"I Am So Grateful. . ."

We have returned home from our trip to Washington D.C. where we picked up Sister Merilee Goates. She was released into our care and keeping a week ago on Thursday morning at the final transfer meeting. I take today's title for this post from Sister Goates.

If there were one phrase I heard repeatedly more than any other from our daughter, it was this one - "I am so grateful for. . ." and then she would cite a specific blessing she had received. The list included her testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ as she witnessed the dramatic changes that had come into people's lives whom she had taught.

She referred again and again to members of the Church with whom she had labored to teach their friends, many of whom eventually joined the Church.

I heard her express gratitude for ALL the people who had changed her life for the better, including her mission president, Matthew Riggs, and his wife and their children, the senior missionary couples who had influenced her, her companions, and all the leaders of the Church she had met, including President Brian Swinton of the Washington D.C. Temple. We had a chance to renew our boyhood ties as we concluded an endowment session last Saturday morning. She mentioned several occasions where he had given sound counsel to missionaries and members.

There was a stranger she met on the Metro as we rode back from the city that day, an engaging black lady who was a grandmother and lifelong government employee who was full of light. After their brief encounter, Sister Goates expressed gratitude for putting that wonderful woman in her path that day so she could invite her to join our Church. She was a Southern Baptist, who knew much about the Mormons and had visited the Washington D.C. Temple in times past.

Gratitude was on her lips for a pair of shoes someone had sent to her on her mission, and for a sweater an investigator had given her when she needed warmth during her first bitter cold winter in Virginia. I also heard gratitude expressed for Honeycrisp apples to which she was introduced. She was never without one thereafter, so grateful for the discovery.

The weather was also on the list. We were at Mount Vernon on a November day basking in 70 degrees when she said it. She also spoke of green trees, so dense that in summer it was impossible to navigate because of the canopy of leaves on all those trees. And then her gratitude was for the fall colors of the leaves that were still clinging to their branches. And then it was for barren trees that made it possible to discern our surroundings more clearly.

Her citizenship in the United States also made the list of things for which she is most grateful. Living in that history-rich environment had heightened her awareness of all our blessings as free people, and the incredible price for freedom that has been paid by so many hundreds of thousands for that precious gift. It is hard to visit those stirring memorials on the National Mall and not be moved. The inspired quotations chiseled in granite, marble and other stones remind everyone of the cost to overthrow tyranny. The World War II Memorial honors over 400,000 lost in the global conflict. The price of freedom is always eternal vigilance. May we never forget the sacrifices of so many! The Vietnam War Memorial inscribed with all the names of the dead in that conflict designed to stop the march of communism was yet another reminder.

On a gorgeous fall morning in November, she shed some tears as we stood inside the Lincoln Memorial and I recounted my love for that iconic American leader who presided during a very divisive time in our history. Emotions were also close to the surface as we stood at the base of the statue of Thomas Jefferson at the other end of the Tidal Basin. Reading their words in those sacred precincts is inspiring. Later we watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and soberly pondered how many there must be like that one in our perpetual struggle to remain free. As we visited JFK's grave site overlooking the capital city and stood before the eternal flame burning there, hope of our perpetual freedom in America was rekindled and sunk deep within our hearts. We were there only hours before the commemoration of Kennedy's death fifty years ago. Oh, what memories it conjured up within me!

Iwo Jima Memorial

She admitted her favorite monument was the Iwo Jima statue, since it was not far from her apartment in Arlington and she was able to visit frequently during her stay there. She was so grateful for those sacred times of somber reflection.

Perhaps most impressive was her introduction to us of a young refugee from Egypt, Yousef, a Coptic Christian who was forced to flee to America when the violence against Christians in Egypt seemed to accelerate a couple of years ago. Yousef is on date for baptism into the Church in December. We had a chance to read several scriptures with him, to testify, and to re-commit him to his baptism date. That's really what we spent most of our time doing in D.C. - retracing her steps with people she had met, loved, served and taught.

As we spoke with Yousef he told us how excited he was about the prospects that soon all minority groups, including the Mormons, would be recognized in two months when the new Constitution for Egypt becomes ratified. His desktop background has pictures of Mormon temples that dot the globe now. He loves the thought that someday there will be temple in Cairo. I told him I felt impressed he would be in the vanguard of early pioneer saints in Egypt, all in fulfillment of the prophecy of Elder Bruce R. McConkie in 1980. Yousef, thrilled at the prospect when I explained he would someday be a pioneer for Mormonism in his beloved Egypt, exulted, "Soon everyone on earth will know about the Mormons!" I felt impressed to tell him I believed as part of Elder McConkie's prophecy there would someday be a temple in Cairo, and he would live to see the day come to pass if he remained faithful to his testimony.

As we left his apartment with water bottles he had graciously given to us out of the little he had to give, Sister Goates once again said, "Meeting Yousef has helped me to appreciate so much my citizenship in America. I had always taken so much for granted. He is here to escape death in his own country, where he told me Christians were being slaughtered in the streets. How grateful I am for freedom to worship God!"

Tears silently fell as the aerial view of Washington D.C. faded into the distance on the horizon. Her face now turned West to resume her life again. She will look back with fondness on her missionary experience, but she will also begin a new chapter now with a renewed sense of gratitude, cultivated from her last eighteen months in Virginia. She will never again be the same person she was.

So we are grateful this week before Thanksgiving for all our blessings as a family. As we recount them all, our list like Merilee's grows longer and longer. This year they include being reunited with Merilee, and yesterday we met our first grandson at the airport, Elder Izach Jach, who returned home from the Iowa Des Moines Mission, taller, broader, and a pillar of power after a mission experience filled with happiness and success.

Our cup is running over, and I am so grateful. . .

Why I Celebrate on the 4th of July

There is perhaps no other place on earth where the annual celebration of the birth of a nation is done in such a unique way. We don't line up our armaments and parade them past the White House with everyone in America cheering our collection of long-range missiles with nuclear warheads as thousands of troops goose-step down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Instead, we have picnics in the backyard and we light off fireworks. At least we used to light off fireworks - now Utah is so bone-dry only the bone-heads light off fireworks.

We celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, 1776. It was no small feat for a fledgling group of diverse colonies to agree to condemn the sitting King of England in such scathing terms. We opposed what we believed was tyranny and taxation without representation. Funny thing is THAT form of taxation doesn't even hold a candle to the tyranny one could assert now exists in America WITH representation. But that's a story for another day, isn't it?

I celebrate the glorious gift of freedom on this July 4th. I celebrate the ability to put some thin-sliced marinated beef briskets on the grill with chocolate brownies and congo squares and grape ice cream for dessert. I remember and I am grateful for the sacrifice of so many men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for my family so we could enjoy one another's company as we gather at the Ranch this weekend.

I'm grateful to all those who fought in the heat of the summer and the bitter cold of a Valley Forge winter during the Revolutionary War to give life to the words of the Declaration of Independence.

It was 150 years ago this week in which the bloodiest battle of the Civil War was fought in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Both sides fielded courageous advocates for what their version of freedom looked like.

War-worn and long-postponed plans for life were the common lot of my father's generation. Some called it the "Greatest Generation." That global conflagration, once considered the war to end all wars, was only the prelude to a sustained period of years that saw unparalleled growth and expansion of freedom's blessings worldwide.

As I grow older it is increasingly more difficult to take the hard work and sacrifice of all those who came before me for granted. I stir with emotion every time I sing the National Anthem. I tear up when I think about the flag that flies a few feet from my home and realize what it represents in blood, toil and courage.

I checked the other day about who reads this blog. I've had readers represented in 22 countries so far. To them I would say, don't give up on the ideals America represents. I pray all may remember the sacrifice of so many who have gone before to make freedom a reality beyond the ideal.

I have freedom to get up every day of my life in America to try and make something good happen, something that but for me would not exist.

I have the unrequited joy of seeing my children and grandchildren succeeding and prospering as adults who are making a contribution for good to their own families, their country, their Church and their employers. They are amazing people who emerged from a simple idea, "Patsy, I love you, will you marry me?"

I am only beginning to understand what it means to be a father, but understanding the meaning that goes behind "Grandpa" is so much easier and fulfilling.

My wife of 44 years is growing older at my side day by day, and as we laugh about our deteriorating body parts, we can share not only that but so much more together in relative peace and tranquility compared to so many others in our strife-riddled world.

Oakley, Utah, not far from where we live, puts on a stellar parade every year. The highway is closed all morning long, then the fabulous new rodeo arena sponsors the Oakley Rodeo at night for a continuous feast of Americana at its best. There is nothing to compare with John Wayne's booming voice over the loudspeakers declaring "America, Why I Love Her."



The Woodland Ward sponsors the annual 4th of July breakfast, complete with flag raising ceremony and a huge American breakfast of pancakes, eggs, hash browns, bacon, ham and all the fixin's any way you want it.

I will never tire of celebrating the 4th of July. To be sure, America has her problems, and many predict her demise, but I choose to remain optimistic about her future. As long as God's children can muster enough gratitude for blessings received, we will continue to find a majority who value the cause of freedom. .

Happy 4th of July!

Free to Choose Eternal Life

Last week we were in the Salt Lake Temple for a stake temple day.  We have many ordinance workers from our stake who volunteer their time, most of whom are elderly and not in the best of health.  They arise early in the morning, even the middle of the night for most of them, to perform that sacred service for the patrons who come to do the work of saving souls.

In all of this they are agents on an errand from the Lord.  No one compels anyone to do anything in this Church.  We are free to choose.  There is no way God at this late stage in the earth's temporal existence, having put in place the plan of life to include the gift of agency, can reverse course and do it some other way.   

Lehi said it well:  "Men are free according to the flesh; and all things are given them which are expedient unto man. And they are free to choose liberty and eternal life, through the great Mediator of all men, or to choose captivity and death, according to the captivity and power of the devil; for he seeketh that all men might be miserable like unto himself." (2 Nephi 2:27).

The plan ensures even God must bow before the immutable effects of agency, but we also have the assurance that despite the rigors and demands of the law there will be mercy as well.  It was President J. Reuben Clark Jr. who reminded us:

"I believe that in his justice and mercy [God] will give us the maximum reward for our acts, give us all that he can give, and in the reverse, I believe that he will impose upon us the minimum penalty which it is possible for him to impose" (Conference Report, October 1953, 84).

In our stake temple day session I was taught a profound truth about the Father.  

We read the verse about how Lucifer does not understand "the mind of God."  (Moses 4:6).  Because it is true, there was no way Lucifer could comprehend or accept the way agency and joy would someday intertwine in the hearts and minds of the believers who would embrace Jesus Christ as their Savior and Redeemer.

There is no such thing as "avoiding" agency.  Even choosing no decision is a decision. Delay is a delusion. Procrastination is joy deferred, but it is still a decision.

Conversely, actively choosing to be obedient is a choice.  Obedient Jesus, for example, chose to let His will be "swallowed up in the will of the Father."  (Mosiah 15:7).  It was His deliberate choice — a choice on this Thanksgiving Day for which we all became immensely blessed everlastingly and eternally.  Our gratitude extends beyond this life into the eternities up ahead because of His choice.  

Elder Neal A. Maxwell once wrote:  "Being obedient is a way of life, but it is also the way to eternal life."  (Moving in His Majesty and Power, "Free to Choose").

Without being able to choose among many alternatives, wouldn't "life" really be no life at all?  We are told things would "remain as dead," having "neither sense nor insensibility."  (2 Nephi 2:11).  Only agency and the freedom to choose activates life before, here and hereafter.

We are informed further by Father Lehi that God's creation would have been wasted and would have served "no purpose," but for the freedom to choose.  (2 Nephi 2:12).  What if?  What if there were no agency?  I wonder if we know what might have been in the absence of agency.

The lesson from Lehi continues:  God wants us to have joy, which is the purpose of His creation (see 2 Nephi 2:25).  We cannot do that if we "remain as dead."  (2 Nephi 2:11).   We must be free to choose to become like Him.

Now for the temple lesson the other night.  I was reminded in the endowment drama of just how hard the lessons of the Gods must be.  There is such a profound profusion of doctrine associated with what it means to be the parent of a rebellious son who abuses his agency.  In two verses we learn so much:  "And it came to pass that Adam, being tempted of the devil -- for, behold, the devil was before Adam, for he rebelled against me, saying, Give me thine honor, which is my power; and also a third part of the hosts of heaven turned he away from me because of their agency; and they were thrust down, and thus came the devil and his angels."  (D&C 29:36-37).  

Note the word rebelled.  Lucifer "rebelled against me" (Moses 4:3; italics mine).  Maybe it was just a foretaste of that which was to come on this earth -- all the unresolved father-and-son differences and angst.  One-third of Heavenly Father's children were turned away from Him!  Parents often lament the rebellious children who reject their teachings.  But all must do as the Father did to become as He is.  We must embrace agency in spite of the pain and anguish it often evokes.  There is a common misperception among us that there were two plans presented in what gave rise ultimately to the "war in heaven."  However, Lucifer wasn't putting forth a plan.  Instead he was rejecting and rebelling against the established plan of the Gods, the very same plan under which our God achieved his godhood.  

The other night I was reminded again this was an agonizing personal loss to the Father.  The "heavens wept over" Lucifer, His "son of the morning" (D&C 76:26), who rejected the Father and turned away from Him a third of His children "because of their agency."  I caught a brief glimpse of the agony in one word:  "Depart!"  (D&C 29:36).

It's the irony that is so inescapable.  Lucifer used the very agency he was given (see Moses 4:3).  The bitter pill is part and parcel of parenting, then, now and forever.  It is godlike in every dimension.  Were it possible, Lucifer really would have destroyed our agency as part of achieving his ascendancy, all the while using the agency God had given him.

I saw the agony even for a brief instant the other night.  Imagine the personal rejection the Father must have known in that moment when the plan was rejected!  What did the Father experience that is so crucial to our individual growth into godhood?  Wouldn't most of us shrink in the fellowship of that suffering?  Becoming like God is so euphemistic it is almost axiomatic.  But did we really comprehend the suffering to get there?  And later would come the ultimate parenting agony of standing aside when His Firstborn Son suffered for all in Gethsemane and at Golgotha.

Much later in the recorded scriptural record, we are reminded that Enoch saw the God of heaven weep.  Why all the tears?  Because of human suffering resulting from man's failure to keep His commandments to love Him and one another (see Moses 7:24, 28).  When Enoch saw the heavens weep, they reflected the same agony of the Father (see Moses 7:29, 33).

Still, even in the agony of such ultimate rejection, we see "God moving in his majesty and power."  (D&C 88:47).

He is still moving in that direction for all of us today.  For that we may be truly grateful on this day of gratitude and thanksgiving.

Thanks, Elder Holland

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland

After President Monson's opening remarks at today's opening session of the 180th semi-annual General Conference, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland expressed his gratitude for all the members of the Church and their quiet and dedicated service to others.

His gentle spirit this morning prompted many feelings of gratitude within me.  We are coming into that season of the year set aside for remembering and for being thankful.  We may not be able to do all things, but we can all be grateful.  In this we are all equals.

My feelings of gratitude extended this morning to my family first.  When one becomes a grandfather many, many times (up to 35 and counting!), life becomes more filled with memories that push out expansive hopes or fears for the unknown future.  I have outlived all my fears now.  I don't get too worked up about what might happen now, because I have a lifetime of experience behind to whisper reminders that those things I feared most as a young man never happened.

The story of the book of Deuteronomy in the Old Testament is filled with the word "remember."  I was reminded frequently by Richard Holzapfel that perhaps it could be said "Thou shalt remember" might be considered the 11th commandment.

As Elder Holland reminded me this morning, remembering what others have done for me and counting my blessings is humbling.  I am more frequently aware than ever before how much I have to be thankful for and for God's goodness.  I find my prayers are more populated with gratitude than ever before.  Of course,  partaking of the sacrament is the essence and centerpiece of my gratitude, as we partake "in remembrance," so that we may "always remember" what Jesus has done for us (3 Nephi 18:11; Moroni 4, 5).

Sometimes, like the ungrateful and forgetful mortals we tend to be, we ask God if not always just rhetorically, "What have you done for me lately?" Alma reminded his people to ask themselves whether or not they had "sufficiently retained in remembrance" His deliverance and blessings (Alma 5:6-7). Later he reminds them at the judgment day we will all have "perfect remembrance" of all we have forgotten (Alma 5:18).

Best to remember here and now to be grateful. 

Elder Holland cited President James E. Faust's lifetime agony over his "sin of omission," when he neglected to show his gratitude for his grandmother by failing to carry in the tinder box filled with firewood she used to prepare all the family meals.  Then Elder Holland publicly thanked his aged mother for her sacrifice so he could serve his mission and for his parents' preservation of his savings so he'd have a financial cushion to begin his education after his return.  He lamented he would have to wait to tell his father, who died 34 yeras ago. 

The important theme of remembrance occurs routinely in the Old Testament -- over two hundred times.  It appears in The Book of Mormon dozens of times also.  Whenever the gospel has been upon the earth in every dispensation, the call to remembrance is part of it.

It seems if we fail to live in "thanksgiving daily" (Alma 34:38), God finds a way to help His forgetful and backsliding children frequently by "prompting" them to remember their gratitude.  "And thus we see that except the Lord doth chasten his people with many afflictions, yea, except he doth visit them with death and with terror, and with famine and with all manner of pestilence, they will not remember him" (Helaman 12:3).

"Because of the word" and our many blessings, we have testimonies and gratitude in varing stages of development (Alma 32:14).  Elder Neal A. Maxwell was fond of reminding us of our need for meekness in our discipleship.  Without it, our view in present deprivations or afflictions may prompt forgetfulness instead of gratitude.  Even Joseph Smith had to be reminded about how his suffering compared with Job's and the Savior's -- "Thou art not yet as Job" (D&C 121:10); "The Son of Man hath descended below them all. Art thou greater than he?" (D&C 122:8). 

I am routinely humbled when thoughts of "poor me" invade my remembrance of them and others like them.  Remembering our gratitude can bring the much-needed perspective.

Alma's suggests we must remember to "sing the song of redeeming love" about the days in which we now live, as well as the days gone by (Alma 5:26; 34:38).  Remembering what the Lord has done in preserving us in past days inspires courage in our present circumstances.

There is a wonderful treatise on "bread" in the gospel of John.  I love the symbolism in the sixth chapter.  Christ had just miraculously produced loaves and fishes for the hungry multitude of several thousand (see John 6:1-14).  We learn there was "enough and to spare," and they were "filled."  But like even the best and most expensive meals we consume today, the next morning some of those who had partaken and been eyewitnesses were hungry again.  The Savior reminded them, "Your fathers did eat [similarly miraculous] manna in the wilderness, and are dead."  He was telling them they would have remained forever dead, too, but for His offering the Atonement to them, an infinite and eternal blessing.  In the wilderness the children of Israel were impelled to gather the manna daily because of its perishable nature, but in Christ they would have the "true bread from heaven," filling them so that they would "never hunger" again (see John 6:31-58).

I must routinely pull myself back from excesses and hyperbole when I tend to get caught up in the heat of political rhetoric.  As you can no doubt discern from these pages, I am deeply concerned as a citizen of the United States of America that we are losing ground in preserving our precious constitutional liberties.  I see slippage everywhere, including the freedoms of religion, speech, and press.  Events in our country, and those around the world remind me of my need for thanksgiving for all the liberties we enjoy as Americans.  When I have rational thoughts, I remember that throughout recorded world history most mortals who have come to live on planet Earth have not had any such constitutionally protected liberties. 

Property rights here and now in America have always been vouched safe as a core element of the Constitution.  However, they are being trampled upon now and can be easily revoked, non-existent, or easily lost through the foreclosures we have witnessed in escalating numbers in recent months.  But wonderful as those property rights may seem now, they pale into insignificance when compared with even one of the least of the many mansions we may someday inherit from our Heavenly Father.  I have to remind myself to keep it all in perspective by remembering what I've been promised if faithful.

After the bread lesson, soon came the "light" lesson.  Fresh from the celebration of the great Feast of Tabernacles featuring illuminated candelabra in the courtyard of the temple at Jerusalem, the Savior taught His followers He was the Light of the world and they would never need to walk in darkness (see John 8:12).

Walking by the light of the Restoration can dispel all the darkness and clouds of political deception currently permeating our existence.  Even the minions of darkness cannot threaten its illuminating relevance in our lives.  I have been reminded this morning that overthrowing the divinely-given principles of the Constitution is not easily achieved.

Thanks, Elder Holland for reminding us to remember to be grateful for that assurance.