FATHERS AND SONS FIRESIDE 2025

The first time I came to Fathers and Sons Outing, my 3- or 4-year-old boy spent the entire time going up and down the long mud slide that used to exist on the other side of the bridge. He probably did it 40 times. He had a glorious time, and Fathers and Sons Outing thereafter became an event more to be looked forward to than Christmas.

He's 54 years old now. I've been coming here for a long time.

Another memorable Fathers and Sons event was Brother Johnson of the high council teaching us a song that I've sung ever since. Everyone but me has forgotten it now, but it shouldn't be lost. It's incumbent upon me to renew its memory so that the next generation can carry it on. It goes like this:

Oh, McGregor is dead, and his brother don't know it,

His brother is dead, and McGregor don't know it,

They're both of them dead,

And they're in the same bed,

And neither one knows that the other one's dead.

Now repeat after me. We'll go slow at first, and then we'll speed up.

Sometime in the next decade or two, I want someone to teach this song about McGregor again so that it won't be lost.

In 1956 Harry de Leyer went to the auction to buy a horse for his children to ride. He got there too late. All the good horses had already been sold. A truck had been loaded with horses that were deemed good for nothing but to be sent to slaughter. Harry climbed up on the truck, looked at the horses, and saw a gray one with gentle eyes. He negotiated a deal with the owner, and purchased the horse for $80.

It was snowing when Harry brought the horse home. The children named him snowman because of the snow on his back. The worn places on his hide and wounds on his legs showed that he had been worked hard as a plow horse. He was about 8 years old. He was gentle, and good with the children; but when a neighbor offered to buy him for $200, Harry sold him.

Snowman apparently didn’t like it at the neighbor’s place. He kept coming back. No one could find where Snowman was getting out of his pasture. It was determined that he must be jumping the fence. The neighbor didn’t want him if he couldn’t keep Snowman in the pasture, so he sold him back to Harry.

Harry had always wanted a horse that could jump, but couldn’t pay the high price that would be required to buy a horse with a pedigree. Snowman liked to jump, so Harry decided to find out what he could do. Snowman enjoyed jumping. He was good at it. He was so good that Harry entered him in a jumping contest. Everyone laughed when the flea-bitten gray lined up with the pedigreed horses, but no one laughed when Snowman won the contest.

Snowman won the next contest, and the next. Snowman became famous. He became a model for what might be accomplished by ordinary things and people. Snowman was named Horse of the Year for 1956. He was named Horse of the Year in 1958 and 1959.

Snowman looked like an ordinary plow horse, but inside he was a champion. He became a symbol for what an ordinary person or animal could do.

I want to tell you about what became of an ordinary boy. He lived in an idolatrous society. The people were all idol worshipers, including his own father. He lived in a decadent country. How much hope was there for this boy to ever amount to anything? He had nothing going for him except his desire to be righteous. His desire to be righteous, and his disdain for idolatry, nearly got him killed. He was laid out on an altar, and an idolatrous priest was about to offer him as a sacrifice to idol gods. He prayed to the real God for deliverance, and an angel appeared and saved him.

That was Abraham. Abraham was a shepherd. The Egyptians considered shepherds to be the lowliest of the low. I used to be a shepherd. As a boy I had sheep. I loved my sheep.

Common, ordinary Abraham became the father of the faithful. He became the father of the Jews, the Arabs, of everyone here, and became a faithful disciple of the Lord. God uses as one of His names, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

How special is that? If God could turn that common, ordinary boy into such a favored and faithful disciple, there is hope for me.

Now I want to talk about Zoram. Zoram is little more than a footnote in the Book of Mormon. He's a minor character. But Zoram was essential to the plan. Zoram was a slave. (So was Joseph. That's another success story.)

Can you suppose for a moment that it was accidental that Zoram was Laban's slave? It wasn't a coincidence. Zoram was placed there with purpose aforethought. Evidence for that can be seen in the fact that the Lord placed enough girls in the family of Ishmael to provide wives not only for Lehi's sons, but also for one extra person. The Lord knew Zoram's heart, and put him in Laban's household just as surely as he put Joseph in the household of Potiphar. He put Joseph in Potiphar's household just so that Joseph could be cast into prison where he would then be in the right place at the right time to be used by the Lord to save the whole House of Israel.

Does it make you wonder why you're where you are, and why you have the problems that you have? Do you try to be as positive and faithful as Joseph and Zoram kept themselves?

Without Zoram and the role that he played, Nephi and Lehi would never have had the Brass Plates. Without those scriptures there would never have been any righteous Nephites to write about. Lehi's posterity would have all become "a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations" like the Lamanites became. (1 Nephi 12:23).

Without Zoram there would have been no Book of Mormon. Without Zoram there would have been no story for the Book of Mormon to tell. There would have been no righteous Nephite civilization to write about. He was the keeper of the keys to the treasury where the brass plates were kept. Without the brass plates, which were the scriptures that Lehi carried on their journey, all of Lehi's descendants would have devolved into the same wild, ferocious, and blood-thirsty state (Enos 1:20) that the Lamanites descended into. A similar thing happened to the people of Zarahemla who "brought no records with them" and who "denied the being of their Creator." (Omni 1:17). They forgot about God, just as do the people of today who never pick up the scriptures.

Zoram was essential to the plan. Who can doubt but that he was placed in the service of Laban by the Lord Himself so that he could be on the spot at the right moment. Without him the brass plates would have been destroyed along with Jerusalem and its inhabitants when the Babylonians invaded.

Zoram was essential to the plan. Are you essential to the plan? That's what I keep asking about myself. My conclusion is that, yes, I am essential to the plan, and so are you.

I've told about Snowman, Abraham, and Zoram so that I could quote President Ezra Taft Benson speaking to a gathering of youth in southern California after he became President of the Church:

"For nearly six thousand years, God has held you in reserve to make your appearance in the final days before the Second Coming. Every previous gospel dispensation has drifted into apostasy, but ours will not… God has saved for the final inning some of his strongest children, who will help bear off the kingdom triumphantly. And that is where you come in, for you are the generation that must be prepared to meet your God… Make no mistake about it—you are a marked generation. There has never been more expected of the faithful in such a short period of time as there is of us… Each day we personally make many decisions that show where our support will go. The final outcome is certain—the forces of righteousness will finally win. What remains to be seen is where each of us personally, now and in the future, will stand in this fight—and how tall we will stand. Will we be true to our last-days,' foreordained mission?" (As quoted by Marvin J. Ashton in Oct. 1989 General Conference, The Ensign, Nov. 1989, pg. 36, 37).

You think that you're a common, ordinary man or boy, but I'm here to tell you that you're not! There is much expected of you. God intends to use you. None of us think that we're anything special, but inside each one of us is a Snowman, an Abraham, a Zoram, and a son of God who was reserved in heaven by the Father of us all to come in this final inning to prepare the earth for the Savior's Second Coming.

Abraham was told that in the pre-earth existence he was one of the noble and great ones. Why on earth would the Father risk sending such a noble soul to that decadent, idolatrous society?

It's because He knew that Abraham could be trusted.

Why on earth did God reserve you until this time, and risk sending you to this wicked and turbulent world? The prophets have said that our world is as wicked as the world was in Noah's day. Why did the Lord send you now? It's because He knows that He can trust you.

He wants to turn you into a being like Himself. We're going to find out that millions and billions of people are counting on us to be faithful.

Don't underestimate yourself. Please believe me. All you have to do is to be good. Keep the commandments. Make yourself available. Look for things to do for those around you. You will be led by the Spirit. Most of the time you won't even know that you're being led.

If you're good, willing, and available the Lord will use you. You're being guided by the Holy Ghost. He is your constant companion. You received that gift when you were confirmed a member of the Church. You were promised that companionship again just last Sunday when you took the sacrament.

Don't neglect that gift.

Don't ignore that gift.

Don't take that gift for granted. It's real. It's there. It will make you into something and into someone you never imagined.

You are essential to the plan. Your posterity is counting on you. Your progenitors are counting on you. Your progenitors are praying for you. So is your posterity, whether they've been born yet or not.

You have the gift of being able to repent. You have the gift of a testimony of the gospel of Jesus Christ. You have the gift of being able to serve. You have the gift of holding the Priesthood of God. You have the gift of knowledge about the most important things in the world, something that the smartest experts in every field lack. You know things about archaeology, astronomy, religion, and God that scientists, the pope, and ministers of every other religion lack. You boys who are still in Primary know more about true religion than the pope does.

You have the opportunity to share a Book of Mormon and your testimony with people who are desperate for some guidance and hope in this turbulent world. You can save them.

God has a plan for you. He's leading you and teaching you and preparing you so that you can return to Him and become like Him. His plan is to turn you into a king and a priest, a father of millions and billions, and a creator of worlds just like He is.

You don't feel capable; but if you'll just be good and make yourself available, God will bring out the Snowman, and the Abraham, and the essential Zoram that is in each of you.

If you don't remember anything else that I've said tonight, just remember that I said that you're essential to the plan.