Hank Smith:                      00:00                   Hello everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I are sharing a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, the lesson this week is on Doctrine and covenants Section 93, only one section this week. It is incredible, a great one. I have a story for you, verse 50. In Section 93, the Lord is talking to Newel K. Whitney. He says he is going to be chastened or corrected or slapped on the wrist a little bit. This is the problem. He says, uh, Newel, you need to set in order your family. You need to be more diligent and concerned at home. As I read that little chastening, please be a little bit more focused on what’s happening at home. I thought of a story when I started at BYU about 15 years ago. I had a few colleagues there who were very kind to mentor me a little bit.

                                           00:53                   One who was on his way to retirement pulled me aside. We were just chatting and he gave me a little bit of a chastening, which I still remember. He said, you are doing a lot. You’re a very busy guy speaking around for church units, wards and stakes. I was doing some corporate work. I was writing, wanted to be doing a lot. He said, can I tell you a story? When a little bit of an old timer says, can I tell you a story? You’re like, all right, this is probably going to be good.

John Bytheway:               01:23                   This is meant for me.

Hank Smith:                      01:25                   Yep. He said, I was a lot like you once.

John Bytheway:               01:26                   You’re like uhoh.

Hank Smith:                      01:28                   He said, I was right in the middle of my career and I was doing everything. I was speaking, writing books. I’m writing articles. I’m bishop of my ward. I am coach. I am involved in city government if it’s available for him to do John, I think he was doing it. Well, he said, one late night I was at the office. It was interesting what he said. He said, when you first start this job, you go home at five, then you’re going home at six. Pretty soon you go home at seven and it just gets later and later. And he said, I was there typing away on a paper. All of a sudden he couldn’t breathe. He said, oh man, I’m hurting. I can’t breathe. He kinda sat in his chair for a minute and said, whew, man. And he said, I didn’t feel well. He’s getting dizzy, starting to ache, and felt like I was going to throw up. And he said, I decided I need to go home. He grabs his coat and gets up out of his chair, and John collapses out the door. Luckily, there was another bad father there, who was in his office. He heard what happened and he came running out and called the ambulance and they come get him. They’re taking him to the hospital and he said, I remember waking up at one point. I am in the hospital hallway. I’m laying on a bed and they are rushing me to somewhere. Lights are going by. The lights in the ceiling.

John Bytheway:               02:52                   Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      02:52                   He said as he came to, he could hear some doctors talking. It was a terrible, terrible moment. When one said to the other, not knowing that my friend was awake, conscious, yeah, this guy’s not going to make it. Oh. He thought, oh no, like the gravity of this moment that I’m going to die hit him. He said, John, the first thing he thought about was, oh, my poor ward. My poor ward. What are they going to do? He said, John, the reality hit him that they were going to be fine. That would be hard, and it would be shocking, but that calling would be filled in a matter of weeks and they would have a new bishop and a new bishopric, and things would move on, and then that kept his thought going of, oh my poor colleagues, no, they were going to be fine. It would be sad and everyone would mourn, but they would move on with work. That position would be filled. Eventually, they would put his position up, receive applications, and, and it was, oh, what about the players on the soccer team? Oh, they’re going to be fine too. Oh, what about the, the people in the government committees he was working on, oh, they were going to be fine too. John, he realized everybody was going to be fine. In fact, the world was going to keep going except for all of a sudden I realized there were six people whose lives were never going to be the same.

John Bytheway:               04:29                   Yeah.

Hank Smith:                      04:30                   Their lives would be impacted forever. It would change everything for them. From that day on, it was his wife and his five children. Obviously he doesn’t die, John because he’s telling me this story and he wasn’t Jacob Marley, you too will, you know. He said, I learned a good lesson there to spend my time on things that matter most. He said, I learned to say no to things that I needed to say no to. He said, I still say yes. It’s not like I say no to every calling, but hey, can you come on over and help this family move? I can’t do that. You want to be on this committee? No. Hey, there’s going to be this great project done at work. You’re probably going to be in on this. You know? Good luck. I wish you the very best. I hope it goes well. I’m not going to be involved. I think he was quoting someone else, John, when he said, Hank, it’s easier to say no when you have a burning yes for something else. It really impacted me, John.

John Bytheway:               05:37                   Yeah, me too. Right now, when you’ve articulated who are the most important people in my life, you remind me, Hank of a story that Stephen Covey told about listening to his wife on the phone one day and someone asked her to participate in some wonderful community project or something. I think it’s Sandra Covey said something like, oh, that sounds like a wonderful worthy project. I am so pleased that you would think of me. I won’t be participating, but thank you so much for thinking of me… because yeah, we can’t do everything that’s asked of us, but boy, who are the people we’ve made covenants with? Who are the people that we’re, that are relying on us? That helps you make decisions when you think of it.

Hank Smith:                      06:20                   Again, it’s not about saying no to everything. He didn’t say that. He said, use the yeses as a little more quality.

John Bytheway:               06:27                   Your friend saw you running yourself ragged. It’s kind of like, again, I think it was Brother Covey, why do we work so hard for the things we can’t take with us sometimes at the expense of those we can. Ooh, ouch.

Hank Smith:                      06:41                   Yeah, I thought of it with that verse 50. Be more diligent and concerned at home. It helped me. I tried to implement the principle he was teaching me. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. We’re in section 93, like I said this week, and we’re with President Steve Lund. He goes through this section. He also shares a lot of stories about his last five years serving as the Young Men General president. It’s a lot of fun and then come back here next week we’ll do another followHIM Favorites.