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I posted this on my latter-dayvillage.com blog, but it’s also more than appropriate for the family blog.  My descendants need to know how I feel about President Hinckley’s passing. 

I too wish to join the thousands of LDS bloggers world-wide who are expressing their feelings following Pres. Gordon B, Hinckley’s death.

I have a strange relationship with death.  It has never shocked or saddened me with overwhelming grief. Even when I got the call from my brother that my father had died in an accident, my breath was taken away for an instant, then I was like, “OK, good job Dad, you’re on to the next phase.  They needed a master teacher and missionary in the spirit world.”  Earlier, neighbors across the street from us lost their 14-year old son to Leukemia. My reaction; I was glad he was finally going on that mission he always talked about.

So I have to admit that I not profoundly sad at Pres. Hinckley’s passing.  Instead I prefer to think about the glorious welcoming in the spirit world and his reuniting with his beloved wife.  I am sure it surpassed any missionary homecoming we can imagine. 

Pres. Hinckley did have an effect on my life; I know he was a true prophet who communicated directly with our Heavenly Father. I know so from personal experience; let me explain. But first, let you tell you that this is one of the most sacred experiences of my life, so as I write this, there will be several breaks for tears.  I am an emotional guy and thinking about this always breaks me up.

I served a mission in Germany from 1972-1974, in the Frankfurt area to be exact.  It was a tough time to serve there; it was at the height of the Vietnam conflict and all of the Watergate shenanigans.  We were not appreciated very much by a majority of the German people and it was very hard to find folks willing to accept our message.  Our weekly teaching hours were almost always in the single digits, with our tracting hours sometimes higher than 40.  It was in the middle of this the then Elder Hinckley visited our mission and held a mission-wide conference. 

I will never forget the testimony meeting that closed the conference.  Most of our zone and mission conferences closed with a testimony meeting, so that fact was not unusual. But how Pres. Hinckley conducted it was.  We partook of the sacrament; Elder Hinckley and our President James C. Ellsworth administered the sacrament. When was the last time you saw an Apostle of the Lord bless the sacrament?  I never had.  The assistants to the president then passed it out to all of us present.  At one point in the meeting, Elder Hinckley asked all of us to take turns and each bear out testimonies.

Elder Hinckley said he would like to offer a prayer for us and the mission. We all knelt down where we were sitting, right there in the pews.  As Pres. Hinckley began to pray, I was struck by this feeling of slight embarrassment, like when you walk into a room and someone is praying silently. His communication with our Heavenly Father was like none I had heard before. Gone were the large words and flowery phrases so many of us are wont to use when praying aloud, instead I was struck with how simple and yet powerful his words were.  He WAS talking directly to his Father, beseeching him to bless the missionaries, to bless the German people, to open up our hearts and theirs to the spirit to that His work might go forth.

Finally, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of inadequacy; that I was truly in the wrong place.  I knew, not just felt, but KNEW into the core of my soul, that I dared not look up, as I had the very distinct feeling come to me that the chapel roof was open and Elder Hinckley and Heavenly Father were talking and speaking directly to each other.  If I looked up, I knew I would be consumed as I was not worth to behold that scene and presence. As his prayer ended, I was physically shaking, not from dread,, but from how close I had been to that heavenly vision.  I had been the presence of the Father, or at least in the presence of a conduit directly between a loving, omnipotent being and his loving, obedient, and imploring son.  It was a feeling I cannot adequately explain, even to this day.  Words simply fail me.  But when I think about it, I still know that what I witnessed was real.

I did not talk with my companion about it.  I was sure he was more worthy than I, and would not have felt the dread of heavenly glory. All the way home on the train I felt so inadequate and sorrowful. Perhaps that was the adversary, overplanting seeds of doubt in me.  But I knew what I felt was glorious, that I had heard if not seen the kind of apostolic rapture that must have existed in the Kirtland Temple.  I knew beyond any doubt that Elder Hinckley WAS a special witness; that he knew his Heavenly Father in ways and means I could not. 

I kept this incident to myself over the years  However, I did not share it with anyone from my mission until a few years after I returned home that I was gather together with several of my for mission mates for a dinner in Salt Lake. We started reminiscing and that topic of that conference came up.  I finally shared my experience, when my then companion, looked me in the eye and said, in essence, “no way, I felt the very same thing.”  We had not spoken to each other about it for several years, yet had both experienced the same feeling. I finally felt comfortable sharing it in a sacrament meeting talk and with some of my seminary classes.

So as you can imaging, for years I’ve been very interested in what Elder and then President Hinckley had to say.  Let’s just say that I knew he was really clued in to what we needed to do as a people. 

Oh yes, there was a surge in missionary activity after that conference.  We were all blessed by Elder Hinckley’s supplication. 

I will miss Pres. Hinckley’s wit, humor and insight.  But I know the Lord will qualify and hold up his next Prophet as he did Pres. Hinckley, for as long as his service is required.  I know our church to be true and our prophets to be in direct communication with the head of our church, even our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In His Name, Amen.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Tim. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.