One night I picked up two girls downtown in Salt Lake City and was taking them to the place where they lived in Millcreek. It’s a pretty good ride and about the kind of ride that helps you max out your earning potential so I was really excited.
They got in the car and they were very vibrant and happy. They started talking about the night and it became very apparent that their standards were not exactly the same or consistent with activity in the church.
They clearly had been out having a good time and were ready to go home. As we started driving, they became very chatty. They wanted me to tell them stories that have happened to me while I was driving. I smiled to myself and thought I wonder what would happen if I just told stories about conversions.
Thinking that I just picked them up from a club downtown I thought that it would be better if I started out with some regular stories. I told them stories about people doing crazy things in the car and stuff like that.
We laughed and had a good time for a minute. They said that their first driver tonight was really cool just like me. I said, I’m sure he was cool, but I’m the very best driver they have. Did you know that? They laughed and said, of course you are!
Then one girl piped up and said, you look like you are Mormon. As I’ve explained before, that’s always a dicey situation. Some people get very angry when you say that you’re a member of the church, but I always say I am a member of the church. I own it and I wear it with pride.
I told her, yes I am Mormon! I continued, I go to church every Sunday and I believe in the church 100%. There was really no call for me to go into this extra detail except that I wanted to make it clear so I didn’t have to answer the question, are you still Mormon?
With this opening I felt prompted to start talking about the stories in my car from my blog. I didn’t feel like I could teach these girls direct principles, but I felt like I should tell them blog stories from my car, so that they could learn the principles through the stories.
I told them the stories from my blog, entitled “My God is a God of Miracles” and “Angels in the Front Seat”. I told them that in both of those stories, God whispered the things to my heart that I should say. I told them that he did that so that they would know that the other things I said were true. I could feel the spirit of God in the car as I testified through the stories.
They loved those stories!
Then I did something that I never do. I felt prompted to do it. I told them about the approximate number of people that I’ve worked with that have been baptized in the last 20 years and how many people approximately have been baptized that I have introduced to the church while driving my car. They lit up! They were really excited to hear that. One thing I noticed is that as I told the stories, and as I talked about people being baptized, they started to be influenced by the spirit in the car. They started to get excited. I don’t think that they even realized it was happening. It was clear to me that the spirit they felt was animating them.
I talked to them about giving out Book of Mormons and how important it was to me to re-introduce people to their Heavenly Father and his son, Jesus Christ.
Finally, one of the girls spoke up and said, I am not Mormon but I was raised Mormon and my parents are very Mormon. The other girl said, I’ve never been Mormon!
The first girl spoke up again and said, I was active in the church until I was 18 but I quit believing when I was 12. I could tell there was tremendous resentment in her heart towards the church and towards God.
I listened to her talk for a moment. I told them that I go to church every Sunday! I told them that I teach in the primary and that we are the nursery leaders. I told them that it’s fun to have a calling with my wife.
They thought this was really neat and I thought they would move on at that point, but the girl that was angry with God and angry at the church kept asking questions, almost as if she hadn’t talked to a Mormon for a long time.
She told me about how her mother and father were very active but that she just couldn’t do it anymore. Finally, I saw an opening that I could use.
I said, people do bad things, sometimes they do horrible things. This accounts for people in the church and outside of the church. I told her that one thing I felt very profoundly in my heart was that her Heavenly Father wanted her to know that he loved her.
I told her she had doubted that in her life, but that he loved her very much. I told her not to seal off her heart to Heavenly Father. I told her not to seal off her heart to the possibility of God.
At this point, I was moved by the spirit to say, you will need that relationship with God because someday your child will be very sick and you will want to call upon your dad to put his hands on your child’s head and give him a blessing. I told her not to seal that relationship off. Do not shut that door.
The spirit was strong in the car and we could all feel it. The other girl started commenting about how amazing she felt in hearing the stories. She said, “these stories have really awakened something in me”. Those were the words she used.
By this time we had arrived at their destination. I really emphasized to both of them that Heavenly Father loves them and that he plays a long game. He wants them home! I told them that their father in heaven will do everything in his power to get them to do the things that they need to do to come home.
I told them that is how we fathers are, we will do anything to save our children. I’ve said it before in this blog, and I’ll say it again, but very few things bring the spirit, harder and faster than a testimony of how much God loves his children. I believe it comes especially fast and hard when those children are on the edge or in danger. I believe he wants to reach out and touch them and that he was doing it right then.
The car was burning and I said to the girls, do you feel the spirit in the car right now? Do you feel it? They almost shouted the word yes in unison. They said, yes, yes we feel it.
It was almost an emotional reaction in the back seat and I could tell that they were feeling it. They were flying high. It was time for them to get out and they both asked if they could touch my shoulders and one of them touched my head. As I stated one other time, many times passengers that have felt the spirit and have been impacted deeply like to touch my shoulders. It never happens in any other circumstance. There is pretty much a no contact arrangement in the car but when they have felt the spirit, they want to touch my shoulders or shake my hand. I believe that this is how they want to reach out and feel more deeply for the spirit they are feeling.
I believe it is them reaching out from their heart to their father in heaven. They got out of the car and went up towards the house. I turned around in the cul-de-sac and started heading back out. As I came back through, the girl who wasn’t a member of the church came right up to the car and waved at me. I rolled down my window. She said, I’m going to ask her where I can learn more about this. She smiled and waved again. She come back down after getting to the house just to tell me that. The spirit whispered to me that this girl was the main reason for the ride today.
I was blown away. The Lord was doing work with both girls. I felt the prompting that the way the first girl will come back into the church is through the teaching of her friend. That night there was no denying the truthfulness of the church. That night there was no denying the spirit in the car and they did not try to deny it. That night they knew the church was true, and a course was set for the return of these two young women to their father in heaven.
When I finish having these experiences, I dictate the stories on my drive home. I do this so that I don’t lose details. I always feel the spirit while I’m doing it because it was a spiritual experience. This time as I wrote the final paragraphs about the second girl and her friend helping her into the church, the spirit testified to me very vividly that I got the point. I just wanted to share that.
Sometimes God sends you a lift 