Spiritual History

MY SPIRITUAL HISTORY

Barry McCombs

I want my posterity to have an account of some of the events of my life that have given me guidance and have provided me with a sure testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ as taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

When I was born, February 3, 1950, my mother was not a member of the Church and my father, although a baptized member and descendent of Mormon pioneers, was inactive.  With the help of my grandmother McCombs my mother was baptized in 1953.  It must have taken some time for my father to become an active member because I recall sitting with him behind our house in Spokane, Washington and asking him why he smoked cigarettes.  He told me he shouldn’t and gave me a puff on his cigarette to show me how bad it was.  I had to have been about 6 years old at that time.

I remember receiving a Father’s blessing from my grandfather McCombs and being big enough to sit on a chair and to receive this blessing on the stage of the old Grange hall on the outskirts of Colville, Washington where the branch of the Church was meeting at that time.  I have a paper in my Book of Remembrance that says I was three years old.  I think my father became active about a year before I was baptized.  I recall sitting in the baptismal interview with Bishop Ray Bates of the Spokane 4th Ward and when he asked me if I had a testimony of Joseph Smith, I didn’t know who he was.  My parents soon remedied that lack of knowledge and I was baptized March 1, 1958.

I was baptized by my father and I have a very clear memory of coming up out of the baptismal font feeling a warmth throughout my entire body and the “burning in the bosom” mentioned in the scriptures.  Later I understood that this was the Holy Ghost bearing witness or validating this ordinance of the Gospel.  While I have had many spiritual experiences during my life, I have always been grateful for this manifestation that has remained with me all of these years.

I feel that being able to witness the changes and growth that occurred to my parents as they became active members of the Church was very important to my own spiritual development.  One of the first challenges my father faced was quitting tobacco.  He smoked 3 packages of cigarettes a day but when he decided to quit he did it from one day to the next.  The day he decided to quit smoking he never smoked again.  He did carry around candy in his pocket and ate a lot of Jelly Beans for about a year.

My mother wanted to pay their tithing but my father insisted it was impossible to do because they barely were making enough money to pay their bills and monthly expenses with nothing left over at the end of the month.  My mom kept after him about paying tithes until my dad finally said, “Alright we will pay tithing out of my next paycheck and then you will see that we won’t have enough to live on.”  They paid their tithing and at the end of the month they had money left over which had not happened before.  From then on, they were full tithe payers.

About a month after my baptism, my parents went to the temple in Cardston, Alberta to receive their endowments and be sealed to each other.  My sisters, Kathy and Danny, and I were sealed to them at that time.  It was a very memorable trip and experience for me.  As we children were waiting to be taken to the sealing room, the temple matron spoke to me and told me that Heavenly Father was preparing a special little girl to be my wife and that I should pray every day that I would be able to find her and be worthy to take her to the temple.  I always remembered what she said to me and though I didn’t pray every day for that blessing, I often did.

In 1973, in that same temple, I was married to Julie Althea Sexton.  Her family had joined the Church about the same time as my parents were becoming active and they were sealed together in the Los Angeles temple just two months before my family.  Julie was 4 years old at the time.

My mother’s first calling in the Church was as a teacher in the Primary.  At the time, she was quite a shy farm girl in her mid-twenties.  I remember her coming home from her first class crying and saying that she couldn’t be a teacher.  The kids in her class were running all over the place and one little boy crawled under the table and wouldn’t come out.  The women in the Primary Presidency were very kind and patient and told my mother that she could be a good teacher and they would help her.  She continued in her calling and within a few years was serving as a Relief Society president and other callings that required a great amount of leadership ability.  I met the little boy who had crawled under the table years later when he was a school board president and bishop in Spokane Valley.  His name was Karl Wilkinson.

One of my fondest memories of childhood was sitting with my mother in the evening before going to bed and reading the children’s scripture stories written by Emma Marr Petersen.  It seemed that my father was most often not home, either working or attending Church meetings at those times.  After reading we would kneel in prayer.  Since my father worked as a lineman for the local electrical utility, he was often called out to repair the electrical lines when there were outages caused by storms or accidents.  My mother always prayed for his safety and we prayed earnestly knowing that the danger was real.  My uncle, Les Olds, also a lineman, was electrocuted while repairing a fallen electrical line only a few miles from our home not long after my parents became active church members.  I believe that reading with my mother and listening to her prayers is the real foundation of my faith.

My father’s first calling in the church was as an assistant scoutmaster.  He called it the scout bouncer because they were such a wild bunch of boys that he spent most of the time chasing them back into the chapel after they had climbed out the windows of the cultural hall.  Within a year or so of becoming active he was called to be a counselor in the bishopric.  On the day he was sustained a woman in the ward came up to him saying that it wasn’t right for him to be called to that position and that her husband deserved to be called.

My father had the gift of healing and this was manifested early in his church service.  A family joined the church whose oldest son had leukemia.  This was considered incurable at the time.  They were baptized and they asked dad to give their child a name and a blessing and he did in a sacrament meeting.  In the blessing dad stated that he would be healed and live long enough to go the temple and be sealed with his family.  Shortly after this blessing his leukemia went into remission.  As I remember it, it took his family a number of years before they were ready to go to the temple.  Not long after being sealed as a family, their son’s leukemia returned and within a short period of time, he passed away.  He was a special little boy, very outgoing and everyone in the ward loved him.

Besides the gift of healing, my father had the gift of prophecy.  While he was in the Spokane 4th Ward bishopric, a project was started to build a new chapel on  16th and Evergreen.  In those days the members had to raise the funds and provide the labor for the construction of their chapels.  This was a big effort that required a lot of sacrifice.  Members sold lake cabins, pianos and other belongings to come up with the necessary money.  My father was the counselor in the bishopric responsible for much of this work.  We lived only 4 blocks from the construction site, which was part of an old farm that had some chicken houses on it.  One of the first things that had to be done was to grade the lot and excavate the soil to prepare for pouring the concrete foundations.  There was a man in the ward who owned a company that built roads and had the kind of machinery needed to do the excavation.  My father went to see him and told him that if he provided the machinery for constructing the chapel he would become active and be called as the bishop of the new ward that would meet in the new chapel.  I remember that night that he came home and told my mother what he had said to that man.  It seemed a very bold thing to promise. As counselor in the bishopric my father had no say over who would be called as the bishop of the new ward and here was this man who was completely inactive in the church, nevertheless, on the day this chapel was dedicated this man was called and sustained as the bishop of the newly created 5th ward.

An important part of my spiritual formation was the opportunity to give service.  Our ward was engaged in many service projects.  It was very common that a request for volunteers to work on one of these projects would be made during the opening exercises of our priesthood meeting.  My father would always raise his hand and say “I will go and my son will too.”  He never asked me if I wanted to volunteer but I didn’t mind because I enjoyed going with him and it was time that we could spend together.  Sometimes these projects would be helping out an individual member, a widow that needed her yard mowed and weeded or a family that was building a home.  We also had a raspberry farm that originally was purchased to raise money for building our chapel and then became a welfare farm.  Later, it was sold and a bigger welfare farm was purchased for our stake.  Both my father and my uncle Bill were very involved in the management of this Stake Welfare Farm and spent many hours working on it.  There were raspberries on the Stake Farm but also root crops such as carrots and rutabagas.  Families would be assigned rows of raspberries and we would have to get up very early in the morning to pick the fruit before the men had to go to work.  At that time of year it would get light early so we would be in the raspberry patch as early as 5:00 a.m.

One memorable experience I had with my father occurred when just the two of us were working in the ward raspberry farm out on Trent avenue not far from Sullivan road.  We must have been staking the plants or something because it was in the evening and almost getting dark.  A hobo came walking up the rows of plants and asked my father if he could give him a ride over to between Post Falls and Coeur d’Alene Idaho.  There were many hobos in and around the rail yards in Spokane near the river at that time before they turned that area into parks.  They would camp alongside the river near the tracks, look for odd jobs and sometimes beg.  These men would ride empty boxcars from one part of the country to another and were looked down upon by society.  This man had a wooden leg that was made from a piece of 2” by 4” lumber.  My father agreed to take him in our car and left me at the farm alone.  I was probably 11 or 12 years old.  Thinking back I realize that he thought it might be a little dangerous and it was better not to have me along.  When he came back to get me it was well past dark and he told me this man’s story.  He had been riding in a boxcar when a Bull, that was what they called a man hired to keep hobos off of trains, threw him off of a moving train and his leg was run over by a wheel severing it.  He wrapped the wound and it healed without medical care.  He also had fashioned his own wooden leg from a piece of lumber he had found.  He had my dad take him to a rail yard where he planned to catch a train going south and ride a boxcar so he could find some work in harvests that occurred during the winter in that part of the country.  I was very impressed by this man’s suffering and also by my father’s compassion for him.

I had an experience when I was in 3rd grade at McDonald Elementary School that made a big impression on me.  We were having a class party and the drink for the party was Coca Cola.  I knew that leaders of the Church advised against drinking it because of the caffeine in it but I also knew that it wasn’t a part of the Word of Wisdom.  I decided not to make a big deal of it and just accept what I was offered.  I had no sooner accepted the drink when the girl who sat in front of me turned around and said, “I thought you were a Mormon.”  I had no idea that she or anyone else in my class knew about my religion.  I felt terrible and made a resolution to never give anyone a reason to doubt what I believed.

While our new chapel was being built I was often asked to help out, not only with my father but also with other men in the ward.  We lived so close it was handy for them to stop at our house and get me to go with them.  I was just a kid but I could help haul materials and hold up boards or feed wires through conduits.  One Saturday the Aaronic Priesthood was assigned to clean up around the construction site.  We had worked just a little while when a hail storm came through and we all ran for shelter in a little shack used to protect materials and some tools.  There were 4 or 5 of us deacons and an older boy, a priest, whose last name was Forsythe.  When the hail stopped I said we should get back to work.  For some reason that made the older boy mad and he began to swear at me and called me a “blankety-blank” goody two shoes and used some terrible language for a priesthood holder.  I just left and went back to work while the other boys stayed in the shack with him.  I learned something important about myself that day.  I learned that as long as I knew I was doing what I should it didn’t matter what anybody else thought or said.

Another experience I had while working on the chapel was witnessing an accident.  A man in our ward who was the ward clerk was standing on a scaffold 8 or 10 feet above a concrete sidewalk working on the eves of the roof.  For some reason, he passed out and fell over, landing on his head on the concrete.  I was close by and can still remember the sound of his head hitting the sidewalk.  It sounded like a watermelon being dropped to the ground.  He lay there unconscious with blood running out of his ears.  He was given a blessing while we waited for an ambulance to arrive.  He recovered completely and the incident seemed to change his personality.  He had always been a bland kind of person.  As the ward clerk he would sit on the stand, take attendance and keep a record of the sacrament meeting.  We deacons would joke around and say,  “Whatever you do don’t look at brother _____, it will make you got to sleep.”  He had these big turtle eyes and his eyelids would droop and his head would start nodding as he sat on the stand sleeping through the better part of the meeting.   After his accident he seemed to perk up, become more lively and even started to become a snappy dresser whereas before he always wore clothes that were out of style.

As a deacon and a teacher, I was assigned to be a ward teacher companion.  Several times I had this assignment with my father.  One of my favorite ward teacher companions was Ross Quick.  Ross only had one child, a daughter.  He was very faithful about visiting all of our families every month and he made sure that I had the opportunity of giving a message or saying a prayer at the home of each family.  I felt the spirit as we went on these visits and experienced the joy of service.  This was a great preparation for being a missionary.

The other thing that helped instill a desire to be a missionary was the example of my parents.  They often had people over to our home for missionary discussions and were the means for many people joining the church.  During my late teens my father was a Stake mission president and during his life filled a number of callings as a Stake missionary.  Even when he had other callings he was always an active missionary.  When he died, he had baptized or been the missionary responsible for the baptisms of more than 300 converts during his life.  I accompanied him on many missionary discussions.  His brother Bill was also an active missionary and at one time in my thirties I was Bill’s companion.  I got to know the full-time missionaries from having them in our home often.  As a boy they were my heroes.  One of these Elders was an extremely good athlete.  He could pitch a softball at a blazing speed.  I learned to pitch from him and was the pitcher for our ward softball team.  This Elder went into the military after his mission and became a member of a special forces unit during the Vietnam War era.  I always have wondered if he survived the war.

During my adolescence my mother had a miscarriage.  She was in a hospital in a very delicate and dangerous medical condition.  The doctor, Dr. Knight, who attended her happened to be a member and a priesthood holder.  He sent for my father to come into the room and the two of them gave her a blessing after which he was able to stop her from hemorrhaging.

When I was 17 I received my Patriarchal blessing from Merlin H. Orme.  There were many great blessings pronounced upon my head at that time.  I have lived long enough now to have seen those blessings fulfilled in a remarkable manner.  A special experience occurred in my late twenties that caused me to trust in this blessing.  I was being set apart for a calling as the ward financial clerk by Garnett R. Port, our Stake President in the Colville Stake.  As he did this he quoted a particular passage from my Patriarchal Blessing saying that I had been given a personality that was mixture of strength and tenderness and because of that I would be able to bring many youth into full strength and activity in the priesthood.  What struck me about this was that it had nothing to do with the calling I was receiving at the time.  It was as if the Lord was telling me,  “Remember that your blessing is from me and not any man.” Many times during my life I have held callings that have allowed me to work with the youth and have seen this aspect of my Patriarchal blessing fulfilled.

When I was a priest, I was assigned to ward teach a brother Quentin who had been excommunicated from the church some years earlier.  He was a builder and had been contracted to remodel the home of another member.  Somehow he had gotten involved with the wife of this member and it resulted in the breakup of both marriages.  He ended up marrying this woman.  Her husband had been one of my Sunday School Teachers.  He had lost an arm and had a prosthesis with a hook on it and was a survivor of the infamous Bataan Death March and had been a prisoner of war for a number of years in Japan.  He never spoke about this but my parents knew something of his story.  His wife and he had no children but Brother Quentin had a large family and some of his grown children were very bitter about what had happened.  As his ward teacher I had the opportunity to teach him the missionary discussions and to re-baptize him.  I was impressed to see how he humbled himself and was so grateful to have his church membership restored.  I also baptized my sister Jill as a priest and another girl named Gwen who joined the Church.

When we went for a trip in our car, we would always have a prayer and ask for safety and guidance as we traveled.  One weekend we went to visit my Uncle Harold and his family in Sandpoint, Idaho.  On our return not far from Sandpoint, we passed a man walking along the side of the road who appeared as if he were drunk.  A little farther down the road my dad stopped the car and said,  “I think we should go back and pick up that man.”  That surprised us all firstly, because it wasn’t like him to pick up hitchhikers, especially one who appeared drunk and secondly, because with all of us kids in the car there wasn’t any room.  My mom made me change places with my sisters so I would be sitting next to him and we turned to go back and find him.  My father asked where he was going and he said if we could take him to Spokane he would be fine.  His clothes were rumpled and dirty and he hadn’t shaved.  Shortly after getting in the car he fell into a deep sleep leaning over on me.  Not long before reaching Spokane he woke up and as my father began asking him questions, he told us his story.  He had a family on the coast of Washington and had gone back East to look for a job because he was out of work.  On his return home he was short of cash and so he had been hitchhiking.  Sometime before we had passed him he had had an epileptic seizure on the side of the road and that accounted for his rumpled and dirty clothes and why he was exhausted and unsteady on his feet.  My dad took him to the bus station in Spokane and helped him with the cost of a ticket to

get to his home.

Two weeks before I graduated from high school I got a job at the Kaiser Aluminum Mead Works potlines.  It was a rotating shift so the first week I worked from 4 p.m. to 12 midnight and the second week from midnight to 8 a.m. and continued going to school.  The week after I graduated I was on day shift and then continued the rotating shift throughout the summer.  It was hard physical work in harsh conditions.  The ambient heat would sometimes reach 130 degrees.  I lost nearly 20 lbs. the first couple of weeks of work.  It was also a harsh spiritual environment.  For the most part, the men who worked there were rough and vulgar.  There lives tended towards working 8 hours, drinking 8 hours and sleeping 8 hours.  The walls of the lunchrooms were wallpapered with nude photos from girlie magazines.  Their vocabulary consisted of the grossest swear words imaginable.  Being a skinny 18 year old some of the men delighted in harassing me and the other young workers but I stood up to them.  A large black man, a former Air Force sergeant became my protector.  He had huge arms as big as most men’s thighs.  During the first part of our shift we had to break used carbon anodes off of copper bars.  We did this by beating on them with 16 lb. sledgehammers.  While everyone else did this by swinging a hammer with both hands, he would swing a hammer in each hand.  Needless to say, no one messed with him.  He was a kind man but was addicted to various vices.  He spent his free time with prostitutes and liked to recount his experiences with them.

One of the men I worked with came home with one of his buddies and found his wife in bed with another man.  He beat up his wife while his buddy beat up the man.  Another of my co-workers was shot and killed by his wife with a shotgun.  One of the crane operators at work was thought to be purposely making the work more difficult for his co-workers so they caught him in the bathroom during a break and beat him so badly that he had to be hospitalized.  As far as I could tell the management didn’t respond in any way to this.  I mention these things to describe the kind of environment I was surrounded by thinking that some of my descendants might have to face similar circumstances.

During my time working at the Aluminum plant, I began to realize the impact our environment can have on our spirituality.  Because I worked rotating shifts I was often sleeping when my family was awake and I also missed attending church every other Sunday.  The main influence on my life was the men with whom I worked whose language was so vulgar and morals so low.  At first their language disgusted me but after being around it constantly, even though I didn’t use the language I would think it and with time a word would slip out once in awhile.  I could see the truth of a quote from Alexander Pope my father often used, “Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, to be hated needs but to seen.  But seen to oft, familiar with her face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace.”

My condition concerned me because I saw that if I didn’t make some effort, I could easily become like those with whom I worked.  I wanted to strengthen my testimony so I began applying the formula I had always been taught at church, reading the scriptures, praying and being obedient.  I tried to repent of anything I had done that I knew wasn’t right.

One night as I was praying in my room, I seemed to lose contact with the physical world around me.  I knew that I was in my room but my spirit began to have communion with the eternal.  I heard no words but knowledge began to flow into me.  I felt the overwhelming love of my Celestial Father and Mother communicated to me.  I comprehended that I had an eternal identity and that my mortal identity was only temporary.  I experienced an intense longing that I can only describe as homesickness.  Although my mortal parents and brothers and sisters were in the same house with me at that time, and I loved them, I would have gladly left mortality if I had been given the chance to return to my Heavenly home.  This experience was much more real to me than my actual physical surroundings.  It left such a deep impression on me that I could never doubt the reality of God or his church and the plan of salvation He has for his children.  After this experience, the scriptures were opened up to me and I had a spiritual rather than just an intellectual understanding.  Also, for some days after this experience I felt as though the heavenly vault of the sky was open and my Heavenly Parents were very near watching me.

While attending my freshman year at BYU I felt the need to prepare myself for a missionary calling.  I felt the need to repent of some things and draw closer to God.  Because of my previous experience, I had faith that if I sought for a spiritual experience, I would have them.  I decided to fast for 3 days and then climb up the mountain behind the school to pray.  I climbed a long way up this steep and high mountain until the valley below was stretching before me and the city appeared as if it was constructed of the toy buildings.  I found a ledge that was wide enough that I could comfortably kneel and expressed my feelings and desires to the Lord for some time.  I didn’t feel any particular response and as the sun was low in the west I climbed down before it got dark.  Going down was more difficult than climbing up because some of the way up I had had to scale up some small rocky cliffs.  Going down it was hard to find footholds and I sometimes had to jump from on precarious ledge to another.  When I made it back to the campus and as I was walking back to my dorm I began to feel very close to my Heavenly Father and the same feeling of the sky being opened above me that I had experience the summer before and being watched over by Heavenly Father stayed with me for about two weeks.

I entered the Mission Home in Salt Lake in October of 1969.  My parents put me on a plane in Spokane and when I arrived at the Salt Lake airport I took a taxi to the Mission Home.  The taxi driver, who was a former member spent the drive trying to convince me that going on a mission was a bad idea and that I should turn around and go home.  There was an old lady who would show up in front of the Mission Home every day with posters against the Church and try to engage the missionaries in arguments.  This was not the type of reception I had expected as a missionary arriving at the headquarters of the Church.  During the week at the Mission Home we received our endowments in the Salt Lake Temple.  At that time, there were no Temple preparation classes for missionaries and since the whole session was filled with our group, there was no one assigned to accompany us as individuals.  After the session, we were taken to an upper room in the Temple where Elder Gordon B. Hinckley spoke to us.  He told us we could ask any question we wanted to.  We were so overwhelmed by the whole experience, no one could think of a thing to ask.  Finally, an Elder asked a question that was inappropriate and Elder Hinckley let him know in no uncertain terms that it was inappropriate.  After that nobody dared ask anything.  I have often thought afterwards what I wouldn’t have given to have had this same opportunity later in my life to ask an Apostle a question about the endowment in the Temple when I wasn’t so ignorant.

At that time, missionaries were set apart by the General Authorities.  Alma Sonne set me apart.  I remember very well how his large stomach pushed my head forward as he laid his hands on my head.  During this week we received some inspirational talks, instructions about how to take care of ourselves and worked on memorizing the first discussion.  With that limited preparation, those who were being sent to English speaking missions left for the mission field and the remainder of us went by bus to Provo to enter the Language Training Center.

At the Language Training Center we were divided into districts.  Among the elders in my district was Theodore Tuttle’s son, whose father was a member of the Quorum of Seventy and another elder who was a great grandson of William Clayton, the author of “Come. Come ye Saints”.   Elder Clayton was a concert pianist who was sent to the Argentine North Mission and I understand he gave concerts on his mission.  It was an exciting and spiritual time as we prepared for our missions.  We had two teachers who were return missionaries from Argentina and students at BYU.  The teaching methodology at the time included memorizing the discussions in Spanish.  I realized there how little we use our mental capacities.  At first it was extremely difficult to memorize a sentence or two in Spanish.  By the end of the 2 months spent in the LTC I could memorize an entire discussion in a day or two.

Our group left for Argentina in December in a big snowstorm.  We had to be transported to the Logan airport because Salt Lake was shut down.  We arrived in Panama City after a long flight on a Panam plane and it was already dark.  The old Panama City airport was an old metal structure with no air conditioning.  I had never experienced such a combination of high heat and humidity in my life.  All of us were relieved to get back on the airplane and leave Panama behind us.  Little did I know that what I was leaving behind was just a taste of what I would be living 24 hours a day in the Argentine Pampa summer.

We arrived in Buenos Aires more than 24 hours after leaving Utah worn out by travel and trying to sleep on the plane.  No one was there to meet us but somehow we made it through immigration and got our bags.  I remember thinking at the time what a dump of a building the International Airport was.  Two years later, when I left I thought, “What a nice facility this is.”  Then I realized that the airport was exactly the same as when I had arrived and the only thing that had changed was me.

After sitting around the airport for a couple of hours we finally came to the realization that nobody was going to come for us.  This was my introduction to what life as a missionary was going to be like for the next two years.  We would be very much on our own and we developed a good deal of resourcefulness and independence.  Some elders became too independent.  With our limited Spanish we got a bus into the city and found a little restaurant because by that time we were famished.  Eventually we figured out how to make a telephone call to the mission home  and they sent someone to pick us up.  We found out that the mission home had received a telegram saying that 4 elders had not been able to leave Utah because of the storm and would be arriving later.  They assumed that we all had missed the flight.

By the time we finally made it to the mission home it was late and we were looking forward to a nights rest.  Buenos Aires in December was as hot and humid as Panama had been but we were under the delusion that it would cool off as night fell. We were taken to an upper floor of a building separate from the Mission Home where there were quite a few beds.  I took a shower and feeling a little more comfortable laid down on top of the sheets on a bed.  Within a short period of time I was sweating profusely and the sheets were soaked.  I got up and rinsed off in the shower and laid down in a different bed.  I repeated this procedure until I ran out of extra beds and lay awake and sweating for the rest of the night.

The next morning I met briefly with the mission president and he informed me that I was being assigned to Pergamino.  One of the Assistants took me down to the bus station, handed me a wad of cash, a piece of paper with an address on it and put me on a bus.  I went to the back of the bus and after the bus took off, a man came walking through the aisle collecting money for the fare.  We hadn’t learned anything about the local currency at the Language Training Center and I had no idea of what the fare was so I just handed him my handful of cash, he took some and gave the rest back.  The other thing I didn’t know was where in the world Pergamino was and how I would know when we got there.  As we drove through the Pampas the bus would stop frequently in little towns to let people of on and off.  Every time we stopped I tried to ask people if this was Pergamino and thought they were telling me it wasn’t.

Finally, we drove into a little bus station and I could read on the sign that it was Pergamino.  By this time it was dark.  There was an ancient looking black car sitting at the station with a taxi sign so I got in and gave the driver the piece of paper with the address on it that was on a street named General Paz.  We drove exactly one block to the next corner and the taxi stopped.  I couldn’t believe I had taken a one- block taxi ride to my room.  I got out of the taxi and repeated the same routine of handing the driver all the cash I had.  He took some and me back the rest.  I have always wondered what that bus ride and taxi ride actually cost me.  I knocked on the door and a lady answered.  I tried to explain who I was and she spoke back to me but I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.  Anyway, she took be to her garage that had been converted into a bedroom.  No one was there so I just crawled into one of the two beds and tried to go to sleep.

During the next week I tried unsuccessfully to contact the mission home to find out why I didn’t have a companion.  There had been a storm that had knocked out the phone lines and there was no telephone communication with Buenos Aires.  I would get up in the morning go down to the local telephone office to see if a call could be made and then wander around town trying to find the chapel or some members.  Eventually I did find some members and in my limited Spanish I could figure out that they didn’t know where my companion was.  Sleep was nearly impossible because of the heat, the mosquitoes and the noise.  

The narrow one-car garage that had been converted to our bedroom had no windows so the only way to get some air was to open the garage door that opened directly to the sidewalk and the street.  People would be walking by within a few feet of our beds all night and the buses from the bus station would be going by tooting their horns as they approached the corner and blow diesel smoke in our room as they shifted down and the accelerator to pass the cross street.

After a week the phone lines were working again and after a couple of failed attempts I was able to figure out enough Spanish to get a call through to the Mission Home and learned that my companion who was the District Leader was in another town, San Nicolas, waiting for me to show up there.  They told me that they would get ahold of him and send him back to Pergamino.  As it turned out most of my transfers during the time I was there would be characterized by this kind of miscommunication.  It was a big mission, half of the country with a poor communications system and managed by the 20 year-old assistants to the Mission President.  We only saw the Mission President at a zone conference every 3 months or so and our contact with the Mission Home consisted of a written weekly report sent through the mail.

I only mention these small trials at the beginning of my mission so that as my descendants face similar challenges as they go forth to serve the lord in various ways they may realize that their trials and inconveniences are the common lot of the Lord’s servants.  During my mission I faced repetitive bouts of diarrhea, cold living quarters, heat and humidity, difficult companions, a broken ankle et cetera.  None of that changes the fact that I had a wonderful mission, grew to love the country and the people and wouldn’t change the experience for anything in the world.  When I left Argentina I cried like a baby.

I want to mention a few of the many spiritual and testimony building experiences I had on my mission.  One of our weekly requirements was to read Joseph Smith’s story.  On our preparation day my companion and I would go to the fancy old home that had been converted to the Pergamino branch meeting house to study.  I would go to a room in the attic of that house to pray and read through the Joseph Smith story in Spanish.  We had memorized a good portion of that story in the Language Training Center and quoted from it in the first discussion we had with investigators.  As I studied Joseph Smith’s own words a deep conviction sank into my soul of the truthfulness and importance of his message.

A Gypsy family was living in a tent on the outskirts of Pergamino.  They had a young son who invited the missionaries to visit his family.  When we would go there the chickens would run through the tent and they taught us how you could scoop a chicken from below so that its legs would dangle and it wouldn’t squawk.  When we gave the Book of Mormon it was our practice to go through the book and show the pictures and explain what they were about.  When the mother heard that one of the pictures was of a book of Mormon prophet named Abinadi, she immediately accepted the Book of Mormon.  Later she told this story.  She had had a dream and in the dream a man dressed in white whose name was Abinadi had told her that some young men would visit her with an important message for her family.  The name Abinadi was very strange to her and she remembered the dream she was shown the Arnold Friberg painting of Abinadi in the Book of Mormon.  The mother and the teenage boy had joined the church and we taught the rest of her family and some of her extended family while I was assigned to Pergamino but not all of them joined the church.  Towards the end of my mission I was the district leader in Rosario and Pergamino was part of my district.  By that time they had built a home and everyone in the family had joined the church.

When I worked in Banfield we tracted out a woman who invited us in her home to teach her.  Later she told us that she had seen us come to her house in a dream or vision before we showed up at her door.  She took the discussions and agreed to baptism but her husband resisted.  I prayed and fasted before going to see him.  He was a Rosicrucian and didn’t believe baptism was necessary.  As we taught him, the verse in 2nd Nephi Chapter 31:5-11 came to my mind and I asked him to read them.  As he read you could see a visible change in him.  When he finished I asked if he would be baptized and he said yes.  This was impressive to me because this scripture was not one I had thought of previously and came to me only at the moment in the discussion when I needed it.

While on my mission, it was not uncommon to find spiritualists and people who believed and dabbled in magical powers of darkness.  We were called upon to use our priesthood power to cast Satan out of homes.  One man, a Mexican had been afflicted with a skin disorder that left his face deeply pocked and had found a photo of himself with pinholes in his face that had been placed in the mouth of a dried frog at his doorstep supposedly left there by a woman who had it in for him.  Such was the type of superstitious beliefs and practices of many of the people.  Once in Rosario we tracted out a house belonging to a healer.  People came from near and far and paid him money to be healed by his supposed spiritual powers.  We taught him and when he learned of the priesthood he offered to pay us to receive it so he could use it like Simon Magus did who was reviled by the apostle Peter.

My last area in Argentina was Rosario.  The branch I served in was called Campo Mormon because we met in a building that had been converted to a meetinghouse that had been a club.  A new chapel was being built before I left and I helped dig the trench for the footings by hand.  The members

were great and we baptized quite a few people during the 6 months I was there.  When I left Rosario to return to the Mission Home and back to the States I boarded a bus that stopped at various street corners on the way out of the city.  At each of those stops members of the branch had congregated and were singing “God Be With You Till We Meet Again.”  I was overcome with emotion and gratitude for my mission experience.

On returning home I got a job pulling boards on the green chain at Avey Brothers sawmill in Kettle Falls, currently Boise Cascade sawmill where I quickly lost the weight I had gained on my mission.  After 3 months, I had earned enough money to go back to school for a semester at BYU.  During that semester the new Provo-Orem temple was dedicated.  The dedication was broadcast at the newly built Marriot Center on the BYU campus.  Thousands of us students assembled for the dedication walking across the bridge from campus to the Center.  It was quite a sight as the huge congregation of students joined in the Hosanna shout.  President Joseph Fielding Smith Jr. led the ceremony and offered the dedicatory prayer.  I didn’t know much about President Smith at the time.  David O McKay had been the prophet my entire life as far back as I could remember and had died during the first months of my mission.  I had testified thousands of times to the people of Argentina that there was a living prophet on the earth but I had done so on account of my faith in the church not from any personal witness that I had received regarding Joseph Fielding Smith.  As I listened and watched the dedication ceremony a burning testimony sunk deep in my soul that Joseph Fielding Smith was indeed a prophet of God and with tears in my eyes I thanked God for that witness and knowledge that I was justified in the testimony I had borne on my mission.

During my first semester back at BYU after my mission, I decided I wanted to attend a semester abroad in Jerusalem.  I took a class in Modern Hebrew to be more prepared and made the decision to stay at home and work through the summer and fall of 1972 in order to save the money I would need to pay for the program.  I got a job pulling dry chain with the planer crew on the 10 hour night shift at Matney’s sawmill just north of Barney’s junction on the east side of Lake Roosevelt.  I applied for the semester abroad program and had everything in order to go but as the time drew near I suddenly had a change of heart and decided I would go back to school at Provo.  I could come up with no reason for changing plans after working so hard for this goal.  It simply didn’t feel right.  This is just one of a number of decisions I have made in my life that were the result of the “whispering of the Spirit.”  I have learned to trust in these feelings and it has made a big difference.

It didn’t take long after returning to BYU to find out why going to Jerusalem would have been a mistake.  The first Sunday in my student ward was a fast Sunday.  I got up to bear my testimony and noticed a beautiful little blonde to whom I was immediately attracted.  I later learned that the little blonde was thinking that she would like to date that guy with the long face.  Soon after, the ward held a dance that I attended.  Julie was there and very popular being asked to dance every dance by the guys who surrounded her.  I finally got close enough to ask her to dance.  While we were dancing I thought I might not get another opportunity so I asked her if she would like to go out on a date.  She accepted but coming up with when she could do it was a problem as she was booked up with dates with other guys for two weeks solid!  I took what I could get which was an agreement to go out on a weekend two weeks from then.  We saw each other on Sundays and in the meantime I was seeing a couple of other girls while Julie was dating a number of other boys.  Our first date was a Western Stomp (dance) that was held on campus at the old Fieldhouse.  I planned on taking her out to dinner before the dance to a Mexican restaurant “El Azteca.”  I didn’t find out until we were seated in the restaurant that she didn’t expect dinner and had already eaten so I ended up eating alone in front of her.

Julie was a great dancer and although she hadn’t been to a stomp before she quickly caught onto the steps.  There was a live band and as this was an Arizona stomp, lots of cowboys, cowgirls and Indians.  We had a great time dancing but found it difficult to talk and hear each other above the music so we eventually found a place in the seating of the basketball court where we could be alone and talk.  We found it very easy to talk with each other and that we had a lot in common.  We spent a long time just sitting and talking before returning to the dance.  

After that first date, we tried to spend as much time together as possible.  BYU had an event called preference where girls asked guys out.  Julie had asked a guy already and I accepted an invitation so we went with our dates and then got together afterwards on the same night.  We always spent Sunday afternoons together.  One Sunday a couple of weeks after our first date we attended a fireside at the Marriot Center.  About a week after that I was at Julie’s apartment when she asked if we could go for a drive because she had something she wanted to talk to me about.  Her tone was rather serious so I thought “Well, this is it, she wants to break off our relationship and is trying to find a nice way to do it away from her roommates.”  I prepared myself to receive the news in the most gracious way possible.  When we got in the car I asked her where she wanted to go and she said, “Let’s go up to the Temple.”  It only took a couple of minutes to get there and when I had parked the car, Julie was acting rather nervous and said, “I don’t know how to tell you this.”  Still being under the impression that she wanted to break up, I tried to reassure her telling her not to worry that I could handle anything she had to say.  She then told me that as we were sitting in the fireside that she heard a voice say to her, “This is the man you will marry.”  This had thrown her life in a tizzy since that time and she finally decided that she needed to get it off her chest and tell me about it.  She explained that she had decided not to go to school that semester because she didn’t have any money.  Her father gave her a blessing that helped her decide to go back to school and also helped her get a loan.  She had gone back to school with the idea of getting her degree as soon as possible with no plans of getting married very soon.  She was just 19 years old.

Although I was infatuated with Julie,  I was completely prepared to accept the fact that she might not want to pursue the relationship.  What I wasn’t prepared for was to have her tell me this news.  Up until that point I had been calm and collected.  Now, I was at a loss for words and actually began to tremble.  Julie told me that although, she had had that experience she realized I would have to have my own answer ant that I shouldn’t feel pressured.  She just wanted to know if I was interested in pursuing a serious relationship because, if not, she needed to put this out of her mind.  I told her that I liked her a lot and while I hadn’t felt ready to propose marriage, I certainly wanted to pursue the relationship.

I was now left to contemplate what all of this could mean and being the type of person who is more comfortable with having my options open than when a decision is made and they are closed, I felt some anxiety about the situation.  I really liked Julie and was very pleased that she would see me as a possible mate but marriage was a big decision with a lot of unknown ramifications and what about the thousands of single girls on campus I hadn’t gotten to know!  I would walk across campus carefully inspecting every girl who passed by trying to size her up and compare her to Julie.  After a few days of trying that strategy I realized that wasn’t going to get me anywhere.  Luckily, I had enough faith from my own experiences to believe that hearing a voice or having some other spiritual manifestation was certainly possible and that I if I was to have my own answer, I would need to get it from the same source.  I prayed daily to receive some inspiration without feeling that any answer had come.  As fast Sunday came around I prayed and told the Lord that if it was just up to me, I would be very happy to marry Julie but I needed some kind of confirmation to make such a big decision.  As I walked across campus to Church a great peace came over me and as I sat in Fast and Testimony meeting I realized I had received my answer.  I had no doubts, no questions as to what my course should be.  From that day until this I have never regretted that decision.  I have never ceased to love her and love her more now than ever.

Julie and I were engaged to marry just a month after our first date.  It was an exciting, wonderful time for us as we contemplated our future together.  We had long discussions about our expectations and desires.  We talked about our feelings for the gospel and the desire to establish a home and family based on our faith.  We found that we both were committed to paying a full tithe, that we were in agreement with the counsel of President Kimball and President Benson not to postpone having children and that Julie would have as her priority being a mother and homemaker rather that working outside the home and that I would be the principal breadwinner.  These common goals and jointly held beliefs have given us a strong foundation for our marriage and an anchor that has kept it stable through the challenges life brings to all of us.

We were married on June 28th 1973 in the Cardston, Alberta Temple where some 15 years earlier the Temple Matron had told me that God was preparing a special little girl to be my wife and that I should pray every day that I would find and marry her in the temple.

While we were engaged, Julie was walking up the stairs in the Wilkinson Center one day when she had a vision of our descendants.  She saw in front 5 children and behind them in tiers, row upon row of children as far as she could see.  Of the 5 in front, one seemed to be quite a bit younger than the other 4 and in the groups behind them were children of varying skin tone.  Julie didn’t share this with me until years later.  There may have been several reasons why she was given the vision but one may have been to help us desire to receive another child when Kyla was born and to help us accept her condition.  She has been a great blessing in our lives.

The summer we were married, my grandmother, Mae Egland, let us stay in her home while she went and visited her daughter, Dolores, who was living in Missouri.  My grandmother was a very special person in my life and had a big influence on me.  I was the oldest grandchild and my grandfather had died when he was just 62 years old and I was 12.  To keep her company, my parents let me stay with my grandmother on her farm frequently during the summers and other vacations.  She was a lot of fun to be with and had many friends in her community.  She had a low income and lived a very simple lifestyle.  Her priorities were her family and she never seemed to covet material things being content with what she had.  I never remember her criticizing anyone and learned a lot about being a good person just being around her.  She and my grandfather were taking the missionary discussions when he passed away and she later joined the Church and was sealed to him in the temple.

I finished my bachelor’s degree the year after we were married and our first son, Peter, was born in August of that year.  We went home to Washington to work and earn enough money for me to go to law school, which was my plan at that time.  I worked as an electrician at a modular home company for about 6 months until it closed down.  Because of a recession I couldn’t find work but made do splitting cedar shakes and selling them.  I applied and was accepted to law school but in another one of those feelings that have marked my life, felt that I should change my direction.

Once class that I really enjoyed at college was Ancient Political Philosophy.  BYU had a Masters in Classics program that concentrated on Latin and Greek.  We decided to return to Provo and work on that.  I went down by myself first to find us a place to live driving and old Chevy pickup that we had purchased and rebuilt the motor.  For some reason, I drove down through Salmon, Idaho and bought an old Jeep that I picked up there and was towing it down with me.  After leaving Salmon, I was driving in the dark with no traffic on the road.  As I was driving, I had an impression that I should slow down.  Everything looked perfectly clear on an empty highway ahead of me but I slowed down with a sense of unease.  As I did, I suddenly perceived that what looked like open highway was actually the top of a semi-trailer that had flipped over on the highway.  The top of the trailer was the same gray color as the road and the way it had turned over the lights from the cab of the truck were not visible.  If I hadn’t slowed down, I wouldn’t have had time to brake and stop before plowing into it.

When I arrived in Provo, I started looking for a place for us to live.  The last 7 months before I had graduated, we managed a large complex of apartments in South Provo with 267 units.  We didn’t want to live in those circumstances again so I was looking for a farmhouse we could rent in the countryside.  There was nothing like that advertised.  I went to speak with some businesses that managed rentals and was told that it would be impossible to find a house like that to rent.  I had faith, however, that I could find something so fasting and praying I just drove south of Provo to see where the Spirit might lead me.  I turned off the highway at Spanish Fork and after driving around a little, came to a livestock auction business.  That seemed like a logical place to find farmers who might know of a farmhouse to rent.  After talking to several people,  a fellow gave me the name of a person to talk to and directions to get there.  He didn’t have anything but he referred me to a dairyman named, Carl Marcussen.  Carl had property with an old farmhouse on it between Spanish Fork and Benjamin.  It was in reasonably good shape with a barn and a number of sheds.  The nearest neighbors were almost a mile away and there was a beautiful view of the mountains.  He only wanted 75 dollars a month rent so that even with the 10 mile commute to school, it was very affordable.

Our years in Spanish Fork were some of the happiest years of my life.  We had very little but each other and I was normally working 2 or 3 jobs as well as going to school but we were very much in love.  We were experiencing the joys of being new parents, (Ben was also born while we lived there) and we had our little farmhouse surrounded by fields.  I drive by there once in awhile when we are in Utah just to remember the joy of that period of our lives.  We were active in our little ward called Leland.  Most of the ward was comprised of older farmers whose families had lived there for generations.  So many had the same last names that they called each other by first names such as brother Carl and Sister Ann instead of brother Anderson, et cetera.  I served as a young Men’s president in the ward.

Leland had a particular history.  Years earlier it had had a bishop who had a dream about an old nephite gold or silver mine in the mountain above Spanish Fork.  This bishop had used his influence to get his members convinced of a project to develop this mine. which was called the Dream Mine.  They began having meetings up there and serving the sacrament and things got to the point that Elder Mark E. Peterson, of the quorum of the Twelve Apostles denounced it and wrote an editorial against it.  As I understand it, the bishop was eventually excommunicated.  That had happened quite a long time before we moved into the ward.  Many of the older members still held this bishop in high regard and maintained their belief in a fabulous mine he supposedly saw.  I was told that when he died they buried him in his temple clothing.  This bishop was apparently a good man and very popular.  Living with the people of this ward taught me something that I hope my posterity will take as a lesson.  As Joseph Smith stated, there are many spirits in the land that exercise their powers to deceive.  Even good people can be mislead if they are not careful.  One must always keep oneself aligned with the instructions of the prophet and the quorum of the Twelve.  Even an individual member of the Quorum could possibly fall away but the President of the Church and the Quorum as a group will never lead us astray.

During our time in Spanish Fork, I worked as an oiler on a dragline, painted steel safes at night, taught beginning Latin classes at BYU, wired a new home for electricity, rewired several others and drove clear out past Price, Utah to cut Pinon Pine for firewood and then go door to door selling it.  During the summers we would go back to Washington State where I had a job as a maintenance man for the National Park Service out of Kettle Falls on the Columbia River.  With all that plus a milk cow, we had just enough to pay tuition and eke out our existence.  I wanted Julie to be able to develop some of her interests so one semester she took a class in horsemanship and I think she really enjoyed it.  One January after we had paid tuition and rent we were nearly out of cash and subsisted the whole month on a bag of potatoes we had, a few squash, some stored wheat and milk and butter from the cow.  I have to say I got pretty tired of potatoes and squash.

Our last year in Spanish Fork, the Leland Ward was combined with members from Benjamin.  We had a recently called young bishop who when he saw what our total tithing contribution had been and realized that indeed that represented one tenth of our total income looked as us with a look of pity and told us that in our economic situation he didn’t think we needed to pay tithing.  We were appalled that a bishop would say such a thing and replied that we felt we had been blessed by being faithful in our tithes and if for no other reason than our poor economic condition needed to keep paying them.  Julie and I felt that we had chosen for me to go to school full-time and therefore had chosen the implications that would have on our finances.  Although we knew of other couples who were taking food stamps while going to school, we would not accept any state or church welfare.  It was our choice to go to school and if we couldn’t make it on our own, I would quit and get a job where we could.  

We enjoyed living in Spanish Fork.  The people in our ward were very kind to us and were good examples of how we should live the gospel in our lives.  Nearly all of our neighbors were quite a bit older than us.  Some such as Grant Stark had served a mission in the early 1900s and we learned much from them.  Dale Barney employed me to help on his dragline and was a great friend.  We were given callings and grew spiritually from these callings as well as our home and visiting teaching assignments.

While living in Spanish Fork, we spent our summers in Washington State where I had work with the National Park Service that helped pay for my education.  One summer we were able to share the gospel with a lifeguard, Dana Mann.  My parents were serving as Stake missionaries and taught Dana the discussions.  She joined the church and served a mission in Japan.  Eventually, she married a non-member who after many years joined the Church and they have now been sealed in the temple.

After completing the coursework for the Master’s degree and seeing that there was little hope for using my education to make a living, we decided to return to Washington so that our children could live close to family and experience the joys of rural life in the Northwest.  I obtained work at a new magnesium metal plant in Addy and we moved into a small log home my parents had built for my grandmother who had recently passed away.  During these years both Julie and I benefitted from our association with my parents.  My father continued his missionary work and I often accompanied him to give missionary discussions.  These were always uplifting experiences.  One man we taught was Wes Smith.  His wife, Teresa, was very receptive but Wes was resistant.  One day he was shocked when he heard a voice tell him he should be baptized.  Wes has served as a bishop and he and Teresa are now serving a mission.  These and many others my father taught over the years have continued in the faith and I have every reason to believe that my father’s joy will be great with them in the celestial kingdom.

Another person who was influential in my life was my uncle, Bill McCombs.  He had become active in the church about the same time as my father and not long after served as a stake missionary.  While I was growing up he served in the bishopric in the Spokane 4th ward while my father served in the bishopric of the Spokane 5th ward.  After our return to live full time in Colville, Bill moved to Colville to be the local manager of Washington Water Power.   He was soon called as a counselor in the stake presidency and I served for a time as his home teaching companion.  Bill was very well versed in the scriptures and could quote them extensively by memory.  He was a faithful, kind and tolerant home teacher to the inactive families we visited and our time traveling and doing the visits were always pleasant spiritual experiences.

I had worked about a year at Northwest Alloys when I realized that my work was affecting my spiritual well being.  Some of the people I was working with had very low moral values and because we worked a rotating 12 hour shift that oscillated from nights to days, my schedule was such that I had to work two Sundays a month and I was sleeping often when my family was awake.  All of this was taking a toll on me physically and spiritually.  I told Julie I was going to look for another job and that if I hadn’t found something within a month, I would quit anyway.  Once I had made the decision I would do whatever it took to keep the Sabbath day holy, the Lord blessed me.  A position came up at the plant for a training coordinator to work a regular day shift Monday thru Friday.  I was given the job and although it was only supposed to be a temporary position that would be rotated back to the shift work and shared with other workers, I remained in the position for another 8 years and because of it learned many managerial and administrative skills that later applied to may career as a school administrator.

In December of 1981 I was called as a counselor to the newly formed Colville 2nd Ward.  Bishop George Carnie was a fairly new member of the church so he relied heavily on my knowledge of the scriptures and the experience I had serving in quorum presidencies and in the Aaronic Priesthood having been a young men’s president several times.  This experience in the bishopric helped educate me in church government and the role of the priesthood.  It also deepened my testimony that this is the Lord’s church and that through his Spirit He takes an active role in its operation.

One Sunday I awoke in a rather foul mood that remained with me throughout the Church meetings.  For some reason, everything bothered me.  The members seemed petty and incapable of taking on their responsibilities.  I felt that my many duties and obligations were an undue infringement on my time and personal desires.  In short, I didn’t have the Spirit and I knew it.  After the meetings were over the Bishop asked me to set apart my cousin, Suzie McCombs, as a primary worker.  Because of the mood I was in I approached this assignment with a feeling of dread knowing that

my state of mind was not conducive to what I had been asked to do but I went ahead out of a sense of duty.  As I placed my hands on her head I was soon enveloped by the Spirit and words of a blessing poured from my mouth.  I told her about the secret desires of her heart and how she would be blessed with a worthy husband and children and many other things none of which had occurred to me before placing my hands on her head.  When I finished setting her apart tears were streaming from my eyes and hers and I was humbled to realize that the Lord desired to bless this daughter of his and would do so through me as an authorized servant in spite of my weakness.

While I was serving in the bishopric I attended a priesthood leadership session of our stake conference.  Elder Robert E. Wells of the Seventy was our visiting authority and after this session he shook my hand and we had a brief conversation.  When he learned that I had served a mission in Argentina he advised me to maintain my Spanish language skills because I would someday be called upon to use them in the Lord’s service.  I don’t know if Elder Wells saw this as an inspired admonition or simply a general word of advice.  I, however, received it as inspired counsel and it was one of the factors in my decision to go to Colombia along with the words of my patriarchal blessing.  Many years later in 2010 I was serving on the Ciudad Clave public relations committee of the church in Bogota and hosted a meeting with Elder Wells with a group of non-member Colombian leaders.  I told him of how his words had influenced me.  He gave me a “gran abrazo” and congratulated me on my work.

Around this time we had a member of our Stake High Council who began offering himself to speak at firesides in the different wards on the topic of the second coming of the Savior.  He was a man about my father’s age I knew and respected.  He came to our ward to give his presentation and stated that through his study of the Book of Daniel he had discovered when the second coming would be and gave us the year which at this time, of course, has long since past.  I raised my hand and asked this brother how it was possible that he should have this knowledge when Christ had stated that not even the angels in heaven knew but only his Father in Heaven and furthermore, if God indeed wanted to provide us with this information why would He be doing it through firesides conducted by a High Councilman and not through the established channels for revelation to the Prophet and down through the different presiding authorities.  It was a rather impertinent question and he seemed to take it as such.  Later, the Stake President spoke with him and he quit spreading this teaching.  I mention this incident to my descendants to point out the importance of judging statements made by well-intentioned persons in the church not by personal qualities that make them popular or accepted among the membership but by how well they are in accordance with the scriptures and teachings of the church and by the light of the Holy Ghost which will be with you if you are living as you should.

Writing down this incident made me recall another experience from my youth.  Our Stake in Spokane held a youth conference and obtained the services of Elder Paul H. Dunn of the Seventy as the featured speaker.  When I returned home and my mother asked me how I liked the conference I told her that I didn’t care for Elder Dunn’s message.  Elder Dunn had gained a reputation as an author and motivational speaker.  His talks and books were full of heart wrenching stories from his days in the military service during World War II in the isles of the Pacific.  When I listed to him speak something didn’t feel right to me and I told my mother that instead of feeling the Spirit as I often did when listening to the General Authorities of the Church, I felt that he was trying to impress us by manipulating our emotions.  Years later Elder Dunn was embarrassed when it became known that his personal war stories were a total fabrication.

I recount these two preceding incidents not to criticize these brethren but so that my posterity might learn a lesson.  The high councilman was a man who did a great service throughout his life to his family and the church.  I am sure that Elder Dunn likewise did much good and was called by the Lord for his own purposes.  But each in their own way let their desire to influence others allow them to get carried away.  The lesson is that good men can err and to protect ourselves from their errors we should become knowledgeable in the scriptures and the doctrine of the church.  More importantly, we should strive to have the Holy Ghost as our companion so we are able to feel when we being taught by the Spirit and when we are not.  Also, the President of the Church and the Quorum of the Twelve as a body, will never lead us astray.

While working at Northwest Alloys I applied and received a scholarship to do doctoral studies at Gonzaga University in their Educational Leadership program.  The idea was that the doctorate would help me advance in the Alcoa corporate structure.  Before completing the program, however, I was approached to apply as the superintendent of the Orient School District.  This was a small school of just 135 students from kindergarten through 8th grade.  I thought I had nothing to lose by applying but when I was offered the position I was faced with a life changing decision that would end up having a profound impact on me and on my whole family.  I tried to reason it out in my mind and made it a matter of prayer. I had learned a lot and had begun to be given consulting jobs through my work with Alcoa.  With a doctoral degree and if I was willing to move I had good prospects for a corporate career.  Also, at that time, I had 9 years of service with Alcoa but needed 10 years in order to vest or qualify for a retirement.  By leaving at that time I would lose all of the retirement pension I had accrued.  Taking the superintendent position would mean a decrease in pay and I would lose my scholarship for a very costly degree program.  In order to get a superintendent’s credential I would have to take another year or more of classes.

I was aware that the superintendent’s jobs were tough and meant continual pressure in trying to resolve conflicts between parents, teachers and students.  I reasoned, however, that if this life is meant to prepare us to administer in God’s kingdom, being placed in a position that would give me experience and force to grow in my ability to lead wasn’t a bad thing.  In the end, my decision was made as other key decisions in my life by paying attention to my feelings and trusting in the words of my patriarchal blessing that “I would never walk alone.”  The decision to begin a career as an educator has brought tremendous temporal and spiritual rewards and allowed me to be the means for blessing the lives of thousands of people.

Taking the superintendent’s job in Orient was a big change for our family.  I was very busy learning a new job, finishing my doctoral program and at the same time working on getting a teaching credential.  On the other hand, because we were living right next to the school and all of our children were in the school, I had more contact time with the kids.  There wasn’t much to do in such a tiny town so we took advantage of our beautiful surroundings to go on lots of hikes, cross-country ski and play in the river.  The Kettle River was practically in our back yard and we swam in it nearly every day in the summer.  It was very clear with interesting rock formations and currents we could float around and play in.

One day in early June, I borrowed a canoe from some friends and Julie, Ben, Molly and I took it for a ride down the river starting several miles above Orient.  We had done this the previous year at the same time of year and had a marvelous time watching eagles catch fish out of the river and coming up close on deer and other animals.  This everything went fine until we were nearly back to the beach where we were going to get out.  Because the spring runoff was higher than normal the water covered a huge rock that normally stood above the flow of water.  As we passed over this rock our canoe grounded on it and turned sideways to the current tilting to one side and filling with water.  We all fell out of the canoe as it turned over and Ben was floating down the river.  I took after Ben while Julie stayed with Molly but wasn’t able to catch up with him.  I was afraid where the River would take him so I yelled to him to get off the canoe and swim to shore.  Ben was only about 10 years old at the time. But he had a life jacket on and I didn’t want to lose him down the river.

I followed behind Ben until I could see that he had made it to shore but by then the effort I had made to catch up with him and the very cold water was taking a toll on me.  I was the only one that didn’t have a life jacket and I began to seriously doubt that I was going to make it to shore without drowning.  Curiously, I was at peace with this prospect and had no fear at this thought of dying.  When I thought I could go no farther I put my foot down and was just able to touch the rocky bottom of the river.

When I got on shore my thoughts immediately turned to Julie and Molly.  When I saw that they were still in the middle of the river quite a way above me I began to feel panic for the first time.  I knew that because of the temperature of the water if they didn’t get out soon hypothermia would set in and they would die even if they didn’t drown.  Because of the swiftness of the current and the width of the river, I knew that my chances for getting them out were slim with the time I had to act.  I was running as fast as I could along the river bank but my progress was slowed by being barefoot running over rocks and debris.

While I was running up the river bank desperately thinking how to save Julie and Molly, they had gotten off the rock and were caught in a whirlpool going around and around in the middle of the river.  Molly was in a panic and had climbed practically on top of Julie’s head.  To help calm her Julie told her that they should say a prayer and as she said it the thought came to her to quit struggling against the current and just float.  When she did that the current whipped her out of the whirlpool and they began to make progress to shore.  In the meantime, I had gotten close enough to wade out into the river to catch them and drag them back to shore.  We were all safe now and very close to our house but traumatized.  By the time we got home the adrenaline had dropped and we were all shivering uncontrollably.  

This incident was so unnerving it took quite awhile before Julie and I were even able to talk about it.  Besides the obvious lessons of checking a river more carefully before getting into it and being more prepared when you do.  I learned two other things from the experience.  One was how precious my family was to me and what a responsibility I had for their safety.  The other was that for someone with a knowledge of the gospel, death is not that scary of a prospect.  I have been in life threatening circumstances since that time and have never felt a fear of death.

During our time in Orient, I served as a home teacher to the members living in Grand Forks, British Columbia.  Peter was my companion and I enjoyed very much this experience with him.  I sometimes accompanied Julie on her visiting teaching assignments to people whose homes could be difficult to reach in winter.  On a couple of occasions we cross-country skied to visit them.  I found numerous opportunities to exercise Christian values and apply gospel principles in my work as superintendent.  It is the nature of the business to continually be involved in helping groups and individuals resolve conflicts.  A good portion of every day was spent listening to people who had problems of one kind or another including teachers, students, parents and workers.  This caused me to often seek for answers in prayers.  My experience and training in the church helped me deal with these situations, gain the respect and cooperation of the people involved and be successful in a position where many fail.

In 1990, I took a position as the superintendent of the Omak School District.  This was a much larger school district with about 2,300 students in 5 schools.  During the seven years in this position I faced budgetary short falls, personnel problems, community members divided over curriculum issues, facility problems et cetera, all of which are common to these jobs.  On more than one occasion I have stood before assemblies of hundreds of parents or faculty who were angry about one thing or another and faced them with a perfect calmness and knowledge of how the situation should be handled.  I attribute that to the divine assistance of the Spirit and to the promise of my patriarchal blessing that I would never walk alone.

In my years in Omak, I served as ward mission leader and also as a member of the Stake High Council.  These were opportunities to grow in understanding of the gospel and in understanding of priesthood and church government.  Our stake, the Ephrata Stake, stretched from the Canadian border on the north to the town of Quincy to the south.  Twice a month we had high council meetings in Ephrata which meant around 4 hours of travel on those evenings.

These also were years of experiencing the blessings and challenges of being a father to children who were growing through the phases of pre-adolescence and being teenagers.  I had the pleasure of having Peter and Ben as home teaching companions, got to teach Spanish to Mae and Molly’s fifth grade class, participated with Ben, Mae and Molly in community plays as the Omak Performing Arts Center the school ran and enjoyed outdoor activities with them.  One of the families I home taught lived out on the Colville Indian reservation on a private road that was about 3 miles long.  It didn’t get plowed in the winter and to get in to visit them I would go in with one of the boys on cross-country skis.  

One of the spiritual incidents that occurred during our time in Omak was the birth of our daughter, Kyla.  This was a fulfillment of the vision Julie had when we were going together at BYU and before we had married when she saw our descendants with our five children in front.  It had been 13 years since our last child was born but Julie knew another child would come into our lives.  While living in Orient she had gone to her doctor in Spokane to see why she had not gotten pregnant after Molly was born.  We both went through some testing but there was nothing in particular to indicate why we had not had another child.

After Kyla was born over time it became apparent that she was not developing normally.   Finally, through genetic testing we learned that she had a very rare genetic syndrome called Pallister-Killian or Tetrasomy 12p Mosaicism.  The knowledge that we were meant to have this fifth child was a great consoling factor as we faced the emotional difficulties involved with raising a child with severe disabilities.  In many ways, Kyla has been a great blessing in our lives.

After serving for seven years as the Omak School Superintendent, I began feeling that I should be looking to move on in my career.  Reading my patriarchal blessing made me ponder over a part that said I would go among people who were in darkness who would look upon me as one who was different but who would seek me out in times of fear and great danger.  I didn’t feel that my mission had completely fulfilled this promise.  I began praying to be given guidance about this matter.

In a conversation with a superintendent of the Educational Service District in Wenatchee he mentioned that he had been the director of an international school in Norway and what a great experience that had been.  I thought about it and got a name of a company that recruited for theses positions from him.  I called the company, International School Services, and spoke to a man named Les Landers and asked him if I could fly back to Princeton, New Jersey where they were located to speak with him.  After making that long trip we only talked for about 20 minutes but he said he could support me in finding a position.  Within a few days he sent me information on three jobs, one in Aberdeen, Scotland, one in Tunisia, and one in Bogota, Colombia.

The posting for the job in Bogota included a description of what attributes they wanted in their new director that fit very well what I had to offer.  About 2 weeks after sending in my application they called me for an interview in Bogota.  Julie and I went and interviewed for 3 days. Then they sent 2 board members to Omak to visit my schools and talk to many people including parents, employees and students.  We were offered the job and accepted.  When we were in Bogota I noticed that Les Landers name was on one of their buildings and I learned that he had been a principal and then a director there.

From the beginning my religion was a topic at the school.  After I was hired but had not yet moved, they had me come down to speak at their general assembly.  I learned then that one of their board members, a bank executive, had been opposed to hiring me because I was a Mormon.  They had spoken about this concern with Les Landers who told them, “Well, you got along with me and I am a Jew.”  Later this board member invited me to his office and explained that he had had an employee who was a member who did a lot of proselyting at work which concerned him.  We had a frank discussion and within a short period of time we became good friends.

One of the first meetings I had was with a group of PTA mothers.  In the meeting they asked if I had more than one wife.  I told them that I had my hands full with just one wife and then explained the current church doctrine on polygamy.  It was evident that at least the part of the blessing that said that I would be looked upon as someone who was different was being fulfilled.

Not long after arriving in Bogota, I was called to be a counselor in the Nogal Ward bishopric.  Less than a year later I was ordained bishop of that ward.  As the bishop I learned how the Lord increases our ability to love the members and how being a common judge in Israel is only about seeking the welfare of each member.

When we arrived in Bogota, the temple was under construction and we were soon involved in preparations for the open house and dedication.  We handed out around 300 invitations to see the open house.  As we started giving them out at school people kept coming and asking for more invitations.  I, personally, took a number of people through the open house including Carolina Barco and her mother as well as Eduardo Cardenas.  Carolina was the daughter of Virgilio Barco, a former president of Colombia.  She later became the Colombian Minister of Foreign Relations and then served as the Colombian Ambassador to the United States.  Eduardo Cardenas was an important lawyer in Bogota whose father had helped author a revised constitution for their nation.  Through my contacts with other schools in Colombia was asked to arrange visits to the open house for the students from San Carlos, a prominent Catholic boys school, by their long term director Father Francis.  Sister Tierney, the director of Santa Francisca Romana, a prominent Catholic girls school asked me to arrange the visit of all of their students.  Both Father Francis and Sister Tierney became close friends.  Julie went through the open house with my special education director, Annie Acevedo, who was also a popular author of books and advice to parents and a newspaper columnist and television show host.  She asked Julie why the church had decided to build a temple in Colombia.  She then answered her own question by saying, “I think God wants the people of Colombia to be more spiritual.”

Another experience we had at the temple dedication was singing in the choir.  I sang in two sessions and directed the choir in one of the sessions.  This was a very spiritual experience.  Our eyes filled with tears and we were so filled with emotion we could barely sing yet the music was beautiful and it truly seemed that angelic voices joined in the singing.  I also had the opportunity to translate some of the sessions for Sister Hinckley and others.

The majority of the students at the school were Catholic.  I attended many masses

during my tenure there singing in the choir for first communions and speaking at a number of funeral masses. When I spoke I would teach the plan of salvation using scriptures from the Bible.  I always received positive comments from the community.  Once after speaking at a funeral a parent approached me to say how impressed he was and the I should become a preacher.  Of course, it was the doctrine that impressed and any child in Primary could have taught the same.

We had a Catholic Priest who was paid to be the Capellan or Chaplain of the school, a Jewish Rabbi and a Protestant Minister who were assigned to the school that I worked with.  I called them the three wise men and they spoke at major school events.  The Board of Directors felt that the Catholic religion department wasn’t as good as it could be and asked me to be the head of that department which I did somewhat uncomfortably for the rest of my tenure.

Not long after arriving in Colombia there was a major earthquake in the coffee growing region of the country that caused quite a bit of damage.  Our school organized a project and rebuilt a rural school that had been destroyed.  The First Lady of Colombia at that time, Laura de Pastrana, was promoting a number of charitable projects to rebuild from that disaster.  She also had her children in our school.  When our project was finished she invited me to go with them to dedicate the new school and several other projects that had been completed.  I flew with her on a military transport plane to an airbase and then we flew by helicopter from one dedication event to another.  At the end of the day, we went to the city of Armenia.  The Mexican people had donated a statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe to the cathedral in that town and the last event of the day was a procession carrying the statue to the cathedral and a Rosary ceremony.  I wasn’t aware that this was planned and before I knew it I was handed a candle and was marching in the procession alongside the First Lady.  I may be the only person to have done such a thing while serving as a Mormon bishop.

A decision was made by the school’s curriculum committee to offer a class in comparative religion.  During the years that the class was offered the instructor would have me come and present the doctrine of our church to the students.  They were always very interested and asked lots of questions.  There was also a group of parents who started a group to explore different religious beliefs and I presented our beliefs to them on several occasions.

The thirteen years we spent in Colombia was also an opportunity to help build up the Church in that country by serving in leadership positions.  The first year I was called to be a counselor in the bishopric of the Nogal ward and not long after was called to be the bishop of that ward.  The boundaries of that ward included a more well-off section of Bogota of upper and middle class as well as a very poor neighborhood of squatters on the top of a mountain on the East side of the city called San Luis, sometimes referred to as La Calera.  The members of this neighborhood faced many economic struggles and most of them really couldn’t afford the cost of bus fare to bring their families to Church on Sunday.  One of the members who lived there, Jose Rodriguez, was looking for work and talked to me about buying a taxi he could operate.  He also suggested buying a bus.  I told him I would consider buying a bus if he would bring the members down to church on Sundays.  We made that arrangement and although it was a very poor financial decision, it got the members to church and about doubled our attendance.

Later, when I was called to serve in the Stake Presidency of the  Bogota Stake I was involved in helping locate a building in San Luis to serve as a chapel for a branch there.  Still later, when we moved to a farm on the other side of the mountain, we attended that branch which had grown considerably and included a number of return missionaries who had been children and youth that had ridden my bus to Church in Nogal.

The members in La Calera were all converts who had many personal trials and challenges in learning to adopt the standards of the Church and get their family life organized.  Some had lived in relationships without marriage and had children from more than one partner.  A few were illiterate and had to learn the doctrine of the Church from talks that were given and class instruction.  With all of these disadvantages they were examples of faith and persistence.  One Ecuadorian Indian named Brother Cuscagua earned his living selling handmade traditional crafts on buses in the city.  He didn’t understand how to calculate what the 10% of his earnings would be to pay his tithing so he would bring the cash to me as his bishop so I could take out the 10% from the meager earnings he had made during the week.  During this time his wife had separated from him over some arguments.  Most of their children ended up serving missions.  One, that I know of, became a Bishop and later a Stake President.  Before he died Brother Cuscagua and his wife were sealed in the Temple with their children.  Most of the families in that branch have made similar progress.

In 2010, I decided to retire.  Our 13 years in Colombia had brought many blessings. In 2005, Julie, Kyla and I were presented with Colombian citizenship in recognition of the work I had done creating Hogar Nueva Granada and the Alianza Educativa that together was educating around 7,000 poor students in Bogota.  The year I retired I was given the Simon Bolivar Award, the most prestigious award given to a Colombian citizen, for my contribution to education in Colombia.  There were many accolades and ceremonies honoring me that included speeches by prominent leaders and political figures including the U.S. ambassador to Colombia, William Brownfield, the Colombian Minister of Education and other dignitaries.  Several major newspapers and magazines did articles on me.  One, featured my membership in the church and noted how my work in Colombia was an extension of my missionary experience as a young man.  All of this had come about through prayer and searching to fulfill the promises made in a patriarchal blessing I had received when 16 years of age.

One of the primary considerations for retiring was to be closer to our grandchildren and have the opportunity to be a presence in their lives as my grandparents were in my life.  Each grandchild is extremely important to us and we love them dearly as we also love their parents.  We know from our own experience that they will face many challenges in life but if they will hold true to the gospel they will overcome every one of them and be with us in the eternities.  

Not long after retiring I was called by different schools to do consulting work with them.  Much of this work has been in Panama where I was hired to help a group create a new school, The Metropolitan School.  I was also contracted to help a struggling orthodox Jewish school, The Magen David Academy.  All of this work has given me further opportunities to share the gospel and teach gospel principles in working with others.

In our retirement, we have experienced the joy of spending time with our grandchildren, serving in various ward and stake callings and being active in the community.  I have worked diligently on family history research and have been able to extend my mother’s family tree 6 or 7 generations.  This experience has strengthened my faith and increased my understanding of the vital importance of families in the eternal scheme of things.  On a number of occasions after working months trying to find the records of an ancestor, I have gone to the Lord in prayer stating that I have tried everything I can think of and failed and asking for His assistance.  Each time I have done this within a very short period I have received help in a miraculous way.  

I have written this history for my children, grandchildren and future descendents hoping that it will in some way help them to find their way through life and remain faithful to the truth.  Mortal life is short and we will soon be in another sphere of existence where our position is highly dependent on our actions here and the place we hold in a family structure that extends back as well as forward through all eternity.  I want each of you to know how much I love you, even those who are yet to be born.

Appendix:

WORDS OF ADVICE FOR MY DESCENDANTS

REPENTANCE

The first and greatest obstacle to repentance is the difficulty we have admitting to ourselves our errors.  We all like to think well of ourselves and have others think well of us. There is a certain amount of pain involved in the self recognition that we have sinned in some respect.  We try to avoid that pain but it is a useless endeavor and the more quickly we confront it the better off we are.  When we can truly face our actions without minimizing or justifying them, the rest of the repentance process follows naturally.

I have come to look upon repentance as a great and wonderful gift that needs to be embraced and not shunned.  The scriptures are clear that as long as we live we need to repent.  It is not a one-time event.  Our mortal condition is such that we have weaknesses that need to be overcome during our whole lives.  The great gift of repentance is that we have the Savior’s assistance in overcoming these weaknesses when we exercise our faith in him and his promises. If we turn to him and follow the steps he has provided we have the promise that these weaknesses will be turned into strengths and the temptations that have troubled us will no longer be a problem to us.  I have found that to be true.  Some of you, my descendants, will find that you will be tried in ways that you think you can not bear.  Don’t be discouraged no that with every temptation the Lord has prepared a way for your escape if you continue trying though you may fail repeatedly.  You are not alone in your efforts and there are angels routing for you.

The greatest pursuit and the greatest adventure in life is perfecting your own character.  No accomplishment you can undertake compares with it.  Climbing the highest mountain, building a successful business, creating a great masterpiece of art will not be near as satisfying as making a masterpiece of your soul.  To do that we have the paradox that we have to forget ourselves and learn to love the Lord with all our might, mind and strength.  If we can do that we will be able to set aside our pride and accept his help.  

FAITH AND PRAYER

You may sometimes wonder if you have sufficient faith to call on the Lord and receive the help you need to get through this life.  I have found that faith is not some miraculous attribute that is only possessed by great spiritual leaders.  It is simply the willingness to do what the Lord asks of us.  Once we make an effort to do that we find out that it is not as difficult as we think and we are strengthened to do it.  President Ezra Taft Bensons said, “When obedience becomes our quest and not an irritant, at that moment the power of God enters your life.”  

The Book of Mormon tells us we will receive answers to our prayers if we pray with “real intent.”  What does that mean?  I think it means that we intend to accept the Lord’s will and follow whatever direction we receive from him.  Our prayers don’t have to be long begging orations.  They just need to be sincere and that sincerity comes from what our intentions are.  It is a good idea to examine ourselves and our motives before we pray.

ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE

People often make the mistake of comparing themselves to others.  There may be times in your life when you don’t feel you measure up, that you are not very smart, attractive, accomplished or capable.  Whatever your situation or whatever problems life has dealt you, remember that this is all very temporary.  You were a glorious being when you left to come to this earth,  You are a unique individual whose path in this life is designed to bring out the best in you and prepare you for a future glory.  Your trials, experiences and life situations are meant for you alone and will be but a brief moment.  Then all of the fame and fortune that people value so highly will fade away.