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 Alma 1-4. I think we tagged on Mosiah 29 with that as well. You’ve told me you have a story for Alma 4. What is it?

John Bytheway: 00:19 You know how in Alma 4:10 it says, “The wickedness of the church became a great stumbling block,” and what is that? It’s something we trip over it. It impedes our progress, right?

Hank Smith: 00:29 Yeah. I can’t move forward with it in my way.

John Bytheway: 00:31 Yeah, and President Hinckley told this story in the April 2006 conference. I have to warn you first, it’s a bit of a gut punch, but so is that verse. The wickedness of the church becoming a stumbling block. Hey, that’s not what we’re after. So this is what President Hinckley says about a young man who was not a member of the church, and he says his parents were active in another faith, and he recalls this young man that when he was growing up, some of his LDS associates, okay, get ready for the gut punch, belittled him, made him feel out of place, poked fun at him. He literally came, these are President Hinckley’s words, he came to literally hate this church and its people. He saw no good in any of them. Then his father lost his employment and had to move. In a new location at the age of 17, he was able to enroll in college, and for the first time in his life, felt the warmth of friends, one of whom was named Richard, asked him to join a club.

  01:28 And he said, “For the first time in my life, someone wanted me around. I didn’t know how to react but thankfully I joined. It was a feeling that I loved, the feeling of having a friend. I had prayed for one my whole life, and God answered that prayer.” And then he talked about having a tent partner in a summer job. I don’t know what that means. I guess you have a job where you work in a tent.

  01:49 Clearly a very intense job, okay. So he said he noticed this friend Richard reading a book every night and one night asked, “What is that book?” And he said, “It’s the Book of Mormon.” This young man said, “I quickly changed the subject and went to bed. After all, that is the book that ruined my childhood.”

Hank Smith: 02:09 Oh.

John Bytheway: 02:09 See how many gut punches? I asked, why was he reading that every night? I couldn’t stand this unanswered question in my head. So one night I asked him what was so important in that book? What was in it? He read about Jesus and about his appearance in the Americans, and I was shocked. These are his words, “I didn’t think that Mormons believed in Jesus.” Ouch.

  02:32 On a subsequent occasion, this young man and his friend were traveling. Richard handed him the Book of Mormon and asked if he would read it aloud, and he did so, and suddenly the inspiration of the Holy Spirit touched him. Time passed, faith increased, and he agreed to be baptized. Which is great. President Hinckley said that is the end of the story, but there are great statements in that story. One is the sorry manner in which members of the church treated him. Next is the manner in which the newfound friend treated him totally opposite from his previous experience. It led to his conversion and baptism in the face of terrible odds. So it’s just kind of saying, don’t be a stumbling block, right?

Hank Smith: 03:16 Yeah.

John Bytheway: 03:16 Be a stepping stone, and we don’t want Alma 4:10 to become true of us.

Hank Smith: 03:21 Oh, I love that. I remember once President Hinckley said, “Our kindness may be the most persuasive argument for that which we believe.”

John Bytheway: 03:30 Yeah. That’s got to be the fruit of what we believe is the way we treat people.

Hank Smith: 03:35 Knowing what we know, we ought to be some of the kindest, happiest, most hopeful people. I’ve noticed in verse 11 of that chapter you mentioned John, Alma 4. Alma saw that the example of the church began to lead those who were unbelievers from one piece of iniquity to another.

John Bytheway: 03:56 It’s another gut punch.

Hank Smith: 03:58 Yeah. Bringing on the destruction of the people. I think we can all, like you said, John, we can decide that’s not going to be us. That’s not going to be us.

John Bytheway: 04:08 And not everybody’s going to join the church, but we can always let them know, “Yeah, I knew a member and they were kind.”

Hank Smith: 04:16 Yeah. So one of the kindest neighbors I ever had…

John Bytheway: 04:19 Yeah, something like that.

Hank Smith: 04:20 … was a member of that church. You never know if that seed might grow into something later.

  04:26 We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcast and then come back next week. We’ll do another followHIM Favorites.