I was set apart as Stake Mission President of the Riverside Stake in the 1950’s by Elder Harold B. Lee and Elder Mark E. Peterson who were then members of the Quorum of the Twelve. In that blessing I was compared to father Lehi as it pertains to missionary activity. He referred to my past missionary activity and indicated that it would be influential in the lives of my children and that they would carry on and spread the Gospel accordingly. I was assigned to develop the flannel board presentation which was used throughout the world by all of the missionaries, both State and Foreign. I designed them and Roger put them together while employed by Hiller Book Binding Company on Third West and Sixth North. Dorothy Handley was the artist I employed to prepare all of the colored pictures. I worked for Tom Monson who was then working for Deseret News in printing the pictures and the script used in presenting the lessons.
I had thirty-one missionaries assigned in our stake. For several weeks we met during the evening three times a week and spent our entire time memorizing the lessons and practicing the use of the flannel board. I would pair them off in various areas of the Stake Center for this activity. We divided up the Stake into small areas and indicated the homes and addresses of the non-members on three-by-five cards. We planned a huge dinner with the support of the Bishops and the auxiliary heads for all the non-members in the stake. We knocked on all the doors of the non-members and invited them to attend. One hundred and eleven responded. After the roast beef dinner we had a forty-five minute program of exceptionally good talent. Then Elder Mark E. Peterson spoke for twenty minutes to those who attended which numbered over three hundred. The missionaries followed through teaching these families and at the conclusion of the year instead of the usual seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen baptisms; we had ninety-three. This performance was repeated each year with the least number of baptisms being fifty-six. When I was released the missionary work reverted back to the usual style and the numbering of converts returned to normal.
During this time I was the High Councilman assigned to missionary work and other dealings with the Nigerian program where I was set apart as Presiding Elder of Nigeria by President David O. McKay, Hugh B. Brown and Henry D. Moyle.
I made three unsuccessful trips to this country but met and taught the Gospel too many hundreds, some of whom were baptized and are attending school at the B.Y.U. and elsewhere.
For years I supervised the baptismal services of all the Stakes in the Salt Lake Valley which were held in the Tabernacle. There were more than thirty Stakes each taking their turn weekly in conducting the services. I was asked to make out the schedule as well as submit a recommendation that the service to be held each Wednesday night at six o’clock. There were usually fifteen or twenty baptisms with one hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty attending from the various stakes.
On Sunday evening at 8:00 P.M. the missionaries and members would invite their non-member friends to attend a one hour lecture to be held in the Stake Center. I would give a series of seven lessons with the flannel board and then hold a baptismal service for those desiring baptism. One young lady called me on the telephone and asked if she could bring her boyfriend to the meetings after hearing what we were doing in our Stake. I informed her that she would be most welcome even though she lived several miles out of our Stake boundary. After seven weeks I baptized him even though he had been raised in a Catholic convent as an orphan child. She was about twenty and he was thirty-one. The following Sunday they accompanied me to a fireside where he bore his testimony. Then Later that evening out on the lawn, I informed him that in the church they could be married in a civil marriage and one year later be sealed in the temple. He looked at me in front of the group and asked the question, “Shouldn’t something as important as this be done correctly?” I said; “Yes, if you feel you can wait that long”. He said, “We will do it”. A year later I received a knock at the front door of our home on 8th West and there stood this young couple holding hands, and he said, “We only wanted to report that we were married in the temple today as we promised you we would.” Since that time he has been a ward clerk and served in the bishopric in the Rose Park area.
We are holding such firesides also here in the mission field in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. On the last Sunday Evening, June 5th, the Second Ward here in Baton Rouge asked me to speak on the same subject as I had previously talked on while giving lessons years ago. There were about one hundred present. We showed two films and I gave a synopsis of the Godhead, Apostasy and Restoration, Book of Mormon, and Plan of Salvation lessons contained in the Pillars of Truth; a booklet that I had published. There were a number of non-member guests who have requested further instruction in the Gospel. Prior to the time I was acting as Stake Mission President and I had a young married man who held the office of a priest as my home teaching companion. One of our families the father was a deacon whose wife was a non-member. She would not let us enter the home, denying that they had membership in the church. I went to their home upon three occasions. The third time she opened the door and said, “I told you we are not members of the church and I don’t want anything to do with you,” and slammed the door in my face. After that my companion John Devrome would not go to the door. About four or five months later I received a note to have the one offering the closing prayer in a meeting to remember Joe Whitaker since he was seriously ill. Immediately following Sunday school I got in touch with my home teaching companion and we went to the home thinking that the wife had made the request. She had forgotten who we were and opened the door and let us in when I mentioned what had happened she said that it was not her request but her neighbor’s request. I had nothing to do with it. I then asked if we could see her husband as long as we were there and she said that she didn’t think that it would hurt. We entered his bedroom only to find that his brother was a High Priest in the church was sitting in a chair beside him. He was suffering from a severe heart pain. I asked him if he would like to be administered to and he said that he certainly would. He said,” anything to get rid of this pain”. Since my companion did not hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, I asked his brother if he did and he said; “yes,” so he anointed his head and I sealed the anointing. Shortly after we left for home and did not hear anymore until the next week when my wife, Nyal, received a telephone call to go to the Whitaker’s. I did not feel the urgency because of their reluctance to receive us as home teachers and so I finished hoeing in my garden and changed my clothes and about an hour later I knocked on their front door with my companion only to find that she was pacing the floor; being very upset that I had taken my time to come when she had called. We went in and administered to Brother Whitaker following which he received a relief of pain. I was informed that shortly thereafter we had done this the week before, the chest pains left and had not retuned until that Thursday evening at which time rather than call the doctor she called the Elders. Thereafter she always called on the Priesthood. Later when we returned on our regular home teaching rounds we visited their home while there was a boxing match on and while the rounds were going on I leaned over to her and asked her when she was going to be baptized and she told me that she had been waiting for me to ask her. I baptized her and later her daughter and granddaughter who lived next door. She became the visual aid director of the 28th ward and held that position until she passed away. Her husband passed away about six months after she was baptized.
I had another experience during the time I was serving in the Stake Mission in Salt Lake. I had previously discovered that the Stake Missionaries had not held a cottage meeting in six months. One of my Stake Missionaries was Girard Kipp, a Dutch convert of the church. He was a grave digger at the city cemetery in Salt Lake and came to our meetings in his work clothes and unkempt hair and most of his teeth missing. He could not learn the lessons and so wrote them on sheets of paper and read them to those who would listen. I received an invitation to go with him one evening to teach a Mrs. Farr who belonged to the Catholic Church. I discovered that she was a well educated woman living in a lovely home in 29th Ward. She wanted me to give her the Book of Mormon lesson with illustrations on the flannel board. At the conclusion of our meeting she turned to me and said; “I don’t want you to come to my place again.” This was rather embarrassing for a few moments until she further explained, “Until I am baptized”. She further stated that, “for the first time I am able to understand what he has been trying to teach me”. She indicated that he would read the lessons to her. She said that it wasn’t I that had converted her but it was Girard Kipp. It was so difficult for him to teach me and he was so sincere that I knew he had to be right; no matter what it was.” She said, “That he would even come to me and ask me how to pronounce the words and I would practically have to teach myself”. He sat there smiling, but I knew that the Spirit of the Lord had worked through him and had touched her heart because of his willingness to serve and to teach under a great handicap. She was baptized and later became the President of the Primary in her ward and is now a very faithful and well read member of the church.
Upon one occasion after mother and I were married and Marilyn was about five years of age and we lived in a ward area with about 1,000 members; 41 of whom were non-members. This was in Iona, Idaho. I wanted to do some missionary work on my own while holding five other jobs down in the ward. I was supervisor of the Aaronic Priesthood and a Sunday school teacher. They would not call me as a Stake Missionary because I was too busy so I decided to do a little missionary work on the side on my own. I had five nights of the week that I wanted to work since it was during the summertime and the farming community did not have any church activity at this particular time. I chose my next door neighbor Ray Burnam who was a Seventh Day Adventist as one of the families. He smoked, drank and used profanity and had fought the church for thirty one years; I also chose the Louck family with seven children, and a Japanese family who had two daughters attending the school where I was teaching. I visited each one of these families at least one night a week without missing and in 32 weeks I had baptized 17 person
