"How Sweet the Voice of a Friend Is"

(Greg Olsen, "Peace Be Unto Thy Soul," 1990)

These past two weeks have been quite eventful for me.  A week and a half ago, my brother-in-law John came into town on military business and generously took me to dinner the night before returning to Georgia.  Then this past Wednesday, my parents came into town to see me.  My dad and I went to the BYU football game, which despite the unfavorable results of the game, was a wonderful experience.  At the game, I was able to briefly visit with my friend Marianne Swenson, who had come into town for the game.  Needless to say, after two months of being away from my family and many of my friends, it was wonderful to have an opportunity to see some friendly faces and enjoy a few precious moments with family and friends.

Thinking about how wonderful these experiences have been reminded me of something that the Prophet Joseph wrote while in Liberty Jail.  It was a part of a long letter  to the Saints in Quincy, Illinois.  Portions of this famous letter later became D&C 121, 122, and 123.  It was in this letter that Joseph penned that heartfelt cry, "O God, where art thou?" (D&C 121:1)  In one of the uncanonized portions of this letter, the Prophet described receiving letters from several members of the Church.  He then wrote these beautiful lines:

"We had been a long time without information; and when we read those letters they were to our souls as the gentle air is refreshing....And we need not say to you that the floodgates of our hearts were lifted and our eyes were a fountain of tears, but those who have not been enclosed in the walls of prison without cause or provocation, can have but little idea how sweet the voice of a friend is."  (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 134).

While I would not want to suggest that I even remotely understand, much less have experienced, the circumstances that prompted those lines from the Prophet, I believe we can apply their meaning to our own, less profound, trials.  Life has its own individualized "prisons" for each one of us.  These "prisons" seldom if ever equate to the despicable circumstances of the poorly named Liberty Jail, but they can be just as dark and limiting in their effects upon our lives.  Whatever the nature of our trials, I believe that all of us have, at one point or another, felt discouraged and we have wondered whether we can go on.

Often times, these "prisons" may not even be visible to those around us.  I remember being surprised when my saintly Mission President once told us missionaries that after a long day of helping and uplifting us in our various problems, he had wondered who was there to help and uplift him.  Of course the answer immediately came to him.  But I remember being surprised because he was the kind of man who I just believed could and did handle everything that could be thrown at him with relative ease.  His demeanor was always so positive, that I had never considered the fact that the life of a mission president was chalk full of its own share of problems (mostly in the form of 19-22 year olds like myself).

In such moments, when we feel that we have the weight of the world resting down upon our shoulders, we too declare, "How sweet the voice of a friend is!"  The comforting and reassuring voices of family and friends truly is like "the gentle air refreshing," allowing us to take a deep breath and then realize that we can continue to endure trials and difficulties for the small moment that we are asked to bear with them.  More than that, it can cause us to remember that we too have an obligation to be "the voice of a friend" to those around us, even those whose struggles may not appear on the surface.

I thank our Father for the numerous voices of friends that he has sent to comfort me throughout various times in my life.  It would be impossible for me to enumerate the times that friends and family have been prompted to say the right words, do the right things, and, in general, just to be there when I found myself in need.  My hope is that I have likewise been attentive enough to the Spirit to be the voice of a friend to others when they have needed me.  Thank you to all of you who have done this so many times for me.

Brett

New Biography of Parley P. Pratt

If you are looking for an interesting book to read, check out this preview of Parley P. Pratt:  The Apostle Paul of Mormonism by Terryl Givens and Matt Grow.  By the way, check out the Acknowledgments page.  It was nice of Terryl and Matt to include me.  I only did a small amount of research and source checking, but I'll accept their kind acknowledgment of my limited contribution anyway.  :)

Life's Training Grounds

(D. Arthur and Maurine Haycock, at a White House Reception, 1954)

Since coming to Fort Worth, I've been thinking a lot about the meaning of life experiences, and the value of having experiences that stretch us.  I've really enjoyed my time here so far, but it has certainly been a challenge.  By its very nature a PhD program makes you feel inadequate.  Somewhere in the midst of reading 2-3 books per week, writing book reviews of those books, and using your "spare" time to do research to write papers and get published, and then trying to fulfill callings and have a social life (as a single), you start to wonder about your general level of sanity.  (And you start writing horrible run-on sentences).  No matter what the nature of our challenges in life, there is a temptation to begin wondering if you are in the right place.  Perhaps most dangerously, there is what Elder Holland once called, "the temptation to retreat from a good thing."

All of this brings me to Washington D.C. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture during 1953 and 1954.  Hopefully those who aren't members of my family will indulge me a little bit of family history.  I promise it will have a point.

To get to 1953, I need to write a short background.  As a young missionary in Hawaii in 1935, my grandfather, D. Arthur Haycock, was privileged to be present for the visit of President Heber J. Grant to the islands.  President Grant had come to organize the Hawaii Stake, the first stake to be organized outside of North America.  During President Grant's visit, my grandfather had occasion to see the work of President Grant's able secretary, Brother Joseph Anderson.  Upon seeing Brother Anderson's contributions, my grandfather determined that when he returned from Hawaii, he wanted to work for the Church like Brother Anderson.  To make a long story short, after returning from his mission, my grandfather eventually managed to secure one of the coveted secretarial positions at the Church offices. In 1947, after nearly ten years of working for the Church (minus some time at the Denver and Rio Grande during the war), President George Albert Smith hired my grandfather as his private secretary. And so from 1947 until President Smith's death in 1951, my grandfather's dream came true.  He had the position that he had always hoped for and loved every minute of it.

With President Smith's death, however, that dream job came to an end.  President McKay already had a very able secretary in Sister Claire Middlemiss, who stayed on with him and served faithfully throughout President McKay's presidency.  In 1952 when Dwight D. Eisenhower asked Elder Benson to accept the position of Secretary of Agriculture, Elder Benson asked my grandfather to move to Washington D.C. and accept a position as his secretary.  After counseling with President McKay and with my grandmother, my grandpa accepted the position and moved to Washington D.C.

While an executive position in the government would be a dream job for many people, my grandfather found Washington very challenging.  He found the environment in Washington D.C. to be a night and day difference from his his work at the Church.  Although he found his work for the government to be interesting and challenging, he and the family struggled to fit into the Potomac region's "unique trappings."  He later confided in a friend and mentor that, "Even before I left for Washington I was quite sure that the glamour would quickly wear off--and I have not be disappointed in that regard."  While he was grateful for the employment and the opportunities it offered, my grandfather's heart had always been at 47 East South Temple, working for the Church.

Most challenging of all, Washington was far from home and during the first several months there, my grandfather was virtually alone.  My grandmother had stayed in Utah with their four girls (including my beautiful mother) to try to sell the house in Salt Lake City while he looked for an affordable house in Washington.  Noting this challenge, my grandfather wrote in his diary for March 2, 1953, "tired & very homesick--miss Maurine something terrible."  The next day he wrote, "Still lonesome for my wife & girls--miss them terribly."  After the family arrived, my grandmother also struggled with the challenge of being so far from home and family.

Everything changed one day in February 1954, when President Stephen L. Richards called to extend a calling to my grandparents to preside over the Hawaii Mission.  By the end of June their Washington experience was over and the family was situated in the Islands.  By 1963, my grandfather was once again working for the Church, and from 1970 until his retirement in 1986 served as secretary to Presidents Joseph Fielding Smith, Harold B. Lee, Spencer W. Kimball, and Ezra Taft Benson.

Washington D.C. had been a hard experience for my grandparents.  But it had also been a necessary experience for them.  While there, my grandparents made several lifelong friends, gained important skills, had once in a lifetime experiences, and learned more about enduring life's challenges.  In spite of the challenges, my grandparents were wise enough to realize that there were friends to be made and there was happiness to be had, even in Washington D.C.  In 1985, he wrote a letter to the family, detailing some of these experiences and came to this important conclusion:  "I have come to know that not every unhappy experience in life needs to remain unhappy, but rather in all likelihood, is a training ground for a better and happier day."

These past couple of months in Fort Worth have helped me to understand this principle better.  There are plenty of days when I feel almost exactly like my grandfather felt during those first challenging months in Washington.  But I am beginning to learn that wherever I am, there are friends to be made, lessons to be learned, and joyful experiences to be had, even far away from friends and family in Fort Worth, Texas.  May we all take advantage of and enjoy the various training grounds that God sends us to.  As we do so, the time will come when we will look back with fondness and see their value in our lives, rejoicing that God was so good as to send us there.

Brett

A New Age for Church History

Hey all,

This is just a small post to let you know about some of the great stuff that is going on in the digitizing of Church History.  The Church History Library is in the process of digitizing hundreds of thousands of records (In May Richard Turley, assistant Church Historian, said there would be 500,000 documents and 50,000 pictures available on the internet by the end of this year).  Here are just a few links to some of these cool things:

General Conference Reports:  The Church is scanning and making available full color and keyword searchable scans of all of the old Conference reports.

Joseph Smith's Papers:  As part of the Joseph Smith Papers Project, the Church is scanning and transcribing every document that we have from the Prophet Joseph Smith.  These are also searchable for people and places.  If you had ancestors who knew the Prophet Joseph Smith, try looking for them here.  As more documents become ready, more people and places will be added, making this a very good place to do some family history.

Brigham Young's Letterbooks:  Ok, so this might be more exciting to me than anybody else, but Brigham wrote thousands of letters during his lifetime and many of them are available right here.  While this takes a little more navigating by using the indexes to each letterbook, this can also be a goldmine of family history for anyone who is interested.

This is just the beginning.  My friends at the Church History Library assure me that there is a lot more to come.  Thanks for putting up with my excitement.

Brett

"Show Unto Us Thy Will, O Lord"

(John Taylor)

For me one of the most intriguing stories in our Church's history is the story of the development of the office and Quorums of the Seventy.  Perhaps prefiguring the importance of this priesthood office, the first seventies in this dispensation were called at the same time as the first members of the Quorum of the Twelve.  For a number of reasons, however, there were significant misunderstandings about the office of the Seventy.  Because the Church was young and inexperienced, and its members (particularly the priesthood holders) were still learning that priesthood government was not to resemble the habits and jealousies of worldly politics, there were contentions about the position of the office of the Seventy relative to that of the High Priests.  Ultimately, that particular question was simply shelved for the time being and the office of Seventy became something of a local office, with nearly every ward and stake in Utah being home to a Quorum of Seventies.  In hindsight, the principles were taught powerfully and simply by the Lord, the Prophet Joseph, Brigham, and others.  But the young Church may not have been prepared for the lessons being taught.  (This is a very generic and probably highly inaccurate history of this particular question.  If you want to know more about it, see: William G. Hartley, My Fellow Servants).

Despite the fact that this decision helped to settle various disputes within the Church, the leaders of the Church knew that the Quorums of the Seventy were not correctly organized.  But it appears that they were not entirely certain about what should be done to correct the matter.  In April 1883, after discussing the matter, the First Presidency made some changes to make it easier to administer the Quorums of the Seventy throughout the Church.  After having committed their ideas to paper, the Presidency, led by President John Taylor took their ideas before the Lord, praying, "Show unto us Thy will, O Lord, concerning the organization of the Seventies" (James R. Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 2:354).  The Lord responded to President Taylor's simple prayer with this magnificent revelation:

"What ye have written is my will, and is acceptable unto me: and furthermore, Thus saith the Lord unto the First Presidency, unto the Twelve, unto the Seventies and unto all my holy Priesthood, let not your hearts be troubled, neither be ye concerned about the management and organization of my Church and Priesthood and the accomplishment of my work. Fear me and observe my laws and I will reveal unto you, from time to time, through the channels that I have appointed, everything that shall be necessary for the future development and perfection of my Church, for the adjustment and rolling forth of my kingdom, and for the building up and the establishment of my Zion. For ye are my Priesthood and I am your God. Even so. Amen" (Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 2:354).

With this revelation as their guide, the First Presidency went forward with their determined course of action.  Intriguingly, it would not be until the combined administrations of Presidents Spencer W. Kimball, Ezra Taft Benson, and Gordon B. Hinckley, that the Quorums of the Seventy would be organized into the pattern that we now see, with the Seventies taking their rightful place of administration between the Quorum of the Twelve and the Quorums of the High Priesthood.

(1st Quorum of Seventy, 1976)

I find this example to be incredibly instructive in terms of my understanding of the principle of revelation.  Like the early brethren, I find that on occasion there are times when we are simply not prepared to learn and understand God's will about various aspects of our lives.  In such moments, we must learn to do exactly what these wonderful early brethren did.  Without full understanding, and with plenty of questions and perhaps a few worries on their minds, they went forward.  When answers were needed, they studied it out in their minds, came up with the best solutions they could think of, and then took those solutions to the Lord, who both commended their honest efforts and promised that as they obeyed the commandments and strove to serve the Lord, He would "reveal unto [them], from time to time, through the channels that [He had] appointed, everything that shall be necessary for the future development and perfection of [His] Church, for the adjustment and rolling forth of [His] kingdom, and for the building up and the establishment of [His] Zion."

Looking back, we perhaps wonder why this process took so long.  Why didn't the Lord just correct the organization of the Seventies from the beginning?  Why did it take until 1976 before the answer to this question started to become clear?  I don't know all the answers to these questions.  I don't know why the Lord didn't just have Joseph just draw up an organizational chart and point out where everything fit into its proper place.  What I do know, is that God seldom works that way because He seems to care more about our growth through the process of revelation than He cares about our having all the right answers to all of our perplexing questions.  As a wise and all-knowing Father, He asks us to "[learn] the Spirit of God and [understand] it, [so that we] may grow into the principle of revelation, until [we] become perfect in Christ Jesus" (Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 151).  In the end, it seems that the process we undergo and the experience we obtain will matter more to our eternal identity and character than the answers to the questions we were seeking.

Brett

That All May Be Edified Of All

As most of you know, from October 2006 until August 2008, I had the pleasure to work for BYU's Education in Zion Exhibit, an exhibit that seeks to tell the story of the Church's long educational tradition.  That experience shaped--and continues to shape--my life in several different ways.  When I first got the position, it was the cure to constant frustration and an answer to sincere prayers for employment.  After all, since history degrees are a little like aces (they are only useful if you have two or more), what does one really do with a history degree?  When I got that job, however, I had no clue how profoundly it would change my life.

Education in Zion did far more than just give me a thesis topic and provide me with a crash course in actual historical research.  It brought me into contact with some of the finest scholars and best friends I have ever had.  It's hard to describe just what working at the exhibit was like, other than to say that it was a little piece of Zion.  I believe this was the result of both the nature of the topic we were studying and the spirituality and the Christlike attitude of our director, Brother C. Terry Warner.  At every meeting, I felt like I was valued, which caused me to want to work harder so that I would have something to bring to the table.  In of the fact that Terry is a world renowned scholar and one of the most brilliant men that I have ever met, he treated us all as colleagues rather than student employees and cheap labor.

It would be impossible for me to detail all of the things that I learned from working for Education in Zion, but this past week I've been thinking about one particularly important lesson.  Although most of the School of the Prophets research had been conducted long before I arrived at Education in Zion, I still had several opportunities to learn more about that unique institution.  In the process, I began to understand a little about the Lord's message to the Saints in 1832, when He said, "Appoint among yourselves a teacher, and let not all be spokesmen at once; but let one speak at a time and let all listen unto his sayings, that when all have spoken that all may be edified of all, and that every man may have an equal privilege" (D&C 88:122).

I suppose the reason I have been thinking so much about this verse lately is because it runs so contrary to the way of the world.  In my graduate school seminars, I find that I feel a constant need to prove to everyone in the room that I belong there.  On the surface, I think that I am trying to add to the lecture and make a difference in the seminar.  But underneath the surface, my real intent remains self-centered.  Unresolved, such self-centered attitudes creep into every aspect of our lives.  For instance, this past Thursday at Institute and again today at Church, I found myself making comments in my classes in much the same way that I do in my seminars.  Rather than seeking to make comments that had the purpose of edifying others around me and building up the Kingdom of God, I was trying to make comments that made myself sound smart.  

After one such comment, a thought took my mind back to Education in Zion and back to the School of the Prophets.  I instantly remembered how Terry had treated me.  Because he had valued us all equally, Education in Zion had become a work of collaboration rather than competition.  As a result, I felt like we all grew together.  There was no need to try to show off because we all needed one another in order to make the project a success.  Terry had put into practical application the principle that the Lord had given to lay the foundation of the School of the Prophets and ultimately to lay the foundation of Zion.

Today was a clear reminder of these vital principles to me.  We are not here to try and make ourselves look or sound smarter than anyone else.  We are here to uplift, to build, and to edify our brothers and sisters, and in so doing, to build up God's Kingdom.

Brett

Thanks at Conference Time

I don't have much to write or say today, except to just express my gratitude for General Conference.  It is always something of a bitter-sweet moment for me when General Conference comes to a conclusion.  It is a little bitter because I realize that it will be another six months before the next Conference, but it is sweet because the end of a Conference gives me an opportunity to sit back and reflect upon the marvelous messages that I have just heard.  While I would love to write something about each of the talks, I don't really have the time, so I figure I will just hit a few highlights.

Were I asked to name my favorite talk from this Conference, I think I would have to single out President Uchtdorf's marvelous message during the Saturday Morning Session.  That talk hit on so many things that I needed to hear that it left me--and likely tens of thousands of other people--feeling like it had been given just for me.  Everything in it, from President Uchtdorf's touching story about his time in Texas, to his powerful witness about our worth in God's eyes, was touching.  It really spoke to me and to my present circumstances.

Equally touching to me was the wonderful message by Elder Robert D. Hales.  Everyone who saw it and heard it knows that Elder Hales is going through some very challenging circumstances right now.  Yet despite his own health problems, he cared enough about us to come and deliver a powerful discourse on the Atonement and upon how we can apply it to our lives during times of adversity.  My thoughts and prayers go out to Elder Hales.

President Monson's talks in the Priesthood Session and the Sunday Morning Session were likewise moving.  Both talks were powerful warnings about the dangers of moral relativism.  As a graduate student in history, I found these talks particularly important and was struck once again with a feeling of profound gratitude to live in a day when we have Prophets to warn and teach us.

Finally, I can't express just how excited I was to hear the announcement that the Provo Tabernacle will be rebuilt as Provo's second Temple (currently accepting suggestions for it's name--NUSKIN related suggestions need not apply).  When the Tabernacle burned down, I was shocked.  The Provo Saints had struggled and sacrificed more than I can comprehend to build that building and I took its loss very deeply.  I believe that rebuilding it as a House of the Lord is at least as much a statement about the faith of those early Provo Saints as it is a statement about the faith of the city's current residents.  What a wonderful blessing it is to know that even when many people have forgotten about the faith and contributions of men like Abraham O. Smoot, God never forgets those contributions and continues to honor them down through the ages.  May we likewise live lives of faith and devotion to God's kingdom that will be worthy of His continued remembrance as the years pass on.

For all these messages and for many more, I echo Elder Jeffrey R. Holland in saying that "I give personal thanks at general conference time."

Brett