How Many Apples in a Seed?
by Godfrey J. Ellis
This article describes my conversion to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It appeared in the book, Stories of Conversion: Why We Joined (Vol 1, 3rd edition – Edited by George Hara and P. Lewis). Some of the stories in this book (1st and 2nd editions) had been previously collected. Then, at the 40th anniversary reunion of members of the Vancouver 1st ward, many others were asked to submit the stories of their conversions to the Church. Below is my contribution.
How Many Apples in a Seed?
Godfrey J. Ellis
(godfreymerry@comcast.net)
I was born in Plymouth, England, in September of 1949 or, as I like to marvel, in the first half of the last century. Our family were staunch Christian Scientists and followers of Mary Baker Eddy. Despite being a member of the “working class,” my father, Maurice Ellis, was training to become an architect. Because of the British class system of the time, he found himself blocked at every turn with doors slammed in his face. One day, an older Christian Science architect told Dad that if he truly wanted to become an architect, he should emigrate to Canada. There, he was told, he would find both a greater openness and would be closer to the “Mother Church” of the Christian Scientists. Somehow, my father was able to secure a position with the Vancouver School Board and left England in January of 1956. He gave my mother, Ruth, a stark choice: follow as soon as possible or grant him a divorce.
My mother felt she had no choice but to follow him two months later with the three children: Wendy, Barry, and myself. We left in March 1956 on a rickety Greek ship called the S.S. Columbia. After sailing to Le Havre, France, we crossed the Atlantic to Montreal. We were the first ship to attempt the St. Laurence River that spring and soon hit ice. It was breaking in front of us but getting thicker and thicker as we progressed. The ship finally stopped breaking the ice and slid up onto it. We were suspended at an alarming angle; the rear of the ship was even submerged into the frigid water. I suppose we could have capsized. According to stories I heard, we were rescued, 24 hours later, by tugboats sent from Prince Edward Island. A Montreal newspaper later claimed that the captain was able to break loose with the aid of the tide. I don’t know how much tide there is in a river, but that was the Captain’s story.
Reunited with Dad, we lived on the North Shore almost under the Lion’s Gate Bridge. Unfortunately, Dad did not find the streets of Vancouver paved with gold, as he had hoped. So, after a couple of years, he moved on seeking greater opportunities in Los Angeles, California. The family followed, but it wasn’t much longer before he and Mum were finally divorced.
My mother did the best she could as a single parent but having to work full-time, she found it difficult. My older brother, Barry, and sister, Wendy, both, shall we say, tested the limits. In the middle of one night, my mother got the call that all parents dreaded from a local hospital. Wendy had been involved in a serious car accident while drinking with friends. Their car had hit a tree in the middle of the night. This was before widespread seat belt use, and she had been thrown through the windshield, severely cutting her face.
My brother, Barry, was also struggling with rules and attitude. Mum was extremely worried about him. Then, one day in 1960, everything changed. A school friend introduced Barry to the Church. He began taking the lessons from a ward missionary and that completely changed his life – it was a 180-degree switch. My mother considered it a miracle and that the Church had saved him. Despite her gratitude though, she didn’t want to hear the missionaries. She had her church, and that was it. As for me, she thought I was far too young at 9 years of age to listen to the elders. But I remember, as my brother was being taught, peeking around the corner watching the missionaries with their “high-tech” flannel boards. I clearly remember my fascination and fierce desire to hear what they were teaching.
Around this time, my mother began looking into returning to England. She could not afford the expense, of course, so instead she and the children returned to Vancouver, a city which reminded her of her home in England. My sister, Wendy, was old enough to find an apartment of her own, and Mum rented a small place in the West End not far from Stanley Park.
The primary condition of Mum giving my brother permission to be baptized into the Church had been that he would not bring his religion home. So, we attended the Christian Science Church in Vancouver while Barry attended the Vancouver 1st Ward on 41st Avenue. After a couple of years, Mum gave in to Barry’s requests that we have the full-time missionaries over to eat on Sunday afternoons, and we began to do that often. The elders liked to eat on any occasion but, in compliance to Mum’s request, they never mentioned the Church. They seemed happy enough to accept the dinner invitations, even if it meant having to keep their lips buttoned. I specifically remember hearing, one Sunday, that It was the birthday of one elder from the deep South. Mum immediately put together a party for him with cake and candles, singing “Happy Birthday,” and even wrapped a couple of simple gifts to open. He broke down, telling us that it was the first birthday party he had ever had in his life.
We were very impressed with these young men. They were very nice and lots of fun. Then two events happened that moved us further down the path to becoming converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The first event occurred at our old church. Despite the fact that my single-parent mother had been a member for many years in England, the US, and now Canada, she was denied continued membership because they judged that she was “not in a sufficient financial position to properly take care of her responsibilities to the church.” She was horribly offended. She didn’t believe that this represented what Christ would want.
The second event occurred one day when the elders came over for dinner (their names may have been Elder Butcher and Elder Cox). Anyway, Barry and one of the missionaries disappeared leaving behind the second elder with Mum and me. He told us that he had a movie in his car. Would I like to see it? Well! I loved movies and my 13-year-old brain caught fire. A movie in my house!? I imagined that, somehow, it would be a Hollywood blockbuster, even though movies in private houses were unthinkable in 1962, long before VHS, let alone DVDs. I guess I expected cowboys, invading Martians, or at least detectives solving murders. I remember my disappointment when he brought in a mere film strip. It was called, “What is a Mormon?” Still, Mum and I quickly became interesting in what the film strip had to say. As soon as the film was over, the elder turned to me and told me that the Vancouver 1st Ward had a wonderful youth program. Would I like to attend a youth activity the next evening? It was called “MIA.” To my surprise, Mum agreed that I could go.
The elders returned the next evening in their tiny missionary fleet car. It was an old Rambler. I found myself squeezed into the none-too-spacious front seat between two very large missionaries. As I was fighting for breath, they started asking me questions. For the entire ride – and this was near Stanley Park all the way up to the Chapel at 41st Avenue and Cambie – they probed and prodded with the most difficult questions about things that I had never heard of before. They wanted to know what I thought of the priesthood. The what? I had never heard of such a thing. How did I think baptisms should be performed? What was a “baptism”? What did I think happened to the original Church of Christ? I had never heard anything about Christ having a church; I thought he just wandered around teaching people. What did I think about the need for prophets today? What was a prophet? Now, I was a very active and well-taught member of the Christian Science church, but I had never heard of these things. How was I supposed to answer such impossible questions? I felt like a nincompoop. Truly, it was getting hot in the car and it wasn’t only the temperature; it was the pressure I felt as they bombarded me with their strange words and stranger questions.
I remember how relieved I felt when we finally arrived at the 41st Avenue chapel. I couldn’t wait to get out of that cramped car and away from those crazy questions. But the building was dark, and the front doors were locked tight. The elders poked around and found out that there was no MIA — they had the wrong night! I remember climbing back into the Rambler. They bought me an ice cream cone, which helped, but then the inevitable questions started all over again, all the way home. I felt so ignorant. As soon as we reached home, one of them asked, “Tomorrow night, then?” I was so dazed that I mumbled. “Err, okay, I guess….” Sure enough, the whole process repeated itself the next day. It’s funny now, but it wasn’t so funny then.
The next evening, though, MIA was on, and I met some LDS kids who were very friendly and fun. I had a great time. That night, after returning me home, the missionaries asked me to ask my mother if we would like to hear something they called, “the discussions.” To my surprise, she agreed.
I loved the discussions! I gobbled up the Gospel.
The teachings in the Christian Science church had been highly abstract and esoteric – some have called the teachings “gnostic.” Very little of it made any sense at all to a 13-year-old. But the teachings of the missionaries made perfect sense to me. It was like a breath of fresh air. I know now that I was feeling the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit, but at 13, it was the common-sense and simple logic that attracted me. Everything they taught made up an inter-connected web. If a person accepted the truth of any one of a number of teachings (the priesthood, Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, a current prophet (David O. McKay), etc.), the rest had to be accepted, too. To reject any one piece meant rejecting the whole. Even at 13, I realized that to try to pick and choose was to commit a logical inconsistency. It was all or nothing. If Joseph Smith was a prophet, then the Church was true, there really were prophets today, the priesthood had been restored, and the Book of Mormon really was new scripture. And I instantly knew that Joseph Smith was (is) a prophet; there was no doubt in my young mind about that. The Holy Spirit planted that knowledge deep into my heart. Where some adults have difficulty accepting that God the Father appeared to a mere child, I had no difficulty with Joseph Smith’s age. I absolutely knew his story was true. Besides, to me, he wasn’t a child; he was a peer, and an older one at that. I was barely 13; he was an impressive older 15!! So, I was converted by the story of Joseph Smith. I couldn’t get enough of hearing about his life and what he taught.
This is not to say that it was all easy. I struggled in some areas because they were so very different from what I had been taught all my life. Tens of thousands of converts are converted by the Book of Mormon and then logically come to accept the boy-prophet, Joseph Smith. For me, it was the reverse. Because of my age, it was the Book of Mormon that seemed strange and difficult to understand. I accepted it because I was certain that Joseph Smith was a prophet. But, for me, It was Joseph Smith who was the steam engine; the Book of Mormon was the caboose.
A more difficult concept was when the elders taught of an anthropomorphic God with a physical body. Now, my old church taught that material objects, particularly our physical bodies, were evils to be overcome. The physical world and everything in it was to be denied and eventually outgrown. So, to say that God, who I believed was just an omnipresent essence of intangible goodness that filled the universe, had a body of flesh and bone …well, to me, that bordered on outright blasphemy. I was shocked. God was a spirit and bodies were evil; everyone knew that! The elders, who were barely out of teenage years themselves, had no idea what we believed about God. So, they blindly asked me, again and again, what Joseph Smith had learned from the First Vision about the nature of God the Father. I was very young, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew exactly what they wanted me to answer. They wanted me to actually say, in words, that God had a body! But I couldn’t say it – I wouldn’t say it. I remember my face turning bright red and fighting to suppress my reaction. The discomfort came out in stifled laughter and lots of “um’s” and “err’s.” The redder my face became and the more I stammered, the more they thought I didn’t understand the point. They kept pressing the question – again and again. I finally mumbled something that must have been adequate, and we moved on. That was a good thing, too, because I imagined that, any second now, everyone in that room would be vaporized by a lightning bolt from on high. Then, again, Joseph Smith was a prophet. I knew that. So, somehow, some way, Heavenly Father must really have a physical body. But I remember it being really hard to fully understand that concept.
The crisis point for my British mother was very different. Her challenge came when the elders challenged her to give up her English tea. What! She immediately and literally called off any future meetings — she wasn’t about to give up her tea! By this time, I was so interested in the discussions that I panicked at the thought of them stopping. I said, “Look, Mum, I probably won’t get baptized either. But let’s go along with them just so we can hear the rest of the discussions — they’re so fascinating!” She reluctantly agreed.
At that time, missionary discussions included a series of “homework” questions for investigators to complete over the week between lessons. I was so interested in what the missionaries were teaching me that I usually had the few questions answered while the missionaries were still saying goodbye to Mum. They quickly stopped giving me the study questions until they were literally walking out the front door. They would hand me the questions and run to their car. Even that didn’t work, and I remember shouting out answers as they got into their Rambler. Before long, they were using up their individual study time just making up extra questions for me to answer.
By the end of the discussions, I was ready for the plunge. I was too young to know that it was the Holy Ghost that I was feeling. All I knew was that I wanted to be baptized. I was surprised to learn that my mother did, too. That was despite the tremendous sacrifice of her tea. Tithing? No problem. Tea? Now that hurt. So, when she agreed to be baptized, I was thrilled. But they almost lost me one MIA night when the elders showed a film to all the youth. It discussed the merging of science and religion and mentioned a planet named Kolob. I was not ready for that one! God having a body was a struggle; that he lived on a planet somewhere was shocking beyond belief! Still, if Joseph Smith said it, it must have been true – but I didn’t want to think about it if I could avoid it.
Despite these one or two hiccups, I absolutely loved the Gospel. The first time I attended Sunday School class – this was before my baptism – the lesson was on Joseph Smith and the restoration of the Gospel. Now, here was something I knew a lot about! My hand shot in the air again and again. I answered question after question. I soon looked around in amazement as I realized that none of the other teens around me were responding. I simply couldn’t understand why the other kids didn’t know the answers to the teacher’s questions. Didn’t they know all about these wonderful truths? Why didn’t they give the answers to these fascinating questions? Instead, they just sat there looking totally bored, staring off into space in silence. I went home perplexed at how little they seemed to know.
On February 2, 1963, we were baptized members of the Church of Jesus-Christ of Latter-day Saints by my brother, Barry, then a priest. It was quite a day. It was spiritual and transformative, yes, but it was also traumatic. I was deathly afraid of water, probably related to a near-drowning in England when I was only a few day’s old – but that is another story for another time. Water, and especially being submersed in water, was a very-real phobia to me. Suffice it to say that the experience was as harrowing as it was, spiritual. “Don’t you feel wonderful!” asked Barry. Yes, wonderful that the horror of being submersed in water was over! The confirmation was also a surprise. I don’t know if I had expected to see a vision or hear a voice during the laying-on-of hands. Instead, the hands crushed down on my head, a few words were muttered, and it was over.
But, the discovery of the LDS Church opened up a whole new life for my mother and me. I embraced the Church with intense enthusiasm and passion. It was all I could think about. I remember memorizing all the verses of “Come, Come, Ye Saints” as I walked to and from school every morning. And, I told my eighth-grade teacher all about my new religion. I must have spoken with great conviction because, as I later heard second-hand, he started taking the missionary discussions and asked to be baptized. Unfortunately, his wife said she would divorce him if he joined. When it came to an ultimatum of his marriage or the Church, he gave up the Church for his wife.
I committed to Bishop Smith (the bishop at the time) that I would only commit to two meetings per week: sacrament and priesthood. Within a couple of years, it averaged two times per day! That included the three Sunday meetings, daily seminary, youth activities, scouts, youth missionary meetings, and special events. But I also learned to temper my enthusiasm. It didn’t take many Sunday School classes to learn the wrong lesson – it became clear to me that the other kids really did know the answers to the teacher’s questions after all. It just wasn’t “cool” at 13 and 14 to be too interested in the Gospel. I soon stopped committing that particular “error”! Peer pressure was important enough to me that I began to tone down my attitude toward the Church. I still knew all the answers and loved to learn more, but I had learned to sit on the back row and giggle and whisper with the other kids. Sad, isn’t it…. But my excitement didn’t fade; it just went underground. The Gospel gave me an opportunity to think about morals and values at a time when I needed help the most — through those formative years.
As for Mum, her life changed, too. We hadn’t been in the Church but a short time when an older single man by the name of Louis Roy spotted this new member, Ruth Ellis, and said, “That’s for me!” (those are his own words). They began dating. Their first date was to a supper club and, to his shock and embarrassment, the after-dinner show turned out to be a girlie dance review. Mum thought that was very funny!
Louis Roy and Ruth Ellis were married in 1964. For some reason, I remember absolutely nothing about the wedding and there are no photographs of the event that I am aware of. Documents show that they were married in Vancouver on Nov. 13, 1964. By this time, Barry was in Alberta on a Church building mission. He was helping to build chapels in southern Alberta (in Raymond and Stirling). Barry was given special permission to come home for a few days to be the best man. (Or maybe he gave Mum away and I was the Best Man, I don’t remember.) Wendy was apparently the Maid of Honor. Ruth and Louis were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple a few days later – 18 November 1964.
The marriage was a joyous event although things weren’t always smooth in the new home. Louis Roy was a fiery-eyed French Canadian with a quick temper but a heart of gold. Coming from two entirely different cultural backgrounds, they didn’t readily adapt to one another. There were wonderful times but there was also on-and-off conflict for the remainder of my adolescent years. Then, too, I was not used to a strong masculine presence in the home. Mum would always allow me to stay home from school if I felt sick and, while I don’t recall ever out-and-out faking it, there were many times when I didn’t make any particular effort to tough it out. Louis Roy, my new stepfather, would have none of that and off to school I would go, sick or not. But I never resented him or his authority. Despite the occasionally difficult transition for Mum and Louis, I didn’t have a problem. I grew to love him very much …and he, me. I was never jealous of him, as most 15-year-olds would be of a new stepparent, and I didn’t resent his authority to any degree. I have never been one to question the cards dealt out in life and, in any case, he really was a blessing in the lives of my mother and me. I even called him, “Dad.”
In high school, drama was an important part of my life. That carried over to Church, as well. At the tender age of 16, I was called to be the Ward Drama Director (a calling that no longer exists). We put on several skits and roadshows, plus some major productions. I produced and directed A. A. Milne’s “The Ugly Duckling” as well as “Faith and a Wall,” a play I wrote and directed about Joshua and the battle of Jericho. This was a great calling for me and helped me develop qualities of leading people with patience but firmness. It also taught me very graphically what type of people are really valuable in the Church, and, consequently, what kind of person I wanted to be in my life.
It was during that winter (1967) that I met Kay Hinckley (later, Cannon). She was the Mission President, Arza Hinckley’s, youngest daughter. I asked her out for a date to the Vancouver Symphony. She was only 14 years old at the time; I was 17. This was long before “The Strength of Youth” standards and, for such a worthwhile activity, her father let her go despite her young age. I remember that we had a really good time. We went out a few more times and each date was wonderful. One Sunday, as we sat in my red Chevy in the Church parking lot, she announced that she couldn’t date me any longer. She had a goal of being “sweet sixteen and never been kissed” and she didn’t think I would want to go out with her under those conditions. I told her I didn’t care; I still wanted to take her out, and I would respect her goal.
Later that year, another wonderful calling came to me. At just 17, I was asked to become the Sunday School teacher of the 14 and 15-year-olds. The teens had been horrible to all the adult teachers and had chased off every adult available. So, the bishopric (it may have been Bishop Ken McLean by then) decided to try an experiment and give the teens one of their own to be the teacher. I was it. I don’t remember how long it lasted, but I remember that I loved it and, as far as I knew, I was doing a pretty good job. The success of the experiment was because I taught them as an equal rather than with the usual authority/student relationship that the teens were so good at challenging. With me, there was nothing to challenge and we got on together just fine. The teens seemed to enjoy the class and I certainly did, too. This was a major turning point for me in developing some qualities of leadership. Admittedly, it was somewhat bizarre.
Even more bizarre was that I was dating one of the students! It was Kay Hinckley. I don’t know if the Bishop had any idea that I was taking her out on a date on a Saturday night and teaching her in Sunday School the next morning. That was interesting! We would sometimes discuss the class on our dates. Well, I thought things were going along well. True, one teen was giving me some mild difficulty, but that was all. I innocently went to the Sunday School President to ask his advice on how to deal with the relatively minor problem …and was immediately released from the calling! I was bitterly disappointed. I suppose my strategizing with an adult leader was taken as proof that the desperate experiment had failed. But it hadn’t – or, at least, I didn’t think it had. I remember wishing I had kept my mouth shut and my minor problem to myself!
I still had my calling as Ward Drama Director. One day, I got the bright idea of putting on a Shakespearean play complete with a thrust stage that came off the regular stage into the audience. The audience would be seated in a semi-circle around the stage. The play was Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” My brother, Barry, built the thrust stage as well as the scenery that cascaded down from the cultural hall stage to the thrust stage. Carol McKay and others made costumes. In fact, Barry and Carol met doing that production and later got married; so the play was also something of a matchmaker, too! My girlfriend, Kay, was one of the performers as were Craig Evers and Doug Hogg, and many others. The ward and stake leaders had expected a teenage production of Shakespeare to be awful and were thrilled and thought it was outstanding when it turned out to be a good production.
That summer, Marvin Judd, a successful businessman and Vancouver 1st Ward member, was kind enough to arrange for Mum and Louis to fly back to England so that she could visit her mother and sister. Although routine today, a flight to Europe was a huge event in 1967. The only thing was that the plane left from Los Angeles, California. Doug Hogg and I were recruited to drive down with them and then return, alone, to Vancouver. We returned by way of Las Vegas where the temperature was 120 degrees. The car, one of Louis cheapie purchases, kept stalling out. Doug and I had no idea what to do. We managed to push the car to a garage where we learned that the gas was vaporizing in the intense heat before getting to the pistons; something called, “vapor lock.” We were told to remove the air filter, which appeared to fix the problem. Only thing was that two 17-year-old kids didn’t know enough to reinstall the air filter. We drove the rest of the way home without one. Louis was none too pleased when he returned from England and found the engine beyond repair! He later told me he sold the car for junk for $14.
Although Kay and I were no longer going out, just before her 16th birthday I phoned her up and asked her if she wanted to go out for old time’s sake. We both knew what I had in mind. After the date, I walked her to the door of the Mission Home, took her in my arms, and gave her the long-awaited first kiss. We looked up to see several missionaries peeking through the window curtains giggling and watching this event unfold!
In the fall of 1968, I talked to Bishop McLean about a mission. I had a great desire to serve but, during the interview, I voiced some of my questions about theology, particularly the question of God having a body. Bishop McLean had no answers. He said that most people didn’t become bothered with the same kinds of questions until they were older, around the age of 30 or 40 and that I had just had them a little early. I took that as a compliment, but I’m not sure he meant it that way! He recommended that I wait three or four years and then go on a mission. I left his office confused about what he had said. Looking back on it now that my questions are all fully resolved and my mission is long over, I wonder what would have happened if I had waited those four years? Would I have still gone on a mission? Perhaps the Lord had in mind that I would wait one year and then go, as I ended up doing. Perhaps that delay was meant for me to meet and convert some of the French people that I taught, I don’t know. Anyway, that September, I went to the University of Victoria rather than on a mission. I lived with a member family and began working on a major in drama. In my new branch of the Church, I was treated as a responsible adult and the people with whom I lived treated me that way as well.
Upon returning to Vancouver the next summer (1969), I began working in the printing office of Malkin & Pinton Industrial Supplies helping to print their catalogs. But I couldn’t shake the nagging question of whether to serve a mission. One day, I decided to fast and pray until I got a firm answer of what the Lord wanted for me. On the second day of the fast, all alone in the printshop, the Spirit fell upon me in the most remarkable fashion. I knew for a certainly that the Lord wanted me to serve. I remember the joy and excitement as I shouted out loud, “I’m going on a mission!”
With Bishop McLean’s full support, I sent my papers in and was called to serve in the France-Belgium Mission. I was delighted; but my call was changed a week later. The problem had something to do with the difficulties caused by my being a British subject, living in Canada, and traveling from the United States to both France and Belgium. The new call was to the Canada Mission, instead. Canada Mission!? I was broken-hearted. I had started teaching myself French even before it was offered as a class in high school and I loved the language. I remember daydreaming of a mission to Paris during my high school French classes. That now seemed to be gone. As I look back on it now, the new mission call was probably to the French-speaking part of the Canada Mission. In fact, that’s where my other best friend, Mike Swan, later served. At the time, though, I didn’t even know there was a French-speaking Canadian Mission. (A funny aside about Mike. At 17, he was asked to baptize an eight-year-old from an inactive family. After that, Doug Hogg and I gave him the nickname, “Swan the Baptist.”) Back to the story: I sent my acceptance letter to Salt Lake but mentioned my disappointment. The next week I received the news that my mission call had been changed a third time. This time it was to the France-Switzerland Mission! I was a little perplexed, but very pleased. I was ordained an elder by my brother, Barry, on August 24, 1969.
A month later, I departed for Salt Lake City. My arrival in Salt Lake on Saturday (Sep 27th) brought yet another surprise. I walked through the door of the General Church Office Building and the secretary looked up and said, “Oh, you must be Elder Ellis. (How did she know?) Your mission call has been changed again. This time, you’re going to the Paris, France Mission.” And, that is exactly where I served. My high school dreams came true.
After an exciting, eventful, and successful mission in several French cities, including fulfilling my dream of tracting in the Latin Quarter in Paris, I returned home to Vancouver in September 1971. I left the next week for BYU in Provo, Utah, just missing an influx of new member including George Hara and others. He may have heard my homecoming talk; neither of us recall.
Once at BYU, I began working on a BA degree in French with a dramatic arts minor. The next August (1972), I was sealed to Mum and Louis in the Salt Lake Temple. One month later, I found my eternal companion, Merry Huntamer. We married four months later on 20 Dec. 1972 in the Provo Temple. I finished my BA and MA degrees at BYU and then completed a PhD at Washington State University. After that, I worked for 40 years as an assistant professor at Oklahoma State University and then an associate and full professor at Saint Martin’s University in Lacey, Washington. Much more importantly, I have served in many teaching and leadership callings in the Church as well as on four high councils. I currently teach Adult Institute and serve as ward clerk.
There is an old saying: “One can count the number of seeds in an apple, but no-one can count the number of apples in a seed.” It’s amazing how one conversion leads so surely to many others. Barry’s school friend in Los Angeles, in gathering up his courage to talk to Barry and plant a seed, started a chain of conversion that hasn’t finished yet. Barry and I have both served proselytizing, family history, and/or temple missions as have our children and our grandchildren, baptizing many, many people into the Kingdom of God on both sides of the veil. Over the years, my testimony grew to wash away any questions I might have had as a young boy. I study the Book of Mormon as a glorious book of scripture and I have come to see how thin the veil is when doing family history work. I still love the prophet of this dispensation, Joseph Smith, but I also love our current prophet, Russell M. Nelson. (Don’t we all!) I know that God lives and has a plan for each one of us. I feel richly blessed to be able to have the Gospel as the centerpiece of my life.