One day, I was driving a scheduled ride that took me to Heber City. To entice someone to take this undesirable ride they stacked another scheduled ride on top of that ride. This next ride went down to Salt Lake. This was great because you would never actually want to go just to Heber. They don’t pay enough and there’s no way you are getting a ride out of there.
When I talk to people who live in Heber, they tell me it’s very difficult to get a ride and this is why no one goes there.
As I dropped the man off in Heber, I was looking for my next ride. It had disappeared. Either the person canceled the ride, which normally would have given me a notice or a cancellation fee, or there wasn’t really a ride in the first place and they just put it on there to trick me into taking the ride.
It doesn’t really matter which of those two options it is. The fact is I was sitting in Heber on the north side of town and kind of in a surly mood. I wondered where I should go. I said a little prayer. The second I got done praying I got a ride in Park city. It was a 23 minute ride to pick him up and it didn’t pay very much money but it was back to American Fork and so I thought that it would pay for my gas. I headed off to pick him up.
I pulled in to pick him up and I started looking for him. We don’t know what the people look like and they don’t show us the people’s pictures even though most of the time they have them. It’s kind of a fun game to sit there and try to guess which of all the people is the one you’re supposed to pick up. You roll over by them, roll down your window and say their name as it appears on the app to see how they react. I’ve gotten pretty good at this and this time was no exception.
As I pulled in there was a guy smoking a cigarette. You never want smokers in your clean car. I said, well that’s got to be him, of course it’s him! The spirit chastised me immediately and let me know that this young man was here for a reason. I knew that I had better get my mind and my heart in it.
Once I felt this impression the spirit washed over me and I could see the young man in a different light. It was kind of amazing because just before I had seen him kind of as a ne’er-do-well smoking a cigarette and now I was looking at him as a child of God and it made all the difference in the world.
He got in the car, and I knew based on the prompting I had received that there was work to do. We started with small talk.
It turns out that he was going to American Fork to pick up a new car. His last car was totaled in an accident and he was picking up a new car with the insurance money. He wasn’t happy with the amount of money he was getting.
I could commiserate with him due to the fact that I had recently been in an accident that wasn’t my fault where the other driver didn’t have insurance. My insurance along with the ride share insurance each paid less than I did out-of-pocket. It is quite maddening but I digress.
I shared my story with him and we laughed. He said, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one getting taken advantage of. I asked him how long he had lived in Park City. He said that he had lived there for four years. He said that he was a cook at one of the restaurants on Main Street in Park City.
I knew the restaurant where he was a cook and I thought that was pretty cool. I told him that. I had given lots of people who worked at that restaurant rides in the past, including his manager.
As we were chitchatting, I felt by the spirit that I needed to get busy. Even though it was a long ride, we were going to need that time. I needed to find a way to bring up the church.
I asked him if he had gone to college to learn to be a chef or if he just worked in restaurants to learned the skill. He described to me the years of studying and working under various chefs that were required to have a job at his level with his restaurant.
He asked me, how long have you lived here? I told him that I moved here to go to college after my church mission. He said, church mission? Where did you go? I said, I went to Argentina. He said, both of my parents are from Latin America and we always spoke Spanish in our home.
I asked him if he was Catholic. He said that he was not Catholic. He said that his parents were Catholic. He said that his family was Catholic but he hadn’t felt like one for a long time. He said that for most of his life he had never seen the purpose for having a church but lately this attitude of his was changing.
He said that he had been trying to find a church where he would feel like he fit. He wanted to find a church that taught the things that he thought Jesus would teach. He said, with all these churches around, you would think that it would be easy to find, wouldn’t you?
I laughed and said, this sounds familiar. He said, why? I said, listening to you talk is just like hearing the story of Joseph Smith. He said, I’ve heard that name. Isn’t Joseph Smith, the one that started your church? I said, yes he was.
I said, he was a 14-year-old farm boy from New York who didn’t have a lot of education but what he did have was a burning desire to know truth. He wanted to know which church was true so he went around to all of the churches talking to the people and try to figure it out.
I said, he went to the Bible and read that if you lack wisdom, ask of God. That made a lot of sense to him. Joseph Smith said that this counsel from James in the Bible impacted him tremendously. He decided to do exactly what it said. I said, he went to the forest, he knelt and prayed. 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 took that opportunity to testify with power. I told him that I knew that this was true. I told him that I knew that Joseph Smith was called of God and that he saw God the father and Jesus Christ. I said, our church is the restored church of Jesus Christ through his prophet. I said, every church has some truth, but our church has the complete restored gospel with all of the truth.
I told him that as the apostles were killed and the church was scattered, they lost much of the truth. All of the churches had parts of the truth but none of them had the whole truth. I told him that this is why there are so many churches. They all have part of the truth, but there are things that they just don’t have.
I told him that our church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was restored with all of the teachings and authority from God that existed in the church when Jesus Christ was on the earth. He said, wow, that’s quite a statement, but I believe you. He said, I got a good feeling while you were telling me that. It felt good and I just felt like that was true. I asked him how it felt and he said, it feels like a warm light. I said, that’s the spirit of God. I told him that the spirit of God testifies of truth and when you feel that, you know that the things you are hearing are true.
I told him that in our church prophets are really important. I told him that prophets teach us the things that God would have us know and they reveal his truth to us. They give us commandments so that we can be happy. I told him that there had been prophets here in America in ancient times. These prophets taught the people, blessed the people and helped them be happy. They taught them to look to God.
I said, your ancestors knew prophets of God. He said, that’s really cool to think. I’ve always thought of the prophets in the Bible, but never considered that maybe there could have been prophets in America. I said, they wrote down their revelations on Golden plates so that they could be preserved.
I told him that one of the prophets that lived here in America whose name was Moroni gave those plates to Joseph Smith and he translated them by the power of God. I said, that translation is what we have today and it’s called the Book of Mormon. I told him that the Book of Mormon was his religious heritage. I said that it contained the word of God as it was given to his ancestors.
I asked him, if that were true, would it be important? He said, yes, very important.
I told him that the Book of Mormon also contained the account of the visit of Jesus Christ to America. He was stunned. He said, what?? I’ve never heard that. I told him that in Jerusalem, Jesus said that he had other sheep and that he was going to go visit them so they could hear his voice and be counted among his sheep. After saying this Jesus ascended into heaven.
I asked him who those other sheep were and he thought for a minute and said, I guess you’re saying that they are the people here in America. I said, that’s right. Jesus Christ descended from heaven here in America. The prophets had prophesied that he would come and he did.
I said, when Jesus Christ got here the people pled with him for salvation and he gave them just that. He called up 12 men, gave them authority and commanded them to baptize everyone, even though they had already been baptized.
At this time, I felt very impressed that I needed to talk to him a lot about baptism. I told him that we were all children of our Heavenly Father and that he wants us all to come home and live with him. I told him that he sent us to Earth to learn things and to see if we were willing to obey.
I told him that one of the things he told us that we needed to do was be baptized in order to return to live with him. I told him that this is why when the people asked Jesus If he would save them, he gave them baptism. Once they had been baptized, they could repent, become clean and stand before God with a clear conscience.
I said, baptism is not just a commandment. It’s a gift that God gives us so that we can prepare to be in his presence.
I asked him if God was perfect and he said yes. I asked him if God loved us and he said yes. I asked him if God was our father and he said absolutely. I asked, as a perfect, loving, all powerful father, do you think he would have a perfect plan that would offer an opportunity for salvation to each one of his children? He said, yes. I said, we believe that too. God has a perfect plan that includes the opportunity for everyone of his children to be baptized so that they can come home to him.
I told him that each of us receives our baptism and then later we are able to go and perform what is called baptisms for the dead. I said, in the New Testament, they talked about baptisms for the dead. It’s one of the truths that were lost. I said, we go to our temples and are baptized for a person who has died. They then have the opportunity to accept that baptism, be cleansed from their sin and stand confident and blameless before God.
This is the plan that God has for each of his children. This is how God can require his children to be spotless, even though no one is without sin. Through the atonement of Jesus Christ and repentance for our sins and then baptism we can be become worthy to return to him. Every one of his children will have that opportunity.
He said, yeah, it’s really cool that you mentioned this because that has always bothered me. I’ve always wondered how people could say that God was just and fair yet at the same time, condemn people for not having been baptized who were never taught about Jesus.
He said, I was never baptized. My parents didn’t baptize me when I was little. I didn’t want to get baptized until I found the church that I felt was the church of Jesus Christ. The true church.
I took that opportunity to bear my testimony again. I testified to the truthfulness of the church. As I testified, I sensed that he was somewhat bothered by the thought of standing before God. I felt that he was ashamed of some of the things he had done and he was thinking about them.
I told him that I had these promptings and that this is what he was thinking about right then. I assured him that those things he was thinking about would be forgiven by God and washed clean through repentance and baptism. I said, this is why baptism is important so that we can stand before God with confidence. We want to be able to enjoy being in his presence.
He said, that is what I want, I want to feel clean. I want to feel like I’m not waiting for the other shoe to drop. Sometimes you feel like you can never become clean. This cleanliness before God is really what I want.
I said, this is why baptism was really important when Christ arrived in America. Once they had been baptized and received the gift of the Holy Ghost, they could walk with God all the time. It’s one of the great messages of all time and it was recorded in the Book of Mormon. That’s why it’s called the Book of Mormon another Testament of Jesus Christ. That book testifies of him and the way we can all come back to him and our father in heaven. This is why it was so important for Joseph Smith to translate that book so that we can know that God loves everyone not just the people in Jerusalem
He said, I like that you’re talking about the Book of Mormon. There’s one at my house. The people that lived there before I did left one but I have never opened it. I just put it on the shelf and I stare at it. I have been wondering what was in that book. Now I want to find out, especially because it’s about my people.
He said, a girl that works with me is a member of your church. She would always get time off on Sundays for an hour or two to go to church. She’s a really good person and I need to talk to her about this. He pulled out his phone, looked up her phone number and sent her a text, saying, I’m talking with someone about your church right now, we need to talk.
I asked him about going to church. I know that a lot of those people that work in Park City are very busy on Sundays. He said he would love to go to church and could take his lunch hour and attend if it were close.
There is a chapel pretty close to downtown and I was hoping that it would be his chapel. I sent in the reference through the tools app and got the information back. He meets at 9 AM in the chapel close to his work downtown. We were very excited. I also got the name of the missionaries and called them. They gave him a call within an hour of receiving my call.
After spending this time figuring out how to go to church, that he had friends who were members of the church and lining him up with the missionaries, I felt that it was important for me to bear my testimony one more time.
I testified of the truth of the church, the Book of Mormon, the prophet Joseph Smith, and the love our Heavenly Father has for us. I testified to him that when Jesus came to America, he gave them baptism and invited them to be baptized, and that Jesus was extending that same invitation to him. I said that the missionaries would help him prepare for that.
The spirit was really strong and I could tell that he was very emotional. With tears in his eyes, he said, I would like that very much. I want to be clean and I know that I was put here today so that I could learn about this. I’ve been looking for the truth for a long time and it feels like I found it.
I asked him again what he was feeling and he said, just like I said before. This feeling is the spirit and I love it. I said, that spirit accompanies truth. When you feel that you know that the things you’re hearing are true. You know that the things that we have discussed are the will of God. He said, yes, I can feel that.
I said, now you know that God wants you to be baptized. He said, yes I do and yes, I will. He asked, what do I need to do to be baptized? I said, you need to go to church and you need to have the missionaries teach you. You need to read the Book of Mormon and pray for further confirmation that it is true.
I said, that book is the key. If that book is true then it means that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, we have a prophet today and the church is true. He said, I already believe that book is true. For some reason, I just couldn’t bring myself to throw it out. It held a lot of interest for me. It’s almost like it was calling me and now I know it was. I will study it and get to know it.
(I’ve got to say it doesn’t get any better than that.)
We were pulling into American Fork and he was getting out of the car. There was a different light about him and an excitement as we spoke. I didn’t even smell the cigarette anymore. I did however think about David O McKay’s quote that the sweetest smell in sacrament meeting is cigarette smoke. It means God‘s children are coming home.
He asked me if I feel like sometimes God puts people in my car because he felt like he was put there today to help him find the truth. I smiled and said, it’s been known to happen
One thing I can say is that there’s no such thing as a coincidence. I never would’ve gone to Heber if I hadn’t had been promised the trip to Salt Lake. If the trip to Salt Lake hadn’t canceled I never would’ve been there to get this trip. When I saw him smoking the spirit engaged with me so I didn’t have to waste any time getting over that. He happened to be looking for the truth and had been praying to find it. He had just moved into his apartment a few months ago and the previous tenants left a Book of Mormon that he just couldn’t bring himself to get rid of. Coincidence? I think not.
Sometimes God sends you a lift 