Hank Smith:                      00:03                   Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week’s Come, Follow Me lesson. John, we are in our second lesson of Isaiah. I want to show you a verse and tell you a story. Isaiah says, “In the latter days, the deaf,” this is Isaiah 29:18, “In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book,” Book of Mormon, “and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. Israel will be gathered.” Isaiah 29’s a great chapter. So I have to tell you a story where something like that happened. This story was told by Elder Ted E. Brewerton back in the 1900s, 1991. He tells the story of his ancestors. This is the Stewart family in Ireland. “When the Mormon missionaries,” he said, “came to the Stewart house, Elizabeth was the third child in the family.

                                           00:56                   She immediately felt the truthfulness of this message and began to study and search for an assurance of the things she felt.” Well, her parents wanted nothing to do with it, so the only person she could talk to was her deaf grandmother. Elder Brewerton says grandma was virtually deaf, so she’s not completely deaf, but she had been virtually deaf for over 20 years. So Elizabeth spent many hours telling her granny about the new prophet, Joseph Smith, who had brought back to earth a very simple but direct message that Christ was speaking again to man. Elizabeth, this is the granddaughter, felt a testimony burning within and asked her parents’ permission to be baptized. Her parents objected because of all that was being said about the quote Mormons, but Elizabeth’s grandma came to the rescue and said, “I’ll go with her. You don’t have to do anything.

                                           01:49                   I’ll go with her.” Elizabeth and grandmother left home to go to the baptism. Parents didn’t want to go. The two walked to the river where the Elders, listen to this, John, had broken a hole in the ice that wintery March day. When the Elders came toward Elizabeth to have her come into the water, her grandmother stepped up and said, “Watch your manners, child. Never step in front of your elders.” She wanted to be baptized first. She had not said a word, nor had the daughter Elizabeth known that she could even hear her. The Elders baptized Granny in her street clothes because she hadn’t told anyone that she was going to be baptized. She even had on a little hat. She had brought no extra clothes with her, so she walked home in her wet frozen clothes because Elizabeth knew she was going to be baptized, so she had brought an extra pair of clothes.

                                           02:44                   Said grandma didn’t even take cold, even though she did not change her clothes until the other members of the family had gone to bed. She had said nothing about her baptism to any of her family. She went about her usual tasks as if nothing had happened. Then when everybody went to bed, she hung her clothes around the fireplace. Now, John, this is the interesting part. In the morning, Archibald, this is the father of Elizabeth, the son of granny, in the morning when Archibald got up, he saw the clothes drying and he began to joke with everyone else in the house that granny must have been dipped in the water along with Elizabeth. Granny listened to their fun and then said, “Archibald, if you don’t want people to hear, stop shouting. You can’t talk about me now. I can hear better than any of you.” John, a miracle had occurred. Her baptism had restored her hearing. From that day on until her death, she could hear distinctly. Archibald often said, laughingly, that she heard too much.

John Bytheway:               03:52                   Awesome. I was hoping that’s what was going to happen.

Hank Smith:                      03:55                   The deaf shall hear the words of the book. Elizabeth didn’t think she could hear at all, that’s why she could talk to her about the gospel.

John Bytheway:               04:02                   Elizabeth, that little missionary.

Hank Smith:                      04:04                   Yeah, little missionary yapping away thinking, “Well, she can’t hear me anyway.” Isaiah was right, “The deaf shall hear the words of the book.” Hey, 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 with Sister Kathryn Davis this week. She is wonderful. She’s been teaching in the institute program of the church for many years. She brings out some wonderful insights that John and I had never seen before in these chapters. Then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorite.