An incident occurred while I was a sailor serving on a ship based in Japan.  The branch of the Church met in a little chapel on the base at Yokosuka.  One Sunday I was standing at the door greeting people as an unfamiliar sailor approached.  I welcomed him to church, and he said, “How do I go about joining this church?”  My friend and I replied that he’d have to take the six missionary discussions, and that he and I would be happy to give them to him since there weren’t any full-time missionaries serving there.

The man was interested in the Church because his girl friend back home was a member.  He wasn’t a very impressive looking person, was investigating the Church for the wrong reason, and got an uncontrollable case of the giggles when we had him read “health in the navel, and marrow to their bones” in the Word of Wisdom.  We began the discussions.  We got through three before his ship pulled out.  I thought that was probably the last I’d see of him.

Several months passed.  One night I was in my bunk on my ship reading my scriptures before turning out the light to go to sleep.  Suddenly, Bill Mills, the fellow we’d been teaching, came forcibly to mind.  There was no reason for me to have been thinking of him at all.  As far as I knew he was gone, and out of my life.  But so forceful were my thoughts, that I was compelled to get up, get dressed, leave the ship, and go walking up and down the docks in that naval yard to see if his ship had come in.

Sure enough—I found it.  It was nighttime, but I marched up the gangplank and requested permission to go aboard.  I then began looking for Bill Mills.  No one had seen him.  It was a big, unfamiliar ship.  I felt very out of place, but something had impelled me to come that far, so I was determined not to leave until I’d located him.  Finally I found him.  He was down in the hold, clear up forward in the bow of the ship.  He was an engineman.  He was dirty, and sitting alone in the grime and grease.  He looked really bad.  He was very surprised to see me.  I explained what had brought me there, and asked him to tell me why the Holy Ghost had sent me.  He replied that he was sitting there contemplating the best way to commit suicide; but that since Heavenly Father was aware of him and his thoughts, and obviously didn’t want him to carry it out, he wouldn’t.

I never saw Bill Mills again, nor do I know what ultimately became of him.  His ship pulled out again right after our midnight visit.  He wasn’t what I would have considered a likely candidate for baptism, but Heavenly Father was aware of him, loved him, and had sent me to save his life.