The main speaker at Sundan Bradbury's funeral was his uncle Todd Merrill. I thought it was weird that his uncle was giving the "remembrances" talk instead of one of Sundan's brothers, parents, or someone from Heather's family. As it turns out, he was the perfect person to give that talk. Evidently, Sundan was very close to his uncle and his uncle knew him well.
It's been a week since I heard Todd Merrill speak at the funeral, but I'm going to try to recall a story that he shared during his talk because it had a big impact on me. As it turns out, Sundan had been involved in a couple of other motorcycle accidents besides the one that took his life. Todd jokingly said that sometimes Sundan would take the top of his skull off, remove his brain and place it on a table, then do wild and crazy things without fear or abandon.
When Sundan was about 18 years old, he and his Uncle Todd were riding their dirt bikes somewhere (I can't remember where it was - at some dunes, I think). Evidently, the frozen ground was unforgiving when Sundan tried to climb a hill and he was thrown from the bike breaking his neck in three places. As Sundan was lying on the ground waiting to be taken to a hospital, he was given a blessing by his uncle. In that blessing, his Uncle Todd basically told him that this was a wake-up call and that the Lord was telling him that he needed to change the course of his life (I'm paraphrasing). After the blessing, Sundan looked at his uncle and said "I think God just broke my neck."
After the accident, Sundan went to live with his Uncle Todd and his wife while he recovered from the accident, which would take a few months. Todd is a Seminary teacher so he teaches 5 days a week during school hours. Sundan was bored, so he asked his uncle if he could attend seminary with him, which Sundan did every day all day for four months. He even attended classes from other seminary teachers in the building. Because of this, Sundan gained a strong testimony of Jesus Christ and His gospel.
With his new strong testimony, Sundan now knew that he needed to serve a mission for the Lord. One day, after Sundan received his mission call, he handed his uncle a box of cd's (Sundan LOVED listening to music) and told him to take these cd's, which were full of unsavory lyrics, nail them to the seminary wall, and tell the students that it is because of that music that he started losing his way and losing his testimony. Uncle Todd said he would do as requested. Because he couldn't just start pounding nails into the walls of the seminary building, he built a special wall and nailed the cd's into that wall while telling his students about Sundan and how his bad music led him away from the gospel. After that, students would show up at class with cd's that they wanted to give up and be nailed into the wall. Pretty soon, the wall was filled 3-deep with cd's.
Besides teaching seminary, Uncle Todd was a speaker at several EFY (Especially For Youth) activities around the world where he would share Sundan's turn-around story and his forfeiting of his bad cd's. Those young people would then end up turning in their cd's as well. Sundan's one simple act of giving up the music he once loved had made a huge impact on many, many young people in the church.
Sometimes we don't think we can make a difference in the world, but through even simple acts, we can impact many people for good.
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