While serving our mission in Vanuatu we lived on the largest of the nation’s 83 islands.  We had supervisory responsibilities for it and for several outlying islands, including Ambae.

Ambae Island is a tropical paradise in the South Seas.  It is thought to be the Bali Ha’i that James Michener wrote about, and is inhabited by the happiest people on earth.  It is the same island that made international news in 2017 by having to be evacuated because of an erupting volcano which was raining rocks on the villages of the people that we loved.  The volcano eventually settled down, and the people were allowed to return.

Getting to Ambae from our island was a 20-minute flight in a two-propeller plane.  The airport on Ambae is a grassy strip cut out of the jungle on a steep incline going up the mountain.  Everything about Ambae was an adventure to us—the people, the scenery, and the cyclone that stranded us there for a week.  The only time I was nervous was our last trip when all that I could find to get us there was a plane with a single propeller.  Entrusting our lives out over open water to a single, little gasoline engine was unsettling.  I don’t like heights, and if we survived the crash when that engine gave out, I doubted that we could tread water very long in those shark-infested seas.

When we got safely back to our own island I wrote an email to my nephew who is an active member of another church.  I told him that his church was like that single-engine prop plane.  It gets him aloft, and enables him to fly, but there is so much more available.

In comparison, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is like the Boeing 747 in which we crossed the Pacific Ocean to get to Vanuatu.  It was powered by four huge jet engines which enabled it to fly at 40,000 feet, and which took us all the way from San Francisco to New Zealand in just 13-1/2 hours.

The four figurative jet engines that drive this Church are named in the last paragraph of the Introduction to the Book of Mormon.  The first jet engine is the Book of Mormon itself.  The reader of the book is invited to ponder its message, and “to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ if the book is true.”

The promise is that “those who pursue this course and ask in faith will gain a testimony of its truth and divinity by the power of the Holy Ghost.

“Those who gain this divine witness from the Holy Spirit” will turn on the other three engines.  They “will also come to know by the same power that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, that Joseph Smith is His revelator and prophet in these last days, and that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again established on the earth, preparatory to the Second Coming of the Messiah.”

The knowledge of these four things becomes a power that can not only propel you to heaven, but which will give you peace in this life and direction for all of your decisions, great and small.

As a 19-year-old non-member of the Church I knew next to nothing about religion or about Jesus Christ.  But I wanted to know.  So I undertook a reading of the New Testament.  I think that in those early years I set out to do that on three separate occasions.  Each of those attempts ended after just a few pages because I couldn’t understand what I was reading.

I also became severely depressed.  At this critical juncture I was given a Book of Mormon.  To my surprise, it was perfectly understandable!  It brought such light and hope and peace into my mind that reading it was all that I wanted to do.  It pained me to have to lay it aside each day to go to work.

When I was halfway through the book I was given a pamphlet entitled Joseph Smith’s Testimony.  It explained where the Book of Mormon came from.  The pamphlet clearly answered two questions that I had all through my teen years:  Are God and Jesus Christ one Being or two, or not Beings at all; and why can’t there be prophets today as there were in ancient times?

Joseph Smith’s testimony was a shock.  It was electrifying.  I knew the story was true.  There was no doubt but that he had seen and conversed with God.  The Father and the Son were separate Beings!  They were glorified men!  They had called a prophet!  They had directed that prophet to reestablish the true Church just as it had been in the meridian of time!  I had found a pearl beyond price!  I was excited.  I was elated.

In the midst of my depression I had withdrawn from the university, which action caused me to lose my draft deferment.  With the Vietnam War in full swing, my leaving school guaranteed that I would be drafted into the army and be sent to Vietnam where I would likely be killed.  To avoid those grim prospects I enlisted in the U.S. Navy.  (I guess you could call me a draft dodger).  I enlisted under a program that gave me 120 days before having to report for active duty.

Soon after that 120-day countdown began I was given the Book of Mormon.  In those 120 days, between 13 November 1966 and 17 March 1967, I read the Book of Mormon, found out who God was, learned how to pray, gained a testimony of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, read the Doctrine and Covenants, was baptized, was given the gift of the Holy Ghost, and received my patriarchal blessing.  I was a new man.

On the 17th of March 1967 I left for Navy boot camp in San Diego armed with a knowledge of myself and of my place in the world.  I was put into a company of 60 men.  We were assigned quarters in a long barracks with 15 bunk beds on one wall, 15 on the other, and a table and benches that went the length of the barracks down the center.  When we arose in the mornings we were to tightly make our beds according to regulations, and to never sit or lie on them again until we retired at night.  Therefore, during any down times, the men all gathered around the central tables to smoke their cigarettes, profane, and loudly complain about the “hole” that they’d gotten themselves into.

Conversely, I was having the time of my life.  As we marched around the grinder in the hot sun, I was on Cloud 9.  I was having prayers answered on a daily basis.  It was exhilarating.  Back in the barracks I didn’t want to have anything to do with my companions’ griping and profanity, so I would quietly go to my upper bunk in the corner, and stand there and read the New Testament.  It was the most wonderful thing.  Having read the Book of Mormon, and now possessing the gift of the Holy Ghost, I was surprised to find that the New Testament was perfectly plain.  I couldn’t wait to get back each day and read a few pages before chow time.  I finished the entire New Testament while standing beside my upper bunk in boot camp.

I know that I was the topic of many of the conversations around the center table.  Many fingers of scorn were pointed at me, and I was asked many questions as the men tried to figure out why I was different.  I think I know how Lehi felt when the inhabitants of the great and spacious building laughed at him and mocked.  I experienced that, but I didn’t care.  I was having too good a time.

I was shocked when those men voted me as the outstanding recruit of the company.  That set me up for the distasteful necessity of doing double time to base headquarters where I had to be interviewed by the base commander and three other officers with scrambled eggs on their caps.  I was grilled for 10 or 15 minutes.  As I recall, all of their questions were directed toward two things:  One was questions about the farm, and what I did there.  I remember being asked the odd question, “What is the purpose of a saddle horn?”

The rest of the questions were about my membership in the Church:  “Did your family join with you?”  “You mean you joined this church all by yourself?  Why?”

At graduation exercises there were 1,500 men standing at attention on the grinder, dressed in their dress blues for the first time, and my name was read as having been selected as the outstanding recruit who was to receive the American Spirit Honor Medal.  With everyone watching, I had to leave formation, march up to the podium, and be presented with my award by the base commander.  Being the center of attention was highly embarrassing.

I’d been in the habit of marching to LDS services each Sunday with three men from the company next door.  The Sunday after graduation was our last one there.  The company commander decreed that everyone had a choice of either going to church that day or of giving the barracks a thorough cleaning.  One after another, 27 men came and asked if they could go to church with me.  It was a thrill to be able to march those 27 men to our LDS meeting.

A testimony of Jesus Christ, of His restored Church, of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and of the Book of Mormon turns all the engines on and lifts one to heights not otherwise attainable.  Members of the Church have all the advantages.  The Holy Ghost works with such people, and makes them capable of doing anything.  Lights are turned on, opportunities are opened, knowledge is given, and people are put in one’s way that are anything but coincidental.  There is guidance, peace, happiness, and satisfaction that are obtainable in no other way.

Our 4-engine jetliner comfortably carried 467 people 6,525 miles over an ocean at a speed of over 650 miles per hour and at an altitude of over 30,000 feet.  I had confidence that it would deliver us safely to our destination.

Why would anyone set out on the most important journey of all in a Piper Cub instead of a Boeing 747?