Do these two young people look like your typical companion speakers for a high councilman visiting your Ward or Branch. Of course not! But they were. They came with their dad and both did very well--especially Mya, his 9 year old daughter.
Mya talked about the 13 Articles of Faith, how they came about, and the Wentworth Letter. Then she proceeded to recite Articles 1, 3, 4, 6 and 13 and talk about each of them. She bore her testimony of the truthfulness of them and challenged the congregation to memorize one each week. Well done, Mya!
Austin's talk was brief, but still impressive. He used Alma 1:25 as the basis for his talk and spoke on faith. ("Now this was a great trial to those that did stand fast in the faith; nevertheless, they were steadfast and immovable in keeping the commandments of God, and they bore with patience the persecution which was heaped upon them.")
When Brother Bascom spoke, I wasn't at all surprised at how outstanding it was. But before he began he told us that it had been the practice in their home to allow their children, when asked to speak, to choose their own topics and write their own talks! Wish I'd made that a practice in our home 50 years ago.
I'm going to try to recreate a little of what he said, with a lot of help from the Deseret News. He started with Alma 37:6-7, (By small and simple things are great things brought to pass, bring about His eternal purposes, confound the wise and bring about the salvation of many souls.) Moroni 10:32 (Come unto Christ and be perfected in Him, love Him with all your might, mind and strength, then His grace will be sufficient for you that you may be perfect in Christ.") and Mormon 9:9 (God is the same yesterday, today & forever with no variableness.)
Brother Bascom spoke of great miracle from the past and particularly Noah and the Ark. Then of a miracle from today. This miracle occurred on and just after November 15, 2013. Following is the portion of the story he shared. A longer version can be read from the Deseret News, but this should be adequate for now.
Surviving
the typhoon: Fear, faith and miracles for 10 LDS sister missionaries trapped in
the Philippines
MANILA, Philippines — The water was
rising fast. In the darkness of early morning, Amanda Smith moved away from the
window to shield her face from the slashing rain. She had shut it just moments
before to ward off the raging storm whipping through the palm trees outside.
But now the wind had ripped it
open, and the wooden shutters were slamming violently against the wall again
and again. Sister Smith, an LDS missionary from Elk Ridge, Utah, couldn’t see
anything outside, but she could smell the sea, which seemed to be getting
closer and closer. They had to get out of here.
She had heard about the storm three
days before, from a driver of a pedicab. It was typhoon season, and tropical
storms were common in the Philippines. Still, the last storm warning had
produced nothing but blue skies. Some of the missionaries wondered if this time
would be any different.
There were nine missionaries from
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with her in the house, a
two-story structure made of cement blocks. They were young women from Utah and
Alaska and the Philippines, all about her own age, 19. They had done what they
could to prepare, hastily assembling 72-hour kits, and had even bought candles
and rope, just like their mission president had asked, even though no one in
the house thought either would be necessary.
Now, as water roared down the
streets toward them, Sister Smith realized no preparations were too small. The
worst storm in generations had just hit landfall.
She was with nine other sister
missionaries, in a house quickly filling with a black, mucky water. As the
storm worsened, she could feel the house shaking, metal poles outside snapping,
animals howling and squealing.
At first, the sisters had all
gathered in one central room on the second floor, thinking it the safest place
in the house. But the water was now rising to their knees. Metal bars covered
every window, preventing an escape outside. With no other choice they would
have to go to the first floor, where the water nearly reached the ceiling, and
try to open the front door to get out. They knew the current could pull them
out into the ocean, but if they stayed where they were now, they would drown in
what had essentially become a box of cement walls.
One by one the sisters slipped into
the freezing water on the first floor. A few couldn’t swim; they held tight to
their companions. Some of the women started to cry. Sister Smith was scared
too, but she was determined not to let it show. She wanted to stay calm for the
others.
The front door was locked with a
metal latch on the bottom and the top. One of the sisters dived under the water
and unlocked the bottom latch; another reached the top and did the same. But
when they tried to open the door it wouldn’t budge. The water pressing from the
outside and inside had sealed it shut.
What had been ebbing as a low level
panic reached hysteria for some of the sisters, who began weeping and sobbing.
Sister Smith could feel the panic rising in her chest too, but she had to stay
calm. With a few of the other sisters who had become leaders of the group, she
started to sing hymns, their voices muted by the stinky water rising to their
chins. They quoted scripture. They prayed. Sister Smith put on a brave face,
not daring to say aloud what she was thinking: “I never thought this is where
my life would end.”
The sister missionaries worked
together. Sister Schaap punched a hole through an opening in a flimsy wall, and
the group of 10 swam through the murky water that would soon carry their
journals and clothes and pots and pans out to sea. Those who couldn’t swim
clung tightly to their companions.
The sisters used the rope to reach
a nearby roof. Sister Smith stood on the rain gutter, the other nine sister
missionaries shivering beside her, the rain still coming down in sheets. Hours
had passed since the beginning of the storm, and yet the sky above Tacloban was
still gray, shrouded by fog.
Sister Smith said thoughts of dying
left her mind. But some of the sisters appeared pale and their bodies were
shaking. The water was still rising and they feared it would engulf them. One
of the sisters suggested they pray. They huddled closely together, bowed their
heads, and with the rain dripping down their chins, asked God to make the water
stop. And then, in what Sister Smith could only describe as the greatest
miracle of her life, the sea stopped rising.
By the time Elder Ardern, first
counselor in the Philippine Area Presidency, arrived in Tacloban four days
after the storm, the water had receded, leaving a putrid scene of destruction
in its wake. Bloated bodies lay exposed on the sides of the road, some covered
by a blanket, or rusty corrugated roofing, others by a moldy piece of
cardboard. The stench was sickening.
The city had descended into chaos
and lawlessness. Survivors of the typhoon had broken into stores that hadn’t
been flattened to steal televisions and toys, food, even light fixtures,
despite the fact that there was no electricity.
Hours after the storm, the
president’s two assistants had made the walk from the mission home to the house
where the sisters had been staying. The house was destroyed but they had to
kick through the door to get inside. When they found no one, they feared the
worse, a sense that only heightened when a neighbor told them they’d seen four
sisters leaving for a nearby elementary school.
“There were supposed to be 10,” one
of the elders said.
They found all 10 at a nearby
elementary school, and soon learned the story of the escape from the house and
the hours spent on the roof, praying for someone to find them.
With the sisters now accounted for,
the assistants and other missionaries assigned to the mission office fanned out
through the city, trying to find the rest of their mission force. A dense cloud
cover prevented even satellite phones from working, meaning the missionaries
had no way to communicate with missionaries serving in outlying areas.
But these missionaries, they said
guided by the spirit and survival instincts, made their way to the mission
home. Some walked for four hours. Others hitched a ride on a motorcycle,
relying on the kindness of strangers unsure how to feed their own children. One
group of missionaries cobbled together more than a thousand dollars and made
their way to Tacloban by boat. All 204 missionaries were now accounted for.
The two assistants to the
president, one from Dallas and the other from Fiji, stayed with the 10 sisters
and others at the mission home, supporting each other, especially at night when
gunshots rang out.
With their own food running low,
the assistants, under the direction of their mission president, decided they
had to make their way to the airport. So before dawn, four days after the storm
but again in pouring rain, they headed out with their flashlights pointing the
way through the darkness.
“It was the hardest thing,” said
one of the assistants. “People had gotten so hungry they had begun to attack
each other. The worst part was the smell, the stench of death.”
Some sisters, their feet blistered,
could barely walk. The looting had become more severe, and the missionaries had
heard rumors that prisoners at the jail, which had lost its electricity and its
guards, had simply walked out. The assistants stood at the front and back of
the long line of missionaries — dozens and dozens — as they made the long march
to the airport.
As they walked, Elder Ardern tried
to arrange a flight out. He had booked flights in Manila, but thousands of
other survivors had mobbed the Tacloban airport. The ticket agent told him if
he wanted a flight out, he’d have to pay more to get his 204 missionaries to
safety.
As Elder Ardern tried other
options, the missionaries milled about what was left of the airport terminal,
its walls blasted out by the gale force winds of the storm. And then, a final
miracle.
An Army sergeant with a C-130
airplane, assigned by the U.S. government to fly Americans out of the disaster
area, said he had a feeling he should walk through the terminal one more time.
As he did, he saw out of the corner of his eye what looked like the nametag of
a Mormon missionary. The sergeant, a Mormon himself, asked if the missionary
was American. When he said he was, the sergeant told him he could arrange
flights out for all the Americans and foreigners in his C-130.
Before the day had ended, many of
the missionaries Elder Ardern had come for were flying out of Tacloban. By
week’s end, all of the missionaries in the area would be evacuated to Manila,
where they would await a new assignment in other missions in the Philippines.
God was, is, and always will be a God of miracles even though the world only sees it as chance. So, I didn't get anywhere near putting Brother B's talk down correctly, but it made total sense at the time. At least the story of the Sister Missionaries was available online, so it's complete.
Elder Browning came to Plaquemine on the last transfer when Elder Morrell became a Zone Leader and moved to Baton Rouge. Elder B is from Highland UT--went to Lone Peak HS where many of the BYU basketball players come from--and has been out for just over a year. When he's released he'll return to UVU for an undergrad degree then on to the University of Utah for a Doctorate in Physical Therapy. Everyone has told me that he's a great Elder and is loved wherever he goes.
