I began life as a shy child.  As a teenager I was nervous, and scared of crowds and the future.  I wasn't happy.  I wanted to be, but everything looked dark.  I wanted to be a good person.  People thought I was good, and thought that I was happy, but I really didn't like who I was.  I had no idea how to change things.

The only thing that I had going for me was desire.  I desired to be good and to do better.  I didn't know it then, but that is the precise prerequisite that God looks for in His children before He can help them.  If a person has a desire to change, and if he'll ask God for help, the Lord is then able to begin orchestrating everything from thoughts and ways of thinking, to situations and opportunities and people who come into that person's life.

When my life and emotions had reached the bottom, and hope was non existent, there was nowhere else to turn but to God.  I cried out in distress.  It was the first time in my life that I had prayed.  It was an out-loud prayer.  It lasted perhaps four hours.  It was what the Lord had been waiting for.

Because I had asked, the Lord was then able to help me.  He might have helped me before, and was surely trying to do so; but I wouldn't have recognized His hand in my affairs, and would, therefore, not have been grateful.  I had to first ask for the help.

Things didn't instantly change, except that I knew that my plea had been heard.  I knew that I was being listened to or else I wouldn't have continued that first-ever prayer for four hours.  Things gradually happened.

First I was given a book.  I think that my unborn posterity held their collective breaths as they waited to see if I would read it.  The Lord didn't hold His, because He knew that I would.  He knows all things.  He knew that if I'd read the Book of Mormon that the lights would come on in my life.

And they did.  My reading, and my praying, and my desire enabled the Holy Ghost to come into my life.  A great light came on.  Hope flooded my future.  Faith came.  My knowledge leaped forward.  Darkness disappeared.  A great happiness filled my soul.  I had direction and peace.

I accepted and worked at callings.  They came thick and fast.  None lasted for more than a year.  At one point I counted seven that I held simultaneously.  I was being schooled.

I married in the temple.  Children started coming.  Each new baby brought an increase of joy.  I went back to school, and got an education.  I entered my life's work.  I was very aware that my vocation was just a means to enable me to devote my best efforts to my family and to service in the Church.

I worked with the youth.  I was an elders' quorum president twice.  I was a bishop's counselor.  I was bishop.  I was in the stake presidency.  I was a temple ordinance worker.  I was a missionary with my wife.  I am a patriarch, and am still working in the temple.  I have seen to it that many hundreds of my ancestors and relatives have received their temple blessings.  I have acquired nine in-law children to date, and 52 grandchildren.  They're the crown of my life.  (May 2019).

Everything has been in crescendo.  My marriage has now been in crescendo for 50 years.  My readings of the Book of Mormon have increased from once every other year to three times per year, to four, and then to six in the last several years. I'm happier than I've ever been.  I'm surrounded by joy.  I use and experience the Holy Ghost every day.  My love for my Savior has grown and increased year by year.  My courage and my ability to do has grown incrementally.  I know that with the Lord's help I can do anything.

It all started with desire.  That has increased, too.  Alma said that, "I know that he granteth unto men according to their desire."  (Alma 29:4).  I testify that is so.

When I was in high school I had a desire to be able to write in a meaningful and inspiring way.  I remember trying to describe a beautiful, moonlit scene that I'd been privileged to observe up on the Mountain Place.  I failed miserably.  It was drivel.

Along with the crescendo that has been my faith and my family and my knowledge and my service has also come a crescendo in my abilities and talents.  As I write this I am looking at the shelf that contains my writings.  I see 60 journals and a difficult-to-count number of books.  There may be as many as 20.

I got to wondering in the night how many articles I've written for my family such as this one.  I counted them yesterday morning.  This is number 700!  Those are only the articles that end up in the books Kevin publishes for me.  They don't include the "All About" books that I made for each of my children nor my general conference index nor the watershed assessment that I wrote nor the compilation of family stories that is A Noble Heritage.

It struck me today that perhaps I've spent the required 10,000 hours to say that I'm a master at something.

It all stems from desire.  I am grateful, beyond what I can express, for this life which the Lord has allowed me to live in crescendo.

In stake conference this past weekend, the question was asked, "How will your life be defined?  How would you define or describe yourself?"

I wrote that I would like to be remembered as "a faithful disciple of Christ who was first, foremost, and always a father."

My discipleship and my fatherhood can only keep increasing.