Description

The Erickson Family of Star Valley, Wyoming

The year was 1983 in what I consider to be one of the most beautiful places on this Earth – Star Valley, Wyoming. The Erickson family was preparing for another busy summer, working on the family farm. Good help is hard to find when you work on the farm or the ranch.

Mike Erickson, a nephew from Clearfield, Utah which is right close to me, wanted to come and spend the summer working on the farm. Well, he showed up at the end of May and started work. Kathy said, he was a good worker and he learned quickly the things that he needed to do.

Well, time passed, the summer passed and that August, Mike was scheduled to go to scout camp with his troop from Utah. On the appointed day, the scouts showed up at the Erickson farm to collect Mike. He, in turn, showed them around the farm and then they loaded up and left for camp.

Kathy reported what happened next. She said:

“A few days later on August 11, 1983, we got an early morning phone call from Mike’s father, Rondo Erickson telling us that Mike had been killed in a thunderstorm. He was struck by lightning while he was sleeping in his tent. We were shocked and grieving, she said.”

Time passed and in 1990, if you remember, most of us do, President Ezra Taft Benson asked church members to participate in the Family-to-Family Book of Mormon Program. The Erickson family bought a case of 30 copies of the Book of Mormon. In each book, they put a picture of their family and their testimony of the book and then gave them back to be distributed.

Kathy said we were happy that we could be a special part of this special missionary effort and we wondered where those books would go and who would read them. Now, as you may remember from that program, those books could and did literally go anywhere in the world.

Well, a few months later, the family received a letter from overseas. Indeed, one of their books had found its way to Bordeaux, France and into the hands of a missionary from Clearfield, Utah, Elder Brad Yuri.

Elder Yuri explained in his letter to the Erickson family that they likely would not remember him, but he remembered them. He was Mike’s best friend and was there on that day when the scout troops stopped to tour the farm and picked up Mike. He was there at scout camp with Mike. He was there when Mike was killed.

A coincidence? No, as Kathy said, “God knows and has his hand on all things.”

I am grateful to Kathy and Pam and others who have shared these very personal stories and I share them with you, with permission and I hope, and I pray that they administer comfort and that they soften hearts and invite the spirit of the Lord to be with you. My fervent desire is that you will be comforted and made happy.