Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. This is where John and I will share a single story to go with each week’s lesson in the Come, Follow Me manual this year. Now, John, the very first lesson this year is called The Restoration of the Fullness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. If you go down in the manual, there’s a talk that is referenced. It’s from Elder Uchtdorf. It’s called Are You Sleeping Through the Restoration? And it made me think of a story for this week’s followHIM Favorites. So John, I’m going to expose a little bit of my own lack of spirituality here. Anybody who listens to the show enough knows that’s not a surprise. So this was back when Sarah and I didn’t have any children. We flew out back east to see her sister and her sister’s husband. This is Amy and Derek Booth. They had a little boy named Broderick, who we call Brody. So Brody was just a little two-year-old, I think, at the time.

  01:09 We decided since we were out there that we should drive over to see the Sacred Grove. So the five of us drove out to see The Grove. In my head, I had this idea that the Sacred Grove would be a specific spot, 30 by 30 foot area where there would be a plaque or something that says, “This is where Joseph knelt and prayed.” Now, John, I’ve been there many times, and so have you. It’s not that way at all. It’s a big vast area with pathways running through it. Well, John, can you imagine me not knowing that? And being irreverent, I threw Brody on my shoulders. He would direct me using my ears as handles. We were running and playing through these pathways. He was steering me into trees, and there were people who were sitting on benches who looked up at us being really noisy and laughing, looking at us like we were crazy. And I thought, “Well, I don’t know why these people are so uptight. Maybe they haven’t seen the Grove yet.”

  02:15 So I kept going through, and even Sarah looked at me and thought, “Huh, I guess he’s just trying to be a fun uncle.” Well, we did this John for 15 minutes, and I’m still waiting, when are we going to get to the Sacred Grove? When my brother-in-law, Derek, he says to me, “Well, should we go?” And I said, “Go where?” He said, “Go get in the car.” “We haven’t been to the Sacred Grove yet.” He said, “We’ve been in it this entire time.” And John, I felt so terrible. I had disrupted everyone’s experience in this Sacred Grove except for Brody’s. I think he had a wonderful first time there, two-year-old on my shoulders. I went, “Oh, no.” I put Brody down, and I said, “I’ll be right back.” And I ran into the Sacred Grove and had a 30-second spiritual moment where I tried to be calm and reverent. Now that when I go there, every time I think of that and I tell that story to groups I take there, I say, “This whole thing is-“

John Bytheway: 03:21 Just so you know.

Hank Smith: 03:22 Yeah. I wonder if we could make this jump that oftentimes we think, “When the Restoration happens, I want to be there. For right now, I’m not really going to pay attention or focus, but I’m going to be there.” And the Lord might say, “You’re in it.”

John Bytheway: 03:39 You’re in it.

Hank Smith: 03:40 You’re right now, don’t sleep through the Restoration.

John Bytheway: 03:43 I love that a lot. You could be right there and not even see it, and not know it, here we are. And how many times have we been told, Hank, that we’re part of the greatest work that possibly have been President Nelson? We’re right in the middle of it. Don’t sleep through it. That’s good.

Hank Smith: 04:00 Don’t miss it. The title of my talk, I guess, would be, Are you Goofing Around Through the Restoration With Your Two-Year-Old Nephew?

John Bytheway: 04:09 With Brody.

Hank Smith: 04:10 Yeah, with Brody. So Brody, if you’re listening out there, I’m sorry that we’re related. I feel terrible that you’re associated with me. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. In fact, this year, you can get it in Spanish, French and Portuguese. Please come find us and then come back here next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.