Hank Smith: 00:02 Hello, my friends. Welcome to FollowHIM Favorites. This year we are doing stories to go with each week’s lesson. I’m Hank Smith. I’m here with John Bytheway.

  00:12 John, this week we’re looking at 1 Nephi 1 through 5. There’s a verse at the very end of Chapter 1 that says, “I, Nephi, will show unto you that the tender mercies of the Lord are upon all those whom He hath chosen because of their faith to make them mighty.”

John Bytheway: 00:29 Hank, this is a wonderful idea, and I think people might remember that Elder David A. Bednar gave a talk about tender mercies once and since then has become our vocabulary, the church, to talk about, “Wow, that was a tender mercy,” something that happened that was unexpected and so helpful, you know?

Hank Smith: 00:46 Yep. It was 2004, so almost 20 years ago, Elder Bednar was a brand new apostle giving his very first full talk in General Conference.

  00:56 Six months earlier when he had been called as an apostle, he had been ready to bear his testimony on the Sunday afternoon session, right, John? Can you imagine getting that call on Friday?

John Bytheway: 01:06 No, yeah.

Hank Smith: 01:06 “Hey, Bytheway, you’re going to be an apostle for the rest of your life. Two, you need to speak to the whole church in two days.”

John Bytheway: 01:12 Wow.

Hank Smith: 01:13 He said it was just about his turn to stand up and speak for the very first time in General Conference when President Monson announced the rest hymn.

  01:22 Now, Elder Bednar said if he could have chosen any hymn to be sung before his first talk in General Conference or his first testimony in General Conference, he would’ve chosen his favorite hymn, Hymn Number 6, Redeemer of Israel.

  01:37 He said, “But the hymns are chosen long in advance, right? You can’t run up to the organist in General Conference and say, ‘Hey, can we change it up?'” He said, “So imagine how I felt when President Monson announced that the choir and congregation would stand and sing Hymn Number 6, Redeemer of Israel.

  01:57 And I remember Elder Bednar said, “Some may count this experience as a nice coincidence.” He said, “But the tender mercies of the Lord are real.” He was sending Elder Bednar a personalized message.

  02:10 I’ve collected story after story after story. I just love these stories, these personalized blessings. You can see the Lord, as it were.

  02:17 I thought I might tell you one, and it’s about my friend Parker B. Strong. Elder Strong got his mission call to Africa. He was very excited and he said when he got there, it was pretty incredible. It’s like camping. Boil your own water and wash your own clothes, right? And he said for the first couple of weeks it was just really adventurous and fun.

  02:37 But then it kind of hit him that this is going to be a long time. This is not a short thing. Apparently, when you get on the bus in this specific place where he was serving, it’s very common for people to hand you their stuff to hold while you’re on the bus. So if I come onto the bus and I have a lot, I just kind of hand it out to people and they hold it for me while I go on this bus ride. He said he got handed a goat, a live goat, and it’s just kind of staring at, can you imagine, breathing on you, you’re like, “Where am I? Like what am I doing? I’m from Utah.”

  03:15 As a good missionary does, he went to the Lord and said, “I’m really struggling here. Can you help me out?” And he did what you would think a missionary would do, and that is he just got to work. President Hinckley, right? “Forget yourself and go to work.”

John Bytheway: 03:27 Go to work.

Hank Smith: 03:28 So he went to work.

  03:30 Well, at one point, a couple of weeks later, I think, he’s teaching a lesson. I think it was in a park somewhere, and he said, “My companion was doing the teaching,” I think, because Parker’s still working on the language, when a kid walks by in a Utah Jazz jersey. It’s a junior Jazz jersey, and Parker said, “That’s my team.” He said it was just something from home, a wow moment like, “Oh, thank you. I just needed to see something from home.”

  04:02 Apparently, as the kid is walking away, Parker sees something else on the jersey so he said, “Hey, come back. Come back.” And so the kid came back and Parker said he turned the jersey inside out and there, in a 10-year-old’s handwriting, is Parker B. Strong. It was his jersey, John, that he had had as a junior Jazz player when he’s in fourth or fifth grade. And then when he was done with that, he had donated the jersey and it had ended up in front of him as a missionary-

John Bytheway: 04:35 Incredible.

Hank Smith: 04:36 … in Africa.

John Bytheway: 04:38 What are the chances?

Hank Smith: 04:40 Right? As Elder Bednar said in his talk, “Some might count this as a coincidence, but I testify with Elder Bednar that the tender mercies of the Lord are real.” Don’t you love it, John?

John Bytheway: 04:52 Yeah. It’s like the Lord’s saying, “I know exactly where you are, Parker, and I put this kid in your path.” That is pretty cool.

  04:59 So when the Deseret Industries says our donations bless many nations-

Hank Smith: 05:04 They really do.

John Bytheway: 05:05 … they’ll send those things all over the world, and this one goes to his area. Amazing.

Hank Smith: 05:10 Absolutely amazing, absolutely incredible.

  05:13 And John, this is just one of how many stories that we have heard, we have experienced, and you can see the Lord is at work in our lives.

John Bytheway: 05:21 And that’s what Nephi was going to show us.

Hank Smith: 05:23 Yeah, the tender mercies of the Lord are real.

  05:27 If you have a tender mercy story, go to our website, followhim.co, and type it up for us and send it to us. We’d love to hear from you.

  05:35 Then join us next week for FollowHIM Favorites. We’ll share another story that goes with that week’s lesson.