Experience shared by
President Ezra Taft Benson:
"Preparing
Yourselves for Missionary Service",
Gen. Conf.
April 1985
Let me talk
about obedience. You're learning now to keep all the commandments of
the Lord. As you do so, you will have
His Spirit to be with you. You'll feel good about yourselves.
You can't do wrong and feel right. It's impossible! One of the great
lessons I learned on my first mission was the principle of total
obedience.
In 1923 I was
serving a mission in Great
Britain. At that time there was great
opposition to the Church. It began with
the ministers and then spread through the press. Many
anti-Mormon articles appeared in the daily press. A number of
anti-Mormon movies were shown, and derogatory plays were produced on
the
stage. The general theme was the same--that Mormon missionaries
were in England
to lure away British girls and make slaves of them on Utah farms.
Today that seems fantastic, but in those days it was
very real. In some places we even had to stop tracting because of
such misunderstandings.
One time we
received a letter from mission headquarters instructing us that we
should discontinue all street
meetings. At that time I was serving as the conference president, and
my companion was the conference clerk. When this instruction
arrived, we already had a meeting scheduled for the following Sunday
night. So we reasoned that we would hold that meeting and then
discontinue street meetings thereafter. That's where we made our
mistake!
The next Sunday
evening we held our street meeting down near the railway station as
scheduled. The crowd was large and
unruly. In our efforts to preach to them, my companion [p. 37]
and I
stood back to back. He spoke in one direction, and I faced the
other half of the crowd.
When the saloons
closed, the rougher, coarser element came out on the streets, many
under the influence of liquor. The
crowd became noisy, and those on the outside were not able to hear
too well.
Some yelled,
"What's the excitement?"
Others yelled
back, "It's those dreadful Mormons."
To this, others
responded, "Let's get them and throw them in the river."
Soon an attempt
was made to trample us under their feet. But since we were taller than
the average man there, we put our
hands on their shoulders and prevented them from getting us under
their feet.
During the
excitement, my companion and I became separated. They took him
down the far side of the railway station and
me down the near side. Things began to look pretty bad.
Then a big husky
fellow came up to me as some of the others formed a circle around me
about ten feet in diameter. The
man looked me straight in the eye and said, "Young man, I
believe every word you said tonight!"
By this time a
British policeman had worked his way through the crowd. He took me by
the arm and said, "Young man,
you come with me. You're lucky to be alive in this crowd." He
led me several blocks and then ordered, "Now you get to your lodge and
don't come out anymore tonight."
When I arrived
at the lodge, I found that my companion was not yet there. I worried
and then prayed and waited. I
became so concerned about him that I decided to disguise my appearance
by putting on an old American cap and taking off my topcoat.
Then I went out to try to find him.
As I neared the
place of the meeting, a man recognized me and asked, "Have you seen
your companion?"
I said,
"No. Where is he?"
He responded,
"He's down on the other side of the railway station with one side of
his head mashed in."
This frightened
me greatly, and I sprinted to the site as fast as I could. Before I
reached the railway station,
however, I met the same policeman again. He said, "I thought I
told you to stay in and not come out on the street again tonight."
I replied,
"You did, officer. But I'm concerned about my companion. Do you know
where he is?"
He replied,
"Yes, he got a nasty blow on the side of his head, but he's gone to the
lodge now. I walked partway with
him as I did earlier with you. Now you get back there and don't
come out anymore tonight."
So I went back
to the lodge and found my companion disguising himself in order to go
out and look for me. We threw our
arms around each other and knelt together in prayer. From that
experience I learned always to follow counsel, and that
lesson has
followed me all the days of my life.
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