Sunday in San Antonio

My wife and I attended church at my niece’s Canyon Springs Ward today.  They meet in an unusually pretty chapel, surrounded by woods, meadows, and pastures.

The congregation was large, and there were two sacrament meeting speakers.

The first, Elder John Armbruster, had just returned a week ago from two years of service in, if I heard correctly, the Philippines Olangapo Mission.  He spoke well, about building faith.

I especially liked one of his stories.  He told about a woman that he and his green, newly-arrived companion were trying to teach, very early in his own mission when his Tagalog was still very rudimentary.  (He himself put visible “quotation marks” around the word teaching when he began to recount the story.)  They were discussing the three degrees of glory — celestial, terrestrial, and telestial — but she was growing more and more frustrated.  Finally, she said “All I can understand is that there’s one heaven and three hells.”  They said “No, no, no.  That’s not what we’re saying.  Here’s a pamphlet in Tagalog about the topic.  Read this, pray about it, and we’ll come back next week.”  When they returned, she was beaming.  She had read the pamphlet.  She understood it.  She had prayed.  And, she said, since their last visit she had had a dream in which a blonde man, dressed all in white, had appeared to her and told her that the doctrine they were trying to convey to her was true.

We’re not always left to our own power in trying to teach the Gospel.  We have to make the effort, but help is available.

There followed an exceptionally good talk by a member of the stake high council named Neil Mickelsen.  He had sought and obtained permission from the stake president, feeling inspired to do so, to deviate from his assigned topic and to speak, instead, on coping with sorrow, loss, pain, and adversity.  The talk was so very good that I asked him for a copy of it — as, it turned out, did my wife and my niece.  I may seek his permission to share the text here.

After church, those of our family who’re still in the area gathered at the home of my niece and her husband for lunch.  I’m very proud of him and my niece.  They’ve done well financially, but, even more importantly, they’ve remained faithful to each other and to the Gospel, and they’ve raised a faithful family.  (He was just released from the bishopric three weeks ago.  Among many other things, she’s taken care of the altar cloths for the temple every week for six years now — a service that I find especially . . .  well, in a way, touching.  Their eldest daughter was married in the temple yesterday, their next daughter is currently serving a Spanish-speaking mission in Idaho, and their other kids are very active.)  They’re passing the Gospel on to the next generation.

Again, my brother would be — and, I feel confident, is — very, very happy.

One really pleasant surprise at the lunch was offered by my nephew, visiting with his wife and two very young children from California.  He’s spent many, many hours recently digitizing old family photos — including embarrassing baby pictures of me, along with photos of my brother when he was quite young and pictures of my parents (his grandparents), of the family construction business when it was new, of long-gone aunts and uncles, of my niece and nephews when they were kids, and so forth.  I had thought those photos were lost.  He presented us with an electronic copy.  It’s a priceless gift, and much appreciated.

Posted from San Antonio, Texas