My wife claims that I took the missionaries to a family of our acquaintance and taught them every week for a whole year.  I think that's an exaggeration, but she insists that it's so.  That was 30 years ago.  I remember the couple and their four children attending church with us in the old building on Dewey Avenue.  They were ill at ease and out of place.  The children had probably never attended church in their lives, and weren't just sure how to act and what to expect.  Their parents were the same.  They were apprehensive.  They put up with my weekly attempts to change them and bring the gospel into their lives; but eventually my efforts and our weekly visits ceased, and all came to naught.

Sometime back in that era I also recall taking the elders to visit the grandparents of those four children.  They were good people.  I'd gone to grade school with their children, liked them all, and I hoped to be able to ignite a gospel spark of interest somewhere in the family.  We had a wonderful visit that evening in their home, although it didn't result in any callback or further visits.

The wife, Doris, told me a story that I've remembered and retold many times.  She confessed that she had a secret hobby.  Her hobby was picking out Mormons.  She claimed to be very good at identifying the Mormons in any crowd.  She explained that Jack, her husband, served on the Wheat League which necessitated his attending meetings in many places around the state.  Doris accompanied him on the trips, and spent the meeting times sitting in the hotel lobbies watching people.  When she observed someone whom she judged to be a Mormon, she'd go up to the person and say, "Excuse me, but don't I know you?"

"No, I don't believe so," the person would say.

"Maybe from church?" Doris would ask.

"Well, that might be," the person would reply, and would then reveal his or her church affiliation.

"I was rarely wrong," Doris said proudly.

Her story made for an interesting conversation as we explored just what it was that made LDS people stand out, but my efforts to also turn her into a Latter-day Saint came to naught—just like my efforts to convert her son and his family.

Nearly twenty years passed.  One day the youngest son in that family of four children called me to ask how to get in touch with my number-two son—his friend of many years.  They had been friends and classmates from grade school through high school, and had been in one another's homes many times.  The young man, Jake, wanted my son to teach him the gospel.  In a few weeks Jake was baptized.  A year later he was serving a mission in Ireland where he baptized in a country where few baptisms happened.  A few months after his mission, he brought a girl to our home for us to meet.  We were astounded.  She was a beautiful, bubbly female version of Jake himself.  If ever there were two people who were meant to get together, these were they.  I'm sure they'd have never met had Jake not joined the Church and served a mission.  They were married in the temple, and now have two small children.

Jake and his wife visited our ward last Sunday during fast meeting, and both bore their testimonies.  No one but Margie and I knew the saga that brought them to that point.  They are the culmination of 30 years of missionary efforts.  Jake is now in a position where he can bless the lives of many generations of his family.  His children and grandchildren will grow up in the gospel and serve in many capacities.  He'll do the temple work for his deceased grandparents, and for many generations back.

It would be interesting to know what Doris and Jack are doing on the other side of the veil.  They now desperately want to be members of Christ's true Church.  Were they in a position to gently push and urge Jake to join the Church?  He's their one best hope to achieve salvation, exaltation, and eternal family relationships.

I don't know what, if any, influence my missionary efforts have had on this family, but I know my efforts weren't wasted.  It's very gratifying to see them come to fruition, even if it did take 30 years.

8 August 2007