Elder Larry R. Lawrence of the Seventy points out that life is a journey, and that “the Holy Ghost makes an ideal traveling companion.”  He suggests that “we need to ask the Lord for directions along the way.”  (Ensign, Nov. 2015, 33).

Many of us are too prideful to stop and ask for directions when we’re lost, thinking that we’re capable of finding our own way; but I testify that when we regularly seek the companionship of the Holy Ghost the results can be immediate and intensely sweet.

For example, I am reminded of a time when I was driving up the steep highway that climbs Ladd Canyon out of La Grande, Oregon.  The asphalt was slushy and slick.  I was nearly to the top of the hill when I noticed a car approaching rapidly in my rear-view mirror.  At the instant I noticed the car, I knew something.  That car was going to pass me on my left, and I knew that it was going to lose control as it passed and slam into my car.  I pressed on my accelerator to keep the car from passing me.  I watched in my rear-view mirror as the car immediately began fishtailing, going back and forth across the highway before it plowed into a snowbank and headed up an incline.  All the way home I thanked Heavenly Father for the gift of that warning that came through the Holy Ghost.

For many years I have made it a practice to not pick up hitchhikers unless the Holy Ghost tells me to do so.  On the half-dozen occasions when I’ve been instructed to stop, I invariably find that the individual has prayed for help.  There are few feelings as sweet as knowing that the Lord has seen fit to send you as His representative to answer a person’s prayer.  This has happened  in many aspects of my life, but the following accounts are only those connected with hitchhikers.

In October 1986 I went to general conference.  I took my 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter as companions.  We also gave an elderly friend, Melba, a ride to Utah to visit her son and family.

On the way back we passed some hitchhikers just outside Tremonton, Utah.  As we passed I was smitten to see that it was a man and a woman with a baby.  Something told me to stop.

I argued within myself that I never pick up hitchhikers, but as I watched them recede in my rear view mirror I still felt that I should stop.  I turned to Melba and asked, “Should I have stopped?”

“I think you should have,” she replied.

Seeing a place to cross the median strip, I did so, and drove back down the freeway beyond the hitchhikers to another crossing.  As I waited for an opportunity to reenter the traffic a van pulled up to the hitchhikers and stopped.

I was relieved to have the responsibility removed from my shoulders, got back on the freeway and sped past the parked van into which the hitchhiking family was loading its gear.  As I zoomed past, however, I noticed that there was but one person in the van, and that the person was a woman.

At that point the Spirit again seemed to speak and said, “That woman is LDS, and needs to be watched.”

I drove a little slower in hopes that the van would overtake me.  In a few minutes it did so.  I then sped up and began following them.  I noted the license:  Idaho 1P31-018.  I determined that I would follow even if the van should turn off onto another route.

Mile after mile I followed to the Utah border and then across Southern Idaho.  After about 200 miles the van finally pulled into a rest stop.  I followed and parked beside it.  The hitchhikers got out and went into the restrooms.  The lady who was driving got out and looked quizzically at me.  I, too, got out and, walking up to her said:  “Did you know that you have a guardian angel?”

“What do you mean?”

I explained that I had gone back around to pick up the hitchhikers, but that she had beaten me to the draw.

“I noticed that you were all alone.  I thought if that were my wife picking up hitchhikers I’d certainly want someone watching after her, so I decided to follow.  Are they all right?”

“Well-ll, I don’t know.  When they started whispering I almost bailed out.”

She then made a comment about her being a Mormon, whereupon I said:

“I knew you were.  I’m an LDS bishop from Baker, and I think I’m supposed to be watching out for you.”

The lady was from New Plymouth, Idaho.  She had left her husband in Provo.  She had told the hitchhikers, who were going to Eugene, that she would take them to Ontario and let them off there.  I told the man that I would follow them to Ontario and give them a ride from there to Baker.  I figured that would keep them honest if they were aware that we were behind them.

When we arrived in Ontario, the couple had decided that they wanted out there, and wouldn’t be needing a lift to Baker.  They had also told the lady that they were out hitchhiking “just for fun.”

“I’ll always remember my guardian angel,” the woman said as we parted.

I’m really not sure what all was involved in this incident.  Something was not right about those hitchhikers.  I have always felt that the Spirit and I intervened to prevent a tragedy.

In October 1994 I had to go to Union, Oregon.  On the way I noticed a hitchhiker resting against his pack in Pyles Canyon several miles out of Union.  I found myself thinking that if he was there when I returned, I’d give him a ride.  Thirty minutes later I was heading back the way I’d come.  The man was hiking up the road going my direction.  I pulled over.  He tossed something into the brush.  He had three heavy bags and packs which we put into the trunk.  He said, “I told God that if the next car stopped, I’d throw my cigarettes away for good.”  That was what went into the bushes.

He told me that he had been reading his Bible, and had lived in the mountains for 3-1/2 years.  He used to be hooked on heroin and other things.  “But God helped get me off those.  I couldn’t have done it without Him,” he said.  “And cigarettes were the last thing I had to get rid of.”  I took him to Baker, Oregon and asked if I could take him two miles out of the way while I got something for him.  I went to the meetinghouse and got a Book of Mormon which he gratefully accepted, put in his vest, and said that he would definitely read.

In August 1995 I was on my way to Rexburg, Idaho to deliver a girl named RoseAnn to Ricks College and to pick up my daughter, Amy.  Several miles west of Ontario, Oregon we passed a stalled vehicle at the side of the road.  As we sped past I noticed a young man standing on the far side of the vehicle leaning against it like he was just waiting for help to get back.  As I passed, a distinct impression came over me to stop.  I said to RoseAnn, “I never stop for hitchhikers, but this fellow needs us.”  I backed up a quarter of a mile.  When I reached the young man, he came up to my window, leaned over, looked in, and said with a surprised voice, “Hi, RoseAnn!”  In an equally surprised voice RoseAnn said, “Hi, Coy!”

RoseAnn and Coy had been high school classmates.  Coy was the son of our recently-released stake Young Women president.  He was on his way to the Boise Temple for his sister’s wedding when his car seized up.  He later told RoseAnn’s father that he had been standing there praying harder than he’s ever prayed in his life, and that it was the first time that he’s had a prayer answered so dramatically.  We got him to the temple with 10 minutes to spare.

RoseAnn’s father told me that he was once driving down the freeway when he passed a stalled car.  As he went past, he could see feet sticking out from under the car on the far side.  A voice told him three times to stop.  He backed up a half mile, and found two women coming out from the far side of the car.  They asked if he was LDS.  Telling them that he was, they replied that they had just been kneeling and praying that an LDS man would stop and help them.

Before our mission to Vanuatu I was a temple ordinance worker in Boise, Idaho where I made many great friends.  One miserably wet, snowy day I was returning from Hermiston, Oregon where I had purchased a planer for my wood shop.  The highway outside Pendleton, Oregon climbs up Cabbage Hill and enters the Blue Mountains.  The road was slushy.  It was cold and raining.  As I got to the top of the hill I was astounded to see a man pushing a heavily-laden bicycle.  The cars and trucks that passed were all splashing him.  Seemingly of its own accord my pickup pulled over and stopped.  I told the man to put his bike in the back, and to get in.

I learned that he was on his annual journey from his job in Portland, Oregon to Utah where he lived.  This was the first time that he’d attempted it on a bicycle.  Winter is not a good time to try such a thing.  The poor man was frozen.  It was one hour until dark, and he still had many miles to go before he could find shelter.  Even if he could eventually reach La Grande and Baker without perishing in the mountains, he would still have the largely uninhabited 70-mile stretch to traverse between Baker and Ontario.

“Without help this man is going to die,” I thought to myself, but I know how to get him all the way to Utah.  I thought of my fellow ordinance workers at the temple, and realized that I knew individuals all the way to Mountain Home, Idaho who would be happy to help with the project that I had in mind.  I could take the man to Ontario where I’d meet my friend who would take him to Boise where he’d meet another friend who would take him to Mountain Home where another friend would take him farther and put him in the care of some acquaintance of his own that he’d have on down the line.  I guessed that together we might get the man all the way to his destination in Ogden.

Three phone calls put the plan into effect.

I had no doubt but what the Holy Ghost had orchestrated the whole series of events.  Surely the man had prayed and asked for the help.  I wanted to confirm that idea.  As I visited with the man I gave him every opportunity to tell me that he’d been praying for someone to stop, but he never said it.

I passed the man to my friend in Ontario, who passed him to my wife’s cousin, Jim, in Boise.  Jim destroyed my vision of creating a chain of good Samaritans by deciding that he would personally take the man all the way to Ogden—which he did.

Jim told me later that he offered the man a Book of Mormon, but the man said, “James already gave me one.  I’m going to read it...I have an LDS friend who’s always telling me about the service network your church has.  Boy, do you have a network!...I think I’ll ask my friend to take me to church with him.  He’s always offering.”

And then he said, “I was pushing my bike up the hill in the rain and I prayed to God for help.  It wasn’t two minutes before James stopped and offered me a ride.”

The Holy Ghost is, indeed, the ideal traveling companion.  We should never be without it.