October 2009
Since we live just one hour away from Kirtland, it has been a nice day trip for our visitors to see while they are here.
The first trip was with my mom, when Charlie was ten days old. I had been out of the hospital less than a week, but was feeling pretty good that day.
We started out that morning and followed our google maps directions until we reached our destination. . .but found no visitor center, no Newel K. Whitney store, just a busy intersection. After some driving around, stopping to ask for directions (you'd be surprised how many people who live in Kirtland don't even know who Mormons are) we finally realized that we had put in the wrong address. Quick recalculation, fifteen minutes of driving and we finally made it to the visitors center.
It was a beautiful day for the beginning of October, and we had packed a lunch to eat. We brought our food out and sat at a picnic table on the lawn right next to the river.
As we were eating, we noticed that there were no folks touring around the buildings, and there were several suited older men with earpieces standing guard by the bridge that leads from the visitors center to the restored buildings, turning away people wanting to go to the other side. Hmm. strange. We continued eat our peanut butter sandwiches.
Halfway through our lunch suited earpiece guy comes up to our table and asks us if we know who is visiting Kirtland today. A member of the quorum of the seventy? Maybe even an apostle? wrong.
President Monson was visiting and was taking a tour of all the buildings, and if we waited around, earpiece guy said, then maybe we'd be able to see him as he passed by in his golf cart.
!!
We quickly finish our lunch, and try to get our peanutbuttery girls looking semi-presentable, and finally we can see his cart coming down the hill and over the bridge. We stood by the walkway with one other family to catch a glimpse. His cart drives up. and stops. And he gets out to greet all of us.
!!
He went around, asked our names, shook each of our hands, and gave Hailey a high five! He then went in to the visitor center auditorium to address the missionaries there. Earpiece guy asks us if we would like to sneak in the back and listen to him talk to them.
!!!
Of course we do. We quickly quickly cleaned up our lunch stuff and snuck in the door right behind President Monson. As he entered the room of forty or so missionaries, he comfortably small-talked with a few of them. As everyone was settling in, he went over to the piano and began playings a few snippets of a song.
We sat in the back of the auditorium, trying so hard to simultaneously listen to him speak and keep our kids silent. And it was so neat and so stressful! He talked about his experiences as a Bishop. He talked about being put in specific places in our lives for a reason. He remarked that it doesn't matter where you serve, but how you serve. He talked about the amazing privilege it was to be in Kirtland. He called it the "Heart of History." (Sounds like him, yes?) I am afraid to say that between taking care of kids while he was speaking and the large amount of time that has gone by since this happened has erased most of my memory of what he said. (Lesson: WRITE THINGS DOWN!!) but it was an amazing experience to be in such limited company to hear him speak.
At the end of his informal address, he asked if anyone had any questions to ask him. Now here is an interesting thing to ponder: what would you ask President Monson if you had five seconds to think of a question. No one immediately raised their hand, so his daughter, Ann M. Dibb, who was with him on this trip, asked him to tell us what his favorite scripture was.
You would think the Prophet would need to have a prepared answer for that kind of question, but he didn't. He said, "Oh, I don't know. . . Third Nephi. . . all of it. I like Doctrine and Covenants section four. . .and you know. . .'angels round about you to bear you up' [D&C 84:88]. . .'trust in the Lord with all thy heart'[prov 3:5]. . .all that is great stuff."
There are two things that I learned about Prophets that day:
1. They are human. They have personalities. They are their own selves.
2. They are truly inspired and bring the spirit of the Lord with them.
As we were leaving, the Kirtland Mission President shook our hands and we commented how amazing it was we happened to be in Kirtland the exact same time as the Prophet. He called after us, "Remember, there are no accidents."
I will spend a great deal longer thinking on that and why we were so blessed to be able to be there that day.
5 comments:
well and there you have yet another possible midwest attraction. We were in Nauvoo the day President Monson was there, in fact we were in the TEMPLE the day he was there and missed him by about 45 minutes apparently. Bless his heart for giving Hailey a high 5. She can tell that story for years to come.
Thank you. I needed to read that today.
Awesome. I bet Hailey will remember that her whole life.
WOW!!!
My SIL works in the Church Office Building -- she's an assistant to a couple of the 70's -- so she gets fantastic tickets to General Conference each time. Last October she was at Conference and they had seats just a few rows back from the very front. When President Monson came in he stopped to chat with several children near the front. He had his security guys lift a couple of the kids up so they were at the same level as him so he could talk to them. One little boy he had up there was wearing a yellow tie and he said that he loved it because yellow is his favorite color. This next October Kate will be 8 and she'll get to go to conference with Aunt Jenny. I hope she appreciates how lucky she is to get to see a Prophet of God in real life and get to be so close!
I love hearing my SIL's stories of the brethren. They really are unique individuals with so much character, lol.
What an amazing experience. And you're right, that's an impossible question to ponder. What would I ask the prophet? I could never come up with the right thing in that time frame, if there is a right thing.
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