Hank Smith:  00:03  Hello everyone. Welcome to another followHIM Favorites. John and I are sharing a single story to go with each week’s lesson. John, we’re in Helaman 1 through 6 today. You know this is about Nephi and Lehi, O remember, my sons. There’s a lot more to the chapters than that, but I’m going to focus on that one for my story. I thought of a story to share with you John. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it. There’s this moment where Nephi and Lehi are being taught by their father Helaman, and he said, “I’ve named you Nephi and Lehi so you could remember those who came before you. Do as they have done.” Years and years and years ago back in the 1900s, my dad came to my room and he handed me this big blue book. And all it said on it was the Tye, T-Y-E, Family History. And he handed it to me like I would be really interested in this book.

00:55 And I opened it up, there’s copies of newspaper articles, obituaries, old pictures of people who aren’t smiling, right? You ever seen those pictures of pioneers? Everybody looks super happy. I look at this and he said, “This is an awesome book.” I was like, “Dad.” And he said, “No, let’s read through this together.” I thought, there’s just nothing else I want to do. I do remember one specific guy, he showed me his picture, and he said, “This man was very, very wealthy when he joined the church in Denmark.” By the time he comes to Utah, he’s lost all of his money. He’s helping other members of his branch cross. He had lost a lot of business because he had joined the church, sacrificed everything, even buried a child at sea, a 2-year-old girl. So much, and when he gets to Salt Lake, Brigham Young assigns him to go live in Ephraim, Utah.

01:51 When he gets there, he doesn’t have enough to build a home.

He has to live in one of those dugouts where they dig the side of the mountain, kind of a cave. Unbelievable. I was 16. I thought, “Well, thanks dad.” A couple weeks later, fast-forward, I found myself at a party that I didn’t know was going to have, things that it shouldn’t have there. I go with a friend, we show up to this party. These weren’t my usual friends, and I found myself in the kitchen, and there’s a bunch of people I don’t know. One of them brings out this six-pack of what looked to me to be juice, because I don’t know my alcoholic beverages John, and he starts passing them out. And I’m looking at it going, “Oh, I like juice. That looks yummy.” He slides it to me and I remember I caught it, and I look at it and I realize, “This is not juice. This is alcohol.”

 02:47 I knew I wasn’t going to drink it. That temptation wasn’t there for me. I have other temptations. But I was surprised at how awkward it felt to try to get out of this situation without looking… I didn’t want to look dumb. I didn’t want to look like I didn’t fit in or anything like that. So, I’m looking at this alcohol, and I think I just sat there frozen for so long because people started to look at me because I don’t know what to do. So, I’m just kind of frozen looking at it. And by the time I look up, there’s a couple of people just looking at me. And I am like, in my mind, “This is odd.” I don’t want you to think this was a big moment with Symphony and Angels, it was just in my mind. I pictured my great-grandfather and he’s standing in front of his cave and he’s looking at me like…

John Bytheway: 03:42 Hello?

Hank Smith: 03:43 Yeah. I lived in a cave, right? Can’t you at least just refuse the alcohol? Can you just set that down and say, “No, thank you.”

John Bytheway: 03:56 I could not figure out how the cave was going to come to this party, so I didn’t see that one coming.

Hank Smith: 04:02 Yeah, it was just a quick thought, like a little maybe flash of inspiration, I’m not sure. And I thought, “Okay, you’re right. I need to say something.” Like on the seminary videos John, when you say something and everybody cries and you all go on missions together, you’re going to say something so good that it changes everybody’s life. I set the drink down and a lot of people are looking at me, and I said, John, I am not joking, I said, “I like orange juice.” It was so bad. Life-changing testimony moment. Three of the kids in the room went, “Huh?” And the kid who handed me the drink went, “What?” And even my great-grandfather said, “Huh?”

 04:55 Like, “Really?” They kind of looked at me and I just repeated it. One of these guys, I don’t know who he was, he looks at the guy who was handing out drinks and he said, “We better get this boy some orange juice.” The kid came over and took the drink out of my hand and got me some orange juice. I drank my orange juice really fast and got out. I think I spilled it down my chin, and I was like, “I got to go.” We left that party real quick. I went and found my friend that I went with and I said, “We’ve got to go. There’s alcohol at this party.” And he said, “You drank?” And I said, “No, I didn’t drink. My great-great- grandfather was there.

John Bytheway: 05:29 “I like orange juice.”

Hank Smith: 05:32 Yeah. We laughed and went home. I can’t tell you that I felt really good and powerful and spiritual. I felt like, “Oh, I have no friends, and I don’t know what to say in the moment.” But now I read Helaman 5, where Helaman says, “Remember to keep the commandments of God. I named you after our first parents.” I didn’t have the name of that great-grandfather, but I did remember him at that time. And so you can remember them. This is your ancestors and you can remember their works. And when you remember their works, you can remember that those were good works. Let it be said of you, that same thing be said of you. Maybe my great-great-grandfather reached through the centuries and just gave me a little bit of extra strength.

John Bytheway: 06:18 I love it.

Hank Smith: 06:19 I wish he would’ve given me a little more, maybe some insight to say the right thing. And John, I don’t want anybody out there to think, “Oh, Hank was Mr. Perfect in high school.” I was not. Definitely far from it. That was a moment. We all have moments where we do the right thing. I like to highlight those even though there wasn’t very many.

John Bytheway: 06:37 This story brought to you by Simply Orange, available wherever.

Hank Smith: 06:42 If you own an orange juice company, I would gladly be your spokesperson, because I still like orange juice.

John Bytheway: 06:48 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 06:49 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. Come back next week, we’ll do another followHIM Favorites.