Why So Quiet?

I sat alone in sacrament meeting today. My dear companion who sat by my side for 54 years had departed this life. When I returned home, the deafening silence greeted me as I entered our home. Only hours before the home had been filled with laughter, happiness and lively grandchildren who were loving the joy of being together. And now it was as silent as the Garden Tomb.

After the funeral yesterday, we enjoyed a meal together provided by the generous Relief Society sisters of our ward. Then that was followed by a rousing dance party out on the basketball court. There was happiness and there was nothing but frivolity. I was tired, but they were not.

And then today, it was silent and I was alone with my thoughts.

Oh, my thoughts! How many, how varied, how consistent and how tranquil. I re-watched her funeral online at the Larkin Mortuary website. I shed a few more tears as I listened to our wonderful children share their talents with the audience. 

I told them I wanted two things out of the funeral - to edify and inspire the congregation, and to show them her good example. Both goals of mine were met, I believe.

I have had so many tell me her funeral was one of the finest they have ever attended. Lance Larkin, my cousin, reminded me of what Elder LeGrand Richards once told him about funerals. He said he had been to many funerals during his long life, and that there were good ones and there were bad ones. The good ones, he said, were about good people, and the bad ones, well, you can finish the sentence. Lance told me, "This was a good woman." I echo his sentiment.

I loved hearing her teachings to her children recounted and now embodied in their lives. She taught them how to pray, how to love their Savior, how to serve others without reservation and how to live their lives faithfully here in mortality. 

And then, far too soon for all of us, she took her leave. She went into another room, as she often did when we had said our prayers and I climbed into bed and fell asleep. She, on the other hand, was up again and in another part of the house preparing something good to eat for her loved ones or someone in our ward who was in need of her loving outreach. I would awaken a few hours later, and find my bed empty while she toiled in preparation. Not unlike what I feel now and realize she isn't coming back to bed.

That's what her death represents for me. She has merely gone ahead into another room to make preparations for me and all our posterity. That she will do it with grace, with lovingkindness, and with patience I have no doubts. It may not involve vacuuming the carpet or making good food to eat, but it will involve spiritual sustenance for which each of us craves.

I told the grandchildren before we closed the lid on her casket that she now has superpowers - she can "fly." My meaning is that she will fly quickly to their sides in times of trouble, or times of need, or times of turbulence, or times even of joy. 

I told them to listen carefully for her gentle invitations to do better, to reach a little higher, try a little harder, persist in faith a little longer. In those moments she will meet them and give them the needed encouragement and spiritual strength which she can dispense from a deep treasury of her own making.

She loves the Lord Jesus Christ. Her whole life was anchored in Him. She became much like Him in all His attributes.

I read these words this afternoon, as I opened my copy of The Teachings of Harold B. Lee. It was as if I could hear his voice speaking directly to me:

"Don't be afraid of the testing and trials of life. Sometimes when you are going through the most severe tests, you will be nearer to God than you have any idea, for like the experience of the Master Himself in the temptations on the mount, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the cross at Calvary, the scriptures record, 'And, behold, angels came and ministered unto him' (Matthew 4:11). Sometimes that may happen to you in the midst of your trials." (THBL, p. 192).

She has gone into another room, not far away, and left me to ponder, "Why so quiet?" And the answer seems to suggest, "So that you may hear her when she comes to minister to you."

Julianna Hayes Hewlett - Home at Last

This week we said our final farewells to our adopted Mother and Grandmother, Julianna Hayes Hewlett. She departed this life at age 82, after a forty-year separation from her eternal companion, Patsy's father Lester F. Hewlett, Jr. We came to love her as our own. I am publishing her first-person life sketch here so that many of her beloved students and their families will have the funeral information. Feel free to share the link with everyone who may have interest.

Viewing: Larkin Mortuary (260 E. So. Temple St., Salt Lake), Sunday July 9th 6-8 p.m.

Funeral: Salt Lake 11th Ward (951 E. 100 So., Salt Lake), Monday, July 10th, viewing 10-11:30 a.m., followed by the funeral services at noon.

Interment: Woodland Cemetery, Woodland, Utah 84036

Life Sketch of Julianna Hayes Hewlett

I was born January 21, 1941, in Montpelier, Idaho, the only daughter of William Earl and Verona Schmid Hayes. I had three brothers, Deon (who died at eighteen months), William Dorain Hayes, and Elwyn “Chip” Hayes. Only Chip remains behind in our little family with my passing, and how I have adored him and his wife Sandy! If Chip ever missed a day calling me in the last forty years, I do not remember it.

We moved many places in Idaho and Wyoming following my father’s Union Pacific Railroad occupation. At age four, my mother found me “practicing the piano,” using the arm of the sofa as my keyboard, as we had no such instrument. At that point my parents felt I should be taking lessons as soon as there was money to rent a piano. Fortunately, the Bancroft chapel was being remodeled, and Father requested that our home be used as a place to store the ward piano. Thus began my lessons, and a continuing lifetime interest in music.

I graduated with honors from BYU and began teaching music at Hillside Junior High School in Salt Lake City. My first class in public school teaching was a Boys’ Choir of 103 voices from the 7^th, 8^th and 9^th grades. It proved to be a year of MY education learning how to deal with teenaged mentality.

In 1968, while recuperating in Idaho from a spinal fusion I received a call from President Florence Jacobsen to serve on the General Board of the MIA. Traveling and speaking in many regional conferences, writing lessons and manuals for the MIA, and beginning work of the new LDS hymn book, were highlights in that phase of my Church activity. I also conducted a regional young special interest choir in the Tabernacle for a regional conference.

In 1969, I took a Sabbatical Leave and traveled to Germany with the University of Oregon, where I lived with a German family, toured the famous music schools of Europe, and later received a master’s degree in international music and art education.

I transferred to Highland High School in 1975, teaching choirs and beginning a Humanities class, studying the arts, philosophy and history. I began taking summer tours to Europe to study the wealth of art, music and literature in the world’s greatest museums.

I was reluctantly and unexpectedly lined up on a blind date in 1977, with Lester F. Hewlett, Jr. It was an amazing spiritual recognition, and I cancelled my summer tour to Europe to be sealed in the Salt Lake Temple on July 6, 1977. My father said in April of that year I would be married before summer’s end. His prediction came true. It was truly a match made in heaven.

Les had been the mission president in the Australia South Mission and had previously served on the Young Men’s General Board and on the Church Athletic Committee. Having been one of the first missionaries to open Alaska to missionary work, Les thus began a lifelong love of missionary work. After returning from Australia, he continued volunteering on Temple Square as a tour guide, where his love of the gospel and commitment to missionary work focused his continuing service.

We moved to the Graystone Condominiums in 1978, where Les was the teacher of the high priest group, and I taught the Relief Society cultural refinement lessons. How I loved bringing the joy of music, art and literature to the sisters in the Grant 4^th Ward (later became the Forestview Ward). Traveling with Elder LeGrand Richards for the dedication of the Orson Hyde Memorial was truly one of the highlights of our six years together. At the insistence of Elder Richards, I led the group in “Master the Tempest is Raging” as we crossed the Sea of Galilee and afterward sat in a testimony meeting on the shore. I realized once again the truthfulness of the gospel, and better understood the love Les and I shared in Church service.

Les and I belonged to the Dinnerset Group, and on December 9, 1983, Les and I were the chairpersons of the annual Christmas party at the Lion House. Associating, as the Hewlett family had done for many years with many of the members of the Quorum of the Twelve, we sat with Elder and Sister Neal A. Maxwell singing Christmas carols. I conducted the music in my new red shoes that Les had just bought me.

The next morning, I awakened to find that Les had slipped to the other side of the veil while he slept. The shock was multiplied by the fact he had not been ill. As Elder Maxwell stated at his funeral, “He was blessed not to have tasted death. He was a guileless man.” He loved and gave many blessings to the widows in our ward whom he served as their home teacher.

The years since his passing have found me continuing to teach at Highland, conducting tours occasionally to Europe with students, serving as gospel doctrine teacher, ward music chairman, ward chorister, and teaching Relief Society cultural refinement lessons.

One of the highlights of my music and Church service was in October 1990, when I was invited to conduct a Young Women’s Choir for the afternoon session of General Conference in the Tabernacle. I led 400 young women from the Bountiful and Val Verde Regions, united in beautiful voice and spirit to praise the Lord. It was more memorable by having chosen the hymn, “We Ever Pray for Thee,” and then finding President Benson had been taken to the hospital that weekend. The choice of that hymn had been made by me in July, well before President Benson became acutely ill.

In 1991, a grandson, Ben Pahnke, died of leukemia. Our family was comforted in knowing Les was there to welcome eight-year-old Ben to his heavenly home. Again, in 1993, our seven-week-old grand-daughter Adrienne Goates, was taken home, and Les was seen at her funeral by members of his extended family. It is an incredible comfort knowing the veil is thin and eternal love is strong.

As the years have brought Les’ four children and their families much closer together, I have enjoyed the plethora of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I have loved and been loved as I never could have imagined in my younger single years. All the children, Nancy Pahnke, Patsy Goates, John Hewlett and Ernie Hewlett, have homes at the Ranch above Woodland, where Les and I spent our summers and where the spirit of FAMILY is so intense and loving.

My calling to the Salt Lake Temple as an ordinance worker has been the highlight of my retirement years.

These last years have been filled with physical challenges, but I have used faith, prayers and priesthood blessings to endure to the end. “When upon life’s billows we are tempest tossed, when we are discouraged thinking, all is lost, count your many blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.”

That ends Julie’s obituary in her first-person narrative, but as her adopted Hewlett family we would update the record to state she won a place in all our hearts. She might easily be the most fiercely independent, tenacious and strong-willed woman any of us will ever encounter. However, as she lived her life to its conclusion in the early morning hours of June 29, 2023, we are constrained to conclude in her 82 years of living she filled the full measure of her creation, and she finally and gleefully entered the eternal embrace of her beloved Les after a forty-year absence.

Anneliese Audrey Goates

Thursday morning brought to a close a bittersweet chapter in the lives of our son Jake and wife Heidi, along with their young daughter Jillian. I made reference several weeks ago to their challenges in a previous blog post entitled, "When Sore Trials Come Upon You".

Heidi was pregnant with their second child and they went for a routine ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby. Instead, as part of the ultrasound exam they had received a chilling diagnosis about their daughter intrauterine - she would be an anencephaly baby. They were thrown into a vortex of uncertainty, sorrow, anger and instant grieving, even though the baby hadn't been born yet. Her birth would also mean a simultaneous funeral if she made it full-term.

Patiently, riding a roller coaster of emotions that took them into spiritual heights and plunged them into the darkest abyss, they waded through the ensuing weeks never knowing what the final outcome might look like.

On Thursday morning we received a text message that Heidi's waters had broken and they were on the way to the hospital nine weeks ahead of her due date. At Jake's request, we all dropped to our knees as a family that morning, knowing the outcome of this impending early delivery would bring additional complications, but petitioning Heavenly Father they might have the privilege of holding a live infant long enough for her to be given a name and a father's blessing by Jake.

As we drove the hour to Salt Lake, little Anneliese made her unscheduled appearance. Jake's text said simply, "She's here." She was alive and struggling for life, but ALIVE! I texted back, "MIRACLE!" It was a miracle we had humbly sought together as a united family on their behalf. "She's a little fighter," Jake texted. "She's trying to wait long enough for you to get here so she can meet you." Forty-five minutes later, now tied up in rush hour traffic along Foothill Blvd. in Salt Lake, we received another text, "She's gone."

We had "lived" her life with her vicariously in the car en route to the hospital through our tears, but Jake and Heidi had the exhilaration of holding her for those precious 45 minutes. We arrived shortly after she had expired. Anneliese is our 44th grandchild. She was a beautiful little doll, perfectly formed, still soft and pink with a petite little doll face resembling her sister and Mother. She weighed only 2.2 pounds and was 13 inches long.

In the delivery room as I held her lifeless little body and gazed upon her face, I felt I had always known her as the adult spirit she is. She came momentarily to earth to join their eternal family, and stayed only long enough to claim her mortal body then return home again. In the spirit world someday we will meet again, and in the resurrection her little body will come forth as it will go into the grave on Monday after her funeral. Heidi will hold her once again in her arms and have the blessing of seeing her physical body grow and blossom into its "proper and perfect frame". (See Alma 40:23).

Their hospital room that morning was full of light, hope and gratitude. What could obviously seem like a tragedy to some was experienced as awareness of the great plan of happiness. Some things we know as an intellectual verity. Other things we know because we have lived through them and embraced them for the gift of spiritual knowledge that transcends merely an intellectual possibility. And now they KNEW.

Jake sent out an e-mail this morning describing their experience in part:

Dear Family and Friends,

Our little angel's early arrival on Thursday has been a very sweet experience and a heaven-sent life we were fortunate enough to experience and welcome into our family. While gearing up for her arrival and departure we initially thought we wanted to keep this a very intimate occasion with only a graveside service and family lunch, but after meeting our little Anneliese, we feel we should celebrate the great blessing it has been for her to receive a physical body as part of our Heavenly Father's eternal plan of happiness.

We realize this is short notice, so please don't feel obligated, but we would like to invite each of you, and any others who may not be on this email who you feel should know, to attend her little celebration at our chapel at 10am on Monday January 27th. Heidi and I would like to share our experience of bringing this sweet spirit into the world. It would not have been possible without all of your support along the way and we'd be very ungrateful to not express our appreciation for your love. We are so grateful for the prayers, thoughts, emails, texts, cards, and letters as we've sought to grow our family over the years, especially during this pregnancy.

We love you all and consider ourselves blessed to have you in our lives. If you didn't see our posts on social media, we'd also like to share with you our blog, where Heidi began to share this journey, and will continue to do so.

We are comforted to know Anneliese is waiting on the other side of the veil for us to reunite with her again some day. We're so grateful for Jesus Christ and his victory over death that we might all live again beyond the grave, and for the restoration of his gospel and priesthood on the earth that seals families together forever. It is comforting to know we have been given the opportunity to hold her in our arms again some day, and we pray we might be better people each day of our lives until the great day of resurrection comes.

All our love,

Jake, Heidi, Jillian and Anneliese Goates

Multiply and Replenish

Earlier today, one of our sons forwarded a question from a friend about the temple endowment. In substance, the question was, “Why does God say multiply and Replenish the earth?”  As you know, I've written about this with Scott Strong before, but here are my thoughts today:

The First Commandment:

“Multiply and replenish.” Through the years, Mom and I have been accused of taking that first commandment to “multiply and replenish the earth” totally upon ourselves without leaving room for anyone else. I promise that was never our intent. We were having our family back in the day when birth control pills were first introduced. We were warned by the world’s leading social scientists and astute demographers that if the birth rate continued unchecked mankind would run out of space on the planet.

Of course, this “zero population” movement we were exposed to in our young married life was nothing more than another of Satan’s lies.

Now all these years later, the cries of "overpopulation" and "the depletion of resources" are still as shrill as ever and it is taking its toll. I checked the Internet for the latest numbers to see what’s happened since the last time I checked. I know this may seem off topic from the question, but it is the very essence of the answer you seek.

The latest data from the Population Reference Bureau indicate there are currently twenty countries in the world with negative or zero natural population growth. This is unprecedented in human history!

Negative or zero natural population growth means these countries have more deaths than births or an even number of deaths and births. These data do not include impacts of immigration or emigration. Even including immigration over emigration, only one of the twenty countries (Austria) is expected to grow between 2006 and 2050.

Ukraine has the highest decrease in the natural birth rate, with a natural decrease of 0.8% each year! It is expected to lose 28% of their population between now and 2050 (from 46.8 million now to 33.4 million in 2050).

Russia and Belarus are not far behind with a 0.6% natural decrease. It is estimated now that Russia will lose 22% of its population by 2050. That’s a loss of more than 30 million people (from 142.3 million today to 110.3 million in 2050).

Japan is the only non-European country in the list and it has a 0% natural birth increase and is expected to lose 21% of its population by 2050 (shrinking from 127.8 million to a mere 100.6 million in 2050). The streets of Tokyo won’t be as crowded in a few decades as they are today!

Here's the list of the countries with negative natural increase or zero negative increase in population and the number after the semicolons indicate where they will be by 2050:

Ukraine: 0.8% natural decrease annually; 28% total population decrease by 2050
Russia: -0.6%; -22%
Belarus -0.6%; -12%
Bulgaria -0.5%; -34%
Latvia -0.5%; -23%
Lithuania -0.4%; -15%
Hungary -0.3%; -11%
Romania -0.2%; -29%
Estonia -0.2%; -23%
Moldova -0.2%; -21%
Croatia -0.2%; -14%
Germany -0.2%; -9%
Czech Republic -0.1%; -8%
Japan 0%; -21%
Poland 0%; -17%
Slovakia 0%; -12%
Austria 0%; 8% increase
Italy 0%; -5%
Slovenia 0%; -5%
Greece 0%; -4%

The effect on the economies of those countries has been devastating. Russia has now begun offering cash incentives for childbirth! Without the replenishment of population at least to the level ratio of 1:1, there are not enough “worker bees” to sustain an aging population and the economies will shrink. What is America’s destiny? Trending in that direction.

The words of the temple marriage covenant have never been rescinded and are easily remembered by anyone who’s witnessed a sealing ordinance: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth,” but seldom do we focus on what comes next – “that you may have joy and rejoicing in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

As Mom and I have learned, there is nothing to compare with the blessing of a righteous posterity in your old age. It equates to a literal fulfillment of “joy and rejoicing.” We don’t have to wait for the morning of the first resurrection – we can experience it here and now, and we are living proof.

This is the period of the earth’s temporal existence when modern society sees those two words, “multiply” and “replenish” as antiquated and irrelevant. It is important to note the Lord’s meaning of “replenish.” In Hebrew (see footnote at the bottom of page 2 in Genesis Chapter 1 under verse 28c), that word is translated as “fill.” We are told the earth was created to “fill the measure of its creation” in the 88th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants, and that it would be crowned with celestial glory (verse 19). That ultimate destiny is accomplished by one eternal family doing its part at a time, to “multiply and replenish” the earth. Now that we’re done with child bearing, there’s plenty of work left to do for others.

Here’s the irony: Those who curtail their families for selfish reasons (careers and money are the usual reasons) claim those who are obedient to this command are really the selfish ones. But staying on the Lord’s side of that line, this seminal truth remains in force:

I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low. For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves. Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment. (D&C 104:16–18).

Selfishness underlies many of the reasons we are not obedient to God's commands. Because of selfishness we rob ourselves of the very blessings the commandments were designed to provide. It seems the greatest opportunity to learn eternal values and to achieve heavenly potentials, lies in the possibilities associated with the covenant responsibility and the privilege to create bodies for Heavenly Father’s spirit children. We believe and do what we can to further the eternal plan, or we don’t and end up thwarting it. What I have learned as a father is that the spirits who have come into our home in physical bodies we have prepared for them are really in every sense our brothers and sisters who were awaiting their chance for mortality. Without question, each has been more valiant, more intelligent, and more amazing than we ever were. It is humbling to think they were held in reserve to come forth in these last days. It is an inestimable privilege to be their parents.

In the October 1942 General Conference, the First Presidency delivered a message to “the Saints in every land and clime,” in which they said, “By virtue of the authority in us vested as the First Presidency of the Church, we warn our people.”

And they said: “Amongst His earliest commands to Adam and Eve, the Lord said: ‘Multiply and replenish the earth.’ He has repeated that command in our day. He has again revealed in this, the last dispensation, the principle of the eternity of the marriage covenant. . .

“The Lord has told us that it is the duty of every husband and wife to obey the command given to Adam to multiply and replenish the earth, so that the legions of choice spirits waiting for their tabernacles of flesh may come here and move forward under God’s great design to become perfect souls, for without these fleshly tabernacles they cannot progress to their God-planned destiny. Thus, every husband and wife should become a father and mother in Israel to children born under the holy, eternal covenant.

“By bringing these choice spirits to earth, each father and each mother assume towards the tabernacled spirit and towards the Lord Himself by having taken advantage of the opportunity He offered, an obligation of the most sacred kind, because the fate of that spirit in the eternities to come, the blessings or punishments which shall await it in the hereafter, depend, in great part, upon the care, the teachings, the training which the parents shall give to that spirit.

“No parent can escape that obligation and that responsibility, and for the proper meeting thereof, the Lord will hold us to a strict accountability. No loftier duty than this can be assumed by mortals.”

The second commandment:

“Thou shalt not eat of it.” In Genesis 1:28, Moses 2:28 and Abraham 4:28 we are given the first commandment. The second command was they were not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It seems, once again in Sunday School class, we are reminded it was “impossible” for Adam and Eve to obey both of these contradictory commands. (Genesis 1:28; 2:16–17). However, if the metaphor is really about each of us, as if we were Adam and Eve, there really is no contradiction is there? Adam and Eve had to partake of the "forbidden" fruit in order to multiply. But you and I don’t need to. We are commanded to multiply and replenish the earth, and we are required to avoid partaking of that which has been forbidden. You and I are capable of keeping both of these commandments simultaneously. It’s an interesting reality, isn’t it?

We all have the very same two options as Adam’s and Eve’s posterity. When we kneel at the altar in the temple to be sealed and enter into the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, we are encouraged to keep both commandments, and they are not contradictory are they?

Our first option under the command to multiply and replenish is to be self-serving and to procrastinate having our families until we’re “ready.” “Translate” that any way you wish.

The second option is to sacrifice the luxury and ease of mortality so that our children can be born and grow toward their own exaltation. The choice, the “options” are very straight forward: To have a family or not to have a family. Adam made the choice: "I will partake that man may be!" And we do not partake that man may be born under the covenant. Interesting juxtaposition.

The tree didn’t have death in it. But disobedience did, and produced the first death. Today disobedience produces the second, or spiritual, death. As he often does for me, the Apostle Paul sums it all up nicely:

Add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall. (2 Peter 1:5–10).

So the offer stands from the Lord: Come unto me and freely partake of all the virtues, fruits and gifts of the Spirit. The fulness of the gospel is here among us, today and forever. By partaking of the fulness our calling and election may be made sure. We are enjoined to get involved. True religion is not merely a spectator sport and a theological exercise in dueling Christian doctrines. We are encouraged to be "anxiously engaged" in bringing to pass "much righteousness," not only in the world, but in our own lives. (D&C 58:27). We are commanded to "seek. . . earnestly the best gifts." (D&C 46:8).

That’s how we stay on hallowed ground on the Lord’s side of the line.