One evening I was driving over on the east side of Salt Lake when I picked up a young man at an apartment complex. He came out and he was happy and bubbly. He was not inebriated which made me happy. Sometimes you get sick of people being drunk because they are so obnoxious.
He got in my car and I could tell right away that he had an Australian accent. I asked him how long he’s been here and he said he had just arrived a couple of days ago. He asked me if I’ve ever been to Australia, and I said no. Then I decided to do what I do with a lot of my Passengers. I decided to speak their native language if I can.
I like to use the words and phrases in the different languages that I know and Australian is no exception. Realizing that one of the most famous Australians that I know is Bruce, the shark, I said, Fish are friends not food in my best Australian accent.
He laughed and said we need to work on your accent and we spent a few minutes doing that. I told him that it’s hard to learn an accent, but I do speak Spanish and have a pretty heavy argentine accent when I do. he said his friend was from Argentina and asked me how I learned to speak Argentine Spanish.
I told him that I went on my mission to a Argentina. He asked how I liked it and I said I liked it a lot. I told him I like the food and the people and I mentioned to him that they play a little soccer there. I told him that most of all I liked teaching them about Jesus.
I had assumed from the start that this young man was not a member of the church and had kind of used my mission as a way to bring it up. As a response, he said that there are lots of missionaries in Australia, and lots of churches. The way he said these things along with the promptings of the spirit let me know that he was a member of the church.
I said, oh so you’re a member of the church. He bowed his head thought for a second and then said I used to be but not anymore.
I told him that I get a lot of people in my car that are less active members of the church like he was or that aren’t members of the church at all and I get to help my father rescue some of them.
I went on to tell him that I am able to field difficult to ask questions from people. I said there are a lot of things that people won’t ask their friend or a family members for fear of offending them. In my car, they don’t feel that inhibition and they’re able to discuss the things they don’t know or the things that concern them.
I said it leads to lots of great discussions. I told him, it gives me a chance to teach the gospel, and that the lord has put a lot of people in my car for that purpose. I shared a couple of stories with him of people I have written of from my car, some of which got baptized and a many of them reactivated in the church. I put special emphasis on those, because I wanted him to feel free to ask me questions.
He never loosened up, so I went in a little bit deeper. The stories that I had told him brought a measure of the spirit to the car. In those stories and by using those stories, I testified of the principles of the gospel. I had testified about Joseph Smith, the book of Mormon and the importance of serving Christ.
He just didn’t seem to be ready to embrace a conversation. It seemed like he had a spiritual hands extended out as if to push. It was almost as if he were struggling to stop the impact of the spirit of the testimony.
I looked at him and said, you know your father in heaven loves you. He loves you so much more than you could ever imagine. I told him that he lived with his father in heaven for thousands and thousands and thousands of years and that he had a relationship with his father in heaven. I told him that he could feel all the way down to his spirit. I told him his spirit knew that and reacted to it. I told him to quit fighting that spirit to quit resisting his fathers love.
I told him the spirit is in the car tonight. I said “you need to know that the spirit is here because your father in heaven has sent his spirit to be with us”. He has done this because he loves you. I told him that God loved him all those years ago and he loves him today.
I asked him what he felt and he said, it’s kind of a remarkable event. I thought that was a strange thing to say, but I’ve never been to Australia, so maybe they say that. I said, you know that this is the spirit of your father in heaven. He said, I guess, yes.
I could sure use something stronger than, I guess, yes, and I felt prompted to say someday he was going to have a family and when he has that family, his son or daughter will be sick and you won’t know what to do. I said if things don’t change, when that day arrives, you’ll think of being in this car tonight and you’ll remember me talking about giving priesthood blessings. You’ll call your dad to give your child a blessing, but in your soul, you’ll know that you should’ve been ready to give that blessing.
I told him, this is why you were here. You need to know that God knows who you are, and where you are no matter where you are. You need to know that God loves you and he’ll be there for you. I told him that God understands our whole process, but that God needs him to come back.
The spirit poured in the car as I said these words. The Lord validated them, and I think it shocked him a little bit. I said, you left the church for a couple of reasons. One reason you left the church was because you felt like people were judging you. You couldn’t stand being with such judgmental people. He said, that’s right!
I told him that he should look at it from a different perspective. I told him he should look at it as him being the judgmental one that separated himself, not the other way around. I told him that there are no victims in the gospel, unless we make ourselves victims. We do it to ourselves.
I told him that he would maybe consider going up and hugging those people who are judgmental to him and tell them that he loves them and watch that change everything. He said, you know, that would change everything.
I felt impressed by the spirit that he had had some frustrations over not being recognized and he blamed it on God for not recognizing him.
I said, you are a very loving person who loves to serve. “You were very frustrated that it seemed like people didn’t recognize this. They didn’t give you support or credit when you did it. You didn’t think people saw you in this light even though it meant a lot to you”.
I testified to him that, even though maybe other people didn’t seem to notice this his father in heaven noticed that he was using these gifts and talents to serve.
I told him that this make God happy and that’s why it made him feel so good. I told him that I understand wanting to have people support you and even recognize your efforts but we can never lose track of the fact that it’s our father in heaven, who sees all and blesses us when we serve him.
I told him that there have been some very influential people in his life that had been leaders in the church. They had been dismissive of him and his gifts. They never gave him and opportunities to serve. I said that he held grudges against some of these men. I told him that he had elevated these people in such a way as they didn’t deserve. I said that some of these people hurt him he blamed the whole church and some of them left the church themselves and he followed.
He said that is amazing, how could you have known that. I explained to him that I had the Holy Ghost, just like he had been given. I said that through the gift of all the ghost god can reveal his will and words to our soul. When we are worthy of the Holy Ghost, he can whisper to our ears and tell us the things that we need to say. I told him that I didn’t know him, but everything I had said that night came from the spirit of God.
He said, looking down at his hands “and you were right about everything !“
I said, you know, you don’t need to wait until your child is sick. I told him that I promised him by the power of God that if he would do the things that he knew that he should with our regards to serving other people he would find that god would serve them with and he would do more good. I said that if he would do this and seek out those who offended him with love, God would bless him for everyone to see.
I told him it was important for him to understand that God loved everybody in the world not just the people in Jerusalem and that there was no racism tolerated in God‘s kingdom. Even though people are flawed he needed to know that God loves everyone and that he sent his son not just to Jerusalem and America but all over the world because God loves everyone.
he said, how did you know that the race thing was one of my issues? Then he said, I imagine you knew it, just like you knew the other things! I said, I don’t know these things, but I know that the spirit of God has whispered them to me, so that you can know that the other things I say are true.
I bore my testimony to him of Joseph Smith and the book of Mormon. I talked about their importance in helping us let everyone know that God loves them and sharing that love. He said again this is been a remarkable event. We had been sitting in front of his friends house for quite some time, and he said, I have to rethink some things in my life.
I told him that his heavenly father loved him and was ready for him to come back at any time, but if he didn’t someday he would be standing with his sick child, wishing he had the power of God.
He seemed a bit emotional to me. He said that he hadn’t felt the spirit like this in such a long time and a reevaluation was way overdue.
This is a good young man and I know someday he’ll be back even if it takes a sick child to bring him around. I don’t think it will come to that.
Sometimes God sends you a lift 