Last Saturday (1 April 2017) found me in Salt Lake City with four of my grandsons (Samuel, Isaiah, Ammon, and Hyrum).  These are good boys—country boys—who found themselves in the big city.  These country boys came to the city and were thrilled to find escalators.  They wondered if city boys going to the country would be as thrilled to see and try out real stairs.

With practice Isaiah eventually became very good at placing his entire foot on a single step of the escalator, rather than on the crack between steps which necessitated adjustments in balance as the escalator started to climb.  He was proud of himself for learning a new skill.

Samuel and Ammon set out on a tour of discovery and found that escalators gave access to no less than four parking levels under the City Center Mall.

The train ride from 5th South to Temple Square was also an exciting adventure and new experience for the boys.  Even their grandfather was pleased with himself for learning the difference between blue, green, and red trains, and for not getting taken to an unfamiliar part of town like happened on the previous trip with four granddaughters.

It was good to be in the Conference Center with 22,000 other like-minded people, and to feel a part of something big and grand.  It was disappointing that the prophet was not there, too; but the disappointment was short-lived as he appeared on the screen in the Tabernacle as we attended the Priesthood session in that historic building.

I was proud of my four handsome, happy, shiny, knowledgeable, honorable, mannerly, righteous grandsons.  I was wishing that we’d run into a camera-toting reporter from the Ensign magazine on Temple Square so that he could recognize how good-looking my grandsons were and put them in the conference issue.

I couldn’t help contrasting them with the unshaven, heavily-tattooed, ear-ring-bedecked waiters where we ate, and with their ferocious-looking, unkempt brothers that we passed on the street.  I wondered again why men want to look like that.  Back in my day most people looked wholesome; but then the hippy days happened, and it became fashionable to look dark, dirty, and unkempt.

Similar things happened in the Book of Mormon every time the people departed from righteousness.  Nephi says that in vision, “I beheld, after they had dwindled in unbelief they became a dark, and loathsome, and a filthy people, full of idleness and all manner of abominations.”  (1 Nephi 12:23).

In the book of Alma it is written that “...it is strange to relate, not long after their dissensions they became more hardened and impenitent, and more wild, wicked and ferocious, ... giving way to indolence, and all manner of lasciviousness; yea, entirely forgetting the Lord their God.”  (Alma 47:36).

Likewise today, there is a stark contrast between believers (of whatever denomination) and unbelievers.

I’m so grateful that I found the Church in time for me to be married in the temple, and to raise my children in the Church.  We obviously did a good job because all 10 are actively serving in the Church and are working diligently to raise their own children in righteousness.

I had a visit with my four grandsons.  I told them that the visit was a test to see how well they knew their grandfather.

I asked them, “What is the most important thing to me?”

“Us,” one correctly said.

“Yes!” I answered.  “It’s my posterity.  My ultimate goal is that I want no vacancies in my family when we reach the Celestial Kingdom.

“I have a number of intermediate goals to help us reach the big one.  In the next 15 months I want to:

1. finish indexing 50 years of general conference,
2. complete Danny’s Book, Volume VI,
3. finish the two books I”m currently working on,
4. be able to say I’ve read the Book of Mormon once for every year of my life,
5. and get completely out of debt.”

The first three goals I’m doing for my posterity.  The fourth is the “sacrifice” I’ve chosen to make in order to encourage the Lord’s help in the achieving of the goals, and the fifth is the goal I’ve been working toward all my life.

Everything I do is for my family.  The Lord’s words in Moses 1:39 are my words:  “This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life...” of my posterity.

I suggested to my grandsons that to help me achieve my goals that they needed to set some of their own.  I asked what those would be.

The first grandson said, “Read the scriptures daily,” and I added, “Specifically the Book of Mormon, because Joseph Smith said that a man can get nearer to God by reading the Book of Mormon than by reading any other book, and I have a testimony of that.”

“Get our patriarchal blessings,” the second grandson said.

“When?” I asked.

“As soon as possible,” he replied.

“Serve a mission,” the third grandson said.

“Pray every day,” the fourth said.

“And the fifth one is to get married in the temple,” I concluded. “Spencer W. Kimball counseled young men to serve a mission, to get married, and to get an education.  If done in that order they wouldn’t get in trouble.”

My grandchildren live in extremely dangerous but momentous times.  If they live their lives carefully, it is extremely likely that they’ll be in a situation that has never before happened in the history of the world:

I think it entirely possible that they’ll never have funerals.

I, myself, am a borderline case, but will probably spend a short time in the grave.  But if my grandchildren should live another 50 years, the Lord’s Second Coming will surely have occurred, and they will “be changed in the twinkling of an eye” from mortality to the resurrected state.  (D&C 43:32, 63:51, 101:31).

If my posterity and I can just hang onto our righteousness for a few more years, we’ll be all right, and I’ll achieve my goals.