“The Only Church”

The kitchen was filled with the marvelous smells of Thanksgiving dinner—roast turkey and dressing, rolls baking in the oven, and pumpkin pies. We were just about to sit down to dinner when the telephone rang. The voice at the other end of the line was filled with despair.

“Are you the Mormon Church leader who works with people on the central Oregon coast?” said a woman’s voice.

“I’m one of them,” I assured the woman. At the time I was serving as stake president, and Lincoln county, on the coast, was part of our stake.

“I’m not a member of your church,” the woman continued. “But we have a problem this morning that our church can’t solve and maybe no church or organization in the world can solve. The Mormons have a reputation for being able to take care of their people any place in the world, any time. And we so need some special help this morning.”

Then the words and the tears flooded forth. The woman told me that the year before, her son had married and moved with his wife to a commune on the Oregon coast. The woman and her husband had been worried about their son for months, but today they were especially concerned.

“Because it’s Thanksgiving,” she said, “our son called this morning to say thanks for family love and help over the years. During our conversation, we asked him about Thanksgiving dinner. He said they would not be having Thanksgiving dinner this year because they did not have any food or money and neither did the people around them.

“We live in northern California,” the woman continued. “We’re about ready to sit down to a lovely Thanksgiving dinner. But my husband and I would choke on it, knowing that our children were going hungry today.”

She told me that she and her husband had thought about flying to Portland, renting a car, and driving to the coast to be with their son and his wife. But her son lived in too remote a spot. “We’d never be able to find them,” she said. Besides, plane schedules made flying to Portland that day impossible. She and her husband had offered to telegraph some money to their son, but the small place where the young couple lived didn’t have such services.

“Then we thought of the Mormon Church and its reputation for caring for people under all circumstances,” the woman continued. “So we called one of the local LDS leaders here in California, and he gave us your name. Can you help us?” she pleaded.

“We will try,” I assured her.

“They live in the Oregon coastal mountains near a little community called Siletz,” the mother said. “Do you know where that is?”

“Yes,” I replied. Siletz is near Newport, where we had a strong unit of the Church. We even had some members who lived in the small town of Siletz itself—in the woods of the Coast Range mountains.

“Will you be able to find and help them, then?” she asked.

“I’m not sure we’ll be able to find them. But we’ll try,” I promised.

I hung up and dialed the bishop of the Newport Ward. Bishop J. Charles Woods had been bishop for nearly ten years and had searched out people before—on back roads and in the tall fir forests. I knew that Bishop Woods was a man who always went the second mile. He had a few grown children of his own and would do anything he could to help.

I told Bishop Woods of my talk with the woman from northern California. He asked only one question: “How do I find them?”

I gave him the directions I had written down.

“I know where that is. I’ll be on the way in a few minutes,” he promised.

He needed those few minutes, it turned out, so that he and Sister Woods could pack much of their nearly ready Thanksgiving dinner into containers that went into the car, not on the table.

Within two hours, that delicious dinner had been delivered to a grateful young couple by a devoted bishop who added some words of love, encouragement, counsel, and invitation.

A few days later, a letter arrived in the mail from the woman I had talked with on the telephone. Enclosed was a check for the Newport Ward. The letter read:

It was the reputation of the Mormons that made us think you might help feed our children in an emergency. And you did! Bless you all. We didn’t have a way to solve our problem. Your church was the only organization in the world that could. We’ll ever be thankful.

Shouldn’t we all, I thought.