One night, I was in Park City and I was going to pick up one last ride before I went down to Salt Lake to work for the rest of the night. I got a ride to pick up three young guys in their 20s from a restaurant.
I pulled up, they got in and we started on our way to their Airbnb which was a short distance away. Right out of the box they asked me, so have you lived here all of your life?
I told them no, that I was from Idaho. They asked me why I came here and I said that I came here to go to BYU. They said, we love BYU football, we love Brigham Young. They asked me if I was a Mormon. I didn’t know how this was going to go because they didn’t ask in a reverent way and it was kind of like they were playing around having a good time. I was wondering if they would make fun of me or mock the church.
I said, yes I am! Absolutely! They said we have a question, will you answer a question? I said 100% I will answer your question. They asked, how many wives can you have? They asked, can you have a lot of wives or is that just a myth.
I told them back early on in the church there was plural marriage but that it was abolished in the church and forbidden nearly 130 years ago. They said, oh, so that’s not a thing. I said nope that’s not a thing.
They asked, why did the church have polygamy 130 years ago? This question represented a transition in the discussion. At this point I sensed that they were really trying to learn whereas before I thought that maybe they were being irreverent and crude.
I told them that back in the early days of the church there were lots of hardships, there was persecution and an extermination order and many men were killed leaving families fatherless.
They asked me why there was such hatred. I said, I’m not sure except that people didn’t change and there, in Missouri the church came out as abolitionists in the pre-Civil War south. I told him that in that powder keg, anything was possible. I told them that with these emotional topics people just lost it and our people suffered. I told them they were driven out of their homes.
I said that one of the things they did to take care of these families and assure survival of their church and make it so that people could have the blessing of family was plural marriage.
I said there are a lot of reasons but those are two of them. They said, what? We’ve never heard about that, an extermination order to kill Mormons in the United States? I said yes and that’s why they came here to Utah to escape the persecution that they received from New York to Ohio to Illinois and Missouri. Finally they’d had it and they were brought to Utah by the power if God.
They said, that’s cool. They said, we’re from Tennessee and I don’t blame them for wanting to escape Missouri! We laughed. Then one of them said, so was this all Joseph Smith’s doing? Who was Joseph Smith?
I told the story about Joseph Smith, a 14-year-old boy with a third grade education who was looking for the truth. He couldn’t find the church of God on the earth and he followed what he learned in the Bible and prayed and God the father and Jesus Christ appeared to him and called him to be the prophet to restore the church of Jesus Christ on the earth.
I said Joseph Smith was the prophet God called. One of them said oh, so you don’t think he was the Messiah or a God or something like that? I said no,he was a prophet and he was a man just like we are. I told him we have a prophet today that leads the church, they thought that was really neat.
I told them that Joseph Smith restored the church. He also received the plates with the engravings on them that when translated, by the power of God, were the Book of Mormon. I told him the book was written anciently by prophets in America. It is a manifestation of Gods’ love for the people in America. That is why he gave them prophets just like he did in the Bible.
I told them that these prophets wrote down these prophecies from God and that is the Book of Mormon. I told them that Jesus appeared to the people in America. The back seat said, what? I said, God loves everyone not just the people in Jerusalem, this isn’t a regional church and Jesus was not a regional God. Jesus was the savior of the whole earth. Not just Jerusalem!
I told them that we believe that God sent his son Jesus Christ to America and that Jesus Christ told everybody in Jerusalem that he was coming here when he said “other sheep I have which are not of this fold” and that he was going to visit them. They remembered that scripture and nodded.
I told them that while he was here Jesus said that he still had other sheep that he hadn’t visited and he was going to go to them. I told them about the Buddhist that I had in my car that explained that Budda was the son of the great Buddha. He came to walk amongst them and live with them for a time and taught them how to live. One of them piped up and said that sounds like Jesus Christ and they all agreed.
I said we have the whole truth and it was restored through Joseph Smith. I told him that we have prophets today that continue to receive revelation so that we can know the will of God. One of them said, this is fun we don’t have to get out of the car, do we? I said no. I turned off my app because I had planned to go down to Salt Lake after that ride so it was perfect timing. What a coincidence huh?
I told them that the Book of Mormon was a testament that Jesus Christ is the son of God just like the Old and New testaments. They loved that. Then one said, do you guys believe that if you’re not Mormon you’ll go to hell? That “only you Mormons are going to be running around in heaven”.
It’s a question popularized by South Park in kind of a funny scene but he said it with sincerity. I said, look, we have the authority to perform the ordinances and covenants that we need to go back to Heavenly Father. He said, yeah but does God love everyone or just Mormons and was everything we did to follow Christ in our lives a waste of time just because we’re not Mormons. I said, absolutely not. I told them that when Jesus Christ came to America he descended from heaven, he stood on the steps of the temple then the people knew that they had their God standing in front of them. They touch the prints of the nails in his hands and his feet and they said hosanna which means save us.
Then he called up 12 of them and gave them authority to baptize and commanded that everyone be baptized even though they had already been baptized before and regardless of if they had been baptized he commanded them all to be baptized to his new level, to his new gospel.
I said it’s the same now. God appreciates everything you’ve done and he loves you and Jesus Christ loves you for your devotion and your love and your service and now he is inviting you to take a step up. He is inviting you to this new level.
The spirit was in the car and I could feel it and I said, “what are you guys feeling right now”? Warm, excited and engaged were the three words that came out. I said that’s the spirit of God and that’s because he is here and he’s here because the words I’m saying are true.
They said yes, this is a really cool feeling. I told him that this feeling was here so that they would know what I was saying was true. They said they knew it was true and they all agreed. One said, you speak the truth and he slapped me on the shoulder.
I said, God invited the people in the Book of Mormon and he is inviting you to this new level. One said, what’s in the new level? I said we don’t just get married until death do we part, we have the authority to be married for eternity. There was silence in the backseat and one of them said that’s really cool. I said that’s next level stuff.
I said also back on the theme that God is the God of everyone and not just the people of Jerusalem, how many people lived in India and China and Africa that never heard of Jesus Christ? One of them said probably the majority of all the people that have ever lived on the earth. I said that’s right!
I asked them if they were Gods’s children and they said yes. I asked them if God would want them home and they said yes. I asked them if God was perfect and they said yes. I asked them if a perfect God would have a plan for them and they said absolutely. I told them that in the Bible it talks about baptism for the dead.
I told them that in our church, in our temples we do baptisms for the dead. I can go to the temple and I am baptized in behalf of someone who has passed on that did not have the opportunity to be baptized. He then has the chance to accept it if he wants.
I also told them that in Peter it talks about what Jesus did during the three days he was in the tomb. One of the boys spoke up and said I love Peter! I said, well, Peter taught us that that while Jesus’ body was in the tomb he went to the spirit world and taught the people who hadn’t had a chance to hear the gospel. He set up the work so that everyone there hears the gospel and can take that next step.
They asked me if they could go into the temple. I told them that to go into the temple you had to be a member of the church. They asked me how they could become a member of the church or how that would be possible. I told them that the missionaries would have to teach them and then they would have to be baptized and then they could go to the temple and do baptisms for others including their family members who had died.
I told them that because they had been taught, when we go to the temple and are baptized for them they can have all of the blessings even though they were technically never members of the church on the earth.
There was silence, they were stunned by the complexity and the totality of the gospel. One of them said, “he has everything covered.” Another said of them says, I don’t know what you do in your life but whatever it is that you’re talking about I believe it, I’m Buying. He said that he could not help but believe the words that I was saying and that he knew they were true.,
I asked him if they wanted a Book of Mormon and they said yes, all three said yes! I didn’t have the books with so I made arrangements to come back the next day with three Book of Mormonsfor them.
They told me that they were grateful that I had taken time to answer their questions and had brought the spirit into the car. They told me that they were excited to get those books and read them and that they’d like to have missionaries come to their home in Tennessee.
I told them that we could do that and that I would bring them the books the next day and we would have missionaries come over to their home. They went away happy, feeling the spirit and with a peace in their heart. They had been taught by the spirit.
I think great things are in store for these young men because they were expressing great desire that night to learn the gospel and to learn more about the things we talked about. I am very optimistic because I saw that they had a foundation and knowledge of the Lord and Savior and the desire to follow him. They were sensitive to the spirit and accepting the meaning of that. This could end up being a very nice addition for a singles ward in Tennessee
Sometimes God sends you a lift 