I have a friend who lived over near me from Latin America. If you look in the dictionary under a man of few words, you see his picture. He never really had much to say, but he had good vibes. He would go to church with his wife but he wasn’t baptized.
I asked the family why he wasn’t baptized and they said they didn’t know. They said he didn’t want to talk about it. They told me the story of this family and the church and their dad‘s role in making sure they were faithful even though he wasn’t a member. They lived about 2 1/2 hours from the small town where they met in a home they used as a church house. It was a dangerous drive. My friend would get up every Sunday morning and drive his family to church, then go to sacrament meetings with his family and finally drive them back. He had rejected the church so many times that no one bothered with him.
All of his kids were members of the church and one had served a mission. He paid for that mission by working an extra job. This man loved his family and he wanted to see them do the right things.
When they told me the story I was blown away. When we discussed this family, a lot of people I knew would say, what’s wrong with this guy? I was sitting in a meeting hearing these types of comments when the spirit whispered to me, “no! Look at and focus on what’s right with this guy”.
I heard the voice of my Mission President, president Baroni, in Argentina, who used to say, people aren’t stupid, they usually do the things that they do for good reasons. He would always say that this is when you have to listen to the spirit and let the Lord give you the right questions to ask. He taught us to show proper love so that they would feel the spirit when you ask those inspired questions.
It was almost as if I was in a training watching President Baroni say that. Instantly, I knew that these were my marching orders. I had to quit treating him like the annoyance or the plus one, like he had been treated for years by many people, and get to know him.
This tends to happen when we are focused intently on the members of the family who have been baptized and accept the nonmember status of the ones who have not. Many times we have a tendency to quit working with them. We quit trying with them and we quit praying about them. We just know that they are the non-members in the family .
It became clear to me by the spirit that it was time for him to feel the love of his father in heaven so that he could be receptive to the questions and open his heart. I felt an urgency to have an honest exchange.
He was staying with his son‘s family and they were friends of mine. This was good because some of them had become a little bit lax in their attendance at church meetings. They arrived late and left after sacrament meeting. I had been over with that family a lot trying to change their temperature towards being fully engaged in the church. I decided to use that proximity to get to know this patriarch of the family. I figured that one of the best ways to get them re-energized and on point with the church would be working with his father.
When I brought it up to his wife and kids they kind of laughed and said, everybody else has tried. What makes you think that you can make this happen? When they said that in my mind, I remembered the prompting I received and what President Baroni had said. I said, I don’t think I’m going to do anything. We’re going to create an environment where the Lord can work in his heart.
We became friends and started taking long rides and talking a lot. We talked about everything from farming to construction. We even sprinkled in a little soccer, given the fact that I knew the most famous professional soccer player from his own country personally. He was duely impressed.
After several months of this, our friendship was strengthening. He was attending church with his family as had been his custom for years even though there was not a 2 1/2 hour drive. It was more like a five minute slow walk.
I felt impressed by the spirit that it was time to start asking questions. I still hadn’t been given a clear question by the spirit to ask. I started asking general questions about the gospel.
Do you know about Joseph Smith? His answer was, Yes!
Do you believe he saw God? He said yes!
Do you believe the Book of Mormon is true? He said yes.
Do you believe the church is true? He said yes.
I asked him, if you believe these things are true, why haven’t you been baptized? He got kind of a little bit squirrely and said, I have my reasons. I felt like he was almost there, but not quite.
The next Sunday, I had the weirdest prompting. The prompting was that I was supposed to get the key to the baptistery and take him there. In our stake this was not an easy thing to do. I learned a long time ago that in our stake many times the keys to the buildings and the rooms in the buildings are often confused for actual power and getting a hold of them was not easy. I had even been chastised by the stake Primary President for baptizing too many people at different days throughout the month. She insisted I should baptize them all on her stake baptism day and had complained about me to the Stake Presidency. Oh the roadblocks to missionary work we love to construct in the name of organization. The rules we make are sometimes pretty astounding.
We did not attend church in the Stake Center so this was not going to be easy. I called the high councilman and he hemmed and hawed. He didn’t want to go up against the Primary President. I decided to go straight to the stake President and tell him that I’ve been working with this guy and felt prompted by the spirit that I needed to take him over there and show him the baptismal font. He gave me his keys and said, go for it. Maybe I should have just started with him.
The next day, I went over to see my friend and asked him if he wanted to go for a ride. He said yes. Usually rides included something of a treat like ice cream or cookies. Because of this, getting him to go for a ride was not a difficult thing. We got in the car and drove to the Stake Center.
I told him that this was our Stake Center. I turned off the car and we went in. I could tell he was quite anxious and very curious as to why we were at the Stake Center. This was not our normal route when we went for rides. We walked in and walked to the primary room. I went to open the curtains to the baptismal font but the spirit very loudly said not to do this. The spirit told me to take him down into the empty font. Having been led to this point by prompting, I was wondering what I was going to do next.
We walked down into the font and I thought that I would just show him that this is where we did baptisms. I took this opportunity to bear my testimony of the truthfulness of the church, the prophet Joseph Smith, and the Book of Mormon. I testified about baptism and how in the Book of Mormon, Christ commanded everyone that they needed to be baptized, even though they had previously been baptized . I showed him how we stand and how you hold their hand and dip them beneath the water. I mentioned that when I do baptisms, I usually fill the font and I like lots of very warm water.
As I was showing and describing baptism in detail standing in the font the spirit was strong. It was undeniable and I could tell he was feeling it. I looked at him and a light came on in his eyes and a hopeful smile came across his face.
Something clicked. He said, hold on! You baptized people in here? I’ve never been to a baptism in the United States. Are you telling me that you baptize people here? I said, yes, in the warm water. Then I said, this is where we’re going to baptize you! When do you want to get baptized?
To this point he had always intensely avoided the baptism conversation but I could tell that barrier had now been broken. He started to cry and asked, do you want to know why I have never been baptized? I said, yes, it’s a question I’ve had for some time. I have prayed that Heavenly Father would help me know so that I could help you get baptized.
We were still standing there in the baptismal font and he looked at me and said, when I was a kid, two of my friends and I went down to the river to play. We went out in the water and we got in trouble. My two friends drowned and I have been terrified to go into the river ever since then. I’ve never told anyone that. I haven’t gone fishing because of that and I never swim or get in water. I even shower instead of taking baths because I don’t like water. I’m terrified of it. In our town where I’m from, they baptize in that same river my friends drowned in. My kids and my wife were baptized in that river but I could never bring myself to get in that river so I shut myself off to the possibility. I just hoped that my Catholic baptism as a baby would do it for me.
He looked at me and asked, so you’re saying I can be baptized here and not in the river? I said, yes, that’s exactly what I’m telling you. I said, everyone here is baptized in a font like this in a building and not in the river. I asked him if he would be baptized with that same baptism Jesus taught and the same way he taught it. I said, let’s make this right.
The smile on his face lit up the room and he asked, how soon can I be baptized? This is the kind of question that I like to answer. Here we had a man that had pretty much been attending our ward every week for a few months. He had been for all intents and purposes active in the church for over 40 years. He had sacrificed greatly so that his family could be active in the church. He had a testimony of the restoration of the gospel of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He loved the gospel with his family. That man wanted to know when he could be baptized. I said, let’s get a hold of the missionaries but I think we should be able to make this happen in a week or so.
The missionaries were excited. They came over later that day and set up a schedule to teach him the lessons that week and baptize him that next Saturday. They were able to do this because he had read the Book of Mormon, he had taken the lessons a bunch of times and he was ready to make these covenants. When we told his wife and children, they cried. He was a little embarrassed for his lack of understanding over the years but excited that he was ready and able to be baptized.
The baptism was awesome. I got to baptize him and confirm him a member of the church. I also was able to ordain him a priest in the Aaronic Priesthood. He and his son passed the sacrament together at the same time. It was awesome!
This all made me realize that we just need to ask the question in genuine, proved love accompanied by the spirit. He didn’t want to feel stupid and needed a safe place where the spirit was abundant so that he could make himself vulnerable enough to express this fear that had paralyzed his spiritual growth for years.
About a year and a half after he was baptized, he was sealed to his wife and children in the temple. I have had many opportunities to give priesthood blessings and serve in the gospel with this man and his family. I am happy for and will always remember the day he felt comfortable enough to talk to me about his fears so that he could overcome them and follow Christ. This is a picture of them after they were sealed in the Mount Timpanogos Temple. My MTC branch president was the sealer! I am an Idaho boy and I enjoy a bountiful harvest.
Sometimes God sends you a lift 