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 are in Alma 36, 37 and 38 today. In chapter 36, Alma tells the story of his conversion, and I have a story for you. I heard this story the very first time, and I looked into it and found a lot more details from Joseph Wirthlin from way back in 2006. He tells the story of Harry de Leyer. Harry de Leyer was late to a horse auction one day, way back in 1956. All the good horses had been sold, and the few that were still there were old, and the company was going to probably salvage them. I don’t know if you know what salvaging a horse looks like, John.

John Bytheway: 00:49 Might not be what we think it is.

Hank Smith: 00:51 Yeah. But it sounds pretty bad.

John Bytheway: 00:54 Yeah.

Hank Smith: 00:55 Harry was a horse master at a local girls school. He saw this horse. It’s described as an uncared for gray gelding with ugly looking wounds on its legs. The animal still bore the marks of a heavy work harness. Had a hard life. All these scars, had a hard life, but Harry figured he’s a pretty cheap horse, so I’ll buy him. He bought him for 80 bucks. By the time he gets the horse home, he’s covered in snow. Harry’s children named him Snowman. John, listen to this. Snowman ends up being a pretty good horse. The girls like to ride him. He was steady and he didn’t startle. He made rapid improvement as a workhorse. In fact, a neighbor said, I’ll pay $160 for it. Harry’s excited, right? He turned around an $80 horse into $160 horse. But the problem is, John, that Snowman goes to the neighbor’s house but ends up every day back at Harry’s property.

  01:54 Harry brings him back to the neighbor and says, you ought to close your gates and get your fences fixed because this horse ended up back at my house. Well, they do this time and again, and the neighbor is swearing, look, I’ve fixed all the fences and I’ve closed the gates, and this horse is still coming back to your property. And it happens so many times that the neighbor says, give me my money back, right? This horse obviously wants to live at your house. Well, Harry is like, how does he keep coming back? Harry said, well, maybe he’s jumping the fence. Maybe he wanted to jump. Harry decided, let’s see if he’s actually jumping. Harry starts jumping this horse just a little bit at a time, and he thought maybe he could compete. John, this will blow you away. In 1958, Harry entered Snowman in his first jumping competition.

  02:48 Everybody looked like, are you kidding me? These beautiful, well-bred horses against this flea-bitten gray. And Elder Wirthlin says, a wonderful unbelievable thing happened that day. Snowman won. Harry continued to enter Snowman into other competitions, and Snowman continued to win. Audiences began to cheer every time Snowman won an event. He became a symbol of how extraordinary an ordinary horse could be. He had started to appear on television, stories and books were written about him. As Snowman continued to win, listen to this, John. One person offered $100,000 to Harry for his $80 horse.

John Bytheway: 03:33 Man.

Hank Smith: 03:35 But Harry would not sell. And then in 1958 and 1959, Snowman was named Horse of the Year. This old horse who had once been marked for sale to the lowest bidder was then inducted into the jumping hall of Fame. Isn’t that crazy, John, that this $80 horse becomes Horse of the Year?

John Bytheway: 04:00 He was always the same horse. What was missing? Somebody did not know what was in there, I guess.

Hank Smith: 04:07 Yeah. The untapped potential that once, think of Alma the Younger that way.

John Bytheway: 04:13 Mm-hmm.

Hank Smith: 04:13 He bore the marks of a hard, heavy life, poor choices, his own poor choices, but the Lord took him out of the salvage yard, right? Alma the Younger becomes what? One of two translated prophets. He goes from vilest of all sinners according to Mormon, to a translated prophet in the Book of Mormon.

John Bytheway: 04:35 Walks away and is never heard of more like Moses.

Hank Smith: 04:39 Yeah. He becomes Prophet of the Year, right? I bet someone offered $100,000.

John Bytheway: 04:45 Senines, 100,000 Senines for him.

Hank Smith: 04:47 Yeah. But the Lord would not sell.

John Bytheway: 04:50 That’s right.

Hank Smith: 04:51 John Elder Wirthlin finishes this story with this as illustrated in the story of an old discarded horse that had within him the soul of a champion, there is within each of us a divine spark of greatness. Who knows of what we’re capable of if we only try. The abundant life, the horse of the year life is within our reach if we will drink deeply from living waters, fill our hearts with love and create of our lives a masterpiece. The Lord can take Alma the Younger and turn him into what he turned him into, he can do the same thing with us, right?

John Bytheway: 05:27 Absolutely. Take ordinary and make it extraordinary.

Hank Smith: 05:31 Yeah. We hope you’ll join us on our full podcast. It’s called followHIM. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Come back next week. We’ll have another story for followHIM Favorites.