Incident in the South China Sea--1971

A Veteran's Day Experience told by Edward, Major, Retired, U.S.A. Army

How are we influenced and are we really listening when our Heavenly Father is talking to us? Who is directing us during this time frame? While I was in Vietnam I had several experiences when I knew I was being prompted by our Heavenly Father. One took place when I was Operations Officer at Chu Lai in April 1971.

Since I was an Instructor Pilot, I’d been given a mission to give a checkride one day. In Vietnam checkrides were given every six months or whenever a pilot was made an aircraft commander. What you did on a checkride was to take the pilot through all the emergency procedures, all routine procedures, make sure they were able to handle the aircraft, see if their judgment was good, and if they were capable of flying the missions they were assigned to fly.

When we got out to the aircraft that morning, the aircraft that I was originally assigned to give the checkride in was restricted from doing running landings which was normally one of our procedures. However, as an I.P. (Instructor Pilot) I could wave that particular portion of the checkride if I wanted to. But I felt, “No, I want to give this particular individual the running landing.”

So I talked to another aircrew that was getting ready to go out on a regular mission that day, and their aircraft was okay for running landings, so we coordinated with maintenance officer to see if there was any problem with swapping aircrafts. He consented to letting us go ahead and swap aircraft.

We took off on the checkride, and everything was perfectly normal—no problems whatsoever. The airfield where I gave the checkride was located right next to South China Sea, and as we were downwind over the sea, all of a sudden there was a loud bang and the aircraft swung violently to the right. I thought initially, we had had a midair collision with an aircraft coming up off the airfield who had taken off and hit us in the back of the aircraft. In my mind, I visualized the aircraft on fire, falling into the ocean and exploding. I grabbed the controls from the young pilot and headed the aircraft for the beach.


Now, normally when you have things like this happen, emergency procedures are to reduce the throttle and make an auto rotation down. However, this time, for some reason, I did not do this. I did the exact opposite. I did not reduce the throttle—I kept it full open. I kept all the power that I had, that the engine could produce, applied to the rotor system. Why I did this I don’t know. I just did it. I can’t say that I was told to do it, or directed to do it. It was just one of those things that for some reason, I did. I kept the full throttle applied.



We made the beach. When we landed, I turned aircraft to land on a steep slope—a 25 degree slope. Usually you can't make a landing on a 25 degree slope in that particular aircraft. How I did it, I don’t have any idea. I just know I did. One skid was in the water, the other skid on the beach. That’s how close it came to going in the water. When the collective pitch was reduced, as the skids touched the beach, the rotor blades came to an immediate stop. Fortunately because of where we were and my extraordinary actions, both the other pilot and I were safe.


When maintenance checked the engine, they discovered that transmission oil was lost due to blown seals, resulting in internal failure of the transmission. The pieces of the transmission were ground into small magnetized metal, pieces of which I still have.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4yjun0Zxwp2iUGG9UFK78qTz01X1Tq_KUQtt1zmMMwYeMDRRgSxwde30N02Keqre1vELQIwq18iqyD6MV-XCT_1kNT__vLqAkacR2eKpE0IbP9YfDnyPn3YcrEqhc6AYBVylXeLQI0_Y/s1600/helicopter+report2+%2528Medium%2529.bmp">Now, if this aircraft, originally scheduled for another mission had gone on its original mission, there’s a very good possibility that the 10 to 14 people aboard (it would have been a loaded aircraft) would not have been as fortunate as we had been. If that aircraft had gone out flying out over the mountains, in very rough terrain, with virtually no landing areas available for them, when the transmission had seized up, there is little chance that they could have landed safely.

Maybe I was just a tool in the hand of our Heavenly Father; if we had not swapped aircraft most likely everybody on that other aircraft would have been killed. By swapping aircraft, I was very fortunate in being exactly where I was in the situation where I was in, to land the aircraft safely.

Our Father in Heaven does give guidance to us. We may not recognize that guidance comes from our Father in Heaven. At the time that this occurrence happened, I would not have said that I had had a vision like Moses did with the burning bush or that I heard a voice like Moses heard coming out of the bush telling him to do this or not to do this. But looking back on it, I know the promptings of the spirit were coming to me. I know that I was being given guidance and direction on what to do. I know that I was being looked after by our Father in Heaven. I know that our Father in Heaven guides us and directs us, and helps us in these things.

"Trailing Clouds of Glory . . . and Eternal Friendships"

Have you ever met someone and felt like you knew them already? Started talking to someone and felt like you were best friends?

Recently my daughter Diana and her husband Jason adopted a son Aedyn. As they get to know and enjoy his special personality, I wonder at the miracle of children and if we knew our children in the pre-existent world.

As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we believe in the Plan of Salvation—that our eternal experience can be divided into three main parts: premortal life, mortal life, and life after death.i In our premortal life or the pre-existence, we were spiritual beings with talents and abilities who chose to come to earth to be tested. Like today on earth, we had friends who we were closer to than others. Did we want to come to earth in families with those who we were close to in the pre-existence? I don’t know, but some things make me wonder.

When I had my second child 18 months after my first, she was as different as night from day as my first born child. Athena was a fussy eater, and would nurse for a minute, wiggle and look around, eventually get back to nursing and wiggle again. She wouldn’t cry; she just wasn’t interested in eating. She was hyperactive and didn’t sleep much and she was never still. Holding her was like holding a pack of monkeys.

She was the cutest, adorable little baby, but she drove me crazy. I had imagined a sweet, doll-like daughter to dress up who would coo at me, and I had a fidgety, squirming bundle of nerves who was never still. Getting her dressed was a 20-minute gymnastic trick and laying still and cooing was something she may have done in her sleep—if she ever slept. She didn’t nurse well, and when she did, she threw up everything—projectile vomiting. For the first year, I smelled like sour milk and I didn’t dare try to feed her any solid food.

One day in Mineral Wells, Texas where we were living, my older toddler son was playing happily and my daughter was going 100 miles per hour. Exhausted, I put Athena in the playpen, and sat down on the couch and broke down in tears. Suddenly I could see my deceased mother standing across the room by my daughter.

“Oh, Beth, I knew Athena’s special spirit before she came to earth! I knew how difficult it would be for you to understand her,” I felt my mother say.

I jerked my head up and stared at the playpen. There was no one, especially my long-deceased mother, standing by the playpen where my daughter was trying to climb out, as I had thought I had seen. I was sure I was going crazy. Not only was I a bad mother, now I was crazy, besides. I put my head in my hands and began to cry harder.

With my eyes closed, I saw my mother’s smile—she was almost laughing as she gazed at the baby. “Your daughter is such a special spirit, Beth. She and I were good friends in the pre-existence. When I knew you were going to be her mother, I knew it would be like it was between us—you two would struggle to understand each other, because you are both so different in personality. Just as we often struggled to understand each other—I often wondered if you were from Mars because we were so different. But just as we loved each other, you and Athena will love each other and learn from each other!”

I jerked my eyes open and although I couldn’t see my mother with my human eyes, I could feel her love and her laughter. I knew she was there in the room with me, comforting me and playing with my tiny daughter. I cried more, but it wasn’t tears of discouragement, but of happiness and love, as I picked up my squirming daughter. I looked around the room and wondered just where my mother was as Athena kept trying to crawl over my shoulder and reach something behind me, then would turn around and almost leap out of my arms grasping for something in front of me.

I thought of that incident over the years when I became discouraged or worried. I didn’t consciously think of my mother being there watching over me; but I knew she understood how I loved and tried to understand a daughter who was so different from me.

Years later we were living in Vicenza, Italy, and Athena and her younger brother, Marc, were receiving their patriarchal blessings from a Patriarch from Frankfurt Germany Serviceman’s Stake. As Brother Peter Mourik, the patriarch, was giving Athena the blessing (which was recorded, typed and given to her), he paused and added, “You are greatly loved by several wonderful friends who have gone to a glorious world. Forefathers and relatives are mindful of you; you have given them joy by the way you live. You do not live for yourself alone.” As he said these words, I felt so strongly that he spoke of my mother who was there in the room with us, who had been a friend to Athena in the pre-existence. I felt my mother’s love for Athena and for me so strongly that I could almost see her.ii

While Ed and I were in our forties and living in Italy, we had thought our child-bearing days were over—I had had nephritis, breast cancer, bilateral modified mastectomies, and many other medical problems. Then one night I “saw” a tall young man’s spirit standing by the side of our bed; he told me he was our son and he would be coming to our family. In January 1987 Bryan Mikele was born in Vicenza, Italy; he is over six feet tall, and very musical.

My daughter Diana loved music from the time she was born. She would calm and “listen” whenever music played. It was so noticeable that I wrote about it in her and in my journal, and then totally forgot about it. When she was a teen-ager, she “discovered” her musical abilities, became a vocalist and became my most musically talented child. She had beautiful blue eyes (my only blue-eyed child out of five children).

Diana and her husband Jason were disappointed twice when they almost adopted a baby, and then it fell through. Once the birth mother changed her mind and decided to keep the baby the day before they were to get the baby. So when they heard there was the possibility of a baby to adopt, they were afraid to hope it could be theirs. But they flew to Utah to check on the possible baby to adopt. The five-month-old boy’s name was “Aedyn,” and the birth mother did not want it to be changed; the only name Diana and Jason had ever planned on for a boy was “Aiden.”

The blue-eyed boy looked so much like Diana and Jason that he could have been their own genetic child. The birth mother said Aedyn's most prominent characteristic was that he loved music and would calm down and “listen” to it whenever he heard it. When the birth mother met with Diana and Jason and let them hold Aedyn, the baby laughed and smiled and was so excited the whole time they had him. The mother took that to mean they were to be his parents and immediately wanted to sign the papers giving him to them. Later she located the birth father and brought him in sign over his rights, fill out his medical history and write a letter to be given to Aedyn explaining why he gave him up to Diana and Jason—so Aedyn could have a better life.

I think Aedyn is Diana and Jason’s baby as much as if he were their own flesh and blood, and not just because he looks like them. If he were black or Hispanic, he would still be theirs—I am sure they were supposed to be a family, and when they are sealed in the temple, they will be an eternal family.

I am sure that if the veils were taken from our eyes and we could see all the pre-existent connections we had on earth today, we would be amazed. Did we give Marc his father’s name as a middle name because of a premortal connection? Are Diana’s musical talents (and her rheumatoid arthritis) a connection to Ed’s grandmother Viola Dayley who also had rheumatoid arthritis and was known for her musical talents all over Southern Idaho?

The next time you meet someone with whom you an instant rapport, is it just coincidence? Or could it be because you were close friends in the premortal life? Wouldn’t you like to know? Someday you will know!

William Wordsworth said it in a beautiful poem,

“Ode:iii
Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:”

_______________________________________________

i http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?index=16&locale=0&sourceId=45af9daac5d98010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD
ii “Patriarchal blessings are given to worthy members of the Church by ordained patriarchs. Patriarchal blessings include a declaration of a person's lineage in the house of Israel and contain personal counsel from the Lord. As a person studies his or her patriarchal blessing and follows the counsel it contains, it will provide guidance, comfort, and protection.”
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?index=16&locale=0&sourceId=17517c2fc20b8010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&vgnextoid=bbd508f54922d010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD

iii http://www.bartleby.com/101/536.html , Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250-1900. William Wordsworth. 1770-1850.

New Technology

I can remember a high school assembly I went to (approximately 1960, or 50 years ago) where someone came and talked about all the technology we would see come to pass in our lifetime. He talked about what was to become the microwave; he told us Dick Tracey’s video wrist watch radio would some be a reality; and he told us about many other technological miracles that would soon become commonplace. I especially remember he talked about a machine they were working on that would transport us from place to place electronically. We would go into a booth-like mechanism, dial our destination, and it would break us down into electrons that could be transported instantly through wires and reassembled on the other end. He said they had already transported a rabbit from room to room. However, he didn’t say if they had done it successfully or not.

To put things in perspective for younger people, in 1960 computers were room-like machines that communicated with punch cards as input/output devices; color TVs were just becoming common. I thought I lived pretty advanced technologically because we had had TV since 1950-1951 (my father was an early adopter of technology), whereas my husband who grew up in rural Southern Idaho, remembers seeing his first black and white TV show as a teenager. In 1963, I worked with computers as a key punch operator (and Ed worked with the Zion’s First Bank’s main frame computer), so we were always interested in technology.



In 1968 we went to the San Antonio Texas World Fair and saw the Future House, with the working video phone, plants growing in water, robot vacuum cleaner and solar heating. Most of these quickly came into use, except the video phone, which is only now becoming widespread with Skype and computer instant messaging. Who would have thought it would have taken 50 years for something that was technically possible (but probably prohibitably expensive, and would need universal technology installed) to become even common.

Other things we didn’t have that I love now, are automatic transmissions and air conditioning in cars. I learned to drive on a stick shift and I remember I had to have an automatic transmission when we got married—we only had one car! Air conditioning was not standard on cars, and I can remember Ed and I driving across Nevada in the summer and put ice on the floor of the car and then turned the lower vent on to blow across the ice to cool us. It worked pretty well until the ice melted!

We were going through flight school in Alabama in 1966, and the only way you could get any television reception was through cable, so we had cable TV way back then. It was very inexpensive there and it later became part of the Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and when we moved back to Alabama in 1980, we were just in time to see the beginning of CNN.

One of the biggest advances that have made such a difference in my life involved the personal computer or PC, which is called that because it is operated directly by an end user without an intervening computer operator. In researching this, I was amazed to realize that “The first true Personal Computer was the Sphere 1 computer, created in Bountiful, Utah in 1975 by computer pioneer Michael D. Wise.” (Wikipedia, the History of Personal Computers).


Even before I got a PC, I recall taking a DOS programming class in college in the early 1980s, and we purchased our first PC, which was actually an Apple IIE, in Italy in 1985. The computer had no hard disk, and my son Marlowe bought a game for it which went to a book series that he had left in storage back in the states. So he hacked into the operating system, read the answers to the questions that he couldn’t remember the answers to play the game. The first “cheat sheets.”

We bought our first PC running MS Windows 3.1 in 1990, and computers have been a major part of my life ever since. I began using the internet and using email when I was working with the Liahona magazine at Church Office Building in 1993. I was coordinating the magazine work between the editorial and art and production departments of the magazine so I often had to get things from the internet (Church News), as well as to and from the translators throughout the world. I think I was one of the first church office workers who had the internet on my computer, although it was limited. I can’t even imagine life without email!

Ed and I had the internet at home very early, and found it fascinating. In 2000 when I changed jobs and began working for the school district as a school technology specialist, my job was learning how to use all technology available, from Ipods, projectors, Smartboards, and much more. Ed and I got our first cell phones while working there in 2000; Ed had said he didn’t see any reason to get a cell phone before then because if someone couldn’t get in touch with him on the regular phone, they didn’t need to. Now he can’t imagine not having a cell phone, with email, the internet and apps running on it.

I have never gotten into instant messaging, except for their video messaging to see and talk to my grandchildren. That is something I love!!!!! I have Skype on my computer, but most people I talk to don’t have it, so I haven’t used it yet. My phone works through the internet so I can call anywhere in the country without long distance, which I like. I never would have taken up Facebook, except that is the only place where my children post photos of my grandchildren, so if I want to get pictures, that is where I have to go. But I only have 15 “friends” on Facebook, and they are all family members—children, siblings, cousins, nieces and nephews. I have learned a little about some of my long-distance nieces though which has been nice. Athena helped me post my first “E-vite” on Facebook when we invited people to an Open House for Diana and Jason and their new baby for this past Saturday afternoon. People can rsvp on Facebook, and it sends them a reminder. However, I have no use for Twitter.


Even simple things like calculators that we never even think about now, were once so expensive that it blows your mind. I recall when Ed was going through his military Air Defense Artillery advanced course in El Paso in 1974 and they were using slide rulers to calculate the effects of nuclear weapons. Ed purchased a new calculator which could do the same thing as the slide rule, except it had memory and could save the information as well as process it. It cost $135.00 (about $1,000 in today’ money) and we thought it was miraculous, but you get the same thing today for $3.00.

The most personally important technology that we have now is the technology that has saved Ed’s life, prolonged it, and has given him a quality of life he hasn’t had in years—organ transplants, specifically, a lung transplant. This is something we couldn’t even imagine when I was growing up, and has personally affected our life.
[Below, Ed a year ago, before a lung transplant; Ed last May after a lung transplant]

Pioneer Day

I’ve always celebrated Pioneer Day—the day the Mormon Pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley. Of course I grew up in Utah, where it is a state holiday and EVERYONE celebrates it. Even when we joined the army and moved to Texas, I still celebrated it with the children because to me it was more than a state or civic holiday—it celebrated my pioneer heritage!

I remember dressing my children in pioneer outfits on July 24 and having them march around the block in Killeen, Texas, pretending they were crossing the plains, coming to the “promised land,” Utah.

I even remember in Hawaii on Pioneer Day, crossing the saddle between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa over to the Kona side of the mountain. There we went to a beach with picnic tables and we made pancakes. Eating our breakfast with sand blowing in our faces, I talked about pioneers and the hardships they’d faced crossing the plains.

There were many Pioneer Day celebrations in many places, but when we retired from the military and came back to Centerville, Utah, I again celebrated Pioneer Day in the traditional way—with parades, fireworks, picnics. There were also rodeos, but I never did those.

This past July 23, I celebrated Pioneer Day in the most authentic way ever—I hiked a “moderately strenuous” three-mile hike at Yellowstone Park with my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren. I really felt like a pioneer as I struggled up that mountain side.

First I felt prepared for the hike. I’d been walking approximately three miles a day in Los Angeles, so I felt fit. I was actually looking forward to the hike with my family. Whenever I think of mountain hikes I think of my mother and how much she loved the mountains, and how we used to hike in Mueller Park above Bountiful when I was growing up.

The first part of the hike went well, and I enjoyed it. We reached our scenic point—a beautiful waterfall that was worth the hike. There were even some wild raspberries there along the trail.

Then there was dissention; my 12-year-old granddaughter Jenni wanted to be in the lead of the group and her mother wanted her to stay with us. My 15-year-old grandson James had gone on ahead of us; Jenni became angry and went back alone. She broke the cardinal rule of hiking: everyone stay together.

We decided to continue on the more difficult part of the trail. Whereas the first part of the trail was easy, this part was the “strenuous” part; it was loopbacks straight up the mountain, across and down the other side. I discovered how really unfit I was. I really struggled to keep up with Athena and seven-year-old Emma. (I might try to claim that we were at 10,000 feet elevation and I had not become totally acclimatized to the altitude, but I don’t think it would wash; I just wasn’t as fit as I thought.)

Athena was patient and kept waiting for me as I stopped to rest, and I thought of the pioneers crossing the mountains; my hearts went out to them. But I knew I had to go on—there was no going back. Even when Emma got tired, she could still run rings around me!

Finally we reached the point where we could see the parking lot down below, and I realized I might make it. Athena was still worried about Jenni, and if she’d met up with James and Dirk at the meeting point. I felt bad that I was holding Athena back so much, but I knew at my old age and decrepit stage of fitness, there was nothing I could do.

But we weren’t through. There was one place on the trail where huge trees had fallen across the trail and we had to crawl across them. Finally we made it back to the trailhead where Jenni had indeed waited for James. We were all together again and we drove to Old Faithful where Ed was waiting patiently for us.

It was an interesting pioneer day exercise with a lot of interesting parallels. Mainly I was glad to make it through and go home. I was glad that I wasn’t the least bit sore the next day; at least I was that fit! I was especially grateful that I’d done it with my family, who were tolerant and understanding.

Plus Athena could say the next month when she took her young women on that hike as part of the young women camp, that if an old 66-year-old lady and a seven-year-old kid could make it, they could, too.

Moving--I Hate It!

One of my most dreaded chores is moving! Despite (or maybe because of) the many years of moving in our 23 years in the military, I dread the actual move!

I hate the preparation for the move, when I go through everything in the house and get rid of half of the stuff because we’ve outgrown it, we don’t need it anymore, it won’t fit in our new location, or just because we can’t take it with us. Moving means major downsizing because everything you move costs twice what it is worth to move, so you must be very sure it is worth it to move it!

--All grocery items automatically go—to neighbors, friends, whoever can use it. It doesn’t matter if you just bought it yesterday, it can’t go with you!

--All kitchen utensils go to a thrift shop too. This move, because we came with only what fit in our car, we had to buy a lot of essentials, toasters, mixers, cake pans, etc. Since I already have duplicates at home, I didn’t need to bring any of that home, so away they went to the nearby thrift store along with the sheets, comforter, plates, glasses, silverware, etc. that we had needed to live with for eight months.

I have to organize everything so when I arrive at the next location, everything is organized, instead of all mixed up like it is in the junk drawer before the move. This is helpful on the other end of the move, but it takes forever, on the “pre-move” end. It takes weeks, and I pack each box, carefully, resenting doing it every minute. Even when the movers packed, I’d go through everything in the house and had it all organized, so they could pack it all exactly like I wanted it—organized. This move, though I packed everything. I am a lot older and slower, so it took a lot longer.

It is painful to say “goodbye” to all the friends we’ve made during our eight-month stay in Los Angeles. We have made some close friends in a short time, but then just like in the military, it isn’t the length of time you are at a place, but the people, that make the difference, and we met some wonderful people—at church, at the hospital, at our apartment, at the lung clinic. As we left friends behind, even knowing we’ll be back in six weeks to see them, the same “leaving forever—nothing will ever be the same” thoughts of our previous moves hit me hard. This part of our life is over; as enjoyable as the next phase of our life will be, it won’t be our time in L. A.

It is hard to leave Los Angeles because we have truly enjoyed the area and our time there; Ed would love to find a condo where we could spend the winter there each year. Many people in Utah have asked us how we liked living in Los Angeles, as though they expected us to relate the perils of living in the big wicked city, fighting gangs, being attacked by movie smut as we walked the streets, inhaling the depraved, smoggy air of Sin City. But our time in the Westwood Area of Los Angeles (one mile south of the Los Angeles Temple) was a memorable one and we enjoyed visiting the local sights—the Getty Villa, La Brea Tar Pits, the Queen Mary at Long Beach, Santa Monica Beach, the Natural History Museum at USC, and much more.

The first part of our move is over, and we’re back home—waiting for our stuff to arrive, so I guess the worst part is over. But I hope I never have to go through that again! But despite everything, the trip was worth it; Ed has a new lung and is a new man, so I can go through a lot more than a move to achieve that!

A Tale of Two Men

This is a tale of two men named Ed. Both were slim, attractive, and white-haired.

The one Ed was a world-famous, wealthy Hollywood agent, who controlled the lives of many famous movie stars. He cared personally for each of his clients; he inspired loyalty as he worked for them personally through good times and bad; he made their careers soar. He taught many young Hollywood professionals to be good agents, and left a heritage of excellence as well as integrity behind as well as wealth and fame.

The other Ed is an average person of no particular renown. A retired military officer who served two tours in Vietnam, he was a military aviator. He has been married for 47 years, and is a father of five children. After he retired from the military, he was a school technology specialist, teaching teachers how to use technology. He is a loving father, a witty man, a caring friend, a charming person who truly enjoyed others. He has kindly led and taught many people over the years.

In January 2010, both men were doing respiratory therapy together at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. During the months they worked together they shared a little of their lives and histories. They were approximately the same age, with advanced lung disease, emphysema.

Recently one Ed--the famous one’s--obituary was in the Los Angeles Times; the same day the ordinary Ed was on a day-and-a half deep-sea fishing trip off the coast of San Diego, California.

No one knows why one person dies and the other lives; that is in God’s hands. For a while last year, the ordinary Ed was so sick with pneumonia and his lung function so restricted that many truly thought his destiny would be limited and his life short-lived. He was on oxygen all the time, but his face was gray, his lips were tinged blue, and he couldn’t say a complete sentence without taking multiple breaths.

The doctors’ options seemed non-existent, and the second time Ed got pneumonia after flying in a commercial plane, he insisted he would never fly in an airplane again—not even to visit family. Going to the store became a major undertaking. When his two granddaughters came over to visit, they began to run into the bedroom and lay on the bed with him and watch “Cash Cab” or “How it is Made” on TV to be with him. The doctors still had no solutions except to keep trying the pulmonary therapy. In three months of therapy, Ed was where they had tried to start him when he began. He had lost 30 pounds.

One small thing changed the situation—a priesthood blessing given Ed by his oldest son, Marlowe in April 2009. In the blessing, Ed was told he had “many more things to do in this life.” He was told that he was to actively seek out treatments that would improve his health. He was told he must “persevere, and keep after the doctors to find a solution to his medical problems.” He was reminded it wouldn’t be easy, but that he must keep looking for treatments that would allow him to recover his health and do the things that he had still had left to do in his life.

The “solution” that changed Ed’s life was a lung transplant, which wasn’t easy or immediate. It couldn’t be done in Utah because of his age—the nearby University of Utah Medical Center did not do transplants on patients over 65 years, and Ed was 68 years-old. However, Ed’s pulmonary specialist did his training at Cedar-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, and recommended Ed to Cedar-Sinai where they evaluated him for a lung transplant (they transplant lung patients until the age of 70 years).

Ed finally passed all the hurdles, rented an apartment in Los Angeles, and moved to California to be eligible to get a transplant. Finally at the end of April, Ed received the lung of a 20-year-old and began his long journey to recovery. It has had its difficulties, including two bronchoscopies, and one time when they had to drain his lung, but in July, he was able to go deep-sea fishing and wrestle the 30 pound albacore tuna into the ship. It was something that he could not have dreamed of doing a year earlier.

What are some of the “many more things” Ed has to do in this life? Who knows? Maybe they are no more than enjoying his children and grandchildren and making memories with them. Maybe it is visiting them wherever they live, watching their activities, and sharing their dreams. However, what a valuable use of the years he now has left to him? Maybe his legacy and obituary won’t be as memorable as that of the famous Ed, but to his family, they are far more precious, more valuable, and of far greater worth than the items listed in famous Ed’s obituary.

Ordinary Ed's monetary wealth will never compare to famous Ed's monetary wealth. But to ordinary Ed's family, his worth in memories is priceless. The one Ed’s memorial will be telecast around the world; The ordinary Ed's memorial will live only in the hearts and in the lives of his friends and family.

"Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play.

Every individual makes a difference."

Jane Goodall

A Father's Legacy

My father was an ordinary, blue-collar man. He never accumulated great wealth, or served as president of an organization, auxiliary or club. He never wrote a book, invented a new machine, won war medals, or did anything to make him well known or famous. When he died, there were no buildings or streets named after him, no colleges endowed by him, or long obituaries written for him.

What legacy did he then leave for his children? He left a legacy of a strong work ethic, a willingness to help others, a love of learning, loving support, and a testimony of Christ.

When I was young, I never realized my father had a testimony, because it was hard for him to show it. I assumed he believed in the gospel because he always took us to Church. However, because he was shy or whatever—I don’t know why—he never blessed, baptized, confirmed, or ordained any of us older children. He did participate in priesthood confirmations and ordinations, so I never felt deprived. That was just how it was. Looking back, I never recall a time when he gave me a father’s blessing during my early years, but maybe I never asked him for one.

I never saw my father gradually take on the mantle of noble patriarch of his family, because after I married, my husband’s work took me far from my childhood home. Even after my mother’s death, as Dad remarried and reared a second family, I was never around to see him magnify his priesthood.

My sister was more fortunate because she lived only a couple of miles from Dad. It was Dad who blessed and named her first son, who helped ordain her husband to the Melchizedek Priesthood, and who participated in all of her sons’ ordinations. He came to their Family Home Evenings and always participated. She recalls that every Christmas Dad would tell of his love of Heavenly Father.

It was 25 years later, when we moved back in my home state with children of our own, that I realized what a strong family leader my father had become. He participated in every ordinance that his many children and grandchildren received. He gave my children and grandchildren priesthood blessings, and I received several very special father’s blessings that I will never forget. He went to the temple with each prospective missionary, and sat in the special place of honor at their weddings.

It was in May of 1998 that I first heard my father bear his testimony. He had helped name and bless a nephew’s newest baby, and afterwards he stood in the fast and testimony meeting and bore a simple, heartfelt testimony.

“So many of my family are here today, that I can’t let this opportunity pass without letting them know I have a testimony of the truthfulness of the gospel,” my father said gripping his canes to keep his balance. “I love the Savior. I know he hears and answers our prayers. I know that we have a prophet at the head of this Church.”

My brothers and sisters and I looked at each other in amazement, because although we had assumed our father had a testimony, we had never heard him bear it before. How grateful we were for that treasured testimony, because not long afterwards he suffered a massive heart attack and never had the opportunity to bear his testimony in public again.

Although my father had difficulty expressing his testimony, his life was a testament of his concern and love for others. He was always the first to help someone in need, to mow someone’s lawn, or fix someone’s car. He shared the bounty of his gardens with everyone.

My father was always intrigued by technology and progress. I recall that we had one of the first television sets in 1950 before there were many channels or shows broadcast. He never lost that enthusiasm for learning new things, and in his 80s, he embraced computers, e-mail, and scanners. I’ll never forget his words in the Intensive Care unit, “I can’t die yet. I haven’t learned how to use my scanner yet.”

My father attended all of our activities and those of our children. He sat through countless recitals, concerts, plays, and games as he cheered his posterity on, and took us out for ice cream afterwards.

Like many of his generation, he was a hard-working man, who expected us to carry our own loads. But, even as he taught us to work hard, he helped us realize how exciting work and training can be.

Although my father found it difficult to express his love when we were young, he more than made up for it telling us how much he loved us in his later years. We never left his home, but that he said, “I love you and appreciate all you’ve done for me.” You knew it wasn’t ritual or meaningless phrases, but came from his heart.

Although his faith was a quiet, unspoken kind, he demonstrated it in countless ways. I recall a time when I was living in Hawaii and had to have a biopsy of my breast. Because my mother had died of breast cancer, everyone was very worried. My father organized a special family fast, and gathered everyone together afterwards for a special family prayer. I wasn’t aware of the fast, but half a world away, I felt the effect of their faith and prayers, when I had a special answer—I felt a peace enfold me that helped me face the challenges ahead. It was a real demonstration to me of my father’s and my family’s faith.

Faith cannot be weighed on a mortal scale. Nor can the value of a father’s example be counted in coin or currency. The worth of a life is not always reflected in the number of scholarships endowed, or buildings bearing one’s name. It may not even be measured by the length of a man’s obituary.

Sometimes a man’s legacy is reflected only obliquely through his posterity’s faith, lives and testimonies.

What Is In Your Children's Spiritual Storehouse?

Recently my brother wrote a blog on what he called “inherited faith”—people sharing the faith of their parents because that is what they were taught. They follow the faith of their family as a tradition, not as a conviction, or because they are truly converted to that faith. He wrote: “To me that is almost as deeply felt faith as saying ‘I drink 7-UP because my parents drank it and I see no reason to try anything else I might like better.’”

It made me think about how you influence your children to gain a testimony of your church or your faith. They cannot rely on your testimony for long after they become adults and question everything, so what do you do during their growing years to help them (1. Want to worship the same religion as you do? and (2. Know how to recognize and gain a testimony of the religion?

The first question presupposes that you are happy with your faith and want your children to follow in your faith, which I feel in most cases is true. If you are not happy with your faith, you wouldn’t care if they followed your faith, but would want them to be good Christian, God-fearing, ethical people, regardless of which religion they chose.

But if you were devout, you probably would want your children to know God, to trust in Him, to follow His precepts, and make worship an integral part of their lives as you have made it part of yours. What would you do during your child rearing to encourage your children to live such a life?

Of course, you would go to church regularly, pray daily, study scriptures frequently, keep the commandments, spend quality family time together, love each other and show that love by how they interact with each other. I am sure most Christian families do these things automatically. I would like to suggest one other thing that might make the most difference—something that is a part of much of what these families routinely do, and take for granted—encourage the activities that help family members feel the spirit of God.

In an article published in the Deseret News on July 24, 2009, National Public Radio's religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty, author of the book, Fingerprints of God, stated that, "51 percent of people in this country report having had a ‘transformative spiritual experience that they can't ignore.’"

That would only make sense as we read in the Book of Mormon, in Moroni 7: 16, “the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; . . . for every thing which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God.”

I feel it is the spiritual feelings that we have in our church experiences (and in other sacred experiences) that are the foundations of our testimonies of both the existence of a God, and the truth of our own sect or faith. We cannot manufacture these feelings for others, but we can create an atmosphere in the home where this feeling can be felt, and the family members can know what it feels like and recognize it when they feel it again.

Also, Moroni’s promise in Moroni 10:5, “And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things” is so reassuring—knowing that you can pray to know the truth of something and encouraging family members to pray for that truth, is empowering. It refers not only to spiritual things, but to all things! However, when it comes to your faith, you are not relying on your parents’ word—you are receiving your own spiritual revelation or testimony of the truth. How important it is then that you are accustomed to praying to know the truth of important things? How important is it to know how to recognize the spirit that testifies of that truth!

I remember when I received my testimony of the Book of Mormon. I had read it and had prayed, trusting in Moroni’s specific promise about the Book of Mormon in Moroni 10: 3-5 “Behold, I would exhort you that when ye shall read these things . . . and ponder it in your hearts . . . I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.”

I remember the wonderful feeling of assurance, of knowledge, of faith, of spiritual power that flowed through me that this Book of Mormon was not just another book, but true revelation. The thought, a testimony of either Brigham Young or Parley Pratt that I had once read came forcefully to my mind by the spirit: “God or the devil has written this book, for man never wrote it.” As I remembered those words, I knew they were true; the Book of Mormon had been revealed to Joseph Smith and translated by the power of the Holy Ghost. I recognized the spirit that testified to me from the times as a child I had felt the spirit when I had been given a blessing of healing, or been present at a time when someone was given a blessing and the spirit was very strong.

I remember a young man telling me that he had prayed to know if the church was true—if President Hinckley (who was then the president of the church) was a prophet. He hadn’t received an answer to his prayer until he was watching General Conference. While President Hinckley was talking, this young man said he was filled with the most overpowering feeling that President Hinckley was indeed a prophet a God, and the church was true! He recognized the spirit that testified to him and knew it was from God.

These spiritual feelings are what we remember that make up our “testimony” and strengthen us during our dark days when it seems there is no hope in the world. I remember another young man who had not been active in his church for a number of years when he attended his aunt’s funeral.

His aunt and uncle had been prominent in the church on the east coast and Elder Zwick, a general authority who had worked with them spoke at the funeral. Elder Zwick talked about the aunt and told some personal experiences he’d shared with her. At the end of the funeral, this young man mentioned to me how impressed he was with Elder Zwick’s comments. He said he felt a power in his talk that he hadn’t felt before. The closing song at the funeral was “How Great Thou Art,” and afterwards this young man asked his sister about it. She mentioned it was a common song, which she’d sung many times before. He then asked her if she heard the extra people singing. She said no, she had not, but that she was crying hard at the time! This young man (who no one would call very spiritual) said that he felt very strongly during the closing song, that he could hear others, besides the audience, singing and he knew they were family who’d passed away that were there—singing and praising the Lord.

These are the kind of spiritual experiences, which testify of God, and bring us to church each Sunday to renew our faith and regain that feeling. It is what prompts us to pray, and read the scriptures and keep the commandments so we can be receptive to the spirit. It is what prompts us to be worthy and to go to the temple. It is what helps us recognize when others are speaking by the spirit. “For when a man speaketh by the power of the Holy Ghost the power of the Holy Ghost carrieth it unto the hearts of the children of men.” (2 Nephi 33:1.)

What can we give our children while they are young to help them find their spiritual path to God? To help them gain a testimony that will sustain them through their life? To help them trust and love God? Is it the traditions of our church? The happiness of our home and family? The habits of attending church? All of these are wonderful, necessary and provide them with a pattern for happiness, but I feel that one of the most important “gifts” you can give your children is spiritual experiences.

When “the young experience the gospel and its fruits and know it is true. Then nobody has to tell them; they experience it,” Elder Neal A. Maxwell explained in a February 1978 Liahona article “These experiences will give each of your young people a storehouse of spiritual experiences on which he can draw, much as our people can draw upon the supplies of food and clothing have laid away.”

Are we providing the opportunities for our young children to gain a storehouse of spiritual experiences on which they can draw when they become older and need to develop a testimony? Or are we only providing them with a supply of food and clothing that they will outgrow?

My Rosebush

[I wrote this article in 1991 and it was published in the March 1993 Ensign and August 1994 Liahona magazine. The names were changed at that time and my name was not listed as author. Illustrations are by Dileen Marsh and from the Liahona edition. Link is to the Liahona online version. Copyright belongs to the church--© 2010 Intellectual Reserve, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Amid carefully tended flowers in my garden grows my favorite rosebush. Its lanky branches are wild and useless. Too heavy to support themselves, they creep across the grass. My father and my husband have encouraged me on numerous occasions to pull out the rosebush, but I simply will not do it. It was a Mother’s Day gift from my son, Marc.

I remember the day he gave it to me. At first, I thought Marc had forgotten that it was Mother’s Day because he left early that morning without saying a word. I wondered where he was. It wasn’t like him to totally ignore a holiday. In spite of it, I enjoyed church, the lovely gifts others in my family lavished on me, and the nice dinner they prepared.

Finally, late that night, Marc arrived home with a beautiful, blooming rosebush in a small pot. He had planned to purchase the rosebush and then go to church with me as a special Mother’s Day gift, but like so many of his grandiose and thoughtful plans, this one had gone awry. In his search for the perfect rosebush, he had lost his car keys and become stranded. I listened to his explanation as I read the handwritten note he gave me. He promised to go to church with me next week. Tears blurred my vision. His eager words weren’t empty promises; he really planned to keep them. But something always interfered.

I mothered that rosebush in its small pot for more than a year. I followed the detailed directions that had come with it; I took it into the garage during the winter; I shaded it when the California sun was too hot. And I never stopped praying, along with everyone else in my family, that Marc would someday flourish and bloom as I hoped the plant he’d given me would.

When we moved from California back to my Utah hometown, I took the rosebush with me in the car. Marc stayed behind because he wanted to try being independent. Since Utah was to become our permanent home, I planted Marc’s rosebush in our flower garden.

The first year, it did poorly—even though I fussed over it, read gardening books, and asked advice. I soaked the roots, fertilized it, and kept the aphids off it. I tried everything. It stayed alive, but it never flourished. Every time I tended it, I thought of Marc back in California and prayed for him. He called occasionally and sounded confident: “Doing great, Mom. No problems.” But we worried. As I anxiously tended the rosebush, I hoped that next year it would do better.

In the fall, I pruned the rosebush back and packed manure around the roots to protect it. That winter was the coldest in forty years. I waited anxiously to see if my one special plant had survived. With my coat flapping in the whistling wind, I knelt in the snow and looked at the bare limbs of the rosebush. Was there any sign of life under the dirty snow? I couldn’t tell.

That winter I sensed that Marc’s life wasn’t going as well as he had hoped it would. Many a night, when the east wind blew and our windows rattled, I lay sleeplessly wondering if he was going to church, eating right, or still running around with friends who used drugs. Though Marc never told us in his phone calls, we felt that he was struggling with problems he could not handle. He sounded as though he was suffering from clinical depression. I reminded him that we loved him and missed him and that he was always welcome to come home. I told him we were willing to pay for him to get medical attention.

When spring finally came, my other rosebushes started sending out tiny red leaves, but my special bush stood bare and lifeless. I watered it by hand and brushed away the dead leaves that covered it, hoping that I could somehow revive it.
One afternoon, my father, who is an expert gardener, inspected my rosebush and declared it dead. He stamped his cane at the gnarled, brown stub and said it was time to give up and plant another bush in its place. But I didn’t.

That spring I increased my fasting and prayers in Marc’s behalf. I went more often to the temple and always put his name on the prayer roll. Then one midnight, we received a phone call. Marc had decided to come home. He didn’t tell us why, but that didn’t matter; we were just happy that he was joining our family again.

Not long after that, while working in my roses, I noticed a tiny green shoot poking its way out from deep under the roots of my special rosebush. Despite the odds, it had lived! I was so thrilled that I insisted my father come over and view the miracle growth.

“It’ll be wild,” my dad said. Patiently, he poked at the manure-covered shoot with his cane. “That growth is a sucker, coming out from below the graft, so it’ll never bear roses. You’d be better off pulling it up now and planting a new bush.”

“Never,” I said. Tears rolled down my face. It had survived the winter, though we thought it was dead. I couldn’t give up now.



So I continue to tend my rosebush. Often I work in my flower gardens early in the morning. I treasure the tranquil feeling that comes over me as I kneel in the grass, tend my roses, and pray for Marc. I am grateful that he is home. Our family’s prayers for Marc continue. We’re all glad he has come back. At least we don’t worry whether he’s eating or not. My motherly intuition tells me that something is still not right. My husband and my father remind me that Marc is young and that eventually he’ll mature and straighten up. I hoard the morning’s quiet pleasures. Too soon the heat and frustrations and challenges of the day will disturb them. But not yet.

I rest for a moment and watch the pink sky brighten. Early mornings are so special that I wonder why I hated them as a child. I spent my thirteenth summer at my grandmother’s house in Monroe, Utah. I wanted to eat raspberries, swim in the canal, and read books, but my stern grandmother insisted that I tend the roses, pick the strawberries, and learn to sew. I used to hide under the covers and pretend to be asleep as I heard my grandmother making breakfast. She called to me to come outside and work in her garden, but I ignored her when I could and let the clicking of her pruning shears and the rustling of the bushes lull me back to sleep.


When I had to work in the garden, I complained. Yet talking to my grandmother as the sun spun its way across the sky, I came to love her. In the garden, she didn’t seem so austere and forbidding as she usually did. She told me of her love for my grandfather and how she had never given up on him, though for years he was not active in the Church. Her eyes grew misty and she smiled as she told me that the happiest day of her life was the day Grandfather took their family to the temple to be sealed.

Working in my garden reminds me of my grandmother and of her faith in my grandfather. The clippers cramp my hand as I prune my wild, overgrown rosebush. I carefully lay the branches in a neat pile. A blast of loud music from a radio in Marc’s room in the basement startles me, but it is quickly squelched and quiet reigns again. Marc will be getting up soon.

By the time I finish pruning, the sun is up, warm on my face. The pile of branches is higher than I’d expected it to be. My hands and arms are scratched and torn as I force the thorny limbs into a garbage bag. Several strong thorns have pierced my hands, and they are bleeding. I hear a bird call as I kneel on the grass, and I wonder if birds feel anything as they watch their babies fly for the first time. My heart is as sore as my hands, and I know the heat will soon be so intense that I will have to go in.

I hear Marc’s car rev as he roars off to work, and I rest for a moment. My tears drop like rain as my heart follows him. Then I remember my grandmother. I remember watching her graft a branch from one of her most beautiful rosebushes onto an old, half-dead bush. Her voice echoes to me from years ago. “I won’t give up on this bush without a fight,” she had said to me on that long-ago morning. “It’s too precious not to try to reclaim.”

The sun stretches out from its mountain bed and showers its rays across me as I kneel next to my own special bush. I wonder if I can graft some branches from some of my father’s rosebushes onto the unproductive bush Marc gave me. Maybe then it could be productive. Perhaps my father’s garden even contains some roses that are descended from those in my grandmother’s garden. I close my eyes and see my grandmother working industriously in the dawn, tending her fragrant roses. I wonder if others tried to convince her that roses would never grow in Monroe’s arid soil. Did others ever suggest that Grandfather would never change during all those years that he was not an active member of the Church? Did Grandmother listen to them? Or did she keep working and praying and hoping?

I don’t care if I’m not practical. I don’t care if we pray for miracles that to some seem unlikely. I’m going to go to my dad’s garden and cut some starts from his roses. I will not give up on my special rosebush.

A Priceless Gift of Life

Ed now has two birthdays to celebrate—his original one on April 4, and his new lung’s birthday on April 28. His new lung shares its birthday with our 12-year-old granddaughter, Jenni. We are not positive, but are almost sure, that his lung came from a 20-year-old college sophomore in San Jose, who was skate-boarding Sunday morning on the way home from a party when he crashed and ended up with fatal brain-injuries. He was an athlete, having played soccer and baseball, loved skateboarding, and was studying upper-level math and German.

I was touched by the faith of the (possible) donor's mother from reading her comments in an earlier Palo Alto newspaper article about a community tragedy. She talked about her faith as "‘two cores of the Catholic tradition,’ community and ritual . . . We clung to each other and cared for each other. . . No one was alone. We felt too vulnerable and found strength in one another." Now again her life was touched by tragedy and she could turn to her faith to get through a difficult time. The article mentioned that the donor family hoped to meet the recipients of their son’s organs so we hope to someday meet and thank them for their generous gift.

How wonderful that a family would put aside their grief long enough to share the organs of their deceased child so that others might live better, longer and fuller lives. What greater gift could they give in a time of tragedy and sorrow? Their gift is truly a priceless gift of life. It reminds me of the selfless gift that an unmarried mother provides when she gives up her child for adoption. She gives up the selfish opportunity to raise and love her child—knowing that her child and some childless couple will both have a much better life than she could give her child.

"Self-sacrifice is the real miracle out of which all the reported miracles grow." Ralph Waldo Emerson

We live in a day when miracles can occur—but only when others give of themselves, selflessly. Sometimes organ donors can only give after their death, but other times living donors (such as kidney donors) can give one of their organs so someone else can live a fuller life. One of the transplant coordinators said they have gotten the technology down now so the donor and recipient in kidney transplants don’t even need to match!

There are many good people out there, that although they don’t give a lung, or give up a baby, they give selflessly to others every day in many ways. They mow their neighbor’s lawns, take dinner into the sick, feed the homeless, watch a friend’s child, read to the elderly, volunteer for “meals on wheels,” work in the community. We live in a wonderful world, where despite all the evil and tragedies, good people everywhere are trying to make it a millennial society.

(to see who we think the donor is go to: http://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=16608 )

A Still Small Voice

“And it came to pass when they heard this voice, and beheld that it was not a voice of thunder, neither was it a voice of a great tumultuous noise, but behold, it was a still voice of perfect mildness, as if it had been a whisper, and it did pierce even to the very soul.” Helaman 5: 30

“And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice.” 1 Kings 19: 12

Last Sunday, President Mark Bragg, the Los Angeles Stake President, told a story of World War II in the Pacific islands. A young marine had just arrived on one of the island under siege by the Japanese, and was terrified by his first experience with combat. He managed to get through the day, and when night fell, and the battle paused, an experienced marine made his way through the lines and into his foxhole. Quietly the experienced sergeant calmed the distraught marine. He patiently answered his questions, and assured him all soldiers were afraid in the face of fire. As they sat in the dark foxhole barely able to see each other, the young marine heard a voice say, “You will make it through this war alive.” The young marine tried to see who could have said this to him, then realized that no earthly voice had spoken to him—only the spirit. He realized that the encouragement and help of the older Marine had calmed and comforted him enough for him to feel the spirit. Throughout the horrors and terrors of the rest of the war, those words of the Holy Ghost spoken quietly that night would support and strengthen him.

President Bragg explained that it is important for each of us to cultivate the peace that cultivates personal revelation in our life. It is also important for us to reach out to others and help bring them the peace that will allow them to feel the spirit of the Lord and receive personal revelation.
Our lives are so full of noise, tumult, chaos—all those things that prevent us from feeling the peace that promotes revelation. All our technology toys—cell phones, ipods, mpeg player, television, laptops, video games—scream at us from any direction. Cars, trucks, motorcycles, children, neighbors add to the clamor. In such an uproar, can we hear the still small voice of inspiration?

Years ago when I was working in downtown Salt Lake City, I rode the bus to and from work. I had worked late one evening, and it was getting dark as I hurried for the last bus to Bountiful. I was frustrated, upset, discouraged, and tired. Only one other person, a stranger, was waiting for that bus and we talked as we waited. I don’t remember what we talked about; I only remember that as we talked on the bus, I felt a peace, a hope creep into my heart that calmed me. She got off before I did, and as I rode the last few miles alone, I knew that things would work out. I didn’t know her name, who she was, or anything else about her. However, our conversation brought peace to me that evening. The peace John spoke of in John 14: 27, “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”

Do we carry that peace with us? Do we live so as to have the spirit of revelation every day? Do we share that peace with others, whether they be friends, those we visit teach or those we meet by accident? Are we a conduit for the spirit? Is our personal internal radio channel tuned to a calming and spiritual station that influences everyone around us, or is it tuned to a raucous, loud, jarring hard-metal station?

I loved the words of Julie Beck, the Relief Society General President, in the April 2010 General Conference when she talked about the power of women to receive revelation. “When women nurture as Christ nurtured, a power and peace can descend to guide when help is needed. For instance, mothers can feel help from the Spirit even when tired, noisy children are clamoring for attention, but they can be distanced from the Spirit if they lose their temper with children.”

It isn’t easy to struggle each day to live righteously in a world where wickedness is worshipped more than God. Yet, Sister Beck tells us, “Personal revelation gives us the understanding of what to do every day to increase faith and personal righteousness, strengthen families and homes, and seek those who need our help. Because personal revelation is a constantly renewable source of strength, it is possible to feel bathed in help even during turbulent times.” (http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,23-1-1207-3,00.html)

As we struggle through these Latter-day tempestuous storms, bombarded by earthquakes, destruction, volcanoes, chaos, thunder and great tumultuous noise, can we hear the still small voice?

Music, My Children and Me

Recently I had an epiphany about music. I have always felt very inadequate musically because I am not talented in that area. It has been difficult here in our new ward as some of our new friends have asked me repeatedly to sing in the choir and I have refused politely that I cannot sing well enough to be in the choir. I felt that I had let them down by not being able to sing well enough to contribute in the choir until I had my epiphany—because of me there are four of my children singing in ward choirs in other wards. I should not feel I had not contributed musically to choirs; I had contributed to not one--but four--choirs that day simply by developing the musical talents of my children.

Okay, okay. That is a stretch—but I felt better thinking that, than feeling guilty because I can’t sing. I have consciously developed the musical talents of my children, and that is important. Last fall I received a link to a website where you could test your ear for music by listening and clicking whether the music played was on tune or not. I forwarded the test to all my children, and every one of them, including Marc, who is the least musically talented of my children, got 100% on the test. They had chosen which renditions were on tune and which were not correctly every time. I didn’t get 100% but that is not surprising because I have a difficult time telling whether something is on tune or not; this is something my children knew and took advantage of often. When I sat with them to make sure they practiced the piano or trumpet, I couldn’t tell if they hit the wrong note until I’d see them glance at me as if to say, “Did Mom notice that flat note?” Then I’d say, “Do it again until you get it right!” But I did sit with them and make sure they practiced their lessons until they got so good they did it on their own.

Nevertheless, music was always a big part of our lives. Ed and I have always loved musical theater and I remember attending the Capital Theater in Salt Lake City to see The Sound of Music in the early 1960s. I played musical theater sound tracks at home all the time. I played loud, fast songs while we cleaned the house to invigorate us, lilting music to wake us up and soft romantic songs to put them to sleep. It is no surprise that ALL of my children are performers, (and most of them do musical theater)—that is all they grew up with.

My favorite song was “Che sera, sera” ("Whatever will be, will be"), which I remember singing to children that I babysat as a teenager, and “High Hopes” about a happy ant, but those and many others I sang to my children. Even though I lived through Elvis’ heyday, I didn’t like his rock songs, although his slower songs were okay. I loved the Beatles, though, and the Smother’s Brothers. Ed and the family went through a country western stage when we lived in Texas and all of the kids knew every Johnny Cash song. We were very democratic and what one of us sang, we all sang--all of the time. I even remember in Hawaii we were hooked on a Hawaii radio station with a DJ called “Myna Bird!”

Even though I couldn’t play the piano, I insisted that every one of my children take piano or trumpet lessons. It began when Marlowe was about eight or nine and had very bad asthma. The doctor suggested playing a trumpet might help his breathing, so we got him a trumpet.

I remembered how my mother insisted that each of us children have the opportunity to take either piano lessons or dance lessons when we were growing up. There was no extra money to pay for them, so she painted landscapes to barter for lessons. I took ballet and tap lessons for years; then I had a problem with my foot as a teen and that was the end of my dancing. My sister Coleen took piano lessons and that blessed her life for years. After Mother became ill and died, I don’t know if the younger children were able to take lessons, but it was Mother’s insistence that we all had talents that we needed to develop, and she would do all possible to get us lessons that made me determined to see that my children receive music lessons themselves. (My daughters took dance and gymnastic lessons, too, but I felt piano and music lessons were far more important).

Marlowe was very talented and by the time he was in high school he was in the marching band and the jazz band. Both Athena and Diana both played the piano well. Marc took piano and trumpet lessons, but they never took with him (I think he is related to me). Bryan took piano, voice, trumpet lessons, and was in the band in Junior High.

When Diana was a baby, I realized that something happened whenever music played—she would calm down and “listen” to it. I even wrote a story about what a musical baby she was, and that “maybe” she had sung with the angelic choir at Christ’s birth. Then I forgot all about her interest in music. In Junior High School, she tried out for the elite madrigal singing group, and wanted to take voice lessons. We discovered she had a very special talent in singing. She developed that talent and won a scholarship to Berklee College of Music in Boston, and performed in many community and professional musical theater productions. Although she doesn't perform professionally now, she shares her talents in many other ways.

Marlowe also made a hobby/career of performing in community and musical theater productions in the Salt Lake Valley; Athena performed a lot at Rodgers Memorial Theater. Even though Bryan was nearly 20 years younger than his older siblings were, they taught him to perform with them and he, too, became a musical theater pro. All of the children, including Marc performed in Community Theater in Italy and in Utah.

Athena has shared her piano playing with her family, in the primary, and in many other ways. She has performed at Rodgers Memorial Theater and even met her husband there. She has always been so faithful in singing in the ward choir, and encouraging her children to develop their musical talents.

Bryan became especially talented in comedy and improvisation, and has been (and is) performing professionally at Desert Star Theater in Murray, Utah. He has a beautiful voice, and gift for mimicry. Suddenly I have my own musical theater troupe!

Music is important to me. It is one of the means by which I find peace, and joy. It is something I share with my family, even if I can’t sing on tune, or play an instrument. I love the music my family is gifted with. I love to hear them sing, and to see them perform. So, even though I won’t be singing in the ward choir this Sunday, in four other wards, my children will be singing my song for me.