Since recently returning from a three-year Church assignment in Africa and becoming reacquainted with our twenty-three grandchildren, Sister Lindsay and I have often been requested on such visits to tell these grandchildren a bedtime story that is, first, true; second, exciting; and third, one they have never heard before.  All you grandpas here tonight can understand the challenge which such a request represents.  One such true story did come to my mind, however, as we visited recently in the home of a son and his wife who live in a Midwestern city with their five children, including three bearers of the Aaronic Priesthood, a priest, teacher, and a deacon.  This story concerned their own father when he was a six-year-old boy.

I grew up in rural Salt Lake County when it was an economic necessity to care for a variety of barnyard animals.  My favorite animals were sheep—prompted perhaps by the fact that sheep do not require being milked twice a day, seven days a week.

I wanted our own sons to have the blessing of being shepherds to such farm animals.  Our older sons were each provided with a ewe to teach them responsibility of caring for these sheep and the lambs that would hopefully follow.

Our second son, newly turned six years of age, called me excitedly at my office one cold March morning on the phone and said, “Daddy, guess what?  Ester [Esther was his mother ewe]—Esther has just had two baby lambs.  Please come home and help me take care of them.”  I instructed Gordon to watch the lambs carefully and make sure they received the mother’s milk and they would be fine.  I was interrupted by a second phone call later in the morning with the same little voice on the other end saying, “Daddy, these lambs aren’t doing very well.  They haven’t been able to get milk from the mother, and they are very cold.  Please come home.”

My response likely reflected some of the distress I felt by being distracted from my busy work schedule.  I responded, “Gordon, the lambs will be all right.  You just watch them, and when Daddy comes home we will make sure they get mother’s milk and everything will be fine.”  Again, later in the afternoon I received a third, more urgent call.  Now the voice on the other end was pleading.  “Daddy, you’ve got to come home now.  Those lambs are lying down, and one of them looks very cold.”  Despite work pressures, I now felt some real concern and tried to reassure the six-year-old owner of the mother sheep by saying, “Gordon, bring the lambs into the house.  Rub them with a gunnysack to make them warm.  When Daddy comes home in a little while, we will milk the mother, feed the lambs, and they will be fine.”

Two hours later I drove into the driveway of our home and was met by a boy with tear-stained eyes, carrying a dead lamb in his arms.  His grief was overwhelming.  Now I tried to make amends by quickly milking the mother sheep and trying to force the milk from a bottle down the throat of the now weak, surviving lamb.  At this point, Gordon walked out of the room and came back with a hopeful look in his eyes.  He said, “Daddy, I’ve prayed that we will be able to save this lamb, and I feel it will be all right.”  The sad note to this story, brethren, is that within a few minutes the second lamb was dead.  Then with a look that I will remember forever, this little six-year-old boy who had lost both of his lambs looked up into his father’s face and with tears running down his cheeks said, “Daddy, if you had come home when I first called you, we could have saved them both.”

Dear brethren of the priesthood, those who are entrusted as keepers of the Lord’s precious flock—we must be there with the lambs when we are needed.  We must teach with love, principles of faith, and goodness and be righteous examples to the lambs of our Heavenly Father.  Each quorum member must be prepared for his future role as a bearer of the holy Melchizedek Priesthood in a world plagued with sin and desperate for decisive moral leadership.

I leave my witness that this is God’s work—it is the most important work in all the world in which we can be engaged.  That we will be instruments in His hands in saving the precious lambs for which He gave His life, I humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

As told by Richard P. Lindsay in general conference, April 1994.