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Speaker: Glenn Rawson
Hi, this is Glenn Rawson. One of the most powerful ways to share history and heritage is by the telling of stories. We began sharing inspiring stories nearly 30 years ago. Each of those stories is true and was intended to inspire and strengthen faith. Over the years, those stories have reached millions around the world. This podcast is for you to listen, learn and enjoy.
First Story: A Toast
President Nelson has asked us repeatedly, as part of latter-day covenant Israel, to stand up and speak out. Remember that – stand up and speak out.
Well, this story illustrates in part what that means. The story was originally shared in a General Conference by President N. Eldon Tanner.
In a world starving for moral leadership, (I say that with calculation) stories such as the following, well, they’re refreshing. I don’t know this young man’s real name so we’ll just call him John.
When he was just a young military man, John went east to an officer’s training school. While he was there, a new commanding officer came to take over the school. A banquet was hosted in this man’s honor. Sitting by the side of each plate at that table was a cocktail glass and at the appropriate time someone raised his glass and proposed a toast to the new officer.
Now, instantly, John faced a moment of important decision. You see, John was a latter-day saint – he didn’t drink. He never had. If he raised that glass now and joined the rest of those officers (potential officers I may add) well, he wouldn’t stand out, he’d blend right in with the rest of him and no one would ever know but if he didn’t raise that glass, well, you get the picture.
In that moment, John made a decision in front of all of his peers that changed the course of his life. While all the other officers raised their glasses in salute to their commander, John raised his as well except that his was full of milk. Well, at that long table he stuck out like a wart on a witch’s nose.
Once the dinner and the entertainment were over, that commanding officer came from his placed at the head of the table and made a beeline straight to John and demanded to know why he had toasted him with a glass of milk.
“Well sir, ” said John, ” I’ve never touched alcohol in my life, I don’t want to touch it, my parents wouldn’t want me to touch it and I didn’t think you’d want me to either. I wanted to toast you so I thought you’d be satisfied if I toasted you with what I’m accustomed to drinking.”
“Report to my headquarters in the morning”, was all the officer said.
Well, you can imagine how the rest of that night went for John the next morning. At the appointed hour, John walked into the commander’s office and faced him.
Whereupon, the commander offered him a position on his personal staff with this explanation:
“I want to surround myself with men who have the courage to do what they think is right regardless of what anybody else thinks about it.”
You know we live in interesting times and it’s like I told the teachers last night, I really don’t think the Lord is expecting us to die for our principles. These days we live in different times, we’re not persecuted, but like those of a yesteryear with our homes being burned and being driven. We’re persecuted in a different way, perhaps it is with enticing us to give up our principles.
I don’t think the Lord is expecting us these days to die for our principles though we have to be willing. I think He’s asking us to live for them or rather just live them.
Regardless no matter what happens, just live them. It is critical, I believe that we stand up for truth right now even if it means we must stand out alone. There will come a time when we will stand before Him and be judged on how well we have stood for Him.
The story comes from President N. Eldon Tanner conference report April 1976.
Second Story: The Dirt on the Road
This next story is a very clear allusion to one of the most startling talks from last weekend’s conference. Something I never expected to hear but I am so glad that I did. I won’t spoil it. You’ll see what this story means at the end.
It had to have been a curious sight that day to see city workers hauling in and scattering loads of dirt all over the paved streets. Now, normally those same men labored to keep their prospering city clean, free of of mud and filth and but there they were out spreading load after load of good old-fashioned dirt on the cobblestone streets right in front of one of the most prominent buildings in the largest city in the United States.
It’s not surprising but history has all but forgotten – that misplaced soil. In fact I only discovered it as a small (oh by the way thing that I found in a history text) but in that soil, in that dirt in the wrong place, there’s a lesson.
You see the location of that dirt was 6th & Chestnut Sts. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The building in which they scattered that dirt right in front was the venerable old Pennsylvania State House which you would know today as Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence had once been debated and signed.
You see the date on which that dirt was being scattered in front of Independence Hall was May 14, 1780. Philadelphia and the entire nation for that matter had their eyes anxiously fixed on that building. Why? Because on that day some of America’s best men were slated to convene and save the freedom won by the American revolution.
So, why the dirt? Answer: Quiet. It was there to muffle the distracting noise of horse hooves and clatter of carriage wheels over hard cobblestones. Just a few feet away from that street, those men would scour the wisdom – the collective wisdom of the centuries – to form a new government. History would come to call that gathering the Grand Convention.
Someone in there understood that inspiration is invited by peace and stillness. Revelation comes when good men and women gather in council wrestling with righteous problems, seeking heaven’s help and of how these men struggled. Oh, it took months but the inspiration came. Praise be to God! That inspiration came to those men.
Out of it the constitution of the United States is the most powerful document and the most inspired document of human law outside the canon of scripture. It is in a sense scripture because God gave good men revelation.
Sometimes, if you know the history of that convention, in spite of themselves. To capture a new eternal principle, it was a document born in council and foreordained. Its principles and its officers are bound by oath to preserve the rights and liberties of all men.
As Elder Oaks said or President Oaks said in the conference, “… there is so much more to the United States constitution than a document in America. Its principles are eternal – it is for all men and all nations and that oath which they took which men today (men and women today) have taken is binding on their souls.”
I will say more about the constitution in the months ahead. Carefully, I will talk about it.
Third Story: “You Shall Go To That City”
I hope you’re doing okay. I have felt compelled in recent weeks. I know this is going to sound whacked but it’s true. A few weeks ago (two weeks ago), I was working on another book and all of a sudden I felt compelled to go and gather up research I didn’t even know that I had. And to put it all into a folder and when I got all done, I found that over the last year and a half, I had collected a pretty, sizable collection of stories about angels among us.
These stories are absolutely profound. There are angels among us and often those angels are members of our family- departed. This is one of those stories.
Louis Frederick Moench was born in Neuffen, Germany in 1846.The 11th child of 14 or the 13th of 16 depending on how you want to count and whose sources you’re looking at. He was either way late in the family of children born to Johann Christian and Elizabeth Barbara Hess Moench.
The family, living in Germany was very poor which was the reason that in 1852, the father, Christian, left for the United States where he established himself as a tanner near Gowanda, New York.
And then right after, sent for two of his older children to come and help him. Christian would never return to Germany but in his absence he left behind his wife, Mother Barbara Hess Moench. She struggled mightily to provide for the 11 children still at home. Though the necessities of life were scarce, hard to obtain, the singing of hymns and the reading of scriptures were a plentiful staple for the family and mother made sure of it.
Sometime later, Barbara became ill and I think it may have been tuberculosis and slowly she began to waste away. When finally she was so weak as to be confined to her bed, her little boy Louis, about seven to nine years old would sit by her side and read the bible to her. Mother’s granddaughter wrote of those days:
“During those long, sad days, she received her greatest comfort from her Lutheran Bible which Louis spent all of his leisure hours reading to her. Though only nine years old, he was an excellent reader with a voice rich and musical, soothing to the dying woman. It was reading at his mother’s bedside that gave Louis a literary training which something about the rhapsody of Isaiah which particularly appealed to him in his reading. One day he read these:
“Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city, for henceforth there shall no more come unto thee the uncircumcised and the unclean.’ On Louis read: ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings that publisheth peace… that saith unto Zion, thy God reigneth! …for they shall see eye to eye, when the Lord shall bring Zion again.”
The Bible was laid down and the boy asked; ‘Mother, what is meant by this ‘Zion’ of which Isaiah the prophet speaks so much?’
She answered, ‘It is a peaceful, beautiful city that will be in the last days.’
‘Will I ever go to that city, Mother?’
‘My son, I promise that if you will always live as I have taught you, you shall go to that city.”
In January 1856, Louis’s dear mother passed away and just two weeks later, his little brother Willie joined her. Shortly after Louis and the remaining children emigrated to America and joined their father and siblings in New York state.
Louis’ father decreed that he had received enough schooling and was to join him in the tannery. Some sources say that Louis was very unhappy and rebelled against his father and ran away. Others say he stayed and worked. But either way, at the age of eighteen, Louis left for Chicago where with hard work, determination, and night school, Louis excelled and graduated from Bryant Stratton college as a trained teacher.
In 1864 , Louis set out with a friend to cross the United States to California where the two young men would pursue the occupation of teachers. The two men had a single wagon filled with supplies pulled by two mules.
By early August 1864, they had crossed Wyoming and come down into the canyons of Utah, presumably Echo Canyon where they camped and enjoyed (one of those nights) a very good trout breakfast. The mountain air and abundant wildlife caused the two boys to decide to lay over one more day in search of game.
Louis’s traveling companion, Henry Trescott observed that they were not more than fifty miles out of Salt Lake City, to which Louis responded,
“We must make an early start tomorrow morning, for I will never spend a night in Salt Lake City.”
“You are very much prejudiced against the Mormons, Louis. I don’t care to have much to do with them myself, but those we have met seem to hard working, honest people.”
“Oh, yes Louis, that is true enough, but I have no use for their religion. I don’t want their polygamy, and I don’t want their golden Bible. I repeat, I will not spend a night in Salt Lake City.”
The following morning, the two boys got up early and they spent the day hunting for game. As they came down off the hills and returned to their camp, they were dismayed to observe that a mountain breeze had fanned their campfire into a blaze and sent sparks into their wagon. Everything but the clothes on their backs and the mules they were riding, was a pile of ash.
Henry said, “Looks like you’re staying in Salt Lake more than one night, Louis,” commented
“I suppose we’ll stay there with the Mormons until we can get another outfit,” replied Louis. “We cannot go on to California without.”
Reluctantly, the two made their way into the city where they found lodging with a motherly midwife named Almeda Farr. She made them welcome and they stayed. She became like a mother to Louis and in time Louis was “perfectly at home in her house.” In a course of time, she gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon which Louis studied, marked, and prayed about.
In time, Louis came to know it was the word of God. Thus it was, that on Fast day, February 6, 1867, Louis Frederick Moench was baptized.
“That night as he laid upon his bed a light entered his room, and he saw his mother standing by his bed. Little Willie was holding her hand. The smile that she gave him made him know that the step he had taken had met with her approval and her dying promise had been fulfilled. He had lived to come to Zion.”
Louis Moench was to Northern Utah and Ogden what Karl G. Maeser was to Utah Valley and Brigham Young University. He was a finely trained teacher, a great administrator and the Father of Weber State.
Fourth Story: Adam’s Funny TV Show
Last weekend, listening to the Saturday morning session, something that Sister Joy D. Jones said literally took my breath away. She was making reference to a friend of hers and his experiences in Vietnam and she likened that battlefield to raising children.
This is what Sister Jones said and as she said it, I wept.
“Long before they enter (meaning the children our children) the battlefield of life, how can we more fully strive to teach, fortify and prepare them? How can we invite them to get far enough in? Wouldn’t we rather have them sweat in the safe learning environment of the home then bleed on the battlefields of life?”
One of the fundamental purposes of life and for us as parents and grandparents is to learn for ourselves and then teach the young to distinguish good from evil, right from wrong. But you know sometimes, it’s just not that easy especially when evil is so cleverly disguised these days.
We were getting ready for bed one night when my son Adam came to me and said, “Dad, can I talk to you?” Now, this is not a normal bedtime request from him, so I said, “Sure, I’ll come down to your room in a minute.”
Well, he crawled into bed; pulled the covers up under his chin while I sat on the edge of the bed. Without any preamble, he told me that he had been in a recent Church meeting where they had explained to him certain principles of the rights and wrongs of morality, and how the media tends to mix it all up.
Well, they must have done a pretty good job because he instantly thought of a certain television series that his older siblings had introduced him to that he really liked! All of his brothers and sisters all raved about how good this show was, and he wanted to watch it too. And he got hooked on it, so much so that he began ordering it from Netflix. I – I knew full well what show he was talking about, and I knew I didn’t like that show, and he knew that I didn’t like that show, but he couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like it when the rest of my family did.
So you see what is happening? Dad doesn’t like this show and doesn’t approve of all the children. It is wonderful but Dad is not forbidding them to watch it.
I still wasn’t quite catching on to where Adam was going with this. And then he said, “Dad,” I’m so confused!” And his lip quivered as he said it. “How can this show be so wrong when it’s so funny?” I didn’t expect that.
I was caught about as flat-footed as a parent can be. I said a prayer in my heart, and we began to talk about the message of the show and what it was really saying and making people laugh at. We talked about the tactics of the evil one, and how he so skillfully makes right look all wrong, and wrong look so appealing, so funny, so humorous. Bless his heart, Adam caught on quickly and pretty soon he was explaining to me the principles that were involved. I didn’t help him that much. He helped me.
Later, we talked about it again, and he told me of the inner conflict that had been created. He knew in his heart that the subtle message of the show was wrong, very wrong, but again, “It’s so funny Dad,” he said. “I really want to watch it!” – the battle between mind and heart.
The whole experience caused me to think. Maybe most adults don’t establish their morals by the media, but as Sister Joy taught so powerfully Saturday morning, children form them in those tender years when they’re not accountable and the media has a great deal to do with it. too often the children do. There’s no such thing as a moral vacuum. If children do not get correct principles from their parents, they will certainly get false principles elsewhere, and the media is the most generous supplier in that regard.
Thank you for listening. Many of the stories you heard today have been published and are archived at glennrawsonstories.com. If you would like more information you can communicate with us there. We will be back again with another podcast next week.
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