Just One Pamphlet

The sun was setting quickly as we trudged down our last street of tracting for the day. My companion and I, both students at the University of Washington, were new stake missionaries. We had spent many hours that day doing what we were told had a 2000:1 chance of success—tracting. And we were doing our part to add to the bleakness of that statistic. Not one pamphlet about the coming general conference had been accepted.

Consoling ourselves with thoughts of a good dinner, we were almost home when we passed what looked like a lumberjack sitting on his front porch whittling a stick into a reed instrument. The Spirit whispered to me that we should stop and ask him the golden questions. I whispered back that we didn’t know him, his house obviously contained many boisterous college boys, and my stomach had plans of its own. We kept walking.

By the time we reached the corner I had a definite feeling of impending doom if I did not turn around and heed the prompting. Somewhat embarrassed, I explained the situation to my companion. She agreed to return to the whistler.

As we approached him, he lifted a face to us that could be described as cherubic. And he was all too willing to talk to two college girls about a gospel message. We soon discovered the lumberjack was a physics student in Seattle for six weeks of special courses. He invited us back the next day to teach him the first discussion.

I know we ate dinner that night, but I don’t think we tasted a bite we were so excited. The next day we were back on his doorstep teaching him life’s great plan amid the frequent exuberant interruptions of his many housemates. He devoured the information as rapidly as we could present it. Our new friend was baptized very soon thereafter. I was a recent convert myself, and my testimony was strengthened by watching this brilliant young man find everything we had to tell him immensely satisfying.

When his six weeks of classes were up, he played us a haunting tune on his now finished instrument and moved back to his home in Walla Walla, Washington. I thought that was the end of the story.

Four years later, I had finished my nursing degree and had begun to practice in Salt Lake City. While working, I met the night shift nurse, an energetic girl named Cathy. I was pleased to find that she was LDS and from Walla Walla. When I asked if she had ever known a young lumberjack-type named Dan, she smiled very broadly and said that she indeed did know him. Cathy said Dan was very active in the Church, and had been the young adult group leader at their institute of religion. And, she added, Dan had gone on a mission to England and had married her in the temple.

I thought back on that afternoon of tracting in Seattle, and I thanked Heavenly Father for the prompting he gave—to share just one little pamphlet before dinner.