John Bytheway:               00:01                   And now on to part two with Brother Steven Lund Doctrine and Covenants 93.

Pres. Steven Lund:          00:07                   One of my heroes is Elder Larry Echo Hawk, who is a General Authority 70. He grew up on a reservation and somehow out of pure talent work ends up at BYU as a football player and as a student and ends up going to law school. Ends up being the Attorney General of the state of Idaho. Ends up being an, I think the under Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs. 60,000 employees working for him. I was chatting with him one day and I asked him, how do you do that? How do you manage an organization like that and find time for your family and for scholarship and all the other things you do? And he says, oh, that’s comes down to one thing I do. When I got to BYU, saw the workload and saw the football with everything I was doing there, I knew I didn’t have the capacity to do it.

                                           00:55                   I made a promise that I was going to avail myself of the help of heaven. And I’m not saying this in his words, this is my recollection of his impression. He said, I decided that I was gonna read 10 pages of the Book of Mormon every day to get centered and to get strengthened. Read 10 pages or until I felt the Spirit, whichever came last. And having done that, he said, it empowered me to do all the other things that I needed to do. Then he said something very much like this. I don’t have it written down, but he said, I found that on any given day, the most important thing that I did in that day was that the reading of the scriptures, having done that, everything else was secondary. But having done that important thing, then I had the help of having to do the stuff that was beyond me that I needed to do during the day.

John Bytheway:               01:47                   That’s your verse 39 prevention antidote right there. If you don’t want verse 39. Wow, that’s a great story.

Pres. Steven Lund:          01:57                   He’s a great man. I don’t read 10 pages in the Book of Mormon every day, but that’s on my mind. Every time I pick up the scriptures. I need to read at least until I feel the Spirit. That’d be better if I read 10 pages.

Hank Smith:                      02:09                   I know it sounds simple, but if I have a friend or a student who says, you know, I just don’t feel what I used to feel. It seems the answer in this section is fill your life with light and truth. John, you’ve talked about the principle of the marinade. Marinate in light and truth. The Lord has given us so much that we could go and listen to, read, attend, then listen to and read and attend. Fill your life with light and truth. It seems that light chases the darkness away.

John Bytheway:               02:44                   If only we had a way to have access to

Hank Smith:                      02:48                   To, yeah, to light and truth.

John Bytheway:               02:51                   I mean, maybe somebody to read it to us even whenever we wanted. If only we had something like that.

Pres. Steven Lund:          02:57                   If only we weren’t being confronted by darkness. There’s that too. Isn’t there true?

Hank Smith:                      03:02                   Yeah. That same device.

Pres. Steven Lund:          03:04                   We had a kid in our ward who got up to give his farewell talk a few years ago. I didn’t know this kid knew how to talk. We’d grown up together. We, his kids and ours and there you couldn’t quite see his eyes. He got up to give his farewell talk. I didn’t recognize him. He had a haircut. And I realized who he was. And his farewell talk was, I’m happy to be going on a mission. I’m going to do my best in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Virtually. That was virtually what he said. But that many words, some different combination. So about two years later, I’m sitting in sacrament meeting and this Sunbeam shows up on the stage, this kid in a white shirt and a tie and square shoulders and resolute gaze. I said to my wife, who’s that with the high counselor?

                                           03:51                   And she says, oh, it’s that kid. The uh, I, I’m, I’m gonna do my best. And he gets up to give his talk and he’s got the whole journal of discourses stacked on the pulpit and the scriptures and he’s reading stuff and he gives the most amazing discourse. I am just slackjawed. That boy was something else. And afterwards we went to, we don’t do homecoming receptions in our church, but they had a little barbecue in their backyard that Sunday night. And we went by the house. My wife was in the youth programs and knew this boy well and loved him even before his mission. She knew who he was. But I was amazed. And I said, so what happened? I remember who you were as a teenager and I see the astonishingly impressive guy you are today. And he’s aw shucks. What changed?

                                           04:41                   And he says, well, I’ll tell you what changed. Music. He says, I had a hobby in my youth. I listened to a certain kind of music that was very dark and very nihilistic and I loved it. And I had something plugged in my ear constantly feeding that into my brain. And the biggest shock of my life, the struggle of my life was when I went to the MTC. I couldn’t take that with me. I’m sitting in the MTC without it. And I started feeling things I hadn’t felt since I was 13 years old because that music, he says, I spent every dollar that I earned in all of my part-time jobs growing up on that kind of music. When I got home from my mission, once I discovered the Spirit, then I couldn’t get enough of it. I’ve really worked hard to try to make up lost time.

                                           05:27                   But I got home and the first thing I did is, I came home, I loaded all of that music. You know, this time the music was on cassettes and on DVDs and stuff. And he said, I put them in a black trash bag. I tied a knot in it, them, because there was a lot of it, and hauled them down to Day’s Market and threw them into the trash bin behind Day’s Market. Every productive dollar I made in my life was in those bags. And I just threw them away. And I said, well gee, it seems like he could have sold it and at least recovered something. Then he got very, he barked back at me and said, no, that music stole my childhood. I would not subject anybody to what was in those bags. We need to do Spirit attracting things. We need to avoid Spirit repelling things and the world. We need to be selective about what we put in our heads.

Hank Smith:                      06:15                   Yeah. It happens so gradually, I wish I wasn’t this way. I wish I was more like you both, but occasionally we’ll pick up a show on Netflix or something and we’ll watch it and after a season or two we’re all of a sudden watching things that we never would’ve started with. But it just happened so gradually that it’s almost like the dimming of a light so slowly that you, you don’t even notice that it’s gone dim.

Pres. Steven Lund:          06:44                   Have you noticed that the real moral decay doesn’t occur until about the third episode of the series?

Hank Smith:                      06:50                   Yeah. Yeah.

Pres. Steven Lund:          06:50                   So you’re kind of hooked. You kind of fall in love with these characters and you kind of are interested in where they’re going and then they start doing stuff you’re willing to tolerate because you love them now and there’s nothing diabolical about that is there?

Hank Smith:                      07:02                   Yeah, I probably shouldn’t laugh at this, but I had a student once way back in my seminary days, and we were talking about music. She said, you know, when I first started listening to this really, really hard dark music, she said, I felt really, really bad about it, but I just kept listening. And eventually that feeling went away.

Pres. Steven Lund:          07:22                   I had a thought this morning about this, you remember in the Princess Bride and they’re having a little contest of minds and they’re switching the glasses back and forth and there’s the poison going on. And it turns out the Princess Bride guy had been taking iocaine in small doses until he’d built it all says, the Princess Bride iocaine powder story is a false analogy. Can we just get that out there? Taking poison or evil in small doses does not make you stronger. It makes you dead. It makes you, it poisons you, it kills you. Building tolerance for unclean things just makes you unclean.

Hank Smith:                      07:58                   Yeah, it’s poisoned by degrees John. I know you love that story.

John Bytheway:               08:02                   I was thinking this is Amalickiah, this is come down from your mountain just a little bit. If you won’t come down, I’ll come up and I’ll say, come down just a little bit. What I love to say about that story, Mormon, the awesome abridger of the record could have said, the servant of Amalickiah killed Lahonti. Factually accurate. But instead he said he poisoned him by degrees. If I come at you with a knife or a javelin or a spear or a cimeter, you know my intention. But if I come at you with a refreshing beverage, I can poison you by degrees and you don’t even know what’s happening. And that is what’s so crazy about that story is thank you for that extra detail, Mormon, that he poisoned him. He didn’t know it was happening because it was by degrees.

Hank Smith:                      08:51                   Yeah. It wasn’t even him. It was his servants. He calls in his servants.

John Bytheway:               08:54                   Yeah. Because you think you’re still in command. You think you’re in charge. I mean, that’s all part of the story. You stay here in your commander in chief tent Lahonti, and here we’ll bring you another refreshing beverage.

Hank Smith:                      09:06                   John. Both you and I think often of the people listening who are in sorrow, despair, they feel hurting. If we have a listener out there who’s sitting at their kitchen table, just how am I gonna make it? I think this section says, as hard as it is, you’ve gotta fill your life with light and truth wherever you can find it. Really, like President Lund said, you have got to avoid even the smallest doses of darkness.

John Bytheway:               09:39                   That strive to be app, that has the youth music that the church makes every year.

Pres. Steven Lund:          09:46                   Yeah, the whole library full of good stuff. It’s right on the machine.

Hank Smith:                      09:49                   Yeah. I think it was one of my students who was struggling. He said, what do you think I should do? I said, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go find every talk Elder Holland has ever given and listen to one a day. There’s probably 50, there’s probably 60 of them out there. Just go listen to a talk from general conference, or who’s one of your favorite speakers? President Eyring. Can listen to a President Eyring talk every single day. You see it, gradually over time, they come out of that darkness.

Pres. Steven Lund:          10:15                   Yeah, a few years ago, somebody in the church in our department contacted President Nelson and said, we see that your next conference talk is gonna be your hundredth talk. So that’s a benchmark not many people get. Maybe we should make something of that. He says, no, no, this is only 98 because two of the talks that you’re counting there, I gave in forums other than general conference. So they don’t count, but But he knew.

John Bytheway:               10:35                   He knew. Wow.

Pres. Steven Lund:          10:37                   You know, he’s given a hundred. I imagine Elder Holland’s probably given something close to that, huh?

Hank Smith:                      10:41                   Yeah. Counting BYU devotionals and go listen to a Steve Lund general conference talk. There’s a few of them. Go listen to those BYU speeches. Put on the good music, turn off, it seems like every night sometimes we watch murder, right? Like, let’s, the kids are in bed, let’s sit down, let’s watch murder. And I bet they figure it out like they did last night. Right? Like we get used to that. We get used to watching a violent show and all of a sudden wonder why we’re not feeling the light.

John Bytheway:               11:11                   Well, you know, some’s got it. Some ain’t. I was born with it. Had to get used to it. Yeah. So sometimes you gotta go to Mayberry.

Hank Smith:                      11:21                   Yeah.

John Bytheway:               11:22                   But Hank, I think some people immediately the idea, I think that the idea of balance, I think there’s a right way to think about balance. There’s a really odd and wrong way to think about balance. You know, I need to have just enough evil so that just, you know, I don’t think that’s what that balance means. One of the interesting things that we can be defensive with and say, well, that really doesn’t offend me or that really doesn’t bother me, but I was kind of cut to the quick, when I’m reading for the Strength of Youth and it’s saying, don’t participate in entertainment that offends the Holy Ghost. I’m like, oh, it’s not about what offends me. It’s about what offends the Holy Ghost. Because I made a covenant at the sacrament table that I would keep his commandment so that I could always have his Spirit to be with me. That’s a different way to think about what offends the Holy Ghost.

Pres. Steven Lund:          12:18                   You guys are so insightful. We were talking earlier about intelligence. I mentioned that I have a brother who’s a PhD physicist. I have an uncle, my dad’s brother, who quit going to church when he was a teenager back in the Depression, but grew up to be a medical doctor. They lived on the East Coast and we lived on the West coast. So we really didn’t see very much of Uncle Jack through the years. But late in life along the way, he became a Protestant and a good man and he was learning about his church, about the Mormon church, as he called it. One day he wrote my brother a letter and he said, Mark, we didn’t know each other well, he had really lived his life apart out there. But he says, congratulations on your degree and all the things you’re doing, your education.

                                           13:06                   He said, it occurs to me that you and I are the most educated people in our genealogy. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon us to help the other members of our family not to fall victim to the anti-intellectual and incomprehensible ridiculousness of the Book of Mormon. But I bet if we work on this together, we can bring everybody around. My brother, of course, he’s a returned missionary and active in the church wrote a letter back to him and he says, Uncle Jack, what you should know about me is that I have spent more hours of my life on my knees praying to understand the Book of Mormon than ever I have spent studying physics, and it is God’s honest truth.

                                           13:52                   But to me, a powerful and inspiring testament.

Hank Smith:                      13:56                   Your story there, president, fits right in with 1 Corinthians 2. Here’s verse 14, Paul, the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him, nor can he even know them for they are spiritually discerned. I’ve noticed that those of us who love the Book of Mormon and love the church and have spent our time in it, the idea that someone can look at it and not see it seems outrageous to us yet flip it around and the idea that someone from the outside looks in and goes, the fact that you spend your time there and you see wisdom in the Book of Mormon and then, then the church, that’s crazy to them. It’s a fascinating spectrum.

Pres. Steven Lund:          14:47                   I think it was written on the wall of the school room I was in in my youth somewhere, said, a statement that said, read the best books first, or you won’t have time to read them at all.

Hank Smith:                      14:56                   The opportunity cost.

John Bytheway:               14:58                   Hank, you were talking about the spiritual man and the natural, they can’t seem to talk to each other. I was at the BYU Print services place that this is decades ago, Hank. There was a poster on the wall and it had some guy dancing around a train track looking strange. And the poster said, those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who could not hear the music. Just reminds me of a conference talk about the music of the gospel. It seems strange, but if you hear it, it’s awesome. And how do we help people hear it? Right?

Hank Smith:                      15:31                   How do you help people hear it? That might bring us to our next topic when we talk about children. The Lord says in verse 40, I want you to bring your children up in light and truth. To me, maybe I’m being too simple here, but moms and dads create an environment where there’s plenty of light and truth. You don’t have to force light and truth on someone if you just fill the house with light and truth. It marinates.

John Bytheway:               16:02                   Hank, it’s always a good idea to go on a road trip, lock the doors and put on a Hank Smith CD and then nobody can leave.

Hank Smith:                      16:12                   Yep.

John Bytheway:               16:12                   Because you know you’re doing 65 down the freeway and they have to listen.

Hank Smith:                      16:18                   John, we laugh, but how many times have you and I heard my 8-year-old falls asleep to your voice. At first I thought, well that’s not so good. But then I think to myself, when someone feels that light and truth, it’s a safe place. You know? You can play the scriptures or the primary songs off the app in the morning when you’re getting ready for school. You could play Strive To Be. Play the music. Fill your house with light and truth. This is members of the first presidency he’s saying this to. This is Frederick G. Williams, Sidney Rigdon, Joseph Smith, Newel K. Whitney, Bishop of the Church. Raise up your children in light and truth.

John Bytheway:               16:59                   President. I can’t remember if I’ve ever told you this story, but both of you know Dallyn Bayles, who’s played Hyrum a lot and lots of different parts. He gets up and sings, Bring Him Home and brings the house down. It was amazing. I have to get up and speak after that. We get on the plane and I ask him, what are you doing? Are you touring? Because he was the Phantom of Phantom of the Opera or something. He says, no, I’m teaching seminary. And I said, how did this happen? He said, my mentor told me, regardless of your original intention, you’ll eventually become what you surround yourself with. I had to stop him. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Say that again. You mentioned Hank, that parable of the marinade. That’s the story. You can fight hard, but eventually that the principle, the idea was you become what you surround yourself with. So be careful what you surround yourself with.

Pres. Steven Lund:          17:55                   So we’re getting that in verse 40. Missionaries go out and spend all day, every day studying in turn in the morning and serving throughout the day and applying the things they’ve learned and they’re repenting every day. They pray like Noah and they get close to the heavens. I had a missionary say to a journalist once he was interviewing him, when you’re on a mission, it seems like you can see forever. And that’s how they are. I ran into a missionary at an airport in Amsterdam. I was going someplace and he was coming home from his mission in England and came through. He said basically, president, can I ask you a question? I’ve learned so much. I’ve gained so much on my mission. How do I not lose it as I go home? How do I keep my forward momentum here? My first thought was to say, you’re great. Just keep doing what you’re doing.

                                           18:45                   But then the impression I had was to just look at it and say, look at you. You almost glow in the dark. You’re so filled with the Spirit. How did you get that way? It was from this pattern of study and love and Christ-like behavior and prayer and then more prayer. Go do that. Don’t listen to those who, when you get home will tell you, okay, welcome home. Now you need to take some time and decompress. You got a little too much missionary in you, go decompress. Don’t ever decompress and you’ll be fine. We went our ways and I didn’t think about him again until I was writing a conference talk and then wrote that up. I didn’t even have his name and I wasn’t even sure where he was from. The conversation was that fleeting. But what I remembered about him was these eyes, just this Christlike demeanor and the question was so sincere.

                                           19:35                   So I thought, you know what? Someday I’m gonna give this talk in general conference someplace in the world, this boy’s gonna hear himself talked about. I bet someday I’ll run into him. Sure enough, it was a couple years later, I was walking across the campus going to an FSY conference and I was talking on the phone and there was his hand on my shoulder and he said, uh, President Lund. I said, you’re, you’re him, aren’t you? He says, yeah, this, it was me. I got off the phone and we chatted for a minute. He said, yeah, I was actually, I’d been watching conference at my mom’s house and I was driving home and I’d gone someplace and I was driving home and I didn’t get back in time for the next session to start. And then I heard your talk on my car radio and knew that that was me. I said, well, that’s pretty fun. So how’s it going? And he got quiet for a moment and he said, well, if I’m gonna be honest with you, I’ll tell you that I made a decision when I heard that talk. And every Saturday morning I listen to your talk and ask myself that question. How am I doing? He’s doing fine.

Hank Smith:                      20:38                   Keep going. Keep going.

John Bytheway:               20:39                   Boy. Like you were saying, Hank, get some talks out and listen to them.

Hank Smith:                      20:44                   Yeah. Whatever it is, fill your house with light. Listen to this from Joseph Smith. We consider that God has created man, and we would add women, with a mind capable of instruction and a faculty which may be enlarged in proportion to the heed and diligence given to the light communicated from heaven to the intellect and that the nearer man approaches perfection the clearer are his views and the greater his enjoyments till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin. And like the ancients arrives at a point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his maker and is caught up to dwell with him.

Pres. Steven Lund:          21:27                   Can I tell you what that looks like? We don’t accrue all this light so that we can be bright. We accrue all this light because it helps us to live better lives and to be better people. I’ve had this little insight that one of the best ways to know who somebody really is by seeing how they behave in an unexpected moment. We’re all pretty good when we’re sitting in church, but when you’re out there and hard things happen to you, somebody turns around and hits you with a two by four in the head or something and then our true character, somebody cuts you off in traffic, you know your true character reveals itself. Well, I’ve told this story a few times when we were mission leaders in Georgia, President Nelson was then Elder Nelson, a member of the Quorum of the 12, came and visited our mission on a mission tour and stayed in our mission home.

                                           22:14                   And we were a little nervous about that because well it was Russell M. Nelson staying in our home. We didn’t want him to discover that he had children running this mission that he sent out there. We’re trying to put our best foot forward. He got in late one night and the next morning Kalleen got up really early and she made this amazing breakfast. This big carafe of orange juice filled with crushed ice. We all come down to eat. He comes and sits down and we’re waiting. Our little 14-year-old Kelsey is upstairs and she’s late. She can’t find something. Finally, so we’re a little impatient. We got an apostle at the table and finally we hear her clumping down the stairs and she runs around the corner and the carpet slides under her feet and she comes around the corner, sits down. And so I’m so sorry I couldn’t find my something scrunchie or whatever. And then she reaches for the pancakes when this happens and her elbow hits that two liters of orange juice filled with crushed ice and then time slowed down as we watched this pitcher slowly turn over and empty itself, two liters right into the icy lap of Russell Marion Nelson.

Hank Smith:                      23:24                   Everyone.

Pres. Steven Lund:          23:25                   Yeah. Yeah. I mean just, yeah, time stood still in that unexpected moment. Who was President Nelson, Elder Nelson at the time, he jumps up and he says, well that was refreshing. I’ll be right back. And he goes in the other room to change clothes. We all sat there and staring at each other wondering, now what church are we gonna go to? Because obviously we can’t show our face with this one ever again.

                                           23:55                   A few minutes later he’s changed and he comes back into the room and we’re trying to figure out a little transition speech. Kelsey in the meantime is sitting in there demolished. He walks right past us and he sits down in the chair next to Kelsey and says, as he comes in, he says, Kelsey, I am so sorry. I forgot, while I’m in there, I’m remembering tomorrow is your birthday and I knew this and I brought you a birthday present and I was gonna give it to you this morning at breakfast because I’m not gonna be here tomorrow morning for your birthday. So here it is. And he reached in his pocket and he pulled out a crisp $2 bill and he hands her this $2 bill. He said, this isn’t anything of any moment, but it’s, hey, I just a token just tell you that I thinking about you and I love you and I hope you have a happy birthday.

                                           24:39                   And he gave her a squeeze and kissed her on the forehead and said, I love you and I’ll see you later. And he left. Now. Now in that unexpected moment, what was that? That was President Nelson filled with light. First of all, he didn’t lose his temper. This was just a momentary ice water in your lap. That’s bad. Ice water. Orange juice is worse. But he goes into the room and then it’s just clear to me that he’s in there changing clothes and he’s thinking, oh, that little girl is dying a thousand deaths out there. I bet I can help. Before he was even dry, he’s in there ministering to our sweet daughter and making her feel, okay, how do you think we feel about Russell Marion Nelson? That’s what light does. It scatters light everywhere you go.

John Bytheway:               25:24                   I think it was CS Lewis who President Lunt has talked about before who said that if you turn on the lights suddenly in a dark room, you might discover rats in your cellar. I’m paraphrasing. He says the light doesn’t produce the rats but the suddenness of it coming on shows what’s really there type of a thing. Does that ring a bell? I mean, I’ve said to Robert Millet once before, I think I’ve got rats in my cellar at an event that’s sudden like that shows what you really are. What a great story. That was refreshing. But even better to think, I don’t want her to remember this only as I spilled and to come out and redirect that with happy birthday. Oh my goodness. That’s beautiful. Sweet, sweet memory.

Pres. Steven Lund:          26:12                   A good, good man.

Hank Smith:                      26:13                   Yeah. Hmm. I have a question for you both. The rest of this section seems to be that these men, Frederick G. Williams. Sidney, Joseph, Newel K. Whitney. They’re out doing their callings. They are doing work and the Lord reminds them that their first duty is their home. He says that to Frederick G. Williams. There are things that are not right in your house. He says it to Sidney. You set it in order, thy house. Joseph. The same thing. The Newel K. Whitney be more diligent and concerned at home. President, you’ve had quite a few priesthood callings in the church and you’ve trained. How does one, I don’t know if the right word is balance, but how does one not allow a church calling to take over their life and their family is neglected? Is that something that you’ve seen?

Pres. Steven Lund:          27:11                   Yeah, it’s something I’ve lived too. I find this so fascinating that the end of this magisterial discourse on the nature of God and time and the plan of happiness, that then it turns to this from verse 41 almost to 52. He’s talking about families and first it feels a little hodgepodge, but as you think about it, it all connects up because what is the most important imperative as we’re looking at Christ-like behavior and accruing goodness and so forth. We’re gonna come as families if or we’re not coming at all is this the doctrine. So I found it interesting and one of the copies that our extent of section 93 was the Newel K. Whitney version that he took the transcribed copy that he took home with him. Apparently on the back of it he had written revelation to Joseph, Sidney, Frederick and Newel himself by chastisement and also relative to the Father and the Son.

                                           28:17                   To us it feels like this little chastisement was an appendage. He was stung by it. It was front of mind to him. Yeah, we just got laid into, as I’ve read through that I would assume that there must have been something going on in their lives. At least Joseph talked about, I didn’t ever do anything really seriously wrong, but I was like-minded and I did some stuff that he must have been referring to some of that behavior. As you look at it carefully, it seems like what heavenly father is criticizing is your question. That lack of balance. Yeah, you’re doing the work but you’re ignoring your family. You gotta go home and teach your family these things. It was about life balance. They were doing lots of good, lots of good things but not family. When I was a new bishop of a singles ward of a student ward, I was having this amazing experience where you go into that office and there’s a list of names on the a list on the door and people sign up and they come in and these young people who are, they desperately want to live better lives and they come in and lay out the most important issues of their lives, the most painful, the most important things of their lives.

                                           29:26                   And Bishop sits and listens. I would sit and listen and be a little apprehensive because I don’t know what to tell them. By the time they got through explaining what their concern is, I would discover that I didn’t know what to tell them, that I was having impressions and I would tell them things. It would feel to me like I was an innocent third party in this conversation between these good members of the church and the Lord. And that would go on all day and I would get home, church would get out and I would rush to the bishop’s office from the sacrament meeting room that would go on until 10 o’clock at night because it was a student ward and we had stuff going on. I would go home again alive with this spiritual experience I’d had all day. And that went on for a while. And one day my wife caught me at 10 o’clock. I’m coming home, this amazing feeling. She said, I wish you could be here and hear the conversations going on in our house while you’re down doing that. What do you mean? Well, what our kids say. Our children would be asking, where’s dad? When’s he coming home? Well who is he talking to?

                                           30:41                   Is he coming home today? And she said, I don’t think that’s what you want your kids to remember you for. So we changed things and I started coming home after sacrament meeting and we would have dinner together. I would take a break and we would eat later on. And then I started doing stuff on Wednesday nights in order to make that work. And it made a huge difference. I mean the stuff I was doing was so valuable and so important. Not that I was doing it, but I was there for these things that I was neglect, I was all this, everything that they’re being criticized for, I was that. And I can understand how can you imagine what the thrill of the restoration going on around them, how they would be called to that. I’m really glad that I had a wife to tell me about it. Rather than having it called out in a section of the Doctrine & Covenants, canonized and published to the world. That we’re talking about 200 years later. This was better.

Hank Smith:                      31:36                   In any calling in the church there are very good things. You could allow it, you could keep going. There’s always more to that you could do. Is it appropriate for me to say there’s gonna be a boundary where I have this time set for this, then I’m going to go be with my family. When we say go be with your family, it doesn’t mean go home and watch football while your family is at home. If you’re really gonna go home and be with family then go home and be with your family. I think this is a good, better, best issue. Maybe it’s different every situation.

John Bytheway:               32:14                   I appreciate President Lund’s story because my wife helped me see things I couldn’t see and helped me see that balance. Just like you President, we had that conversation a lot and I was called to be bishop. I had six children from 11 down to two.

Hank Smith:                      32:32                   There’s wives that listen that are thinking, you know, he’s saving the world and I love it. Love that he’s saving the world. We’re losing here.

Pres. Steven Lund:          32:43                   I think that the Lord knows this is hard stuff. I love the way he presents this. He uses the word friends. I’ve learned like seven times in the Doctrine & Covenants and two of those times we’re right here. I called you servants for the world’s sake and you’re their servants for my sake, therefore I say unto you my friends. Let my servant Sidney go on his journey. These are my friends. I had this impression in thinking about this when Jesus was on the earth in his mortal ministry, who were his friends, those apostles were his friends and he found himself from time to time and regularly having to say hard stuff to them. I think it was like, you know how sometimes you say, now you know I love you. I’m about to tell you something hard. Are you ready to hear something hard? And it seems to be what he is doing here. Now you know you’re my friends, you know that I love you. You gotta take care of your family better. There’s just a sweetness to that that if we could feel what they might have felt, what would it be to have the Savior of mankind say, you’re my friends. That’s something.

John Bytheway:               33:46                   I heard somebody say once, when somebody really knows you love them, it’s almost impossible to offend them. You can say things boldly, directly, because they know you love them. Like you said, maybe that’s where he’s starting. You know, we’re friends because if you’re not friends, you just say, oh you’re fine. But if you really love them, you might be willing to have a harder conversation. Is that fair?

Pres. Steven Lund:          34:12                   Elder Packer used to say to general authorities, if you see something going wrong and you don’t do something about it, you’re just being selfish. It’s more important to you to protect your little relationship with these folks than it is to help them to correct their lives.

Hank Smith:                      34:30                   I like that you brought that up President, my friends. He says it in 45. He says it again in 51. When I’m serving in my calling men or women, mom or dad, I think I have to be this close to the Lord where he can, in my calling, I can hear him say, enough’s enough, you know, go home. And sometimes when I’m at home he might say, this person over here needs you. It’s time to go that way. Because it’s really hard for the three of us to say, here’s when you should put this one first. Here’s when you should put this one first. You have to be close enough to where he can direct you and tell you where you need to be. It’s probably good to keep in mind that quote, John, you’ll know who it’s from. No one on their deathbed ever says, you know, I just wish I would’ve spent more time at work.

John Bytheway:               35:26                   Ah, it’s a related statement to that idea. What a tragedy to spend your whole life climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. So you’re like, what wall am I leaning against?

Pres. Steven Lund:          35:43                   Alright, but in fairness, sometimes we do regret not having spent more time in the office on tax day.

Hank Smith:                      35:50                   Yeah.

Pres. Steven Lund:          35:51                   That’s that one day than the bills are coming due. There’s huge pressures that drive us to those places.

John Bytheway:               35:59                   Because you’re a provider that says right there in the proclamation, I’m supposed to provide, preside, and protect. It’s an interesting discussion to have. I think you’re right about having the Holy Ghost tell you it’s a, no, actually you should go over there and not trying to make a blanket statement for everybody. Keep the Spirit with you when you’re needed, where you’re needed.

Hank Smith:                      36:21                   I think it would be probably a good addition to your study this week in section 93 to read Good, Better, Best from President Oaks. Listen to this paragraph. In choosing how we spend time as a family, we should be careful not to exhaust our available time on things that are merely good and leave little time for that which is better or best. A friend took his young family on a series of summer vacation trips, including visits to memorable historic sites. At the end of the summer, he asked his teenage son, which of these good summer activities he enjoyed most. The father learned from the reply and so did those he told of it. The thing I liked best this summer, the boy replied, was the night you and I laid on the lawn and looked at the stars and talked. Super family activities may be good for children, but they are not always better than one-on-one time with a loving parent.

John Bytheway:               37:15                   One of my favorite memories of my dad was building speaker boxes for the car I bought after my mission just in the workshop. Sawing and measuring and cutting.

Pres. Steven Lund:          37:27                   Isn’t that strange that that’s the thing, you know, our lost son, there’s, he was such an active kid, he always wanted to be doing stuff. I was that dad who had a really busy business life. And often you don’t know how quickly that window closes and it always closes faster than you think. A two year old’s only a 2-year-old for a minute and then their hands are slipping out of your hands sooner and sooner when you go to grab them.

Hank Smith:                      37:51                   It’s a sensitive subject to all of our listeners out there who are saying, I’m trying, so are we. So are we. Keep at it. Keep trying.

Pres. Steven Lund:          37:59                   After my mission, I had just a very strong powerful impression one of the few times in my life where I discussed some real direct instruction, I should go join the military. I did. So I ended up joining the army against my will. It was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. But I went and did it and I found myself, you know, I went through basic combat training and did all the training and ended up at my first permanent station out in Fort Stewart, Georgia, which is a huge army base out there. 26 miles I think every direction of swamp. It is the hottest steamiest swampiest place. We had a little orientation when we came in and they said, okay, first thing you gotta be careful of is you need to know that every puddle of water on this army base has a resident.

                                           38:43                   Water moccasin and alligator. Don’t be hanging out there. There were mosquitoes, there were bugs, there were sounds in the night. It was quite a place. I was the company clerk of a combat engineer battalion to be a combat engineer. The army handbooks that you, you just have to have one attribute. Strong back. That was the only, the only criteria. I’d lived in an open bay billets, 20 bunks and 20 wall lockers in a row and one big open room without air conditioning, concrete slab floor with some of the wildest people that I have ever known. And I grew up in northern California and I grew up with hippies and I’d been on a mission, I’d seen a lot, but these guys were something else. They’re just the most profane, hilarious, hard living guys that you’ll ever meet. And this was my life. But on Sunday mornings I would get up, my buddy across post would come and pick me up and we’d drive seems like 20 or 30 miles to Ludowici, Georgia.

                                           39:49                   I mean, think now because I was a returned missionary and because I think I was part of the design, I got to serve in the elder quorum presidency and I got to be an assistant ward clerk. I was also a stake missionary and a ward mission leader. And I was in the Sunday school presidency, like all at the same time. So I got like six years of church experience in one year. I’d go to church early in the morning, probably teach a couple of lessons, and then afterwards, I’m a stake missionary. So we would do a little training for our ward missionaries and then we would go out and do some missionary work. And I would get home, you know, at eight or nine or 10 o’clock at night, I would show up. We lived in this little building that was out in a wooded area off on one corner of the post.

                                           40:28                   And it was dark. There was no lighting around it. There was just a little six by six foot cement slab and a door. And then you’d go in and I remember several times showing up at that door awash with the Spirit, having been serving and doing and being rewarded the way that we are when we’re trying to look out for each other and putting my hand on the doorknob to go in and think, okay, I’m going back into the world now. I would swing that door open and walk inside. It was like from the door to my bunk. I could just feel Spirit wash away because the Spirit couldn’t live in that environment. The vocabulary and the music and whatever was going on, that difference between light and darkness. Light attracts light and darkness attracts darkness was, these were good people living really bad lives.

                                           41:22                   I loved one day they were going out on a Saturday night and I was laying on my bunk. I remember I was reading a biography of Brigham Young of all things in the middle of chaos, a couple of these guys come over and say, Lund we’re going out drinking, you should come with us. You know, how come you just stay here all the time? You know? And I wouldn’t stay a long time, once they were gone, I’d go find stuff to do, but you should come with us. What makes you think you’re better than us? Yeah, how come you think you’re better than us? They’re getting a little bit aggressive. And finally all I could do is take a deep breath and say, well, here’s the thing. I’ve made promises, like to God and I’m just doing my best to keep them. And with that they got kind of quiet and wandered off.

                                           42:05                   It wasn’t right in that moment, but later I ran into one of these guys. He was this big African American kid from Louisiana and with a bunch of gold teeth. He was just this huge personality. But frankly, it mattered to me what he thought of me. There’s a charisma about him. He was a wild thing though. I was walking out of the one of the buildings there and ran into him and he says, so, you know, I used to go to church too. I said, really? He says, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah. You know, I was in the choir and everything. I’ve made those promises too. The only difference between you and me is I haven’t kept mine and he walked off solemnly. And I thought, well, people can feel light too.

                                           42:53                   I was home from my mission and the way I end up in the army is I went to the temple to see if I could get some direction on what I should study. I’d been at BYU for a year. I hadn’t been a good student, so I was hoping I could get a little direction. So I’m praying should I be a geologist? And I wanted to listen to my mind and I had this impression I should go join the military instead. It made no sense. Then I find myself a few months later, I’m in Georgia in the middle of this swamp. This made no sense. I had a little index card in the drawer of my desk in the little room I worked in that said that which does not kill us, makes us stronger. Now. I would look at that every day and say, okay, I’m not dead yet. So this is working.

Hank Smith:                      43:31                   This is working.

Pres. Steven Lund:          43:32                   And then I get transferred to Germany and looking back on it, I can see a whole bunch of stuff. Six years of church service experience compressed into a year. And then over there I was the leader of the youth program. They stake young single adult leader and got a whole bunch of experience doing that, meeting these amazing people and doing more things. I met my wife there, my wife’s dad was a civilian employee of the Department of Army. And I met in church there. I didn’t know she would be my wife, but later on when I got back to BYU, we became friends and got married. I can make a long list of things, important things in my life. Things that my life would be so much less rich and so much, you know, if I hadn’t listened to that prompting, I’m sure I would’ve been okay.

                                           44:18                   You know, my life would’ve been okay, but it would not have been this. When Heavenly Father prompts you to do something, especially if it’s something you don’t wanna do, the only appropriate response is yippee. Heavenly Father does not take stuff away from us unless he’s willing to replace it with something better. So much good grew out of that. Could only have happened by my doing this thing that made no sense whatsoever that I did at the time that I did it. But except that I’d had an impression. Heavenly Father’s good to us. If we’ll let him, he’ll be amazingly generous with us.

Hank Smith:                      44:58                   He says, my friends.

Pres. Steven Lund:          45:00                   Yeah, he’s been my friend.

John Bytheway:               45:02                   I love what you said, president, how this starts with his amazing theological ideas and ends with family when Newel K. Whitney saw it, he said, first I got chastised and then we got these other great ideas. But the section reminds me of a couple of paragraphs in one of Sheri Dew’s books. This is from God Wants a Powerful People. She said, it is the power of the word that converted a professor in a European university. When missionaries knocked on her door, she invited them in, pointed to her various PhD diplomas hanging on the wall, one of which was in theology, and began to talk to the two young men who had a fraction of the knowledge she had. But she accepted the invitation to read The Book of Mormon, couple months later was baptized. She told those attending her baptism, the missionaries who had taught her were wonderful, but they hadn’t converted her.

                                           45:51                   Since she had met them she had read The Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, the Pearl of Great Price, all of James E. Talmadge’s writings and several other volumes of church doctrine. Then she said in words to this effect, after years of studying philosophy, I picked up the Doctrine and Covenants, read a few verses that answered some of the greatest questions of Aristotle and Socrates. When I read those verses, I wept. Now it doesn’t say, but I bet those were in 93, what do you think? She concluded I don’t think you know what you have. The world is starving for what you have. I am like a starving person being led to a feast. And over these eight and a half weeks I have been able to feast in a way I have never known possible.

Pres. Steven Lund:          46:37                   Quite a church you belong to. I’m intrigued that John the Baptist comes up from time to time throughout this whole text. As the young men president it’s on my mind. John, if we could talk about John the Baptist, since you’re a John, would you read some verses here about what we know about John the Baptist?

John Bytheway:               46:55                   Okay, starting in verse 12 and I, John saw that he received not of the fullness at the first, but received grace for grace. And this is talking about Jesus received not the fullness at first verse 13. He received not of the fullness at first, but continued from grace to grace until he received the fullness. And thus he was called the Son of God because he received not of the fullness at the first and I John bear record and lo the heavens were opened and the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the form of a dove and sat upon him. And there came a voice out of heaven saying, this is my beloved son. And I John bear record that he received a fullness of the glory of the Father and he received all power, both in heaven and on earth. And the glory of the Father was with him for he dwelt in him.

Hank Smith:                      47:45                   Wow.

Pres. Steven Lund:          47:47                   I was recently in Harmony, Pennsylvania with Elder Neil L. Andersen to record a young men organization anniversary celebration broadcast. We had some interesting ideas about how to do that. But when we got to Elder Andersen, who had been assigned to help us, you know, to support this thing, he said there would be no young men organization at all if it weren’t for the restoration of the Aaronic priesthood. The only reason we have a young men program is to make better deacons, teachers and priests was, it was sort of his attitude. So he says, let’s not do those other things. Let’s you and I get on a plane, we’ll go to Harmony. Let’s talk to the young men of the church about what happened there. I will tell you that standing in that sacred place among the sugar maples next to an apostle, as he bore his testimony that this account of John the Baptist describes him as arrived in a cloud of light.

                                           48:51                   This being of light arriving in a cloud of light, something like that. That happened right here, right near us here someplace. This is not a fable, this is not a story we tell. John the Baptist, who baptized the Savior came and taught Joseph and Oliver about this and can you hear him say that? I can just share my testimony that I felt it in my bones there, in that place that he was part of this restoration story. President Steve Owen, who I replaced as the, you know, he was the former young men president. His counselors talked about being with Elder Eyring once and Elder Eyring walked in to the office and he says, oh, I’ve just been reading about John the Baptist this morning. And then he said something really interesting he said, you know, we refer to the youth of the church as being the rising generation.

                                           49:43                   I’ve never really loved that term because I don’t understand what it means. What’s that mean? Rising generation? He says, I’ve been reading about John the Baptist. It feels to me like we really ought to refer to them as the preparatory generation in the sense that John the Baptist was a preparer of the way. This is in fact what they’re called to do. I am a beloved son of God and he has a work for me to do. I will help prepare the world for the Savior’s return says our young men theme and the young women theme very much like it. I will help prepare the world for the Savior’s return. John the Baptist, he was the restorer and he was also a role model in so many ways. Who we should be. We are preparers of the way.

Hank Smith:                      50:29                   President Lund, thank you so much for being here. And on a personal note over the last five years, I’ve had four of your young men in the young men’s program in my house. You have blessed them immensely and they don’t even know it. That’s one of those things they would see you maybe at the airport and not know that man has prayed for them, thought about them and served them. I think that’s a beautiful thing. Thank you both for coming on the show today and for giving these last five years. You and your family.

Pres. Steven Lund:          51:06                   Hank, John, thank you so much. It’s been just a joy.

Hank Smith:                      51:10                   We have loved having you. Whatever church assignment you hold next. Maybe they’ll let you have your favorite one.

Pres. Steven Lund:          51:17                   In our church. You’re the bishop today and you’re the nursery leader tomorrow. Yeah, we’re excited to continue to serve. It’s a great kingdom. We wanna be part of it.

Hank Smith:                      51:26                   Yeah. There is no retirement, I don’t think in the, in all of it’s plan.

John Bytheway:               51:31                   Yeah. Thank you President. What a joy it has been. I had the amazing opportunity to serve with President Lund and some other amazing men on the Young Men’s Advisory Council and I just used to sit there thinking, what am I doing here? I have a testimony that our young men general president was called of God. Some of the things you’ve said, I was taking notes so fast and was blessed by the beautiful spirit in that room so often, and you’re right, Hank. Prayers for the young men and their leaders and their bishops all around the world. Was the thrill to be there. So thank you personally, president.

Pres. Steven Lund:          52:11                   That Young Men General Advisory Board was something historic in nature. You were actually called to be a member of the general board of the young men. President Nelson uses words with great precision and just after we were called, he’s made the comment that, you know, a board is a decision making body and this isn’t the decision making body. These are advisory physicians who come in and counsel and it’s a think tank. It’s a brain trust and it’s a teaching apparatus, but it’s not a board.

                                           52:48                   So he changed the name, what he’d do. But you served on both. The general advisory committee has done some historic things. The church in general won’t appreciate this necessarily, but the technologies that came out of COVID. Zoom virtual meeting technologies allowed us to start doing some trainings that we couldn’t do before and we have permissions and have John and his colleagues figured out how to train newly called stake young men presidents around the world so that when somebody was called, they weren’t just learning from the guy before him who didn’t know what he was doing either because he didn’t get trained, who got trained by somebody who didn’t get trained, rather when they would get called, we would get a print out of who got called into a stake young men position this year in many areas throughout the world.

                                           53:41                   And then we would arrange training with them and John and his colleagues would actually provide them real time training with real feedback where they could talk and exchange and get questions answered. That all culminated the last set we went through, the last area that we were able to go through was to go back to John’s mission. He was training folks in areas where he served as a missionary. There were some miracles involved in that. You had some conversations that were pretty touching, weren’t they?

John Bytheway:               54:11                   Oh, I saw a last name of Cassanello and he put in the chat, you and my dad were companions, that full circle feeling of, oh my goodness, you know? Yeah. It was amazing.

Pres. Steven Lund:          54:24                   What a thrill, a sweet thing. Just one of the ways in which the Lord is using modern technologies to advance the cause all around the world from Salt Lake City, when we have these amazing teachers who can get in and teach so much so quickly.

Hank Smith:                      54:39                   Yeah.

Pres. Steven Lund:          54:40                   Even if it was always in the middle of the night.

Hank Smith:                      54:43                   He would tell me sometimes, I gotta get up a little earlier today.

Pres. Steven Lund:          54:47                   Yeah, yeah.

Hank Smith:                      54:47                   Yeah.

John Bytheway:               54:48                    That was awesome. I’d do it again.

Hank Smith:                      54:51                   Well, president, it’s been a joy to have you here, John, as I was looking at this section, that’s part of our hope with our show, isn’t it? To add a little bit grace for grace to people’s lives, line upon line.

John Bytheway:               55:07                   Just a little bit, and I, I love that we brought that up line upon line. It’s not a light all at once. As Elder Bednar said, it’s a little bit like a sunrise that’s slow, but a little bit of light every day.

Hank Smith:                      55:20                   And the fact that we get to be part of that, we hope our show brings some of that light and truth.

Pres. Steven Lund:          55:26                   It’s working. I feel a little lighter and a little brighter every time I’m around you, every time I tune in. Thank you for all that you do. Truly.

Hank Smith:                      55:35                   Well, we love it. With that, we want to thank President Steve Lund for being with us today. We want to thank our executive producer Shannon Sorensen, our sponsors David and Verla Sorensen, and every episode we remember our founder. He was full of light. I remember big beaming, bright smile Steve Sorensen. We hope you’ll join us next week. We’ve got more of the Doctrine and Covenants on followHIM. Thank you for joining us on today’s episode. Do you or someone you know speak Spanish, Portuguese, or French? You can now watch and listen to our podcast in those languages. Links are in the description below. Today’s show notes and transcript are on our website. Follow him.co. That’s Follow Him dot co. Of course, none of this could happen without our incredible production crew. David Perry, Lisa Spice, Will Stoughton, Krystal Roberts, Ariel Cuadra, Heather Barlow, Amelia Kabwika, Iride Gonzalez, and Annabelle Sorensen.