The Lost Batallion

There are other “lost battalions” comprised of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, who have, through thoughtless comment, isolated themselves from one another. An account of how such a tragedy was narrowly averted is this occurrence in the life of a lad we shall call Jack.

Throughout Jack’s life, he and his father had many serious arguments. One day, when Jack was seventeen, they had a particularly violent one. Jack said to his father: “This is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. I’m leaving home, and I shall never return.” So saying, he went to the house and packed a bag. His mother begged him to stay, but he was too angry to listen. He left her crying at the doorway.

Leaving the yard, he was about to pass through the gate when he heard his father call to him: “Jack, I know that a large share of the blame for your leaving rests with me. For this I am truly sorry. I want you to know that if you should ever wish to return home, you’ll always be welcome. And I’ll try to be a better father to you. I want you to know that I’ll always love you.”

Jack said nothing but went to the bus station and bought a ticket to a distant point. As he sat in the bus watching the miles go by, he commenced to think about the words of his father. He began to realize how much love it had required for him to do what he had done. Dad had apologized. He had invited him back and had left the words ringing in the summer air, “I love you.”

It was then that Jack realized that the next move was up to him. He knew that the only way he could ever find peace with himself was to demonstrate to his father the same kind of maturity, goodness, and love that dad had shown toward him. Jack got off the bus. He bought a return ticket to home and went back.

He arrived shortly after midnight, entered the house, and turned on the light. There in the rocking chair sat his father, his head in his hands. As he looked up and saw Jack, he rose from the chair and they rushed into each other’s arms. Jack often said, “Those last years that I was home were among the happiest of my life.”

We could say here was a boy who overnight became a man. Here was a father who, suppressing passion and bridling pride, rescued his son before he became one of that vast “lost battalion” resulting from fractured families and shattered homes. Love was the binding band, the healing balm. Love—so often felt; so seldom expressed.

-Lost Battalions

THOMAS S. MONSON

The World’s Meanest Mom

A young mother recently shared with me a story called “The World’s Meanest Mom,” and I would like to share it with you here. She said:

“I had the meanest mother in the whole world. While other kids had no breakfast, I had to have cereal, eggs, and toast. When others had pop and candy for lunch, I had to eat a sandwich. My mother insisted on knowing where we were at all times. You’d think we were on a chain gang. She had to know who our friends were and what we were doing. She insisted that if we said we’d be gone for an hour, that we would be gone for one hour or less.

“I am ashamed to admit it, but she actually had the nerve to break the child labor law. She made us wash the dishes, make beds, learn to cook, and all sorts of cruel things. I believe she lay awake nights thinking up mean things for us to do. She always insisted that we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

“By the time we were teenagers she was much wiser, and our lives became even more miserable. None of this tooting the horn of a car for us to come running. She embarrassed us to no end by making our dates and friends come to the door to get us.

“My mother was a complete failure as a mother. None of us have ever been arrested or beaten a rap. Each of my brothers has served a mission, and his country. And whom do we have to blame for this terrible way we turned out? You’re right—our mean mother. Look at all the things we have missed. We never got to take part in a riot, burn draft cards, and a million and one other things that our friends did. She made us grow up into educated, honest adults. Using this as a background, I am trying to raise my children. I stand a little taller and I am filled with pride when my children call me mean. You see, I thank God that he gave me the meanest mother in the whole world.” (Orien Fifer, Phoenix Gazette)

What are we investing in?

In today’s fast-moving, materialistic world, unfortunately many fathers place their business affairs ahead of their children. I am appalled as I look around me, as was Eddie Cantor some years ago, when he said that a man will spend a whole week figuring out what stocks to buy with $1,000—but he won’t spend an hour with his child, in whom he has a greater investment.


Is it any wonder that many of our young people are troubled with identity problems? We who are older speak of building a better world, but our progress is slow. Real generosity to the future lies, then, in giving all that we have to the present.

Constantly Engaged in a Good Work

Yesterday as I came over to one of the sessions, one of my returned missionaries was kind enough to introduce me to an investigator. We had a wonderful chat and in the course of the conversation the investigator said, “I finally think I have found out the secret to your success as wonderful, righteous people.” I said, “What’s that?” She said, “You attend so many meetings you don’t have time to commit a sin.”


I have thought about that, and it prompted me to turn to this little verse. It goes:


“One day for church
Six days for fun.
The odds of going to heaven,
Six to one.”

Young People—Learn Wisdom in Thy Youth

PAUL H. DUNN

Parenting Transfers Responsibility

One of the scriptures many of your moms and dads take literally is the one recorded in the sixty-eighth section of the Doctrine and Covenants, which says: “And again, inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes which are organized, that teach them not to understand the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of the hands, when eight years old, the sin be upon the heads of the parents.” (D&C 68:25.)


Now that is rather serious to those of us who sit in such a responsible position. I once asked my mother, “How does it feel, Mom, to have all my sins placed upon your head?” She said, “Oh, but you forgot one thing, Paul. I have transferred them back to you because I have taught you the doctrines of the kingdom.” In a sense that is what we are trying to do, young people: to prepare you to live a happy and full life both now and in the future, and true joy and happiness comes in knowing and living the commandments of our Father in heaven.

-Young People—Learn Wisdom in Thy Youth 

-PAUL H. DUNN

Lions, Hippos and Crocodiles

Certain stretches of African rivers dry up from time to time, stranding all the water-dependent creatures in a new desert-scape dotted with evaporating ox-bow lakes. During the normal times of plentiful water, hippos and crocs are the masters of the riverine environment. Lions and elephants interface with them at the edges, but pose no challenge to the undisputed lords of the river.

That is, until the water level drops during a severe drought cycle, and the last stagnant ponds dry to cracked mud. Then the crocs and hippos, already starving and dehydrated, must bolt overland to discover another pond or river extension. Few of them moving cross-country in the desert heat live to see another waterhole. Their overland fatality rate is lemming-like, as lions, hyenas and vultures swarm in when they finally drop to the earth.

The moral of the story: Don’t be a hippo if your stretch of river might dry up. Be adaptable to many environments, not just the master of one that might prove to be impermanent. Better yet, be a bird, able to fly away to a safe location as conditions on the ground change for the worse. Have an agile mobility plan—or two or three.

Die Boek van Mormon

Die Boek van Mormon

By John M. Pontius

I was searching through my books in storage a few days ago and came across a first edition of the Book of Mormon in Afrikaans. I served a mission in South Africa from 1971 to 1973. It was an interesting and challenging experience.

I attended the Stake Conference in Johannesburg on May 14, 1972, when the new translation of the Book of Mormon into Afrikaans (Die Boek van Mormon) was presented. It was an electric moment. People wept. Some had waited all of their lifetimes to read the Book of Mormon in Afrikaans. Many people had learned English for the sole purpose of reading this scripture. The Spirit was strong among us as we rejoiced.

Remembering back more than 50 years, I can still remember Professor Felix Mynhardt [not a member of our church] as he spoke of his experience in translating that sacred book. I will retell it as best I can recall.

Professor Mynhardt was invited to come to the stand and speak about his experience in translating the Book of Mormon. He recounted how he had been given a gift of languages from God from his youth. He said that he was fluent in many languages, including English, Afrikaans, Hebrew and Egyptian, as well as many others. He was presently employed as a language professor. He said he had been praying that the Lord would give him some task, some divinely important task, that would justify his having this gift of language from God.

He said in about 1970 that he had visited with a group of Mormon leaders, who sought to commission him to translate the Book of Mormon from English into Afrikaans. He said that he knew of the Book of Mormon from his religions studies, and his initial reaction was that he did not want to be involved in translating it.

However, that evening, as he prayed upon his knees, as was his habit, he said the Spirit of the Lord convinced him. The message was something on the order of, "You asked me for a great, divinely inspired task of translation, I sent it to you in the form of translating the Book of Mormon, and you declined." Professor Mynhardt said he could not sleep through the night because he knew that translating the Book of Mormon would get him into trouble with his university, which was owned and operated by the Dutch Reformed Church. When morning came he telephoned Elder Clark to inform him that he would begin the translation immediately.

He stood at the pulpit and described the experience. He said, "I never begin translating a book at the beginning. Writing style usually changes through a book, and becomes more consistent toward the middle. Accordingly, I opened to a random place in the middle of the Book of Mormon, and began translating." He said, "I was startled by the obvious fact that the Book of Mormon was not authored in English.

He said, "It became immediately apparent that what I was reading was a translation into English from some other language. The sentence structure was wrong for native English. The word choices were wrong, as were many phrases." He said, "How many times has an Englishman said or written, 'And it came to pass?'" We all laughed, and knew he was right, of course. He continued, "When I realized this, I knew that I had to find the original language, and translate it back into the original language, or a similar language to the original, and then proceed to translate it into Afrikaans. He listed a half-dozen languages he tried, all of which did not accommodate the strange sentence structure found in the Book of Mormon. He said, "I finally tried Egyptian, and to my complete surprise, I found that the Book of Mormon translated flawlessly into Egyptian, not modern, but ancient Egyptian. I found that some nouns were missing from Egyptian, so I added Hebrew nouns where Egyptian did not provide the word or phrase. I chose Hebrew because both languages existed in the same place anciently."

"I had no idea at that time why the Book of Mormon was once written in Egyptian, but I can tell you without any doubt, that this book was at one point written entirely in Egyptian." I heard him say this over and over. Then, he said, "Imagine my utter astonishment when I turned to chapter one, verse one and began my actual translation and came to verse two, where Nephi describes that he was writing in the language of the Egyptians, with the learning of the Jews!"

He said, "I knew by the second verse, that this was no ordinary book, that it was not the writings of Joseph Smith, but that it was of ancient origin and was in fact scripture. I could have saved myself months of work if I had just begun at the beginning. Nobody but God, working through a prophet of God, in this case Nephi, would have included a statement of the language he was writing in. Consider, how many documents written in English, include the phrase, "we are writing in English!" It is unthinkable and absolute proof of the inspired origins of this book.

He paused, then noted, "I am one of the few people in the world that is fluent in ancient Egyptian. I am perhaps the only person fluent in ancient Egyptian and also in Afrikaans and English. And I know for a fact, that I am the only person alive who could have translated this book first into Egyptian, and then into Afrikaans. If your church ever needs an Egyptian translation of the Book of Mormon, it is sitting in my office as we speak." We all laughed. 
Professor Mynhardt spoke of many other things regarding the translation of this book, and then said, "I do not know what Joseph Smith was before he translated this book, and I do not know what he was afterward, but while he translated this book, he was a prophet of God! I know he was a prophet! I testify to you that he was a prophet while he brought forth this book! He could have been nothing else! No person in 1827 could have done what he did. The science did not exist. The knowledge of ancient Egyptian did not exist. The knowledge of these ancient times and ancient peoples did not exist. The Book of Mormon is scripture. I hope you realize this.

"I will keep promoting this book as scripture for the remainder of my life - simply because it is scripture, and I know it. I haven't studied your doctrine or your history since Joseph Smith. The only thing I know about the Mormon religion is that you have authentic, ancient scripture in the Book of Mormon, that your church was begun by a living and true prophet of God, and that all of the world should embrace the Book of Mormon as scripture. It simply can't be denied!"