however, he loved to chase after balls or sticks and bring them back to be thrown again. We could tell when it was about to rain because Red would eat grass before an approaching storm. By the time we moved to Idaho in 1959, Red was getting pretty old in dog years. On one of several trips to the new house, he jumped out of the back of the pickup and was never seen again.

I think we had other dogs in later years, but I do not particularly remember any of them.

I am not particularly a dog person. That stems, I suppose, from having been bit by dogs during my growing up years in the Nampa area. The two incidents I recall both stem from when I used to go door to door trying to sell greeting cards. One was from a yappy little dog that bit me on my heel. So much for my mother's oft-repeated adage that a barking dog doesn't bite. The other bite came from a large dog, a German shepherd I believe, that quietly slipped up behind me and bit my buttocks before I even knew he was there. Not a warning bark or growl. Nothing. Maybe these incidents also explain why I've never been interested in being a door-to-door salesman.

Once on my mission in Brazil I had also had an encounter with another small yapping dog that tried to bite me and would have succeeded had not the owner right at that precise moment yanked him by the tail away from me. The dog got my pants but fortunately not my leg.

Claudia's family, during the years she was growing up in southern California, had a beagle named Sunny Boy. Knowing that healthy dogs have wet noses, she felt his nose once and, finding it dry, poured water on it to make sure he would stay healthy.

Her family also had goldfish, which once upon a time she killed by pouring milk into the fish bowl. She reasoned that if milk were good for her it must also be good for fish. Wrong.

In later years the Langes also had a German shepherd named Gunther. He was the family's dog at the time Claudia and I were married in November 1972. Just a month after we were married, we drove to southern California to spend our first Christmas with the Langes in San Gabriel. Claudia's younger brother upstaged Christmas morning as we were first gathering around the Christmas tree. David came into the living room, staff in hand, dressed in a robe, with Gunther at his side playing the part of a humble sheep, as David proclaimed in comedic voice, "And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night" (Luke 2:8). The comic moment was unforgettable, classic David, the stuff of happy memories.

Moving away

My earliest memory of national politics stems from the fall of 1960, when Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy were chal­lenging each other for the presi­dency of the United States to replace Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had been the popular Republican presi­dent during the previous eight years. Nixon was serving as Eisen­hower’s vice-president.

I favored Nixon, the Repub­lican candidate, but not as strongly as some of my fellow classmates, who vowed that they and their families would be moving to Canada if Kennedy were elected. The youthful Kennedy won the November elections by a slim margin and was inaugurated in January 1961, but I cannot remember anyone at school moving away during those early months of the new decade.

Unfortunately, our family did move again in the spring of 1961, not as far as Canada, but off the farm and six miles into town, which was sufficient disruption of my little world.

We moved to a smaller house on the south edge of Nampa, just a couple blocks from the high school. Our house, was located on a little acerage on the north side of Montana Avenue, which was later renamed Colorado Avenue. There was a pasture behind the house, and we still had a couple of cows that had to be milked every morning and night. The place was just south of the Northwest Nazarene College. [Today the Northwest Nazarene University has taken over the area where our house once stood.]

The move seemed to come up suddenly and I suspect involved a default on the farm payments. Eleven-year-old boys weren't privy to such bits of information.

I just know I was pretty brokenhearted at the prospects of leaving Scism School and my many friends there. And it was pretty tough starting at Roosevelt Elementary during the last month or so of my sixth-grade year. For­tunately, we were still in the same ward, so at least I did not have to deal with changing friends at church too.

Scism School

I was a fourth grader when we moved from Oregon to Idaho, and March has to be a terrible time of year to transfer to a new school. But the other kids were excited to see a new face so late in the school year and quickly befriended me. So, even though I was pretty shy about being the new kid on the block, I soon felt like I fit in. And I was able to head into summer vacation already having friends throughout the area.

Scism School was a three-room country school a couple miles north and west from our farm. Grades 1, 2, and 3 were in the same room. Grades 4, 5, and 6 in a second room. And grades 7 and 8 in a third room. After that a student had to travel into Nampa to attend the ninth grade in one of the junior high schools before going on to high school.

I came to Scism in the final months of my fourth-grade year. Sylvia Jones was the teacher. The next school year (1959–60) I was in the fifth grade and got to move over into the middle two rows of the same room. Mrs. Jones was still my teacher. The next school year (1960–61) I was in the sixth grade and got to move over into the two rows closest to the windows. Mrs. Jones was still my teacher.

Had we not moved in the spring of my sixth-grade year, I would have gone into the next room for the seventh and eighth grades, where Herman Jones (Mrs. Jones's husband) would have been my teacher. He later transferred to teach at one of the junior highs in Nampa, and I happened to be in one of his classes my eighth- or ninth-grade year at Central Junior High School.

Looking back now, decades later, I am con­vinced that those years I spent in that little classroom with Mrs. Jones were among the best of my entire educational experience. She was a master teacher who cared deeply for her students and inspired in us a love for learning.

She was also a deeply religious person, a Seventh-day Adventist, who loved the Lord deeply. In those days, before the Supreme Court ruled that prayer in public schools violated the First Amend­ment, an unfortunate ruling to be sure, schools in Idaho would begin each day after the Pledge of Allegiance with scripture reading from the Bible. It was probably supposed to stop there, but Mrs. Jones would often go on to expound on what she read and to share her beliefs and feel­ings. I often recognized, as a fifth or sixth grader, that her interpretations didn't always coincide with my own Mormon beliefs, but never once did it occur to me that anyone could be offended or harmed in any way by what she taught us.

The rever­ence she gave the Bible and other sacred things, including the names of Deity, are an inspiration to me to this day. A simple illustration was her observation one morning that the scriptures were so sacred to her that she would never let them fall to the floor or ever place other books on top of them.

Naughty toes

In the early days of my mission in Brazil I had surgery on my toes. I had arrived in Brazil on Wednesday morning, December 18, 1968. Thursday night I took a bus all alone to Petrópolis, a city in the mountains about an hour and a half by bus from Rio de Janeiro. There I met my first companion, Elder Dean Slade from Las Vegas. I was just beginning my mission. He was about to finish his.

As we were preparing for bed that first night, my companion noticed that the big toe on my right foot was all red, inflamed, and infected. That was not good, he concluded, with all the walking missionaries do, with the humid climate, with the rainy season coming on.

Elder Slade called the mission president that night and the next day he took me back down to Rio, where we went to Hospital Silvestre, a clean, well-equiped hospital run by the Seventh-Day Adventists that had doctors and nurses who actually spoke English. I wasn't very fluent in Portuguese yet. That Friday afternoon, December 20, I had my toe operated on and the nail completely removed from my right big toe.

For the next week I convalesced in the mission home. I was supposed to stay off my foot for the most part. The incessant pain helped me do that. I celebrated my first Brazilian Christmas as a patient lying on a bed or hopping around in the mission home. During that week I also kept reviewing the missionary discussions in Portuguese, read James E. Talmage's Jesus the Christ again, read nearly half of President David O. McKay's Man May Know for Himself, typed the entire new mission handbook onto stencil so that it could be mimeographed for the missionaries, and visited the hospital every other day for bandage changes.

Finally, on the evening of Saturday, December 28, I returned to Petrópolis. Elder Slade was grateful to have a companion again. I still had a bandage on my toe and had to wear sandals rather than shoes.

A little over a month later, on Wednesday, February 5, 1969, Elder Slade and I returned to Rio. He was on his way home to the United States. I was merely going to the hospital to have my toe checked and planned to return to Petrópolis that afternoon. My companion went with me to the hospital, where shortly thereafter I came out without a toenail on my left big toe.

I reflected that the first day and the last day that Elder Slade was my companion he had been with me in the hospital watching me lose toenails. I said my final good-bye to him from on my back in a bed in the mission home. He had been a good companion, one that I relied on heavily for help with my lessons and the language. He gave me a good start on my mission.

The next morning, after an overnight stay in the mission home, I returned alone to Petrópolis to prepare to transfer to the Tijuca area of Rio de Janeiro. That change came as quite a shock. I had been in Petrópolis only six weeks. Perhaps the president wanted me a little closer to the hospital, a little closer where he could keep an eye on my toes.

I was supposed to go with the other two elders in Petrópolis to the neighboring town of Teresópolis for the evening when they went over there for Mutual. One of the elders was the branch president in Teresópolis, and he and his companion traveled over there a couple times a week. As mentioned, I was supposed to go with them. But when I got back to Petrópolis, they had left me a note informing me they had already gone.

I spent the rest of the day alone, somewhat frightened at being alone. I stayed in my room at the boarding place, the pensão where we lived, being careful with my foot, packing, preparing instructions for those continuing after me, finishing my part of the district history, writing in my journal, catching up a bit of delinquent correspondence, and such. Sometime that evening I poured out my soul in prayers of thanksgiving and pleading. My eyes were wet. And my toe down there throbbing with pain at the end of my leg did not even seem to matter at that moment.

And so the next day, Friday, I was off to Rio and my new assignment with a new companion. And with a throbbing toe.

"Last Friday evening," I wrote in my journal on Wednesday, February 12, "I had an experience that deepened my appreciation for the Savior's atoning sacrifice and demonstrated the weaknesses of the flesh. I was changing the bandage on my toe for the first time since the operation and the pain, because of sticking to the raw skin where the toenail used to be, became so unbearable that I blacked out right there on the bed. It was only a few seconds but had Elder Sarager [my new companion in Tijuca] a bit worried."

I wished afterward that Elder Sarager had finished ripping the bandage off while I was out. Unfortunately, he did not. After I recovered a bit, I still had to deal with getting the sticking gauze the rest of the way off. The pain was horrendous.

I continued in my journal: "How weak we are! The Savior suffered such intense pain in Gethsemane, causing bleeding at the pores, that my experience is weak in comparison. His was for hours, mine only minutes. His was more than physical pain, mine only that. Yet Jesus Christ fainted not but perfected His Father's plan. For this experience I am grateful and can appreciate and understand a little more clearly now.

"Health is a beautiful and one of our most valuable gifts from our Father in Heaven. Like too many blessings we often do not appreciate it until it is taken from us or we forfeit the right to have it. If I have not yet learned another thing from my mission, I do know that health should be jealously guarded with good sense and the proper measure of faith. We must be clean that bear the vessels of the Lord."

That should have been enough in the toe department. But that was not to be.

Nearly nine months later, on Monday, October 27, 1969, I wrote in my journal, "Today turned into one of those days when all sorts of things happen to make life look different and exciting. Making a visit to Hospital Sil­vestre, I learned from Dr. Kovach that my cold was really bronchitis. An infection that started in my right big toe again last week, ten months after the operation on it, required the toenail to be removed again. I was told that the problem was not really ingrown toenail problems but a fungus of some type on the toenail. For all this I have been given medicines of all shapes, colors, and forms: one taken every four hours, another every 12 hours, another three times daily, another every day at lunch for 40 days. The worst part of the whole experience was calling President Johnson to give him the good news and writing my family to give them something to worry about."

Enough with toes already.

Read aloud

One of the defining spiritual experiences of my life occurred early in the summer of 1968 as I was preparing for my mission. My freshman year at Brigham Young University had ended, and I returned home to Idaho. I was horribly homesick for Provo. I felt as empty as I've ever been in my life. Before or since. I really missed BYU and the people and the experiences I had had there. For a week it continued.

One morning after especially earnest pleading with the Lord to comfort me and lift me out of my depression, a voice softly suggested: "Read aloud." I do not know if I heard the voice in my mind or in my ears. It seemed at the time as real as if someone were in my bedroom with me.

Read what aloud? But no answer.

I felt moved to turn to the Book of Mormon. I thumbed through its pages, not knowing what I was looking for, until I reached a passage that jumped out at me as if it were in type twice the size of any other verse on the page. Its message entered with considerable force into my soul: "For the eternal purposes of the Lord shall roll on, until all his promises shall be fulfilled" (Mormon 8:22).

Those brief words said everything that was necessary for me: The Lord was mindful of me and my needs. His work would move forward. He was inviting me to participate if I desired. He loved me and had the best in store for me in the context of His all-knowing economy, even if I could not understand what all of His plans and purposes might be.

Accept with a willing heart

I received my patriarchal blessing on Thursday evening, September 2, 1965, six and a half weeks after I turned sixteen. For the most part I did not remember the details of what the patriarch said until the typed copy came in the mail a few weeks later.

I did recall, however, that I was told never to decline callings that would come to me to serve in the Church. That is what I remembered, and it would shortly become important counsel to me. What the patriarch actually said to me, I learned a few weeks later, was slightly different, although the intent I suppose was essentially the same:

"Accept with a willing heart the responsibilities of service and God will magnify you until you will be capable of con­founding the wise and the learned and will melt the defense of the unrighteous, and even though they accept not the message of truth which you bear, yet they will testify of the power which is within you."

The following Sunday a member of the bishopric met with me and called me to serve as our ward's Sunday School organist. In those days Sunday School was a separate meeting and had an opening exercise with its own opening and closing hymns, a period of song practice, and the administration of the sacrament with an accompanying sacrament hymn. That was at least four hymns every Sunday, sometimes more depending on what we did during the hymn practice.

I said yes, I would do it. With only two and a half years of piano study be­hind me, hav­ing never had an organ lesson, and being able to play only four of the simplest hymns, I accepted the position solely be­cause of the patri­arch’s admonition and promise from just a few days earlier.

"You said what?" my incredulous piano teacher said to me when I told her I had accepted the call. Sister Ruby Hurren, an organist in our ward, had been my early-morning seminary teacher the year I was a freshman. Her husband was a counselor in our stake presidency. She was my piano teacher. I thought a lot of her and greatly valued her opinion. She agreed I needed a lot of help and we began a crash course in learning how to play hymns on the organ.

The Sunday School chorister was also understanding and cooperative. She agreed to list all the hymns I would have to play during the coming month, including the various practice hymns, and promised not to stick any additional ones in that I was not prepared to play. She also got me a key to the building and to the organ and arranged for me to spend time after school and on weekends to come into the chapel and practice on the organ itself. Early on I spent hours and hours practicing the organ. It was a grand old instrument, an actual pipe organ, not like the little electronic instruments I played in other places in other years.

The Lord kept His word and mag­nified my talent all out of normal proportion. I had accepted the calling with a willing heart, and God had magnified my meager talent. Within months I had mastered the organ even better than the piano and soon I was also serving as Mutual organist, priesthood pianist, stake priesthood pianist, and unofficially as an assistant ward organist. It would serve me well in later years when I went off to college and after that served my mission in Brazil.

Outside my own family and my piano teacher and the Sunday School chorister, I doubt anyone else knew or appreciated that I really had not known how to play. That clearly was a bless­ing from the Lord and not a stroke of my musi­cal genius because, with hymns excepted, I did not progress a great deal in other areas of musical study. To this day hymns are about the only thing I know how to play.

My patriarchal blessing

I was sixteen years old when I received my patriarchal blessing. It was a Thursday evening, September 2, 1965. I drove alone to the stake center. Neither of my parents came with me. There in a warm room we had to ourselves I met the patriarch, Leon H. Swenson, and his wife. She was there as his scribe.

I had handed him the recommend that authorized him to give me a blessing. My parents' names were on the recommend. The only specific thing I remember from our preliminaries is that he asked me what the R stood for in the middle of my father's name: Ivard R Cleverly. That was his actual full legal name. But I knew the R stood for his mother's maiden name, Ritchie, and I told him that, not realizing until afterward that in the record he created he renamed my father Ivard Ritchie Cleverly. My real answer should have been that the R stood for nothing.

Brother Swenson had me sit in a chair, and he walked around behind me and placed his hands on my head and began speaking. "Brother Dean Batt Cleverly," he began, "in the authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood which I bear and by the authority in me vested as an ordained patriarch in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I place my hands upon your head and give unto you your patriarchal blessing."

He spoke a phrase at a time and paused long enough for Sister Swenson to write it down in long-hand. He continued that way throughout the blessing, alternately speaking and pausing until he came to the end of the blessing: "This blessing I now seal upon you by the power in me vested and in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."

And then I drove home. I had not felt anything particularly special about the experience and for the most part did not remember the details of what he said until the typed copy came in the mail a few weeks later.

I did recall that I was of the tribe of Ephraim, which did not surprise me since everyone else in my family who had received patriarchal blessings, and indeed most members of the Church I knew anything about, were of Ephraim. And I remembered that I was told never to decline opportunities that would come to me to serve in the Church. That would shortly become important counsel to me.

The next afternoon, however, I received a spiritual confirmation that the blessing was literally from the Lord. During the summers I drove the mobile Dairy Queen truck around Nampa and sold ice cream to whoever would stop me. We affectionately referred to it as the Dilly Wagon. I had the town divided into three basic areas and would cover one of them on Mondays and Thursdays, the second one on Tuesdays and Fridays, and the third one on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Friday afternoon I drove up the street that passed by the stake center in my ding-a-linging Dilly Wagon. As I slowly drove by, the Spirit of the Lord come upon me in a particularly powerful manner and confirmed in my heart and soul that there in that building the previous evening the heavens had opened and the Lord, through his authorized servant, had given me a revelation that was for me alone.

I am grateful for my patriarchal blessing. And I am grateful for the confirming witness that came to me, through the power of the Holy Ghost, that its message was scripture to me, a blessing from a loving Father to guide me throughout my life.

My first general conference

I remember the first time I attended a general conference in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. It was the April 1966 general conference. I had watched conference sessions on television at home in Idaho, but this was the first time I had attended in person. My older brother Jerry and I had come to Salt Lake for the occasion. I was sixteen years old, a junior in high school.

Moments before the beginning of the Saturday morning session, President David O. McKay entered the rather noisy Tabernacle. In a moment a solemn hush filled the air as the thousands of gathered Saints rose in deepest respect to their prophet-leader. Tears of joy and gratitude gathered in my eyes as the Spirit bore force­ful witness that for the first time in my life I was standing in the pre­sence of a Prophet of God.

The next morning, Easter Sunday, dawned early upon us as we crowded into the historic conference site. At the concluding session that afternoon, President McKay delivered his own final address and left his blessing upon the Church. He was advanced in age, and it proved to be the last sermon he ever personally gave in a general conference. Once again the moment was thrilling.

As he finished, the mighty organ and choir joined together in "The Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. As is the tradition with this Easter anthem, the congre­ga­tion stood. After the last powerful strains had filled the air, the choir softly and reverently intoned President McKay's favorite hymn:

I need thee every hour,
Most gracious Lord;
No tender voice like thine
Can peace afford.
I need thee; O I need thee;
Every hour I need thee!
O bless me now, my Savior;
I come unto thee!

I doubt there was a dry eye or an untouched soul in the entire building.

The two of us, my brother and I, stayed in Salt Lake the following day to do genealogical research. During the afternoon I prevailed upon Jerry to take me to the Church Administration Building to be intro­duced to his mis­sion pre­si­dent, Elder Thomas S. Monson, now a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In those days you could still just walk into the building. Elder Monson was not in his office.

Feeling increasingly more confi­dent, we walked into Elder Harold B. Lee's office to look at his wall genealogy chart. We wondered if Brother Lee's family was related to Grand­ma Batt, who was a Lee before she married Grandpa. Elder Lee was also out of the office that after­noon, but his sec­retary kindly showed us the chart. Nothing seemed to match.

Then we waxed fully bold as we decided to visit President Joseph Fielding Smith, then president of the Twelve, and his good wife, Jessie Evans Smith, in their Eagle Gate apartment. I cannot believe we had the nerve. What an absolutely audacious thing to do!

When we knocked, Pre­si­dent Smith came to the door and graciously in­vited us in. The Smiths had been watching the evening news when we arrived but turned it off im­mediately to chat with us for some twenty minutes. I remember little of what tran­spired, but admittedly I left walking six inches off the ground. Now I appreciated this chief Apostle and great gospel scholar in a warm, new light. Four years later, following the death of President McKay, President Smith became the tenth President of the Church.

More on my fear of water

After my early experiences with water—the scare I received on Jenny Lake in July 1951 and my near drowning in the Owyhee River in July 1955—I had an active fear of any water I couldn’t see the bottom of, such as a lake or a river. I could deal with bath tubs or swimming pools, but I never became much of a swimmer.

When I was a Boy Scout, we used to go to Scout camp every summer at Camp Billy Rice, which was located in the mountains north of the Boise area somewhere east of the town of Cascade. The camp was located on Warm Lake, which was anything but warm. If you jumped or were thrown into the frigid water, it would absolutely take your breath away. And if you stayed overly long in the water, you would begin to believe that you had no feet or legs or other body extremities. The water temperatures were that numbing.

I managed at camp to pass the short swimming requirements for the various rank advancements, but my fear of water kept me from actual swimming and thus from earning my Eagle rank. I was a Life Scout by the time I quit Scouting, and I was only two merit badges short of Eagle—swimming and lifesaving.

By the summer of 1967, just after I graduated from high school, I finally worked up the courage to try water skiing for the first time. We were at a youth outing on Lake Lowell, a reservoir south and west of Nampa, and I decided to go for it. I made it up onto the skis and let the boat pull me around for a while. And I actually survived. Of course, I was wearing a life jacket and that made it difficult to sink into the dark watery depths below me.

I can remember going water skiing only two other times during my life: The first was on Lake Washington during June of 1971, when I was spending a week visiting Dana Blackham, whose family lived in Seattle and owned a boat. Dane and I had been missionary companions in Brazil while we served in Maceió. Later we were roommates at Brigham Young University. He served as the best man at our wedding reception. And I let him take me water skiing again.

The other time was at Pineview Reservoir up near Huntsville and Eden in the Ogden Valley on July 17, 1999, two days before my fiftieth birthday. It was another youth outing. This time I was there as bishop. I suspect I had not actually planned to ski that day, but before the outing was over, I was out there on the water being pulled around by Sheldon Panter's boat. I had a difficult time, as I remember it, getting up on the skis, but finally I made it. For a little bit anyway. I am not as young as I used to be.

Agent at customs

An account of my arrival in Rio de Janeiro, written during the year following my mission (1971) as a creative writing assignment for one of my English classes at Brigham Young University. The story is not intended to convey any disrespect for that wonderful, vast realm I came to love as much as my own homeland.

I wasn't really ready for my first day in Rio de Janeiro, and it wasn't exactly ready for me. Between the two of us there was a considerable mix up.

The truth is that it had been snowing at Kennedy International on the eve of our journey, and this meant I had come to this land of sun lugging an overcoat filled with the extra weight of books and film. When you have no use for an overcoat, except as a piece of luggage, to haul it all over creation seems strangely like a bit of stupidity. Rio, on its part, was having trouble too. It couldn't find an agreeable temperature or a decent humidity. Our mutual discomfort established some minor rapport between us, and I realized that Rio de Janeiro and I actually both needed the same thing—a nice cool day.

The flight to Rio starts with the pilot's trilingual welcome. It is a long, uneventful journey, with gracious hospitality and lots of food, with two major meals on top of one another, dinner and breakfast. It offers time to stare at the darkness, later at clouds, water, and jungle; to chat in broken foreign tongues with fellow passengers; to sleep between the meals that are obviously from the kitchens of foreign chefs.

Suddenly you see the first intimation of the future, of Rio—the city of fun and sun—and there is the runway and the banners waving from the airport complex and the brave hope of a glimpsed destination. Except for the overcoat, handbag, camera case, books, and box of home-baked cookies that all had to be carried off the plane, I might have been walking into a fantasy world, for I felt that perhaps here would be the exotic land all men dream of, the vast jungles, the natives in their festive dress, awaiting carnival. A closer inspection, however, by the end of the walk to the customs area, revealed that it was merely a giant greenhouse—the same old hot humidity we had been warned of, with no immediate jungles, and the natives in rather drab attire.

The airport is filled with people—mixed, assorted people, with tourists hailing from every continent, and in the air the sound of incessant chatter. There are benches all along for the waiting and the waited, and though Rio's failure to cope with the indoor heat had dampened my enthusiasm and wilted my courage, the idea of getting through customs beckoned me on.

It was not particularly surprising, somehow, when at last, after so many months of anticipation and after so much arduous study and preparation, when at last I arrived, overcoat in hand, at the very threshold of my mission, when I finally presented myself there at the customs section, face to face with the man at the desk behind a little mountain of declaration forms, expectant, ready to enter at last where I had never been before, Rio de Janeiro—it was not, somehow, particularly surprising to find the man was not going to let us in his country.

That's the way it is with Brazil. Even after the Revolution of '64 had made it the country of the future, there is still an exasperating, archaic incompetence.

The elders with me were not surprised either, but they seemed apprehensive. We all did.

"Can we get through?" someone asked timidly.

"No, sir," said the agent. "Not without the luggage you've declared."

We were not encouraged. "But what if it's in New York still?" we replied, realizing that our luggage had not made our quick flight change at Kennedy International.

"Too bad," he replied. "Wait here a few moments."

I clocked the wait. It was 43 minutes. Not bad for one not expecting to get in at all.

Much depends, when you pause at the brink of entry, on the attitude with which you happen to be met by the man with the stamp, the agent at customs, and scrutinized in his omniscient way for some of the slowest moments that tick by in this lazy land. If you arrive just as night has faded into dawn, and without any advance warning about being barred from an entrance into the country, the experience is something that sticks with you.

I was lucky. Rio de Janeiro, when it first burst upon my expectant sight, was as thrilling as a Christmas present, and for a moment or two I didn't catch on that the unwrapping would be so difficult. If I hadn't been with seven other greenies, I would have felt lonelier than perhaps even this situation merited.

"Come back tomorrow," he said, with the stiff authority that an office had given him, "to pick up your luggage, for now we can do nothing for you."

I don't know how long it normally takes there. Twenty minutes, half an hour maybe. But when we returned on the next morning, to begin the whole mess all over, it took six and a half hours.

49th State Hawaii Record Company

There comes a time in every child's life when he realizes he knows more than his parents. Or thinks he does. It's a part of growing up.

Sometime after we moved to the new house just south of Nampa, which occurred in December 1964, we had a 45 rpm vinyl phonograph record, one of the small ones with a doughnut hole in the middle, that was put out by the 49th State Hawaii Record Company. I do not remember what song was on the record. All I remember was that it bothered me that the label claimed Hawaii was the 49th state, when I knew full well that Hawaii was really the 50th state.

My mother was certain that Hawaii was the 49th state, and she had proof in hand, and none of my teen-aged arguments to the contrary could convince her otherwise. Remember, this was in an era before the Internet, and it was not a simple task to amass proof that Alaska was really the 49th state (admitted to the Union on January 3, 1959) and Hawaii the 50th (admitted on August 21, 1959). The encyclopedia we had was no help; its entries on Alaska and Hawaii still referred to them as territories. The public library was no help; its holdings contained nothing so recent as a current event.

Nothing I could come up with would carry the point. My mother was firm in her belief that Hawaii was the 49th state. Neither of us budged, and our friendly impasse finally faded away, neither of us convincing the other, neither of us conceding defeat.