Caroline Meets Claudio R.M. Costa of the Presidency of the 70

Yesterday was our Stake Conference at church. For those of you that are not familiar, it's a large gathering of church members from all over the region into one location to listen to regional and occasionally worldwide leaders of our church. It was a wonderful experience. In this case one of the worldwide leaders was in attendance. He is Elder Claudio R.M. Costa from the Presidency of the Seventy. The speakers were amazing and the Spirit of the Lord was especially strong. Elder Costa talked about a poor family near Recife Brazil where he is from and some of the sacrifices they had made to dedicate their lives to the Lord. I enjoyed the meeting and his remarks. It is truly amazing that even though his English was broken his words penetrated our hearts and strengthened us all. Despite the large crowd that surrounded him for the first 30 minutes or so after the conference, I was hopeful to allow the girls to shake his hand and have that experience. Sterling lasted about 8 seconds after the Amen of the closing prayer. He took off to who knows where. I guess I was asking a lot of him to stand next to me in a crowd after 2 hours of great behavior, about half of which he pretended that my pen was airplane. Julia was interested for about the first 15 minutes of waiting and then got nervous and found grandma. So Caroline and I stuck it out. As we were waiting I reminded Caroline of a previous conversation that had occurred watching conference reruns at Grandma and Grandpas house one Sunday. I reminded her that this man, whom we were about to meet, was among a few of the Lords elect and select few, and that he was among the finest men on the earth today. God had preserved and selected him to come a hemisphere away in these Latter Days to share that message and that it was worth the wait. She looked up at me and smiled, waiting patienty. She is going on 10 and has grown up this year in leaps and bounds.

Finally, Elder Costa made his way to where we were waiting. I greeted him warmly, introducing myself and Caroline. He was genuinely interested and friendly to us both, as if he had all day to talk. As he shook Caroline's hand he said,

"What a beautiful smile you have. You should use that beautiful smile to share the Gospel. Here's what I want you to do. . . I want you to find a missionary and get 3 pass along cards. Take them and share them with your non-member friends. Write to me about it and I will send you a speedy reply. Will you do that?"

Of course she smiled big and said, "YES!"

After conference we went home to a delicious fish and shrimp fry at Grandma and Grandpa Sanders' home and our honored guests just so happened to be non other than the missionaries. Caroline told Elder Mortenson all about the ordeal and snagged 3 pass along cards to begin her duty. He held them out like flavors of ice-cream for her to pick. She decided to pick one in particular, with a picture of the Savior to try to reactivate her home room teacher at school who hadn't attended meetings since she was a kid and just so happens to have landed on my home teaching list this month, Miss Espeseth.

Later in the evening, as she recounted the whole experience in her journal, she carefully cut out a picture from the October General Conference addition of the Ensign and wrote and said to me, "Dad this was a great day. I got to meet one of the finest men on the earth."

I couldn't help to hope and wonder what I could do as a Father to help her and my family be continually reminded that these men are truly the finest the Lord has to offer and that they in reality share his words and counsel with all of us if we will but LISTEN! Of the billions of people on our planet HE has selected but few to carry forth His mighty word. The Lords chosen servant was here in our little chapel, and he spoke the words of Christ.

I had to agree with her and said, "Yes it really was a great day."

BY THE WAY JAN ELLEN, I LOVE AND I MISS YOU!!! Baby BIGGGG. . . . COME HOME SOON!!!