I See... a Prophet's Voice

Stake Conference was shaping up to be a disaster. Due the wide geography our stake covered, the Sunday session was being broadcast from the Stake Center to our outlying chapel via the internet. However, due to prominent audio distortion that made every speaker's voice thoroughly scratchy and raspy, the messages being shared were indecipherable. This was personally particularly troubling because I had been fervently praying to be inspired this Sunday.

Elder Carlson of the Second Quorum of the Seventy, our General Authority visitor, approached the podium. Frustration was rising. Would this servant of the Lord speak wonderful things I needed to hear but could not? He started talking but all I heard was avnucwiruvnbpunvspfnv punctured by parts of words. Just when I was ready to stop straining my ears through irritating static and turn my attention to less challenging distractions, I was able to make sense of a single phrase- “What think ye of Christ?” from Matthew 22:42. Except for me it wasn't Elder Carlson's voice- it was President Kimball.

President Kimball was my prophet. He called me on a mission, encouraged me acquire my own personal testimony, and promised me blessings beyond measure if I lived worthy of a temple marriage, and he did all this in his trademark throaty, raspy voice. At that moment when Elder Carlson, via the miracle of technical glitches, invited the members of our ward who couldn't hear him “what think ye of Christ?” in a thick raspy voice, my mind raced back to a cold day in the mission field in Seoul Korea many years ago and a homesick missionary listening to his prophet, President Kimball. During one talk he invited all to ponder on that same critical question, but he was looking straight into my soul. That moment was written in my heart that day decades ago, and Elder Carlson's good message embedded in bad static brought it up again. Although technically, stake conference was a bust, I found what I was looking for.