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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.
Hurricane Pass
Recently, President Nelson asked us again to immerse ourselves in the scriptures to strengthen our faith. He keeps using that word, immerse, not study, not read, IMMERSE.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about that. And before that, he invited us to do the same thing – immerse ourselves in the scriptures as a way of enabling us to hear him. Well, how in the world do you immerse yourself in the scriptures?
Well, I would like to share a story that’s true. But at the same time, you know me, it’s a parable about possibly how we can do that.
How many times in your life have you said, “I want to be a scriptorian.” And you came home from church and you went to work with all the passion and the zeal, you went to work over the scriptures. Possibly you picked up the Book of Mormon. And then, after a few days, that passion began to wane. Well, you know, the rest of the story. And that’s why there aren’t that many scriptorians out there. Who’s gonna stick to it? Well, here’s the story.
About 25 years ago, longer than that, now, closer to 35 years ago, I flew for the first time across the Colorado Rockies. I remember that first flight. I sat there with my nose pressed against the window, taking in the magnificent scenery below me. It was fun. The first time I flew, staring down at the world below.
But then after hundreds of flights, it became kind of boring. Looking out the airplane window, it all looked the same. Well, yeah, there were variations in color and texture, but from 35,000 feet, the landscape all looks pretty much the same.
I came to realize that seeing the Rocky Mountains from the air is a little like getting a kiss through a spring door. It’s nice, but you sort of lose something.
Now, contrast. My daughter Sherise, (my oldest daughter) and I determined sometime back that we were going to see the Tetons really up close. I look back on it. Now. I think we were nuts. Our goal was to run up and over Hurricane Pass, right, just north of the three Tetons in the Teton Range. That trail crosses over the entire range from the Idaho side and to the Wyoming side and is 22 miles long.
Did I mention we were going to run it, not hike it? Well, we set out. Yeah, we were really full of fire. Now to be honest, we both knew we couldn’t run the entire 22 miles up over a mountain range. Some of the trail was just too steep and rugged. But we did try, we ran most of the way. Oh, and you know what? It was fun.
We ran through the pine forests along the valley floor. I loved the smell of pine. Then we started climbing up reaching the open hillsides that at that time were just laden with wildflowers. The color and the contrast. Oh, that was beautiful. And then we got up on top of (the picture I put on Facebook), we got up on top of the high mountain lakes and the rocky terrain and we were above the tree line and Oh! mama the view.
Finally, we reached the very top and crossed over the skyline trail. The view looking down the Tetons, so close it was as though we could reach out and touch them with that clear mountain air. Oh, it was utterly magnificent.
Now up to this point, our journey had been nothing but uninterrupted joy, a lot of sweat but uninterrupted joy. But that all changed when we started down the other side. The trail was steep on the other side and rough. There were places we couldn’t safely run. Even at that, Sherise rolled her ankle twice.
We ran out of water, and worst of all, darkness fell before we got down to the bottom and reached the lake. Those last few miles were a struggle that brought us to the point of exhaustion. We hurt so bad by the time we hit the bottom near Jenny’s lake. I can’t even tell you that the last few miles we were walking, holding on to one another for support and singing sacred songs to keep us going.
Finally, by following the faint beam of a cell phone light, we finally found the family and we’re safe, completely spent and in terrible pain, but happy. We did it. We did it. And given the circumstances. We’ll do it again.
We experienced firsthand, every sight, sound, smell and step of the Tetons and Hurricane Pass. You can’t see that from an airplane. You can’t experience that from a car from a long way off. I have flown over and around the Tetons on more than one occasion in an aircraft. But nothing compares with getting down in them – smelling the trees, the flowers, touch, taste, smell, feel, experience. Everything up close. Memories in the mountains are made in them, not above them. And certainly not from the comfort of a car.
My friends, mountains are just like scriptures. You have to get down in them with your nose figuratively speaking inches from the page, study every word, preposition, every comma, ponder what the prophet meant. What was going through his mind caused him to say that to get down to the details.
Too many of us read our scriptures like flying over the mountains in a jet. We sit down and off we go. Eager to get to our destination at the other end of the chapter, the other end of the book. There’s no passion. There’s no quest. Neither is there any sense of the typography of the characters, the story, the history, the drama that’s in the book, right underneath this.
Just as texture, shadow and perspective of Mother Earth are best experienced up close, so too is it the same with the scriptures. They become a passion. When we slow down, bend our backs, put our nose to the page and start exploring every word, phrase and character, it will be frustrating; even painful.
No one can study the Word of God like this and not be affected deeply. The scriptures will invade your spiritual senses just as the smell of pine in a forest can assault you. But oh, oh the adventures you can have.
So do you want to immerse yourself in the scriptures? Alright. Bend your back and get ready and put out some effort. Climb the Grand. Take a hike through the mountains of Isaiah. You’ll love what you see. And don’t be deterred. If you can stick to it. We’ll see you on the other side – weary, glassy eyed maybe. But a changed person.
George Housley
Next story. I hesitated whether or not to say this to introduce this next story and I hope this isn’t inappropriate or a turnoff to you. But I understand very well and I’m not eliciting sympathy. I understand a little of how perfect and powerful God is. And I also understand how far away from that I am when drawing the comparison between me and Him.
Well, I’m created in His image but beyond that, I’m afraid there’s not much similarity. I will never be good enough, worthy enough of my own accord. There is one thing though, that I can give Him, I can’t give him perfection. I can’t even give him good enough to be called worthy most of the time. But there is one thing I can give him.
There’ll be one good thing that I can do with all of my heart and soul – and that is teach the gospel, be a missionary and bring souls unto Christ. Any dummy can do that. And I can qualify there. That’s my joy. Here’s a story about just that. Someone helping someone else and by so doing, saving themselves.
George Housley, left England with his mother for America on the Horizon in 1856. George was 19 years old by that summer. This is again the story I told you earlier. They found themselves at Iowa City awaiting a handcart to cross the plains to Salt Lake.
A man came up to them and warned George and his mother not to go because if they did, they would starve to death. George was sorely tempted to stay behind with a few others but it was made known to him and his mother that they were to go on. So go on they did.
George and his mother set out in high spirits singing as they went as they left Iowa City. They were part of the Martin Handcart Company. However, by the time they reached the Sweetwater River in Wyoming, some two and a half months later, their joyous singing had been hushed for desperate prayers.
George described their rations being reduced to four ounces of flour a day, a half a cup. People were starving and freezing and dying all around them. Finally, it all became too much for George, “I became so despondent through weakness, he said that I longed for death, and tried to hide myself from the company that I might die.”
George went some distance from the camp, and sat down behind a rock and prayed to die. Sometime later, a man rode up on a dark horse, found George wrapped him in a blanket, and put him on that horse and took him back to safety. Well, George would live on, come to Utah, and become the father of 15 children and 94 grandchildren.
Decades later, George, now an old man, was at a family gathering. Marshall Frank Allen, the other grandfather of his granddaughter, Clarissa was sharing his experiences from the trail. He spoke of the call that came from President Brigham Young in October 1856 to go out and rescue the handcart people. He said at that time, he thought it was a foolish thing to go out in such weather with no roads to follow, but that he would make it a matter of prayer.
Marshall did, and it was made known to him that he must go and in so doing would save many lives. Accordingly, he rode out into the storm into Wyoming. It was terrible. Some of the company turned back and urged Marshall Frank Allen to do the same. But he vowed he would ride all the way to the states (meaning all the way to the Missouri River) if he had to, to find them.
He told how a short time later, he rode into the Martin Company camp and how it occurred to him that there might be someone else farther back along the trail. And then Allen told of writing back and seeing a dark spot on a hillside some distance away. He rode toward it, and discovered it to be a young man near death. Frank Allen described that he dismounted his horse. And at this point, as Frank is telling the story, Grandfather Housley spoke up.
“Your horse was a bay with one white foot and a white star on its forehead.” Grandfather Allen said, “Yes.”
“And your blanket was red and black plaid.” How did you know that? Asked grandfather Allen. Because I was that young man, said George Housley.
By Frank’s efforts to save a stranger. He preserved a great posterity, including some of his own. It is true on many levels in our efforts to save others, we save ourselves.
I might say. I am grateful to all of you that joined me for these fireside chats on Wednesdays and Sunday nights. You had become a small congregation as if it were a small community. And I love how you’re kind to each other, supportive, encouraging. You pray for one another. You even contact one another outside these firesides and some of you have become good friends. That means a lot. Thank you.
Harold B. Lee’s Prophecy
Next story. My small means in many instances, the Lord confounds the wise and works miracles. Some miracles in this world today are so small and so commonplace, as to be mislabeled as discoveries. This story I’m going to share comes from my friend, John Watson. He said, “I heard it with my own ears.”
In the early 1970s, John Watson, a Latter-Day Saint was teaching school in Simi Valley, California. President Harold B. Lee came to their state conference. Between leadership meetings, everyone took a break, John came into a hallway in the building and found two men talking. Now, he said, perhaps not fully understanding how much the local valley’s economy actually depended on the aerospace program, they were discussing the horror of how much money was being shot off into space.
You get the scene, two men running down the aerospace industry that was centered there in Simi Valley, California. And as they’re griping about it, John walks up and hears them.
Then John described what happened next.
“Harold B. Lee came out of the restroom, and stopped at the water fountain. He took a handful of pills, tablets and capsules from his pocket and sorted them to his satisfaction. Some he returned to his pocket and others he washed down with a drink of water and started up the hall. He had taken three or four steps when he stopped from where I stood. I had a perfect view. And to me his body language was, “Do I or don’t I?”
And John said, he turned and came back to where those two men were talking. And he said, “Brethren, please forgive my interruption. But I could not help here, but hear what you’re discussing. He then, John said, wagged his finger back and forth in front of their faces and continued, “Do not begrudge not one dime what is being spent in the aerospace industry, it will yet be the means of spreading the gospel in a manner you cannot now dream of.”
And then John said, “Can you imagine?” He nodded his head to them, and turned to go back to his meeting. John, heard the prophecy. And he took note. He then goes on to describe that at that time in California, they were able to get, “One hour of General Conference on a two week delay.”
Now, let me just step in. Do you remember those days when we all listened to priesthood sessions by telephone hookup, and then there came cooperative television networks that would broadcast it. And now through satellite link, we can listen in real time to prophets of God in the comfort of our own home, across the world, all at the same time, and in our own languages. As John pointed out, just consider the impact that computers have had on the gathering of Israel on both sides of the veil.
Can you imagine the feelings of those pioneers who came from all across the world, to Utah, just so they could hear prophets of God in real time, and speak. Can you imagine what they’d say now, as they watch us meet and listen with Zoom and FaceTime calls, and never leave the comfort of our living room.
John concluded his story this way, “The list goes on and on. The last being the changes COVID-19 has foisted upon us while we sit in our own homes, and participate in not only General Conference, but our weekly sacrament and auxiliary meetings via technology from the aerospace industry. I have properly said a thousand times, I have seen a greater fulfillment of Harrold B. Lee’s prophecy and to think he said, “I overheard it with my own ears.”
I share that story with you. Even though John gave me permission, I share that story with you with the idea in mind that it isn’t lost on me that these broadcasts right here, right now, via Facebook, with a little simple counter sitting in my office are being listened to all across the world – Europe, South America, Asia, everywhere.
People are listening right now. It’s a miracle. And I’m grateful.
Jesus and the Woman with the Issue of Blood
Last story for tonight. I’ve said it here many times before. And I hope you don’t misunderstand what I’m going to say. I am fascinated by power. I always have been. I’m intrigued by it. You could call me a power-hungry fool. But it is not the power of wealth and fame or even politics and popularity that I want. I don’t care a spit about that. But the power to know peace, move mountains of misery, to love as God loves. I want the power to lay hold upon those things. And not only that, for me, but to share it with my family and with others.
This story I’m going to share with you now is one of my most favorite stories in all of scripture from the life of the Savior. It began on the beach at Capernaum. As Jesus came ashore, the people were waiting for him. Among them was Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue there who fell at his feet and announced that his only daughter lay dying.
“I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her … that she may be healed and she shall live.”
Well, Jesus agreed to go. Now, thronged by a crowd, anxious to see Jesus perform the miracles they’ve heard so much about, began to follow him. And this is where it. I’ve been to Capernaum. I’ve stood on that beach. And I can envision that very beach up which he would have walked following Jairus into the city.
Now within that crowd, there was a woman afflicted with an incurable disease, some manner of blood disorder. For 12 years, she had suffered many things at the hands of many physicians, and was not healed, but was more sickly than ever. Somehow, we don’t know when or where. But she learned of the power of the great healer. Faith was awakened within her and she was determined to go to him. However, because of the nature of her illness, she was unclean, and under the Mosaic Law, was ashamed to ask for the Savior’s help.
As Jesus passed by her in the crowd, she said to herself, “If I may, but touch the hem of His garment, I shall be whole.”
It must have taken considerable effort and faith, especially for a weak and sickly woman, to get through the crowd and reach Jesus. Moreover, the distance from the lakes shore to the city is not that far. The woman had no time to dally or to waste with indecision. She pushed her way through and from behind, touching the hem of the Masters rope.
Immediately there was a tangible surge of power that flowed throughout her body. She was fully healed from that very moment and she knew it.
Jesus stopped and said, “Who touched my clothes?” Now, Peter said to Him, in effect, “There’s all these people around, pushing and shoving, and you asked who touched me?”
But her touch was different from everyone else. Hers was a touch of faith and supplication that brought forth His divine power. And he felt it. I perceive, Jesus said, that virtue or power is gone out of me. The woman knowing that she was discovered, came forward and fell at the Master’s feet confessing before all what she had done.
With intimate kindness and tenderness, Jesus commended her daughter. My faith has made the whole go in peace. How much like that woman are we? You? Me?
In our time, President Russell M. Nelson has invited us to hear him and then he added this:
“As we seek to be disciples of Jesus Christ, our efforts to hear him need to be ever more intentional. It takes conscious and consistent effort to fill our daily lives with his words, his teachings, his truths we simply cannot rely upon information we bump into on social media.”
I’ve thought so much about that woman. We are like her, mostly nameless and faceless in a very large, crowded, confused world. Yet to the Lord Jesus Christ, you matter and he has time and love enough for you.
Like her, we all have hidden ailments, miseries, mountains of misery, that come with mortality and steal from us our happiness or peace and power, ailments that the wisdom of the world can’t fix. However, whether or not we put forth the intentional effort to draw near unto Him, well, that’s our choice.
He is for us as it was for the woman healed from her issue of blood. With the presence of social media, it is as though there’s a loud pushing crowd about us, demanding with an incessant cacophony, our constant attention. Will we turn them out and have single minded determination, fight our way to the Savior’s side where we can hear him and receive His power and peace?
The woman’s enduring and endearing proof of faith was that she fought her way into His presence and touched Him with real intent and full purpose of heart.
I hope and I pray that may be the same with us, no matter what it takes, may we reach his site and receive His power.
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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