It has been four years since we moved from California to Utah. Boy, am I glad that we moved here. As I was roaming around the house recently, it really struck me how much I love our home - the location, the floor plan, and the yard. We have made some remarkable improvements to the house, but there are still some improvements that I would like to make like updating the master bathroom and repainting the outside of the house. Maybe one day this will happen, but not for a while.
Speaking of living here for four years, I was asked once again to speak in Sacrament Meeting in our ward. I spoke last Sunday (April 27th). I hadn't spoken since shortly after we moved into the ward, so it had been four years. Truthfully, I was very excited to be able to speak again because I already had a topic in mind to speak on. The Bishop approved of my idea. I spoke on the Atonement of Jesus Christ since Easter Sunday was the previous week and my mind was on the greatest gift Christ gave the world.
During my talk, I shared two personal stories. The first one was about how I lost my friend Ida's daughter, Stephanie, while babysitting her and her older brother at our house and couldn't find her for over an hour. [Turns out that she was hiding in the bushes the whole time because she wanted to keep playing and didn't want to go home].
I tied that story in with the fact that since the fall of Adam, we are all in a lost and fallen state - meaning that we are subject to physical death as well as a spiritual death. We are all lost and in need of rescue.
I then shared a family story about how my oldest brother, Neal, rescued my brother Kent from nearly drowning in the Spanish Fork river near our house when they were little boys. Neal was about 7 years old and Kent was about 5 years old at the time of the rescue. After falling into the water from a cement beam, Kent couldn't get to the surface because he didn't know how to swim. While being carried downstream completely under water, Kent accepted the fact that he was about to die because there was no way for him to get out of the river on his own. Just when he was about to give up and accept his fate, Kent said he felt something like a tree branch brush against the left side of his body so he grabbed onto it and clung on for dear lift. He then felt himself literally being "lifted up" (not pulled or dragged) out of the water. As Kent was being "lifted up" out of the water, he looked over and saw Neal at the other end of the branch.
I related that story to how just like Kent was rescued by his older brother, through the atonement we have all been rescued by our older brother, Jesus Christ. He was also "lifted up" like Kent, only He was lifted up onto a cross to die for us. I have a deep testimony that Christ rose from the grave three days after his crucifixion. He lives today and He guides and directs His church on the earth today. I also testify that Christ will return to the earth soon to usher in the millennium.
Years after the rescue, Neal told Kent that when he saw him fall into the water, the spirit spoke to his mind telling him to run downstream, find a dead branch lying on the river bank, put it down in the water and wait. Neal did as he was told, extending the branch down into the water, thus rescuing Kent. I have often wondered how a 7-year-old little boy could "lift" a fully clothed soaking wet 5-year-old boy up out of the water using just a dead branch. I'm not sure that a grown man could even do that! There had to have been angels there that day helping with the rescue. It was a true miracle! Kent was not supposed to die that day. I'm so grateful that Neal listened to the prompting of the spirit that day. If God can speak to a 7-year-old little boy, He can speak to each of us and hopefully we will promptly obey just as Neal did.
