I am nine days away from finishing my current reading of the Book of Mormon.  I read 10 pages per day.  I've done that all year, and therefore finish the book every two months.  I've read the book six times this year.  This will complete my 83rd reading, and my 47th reading in this decade (2011-2020).

I enjoy the book very much.  Before I begin each day's reading, I pray for the Holy Ghost to teach me.  I pray for a subject about which I can think and write.  I only got six verses into my reading this morning before I found today's subject.

I was finishing Jesus' giving of His Sermon on the Mount to the Nephites.  I was reading 3 Nephi chapter 14.  I marvel at that sermon.  It's beautiful.  It's deep.  It's perfectly constructed.  There is not a wise man in the world, nor any gifted writer, who could both pack that much wisdom into so few words, and make it so beautiful.  It is magnificent.

As I read the first five verses of chapter 14 I was thinking how important these teachings are, and how they have opened a floodgate of knowledge about every imaginable subject.  Because of these teachings we even know that there is life on other planets, and that those planets are inhabited by people just like us.  The world doesn't know this.  They're just guessing at what might be out there.  We could tell them.  I was thinking we could teach them.  And then the Spirit said, "They would scoff."

In my mind, I agreed.  They would laugh.  They would declare that we couldn't possibly know such things.  They would say that the development of life on earth was haphazard; and that if life exists elsewhere, it too would have happened haphazardly, and that there is no way that humans as we know them would exist elsewhere.  Intelligent life, if there is any, would look totally different.

And then in verse six I read this:  "Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you."  (3 Nephi 14:6).

I knew that Jesus understood swine.  In my mind, I also saw my mother as she fed them.

When my parents moved to this valley in 1939 they purchased 80 acres.  To pay for it my father built a barn in 1940-41 and began milking cows..  He would arise at 4 a.m., and sit on the edge of the bed for some minutes, (hating himself, he said), and gathering the strength to go milk those 8-13 head of Jersey cows by hand again.  He did it every morning and every evening.  It was exhausting.  It was never-ending work.

He milked the cows, and brought the milk to Mom, who ran it through the separator.  The separator separated the cream from the milk.  The cream was poured into big milk cans, and was pulled in a little, red wagon out to the county road where the milk truck picked it up once or twice a week.

The cream was the valuable and salable thing.  The milk was waste, and yet it had value, too, if it could be used to grow and fatten hogs.  So Mom and Dad had pigs.  So did every other little dairy.

Feeding a bunch of pigs is a fearsome thing.  I know that from experience.  Pigs are always hungry and very impatient to be fed.  Each pig wants the first bite.  The whole group crowds around the person carrying the bucket of pig food, and if the person is not careful and quick, he or she can easily be knocked over.  Finding oneself lying prone on the ground in the midst of a bunch of hungry hogs would not be a good thing.  More than one hog farmer has disappeared without a trace.

My college-educated father aspired to be a farmer, but lacked the finances to achieve his goal as fast as he would have liked.  He decided that he could make faster progress if he would accept a job as the vocational agriculture teacher at the high school in Enterprise, Oregon.  He found a room in Enterprise, coming home on weekends, and left Mom to feed the pigs.  That was in 1943.

One pen was filled with sows.  Those big sows were much larger than my little mother.  The smallest one would have weighed over 300 pounds.  The largest would have weighed hundreds of pounds more.  Imagine getting into a pen with those creatures while carrying two heavy buckets of pig food.

Mom worked out a system to keep from being knocked over by the sows.  She placed a full bucket of pig food on each corner post.  Then she ran around the outside of the pig pen to confuse and distract the sows which were trying to follow her.  The sows wouldn't know where or when she would leap over the fence to empty a bucket into their trough.

That system worked for a few days, but those pigs were smart.  They quickly learned to station a sow or two at each corner post so that they'd be ready for Mom's eventual entry into the pen.

Jesus knew that swine are very capable of, and very likely to, "turn and rend you."  The "wise" men and women of this world are the same.  They call good evil, and light darkness, and hold the truth of God in derision.  (Isaiah 5:20).

We could undertake to teach the masses in large groups, but the result would be no different than the experience of Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah.  A few Zeezroms might be in the crowd, but the majority would be scoffers who would prefer to feed you to the flames.

We have a treasure-trove of pearls that we're anxious to share with anyone and everyone.  Of necessity it mostly has to be done one by one.

Alma and Amulek found themselves in the pig pen.  Abinadi, too.  They cast their pearls before the swine that turned and rent them.

Do you suppose that if a missionary or an apostle was to find himself preaching to a hall of full-of-themselves legislators it would be much different than standing in a pig pen?