Accountability

Everyone on earth has been given the gift of agency. Some people say free agency, but that is a misnomer. Our agency comes with a price. The price was the death and atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ, whether they believe it or not. 

With this agency comes accountability. We are accountable for our actions, our thoughts and our speech, our actions and what we write. It doesn’t matter if we write it on social media or in letters or email or scribble it as graffiti on public buildings. We may not have to account for it in this life, but we will eventually stand before the heavenly bar of God and face a very just God. If we are members of the church we will be held to a high standard because we have the scriptures which contain God’s commandments. 

If you don’t understand them it is up to you to read and pray for understanding. So you,in a sense, are in charge of your own destiny. He gives to all understanding according to their diligence. A lick and a promise will not do. Our eternal destiny depends upon how we keep the commandments and Covenants. 

That is the plan of salvation or the plan of redemption or the plan of happiness as it is called. 

The plan was given to us when we lived with our father in heaven. We had a full understanding in that heavenly sphere. The commandments were given to men here on earth by God and through His angels and prophets.   The prophets wrote the commandments so that we would have them. We call these writings the scriptures. If you don’t read the scriptures and listen to the prophets then you loose your way and are lead to and fro by those around you to believe what is popular. 

We see this today and in the history of mankind. The popular theme is, do your own thing and do not worry about the consequences. There are riots and demonstrations because of some perceived injustice, and these people do not take accountability for what they do or say. They want things their way and do not believe that God will be the final judge. Our commandment is to let the Lord judge and reward (thee) according to their works. 

Will this require discipline and forbearance on our part? Of course! Is it easy? No. But how can we become like our Father in Heaven or His son,Jesus Christ if we fail to keep His laws and ordinances ?

The time will come when there will be a separation of the people who love God and those who love themselves. The tares and the wheat will grow together until the harvest. Then there will be a separation. Like Joshua we ask “Who’s on the Lord’s side? Now is the time to show by gaining a testimony and living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Your spiritual life and perhaps your mortal life depend upon it. 

The Priesthood and Me

Clark responded to an email that I sent with the following observation. “I was wondering who the Sylvester Broadbent was who ordained you an elder so I looked on  Family Search and found this: https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/memories/KWCQ-PYH  Note from the mission farewell program that he was called to preside over the West Central States Mission in 1950, so he must have been the mission president.”

Here is the history behind that.

Sylvester Broadbent was the mission president over the mission that Lander was in.  I came home from Weber College for the summer of 1953 to work before going back to Weber College.  Since the mission president had to interview all candidates for the Melchizedek priesthood we arranged to do the interview at the old chapel in Riverton.

We drove over and President Broadbent was conducting some interviews with others, he asked me to sit outside the branch president’s office on a chair and told me to read the 84^th section of the Doctrine and Covenants. He then came out and invited me in for the worthiness interview.  I do not remember if he invited my father in or not.  Dad was the branch president at the time.  He then laid his hands on my head and proceeded with the ordination.  He never asked me if I wanted my father to ordain me.  I was disappointed to say the least, because my father had ordained me to every office in the Aaronic priesthood. I am sure that my father and my mother were disappointed as well, although he never, that I remember mentioned it to me.

With that experience in mind, I always tried to make sure that I remained worthy enough to be in a position to ordain my sons to the priesthood and tried to have the fathers in the stake ordain their sons when it was possible.

Fortunately for me dad ordained me to the office of high priest when I was called to be on the stake high council. because he was a counselor in the stake presidency at the time.

When we were living in Denver my father was a Seventy.  At that time all the Seventies had to be ordained to that office by a member of the First Council (now presidency of the Seventy) of Seventy.  There were only seven of them listed as general authorities. Dad was called to serve as a counselor to Bishop Delmont H. White in the Denver First Ward.  All bishops and counselors in the church at that time had to be ordained as high priests and set apart by a general authority.  Thus they either had to go to Salt Lake City or wait until a general authority came to a stake conference.  Joseph F. Merrill of the counsel of the twelve came to Denver for a stake conference. He was my grandmother Gee’s uncle from another wife than Cyrene Standley.  He ordained my father a high priest and set him apart as a counselor in the bishopric.  He also had dinner at our house in Denver at that time.  That is why my priesthood line of authority goes through my father and directly to an apostle of the Lord. Shortly after this my father was transferred to Lander. 

Since that time all my sons that are high priests or have their priesthood line of authority come through me, have required travel on someone’s part to be ordained to that office.  Clark came to Germany, We went to Frankfurt from Moscow and Joseph flew to Frankfurt. We traveled to Provo, Utah for John, Salt Lake City for Aaron and to Allen, Texas for Philip.

LINE OF AUTHORITY

IVIN LAURENCE GEE was ordained a High Priest 22 September 1968 by Ivin Lafayette Gee.

IVIN LAFAYETTE GEE was ordained a High Priest 17 October 1948 by Joseph F. Merrill.

JOSEPH F. MERRILL was ordained an Apostle 8 October 1931 by Heber J. Grant.

HEBER J. GRANT was ordained an Apostle 16 October 1882 by George Q. Cannon.

GEORGE Q. CANNON was ordained an Apostle 26 August 1860 by Brigham Young.

BRIGHAM YOUNG was ordained an Apostle 14 February 1835 under the hands of the Three Witnesses. Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and Martin Harris.

The THREE WITNESSES were called by revelation to choose the Twelve Apostles and on 14 February 1835 were "blessed by the laying on of the hands of the Presidency," Joseph Smith, Jr., Sidney Rigdon and Frederick G. Williams, to ordain the Twelve Apostles. (History of the Church, Vol. 2, pp. 187-188.)

JOSEPH SMITH, JR., and OLIVER COWDERY received the Melchizedek Priesthood in 1829 under the hands of Peter, James and John.

PETER, JAMES and JOHN were ordained Apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 15: l6.)

Microfilm and me

I have been thinking about events that happened on my mission. One story I heard involves microfilm. There was a microfilm processing facility at the mission office. They would develop the film which they obtained from some members who were what we would call genealogy missionaries today. I knew two of these men. Richard Ranglack and Paul Langheinrich. They would obtain permission to microfilm records both in the East and in the West of Germany and the adjacent countries. 

When I was in Berlin I heard the following story. One man was in the East and had a lot of film he needed to get to the mission. He had contacted the man from the West to meet him on a certain day in a certain city. This was probably East Berlin,but it could have been another city in the East. Of course the police we on the lookout for spies and would be suspicious of anyone who was carrying microfilm. There was a lot of spying going on on both sides of divided Germany. 

The two men did not make specific arrangements because their correspondence was potentially monitored. They just were in the same place at the same time. In the city there was a movie theater. In Germany at that time one would purchase a ticket at the box office and one would be given a certain seat. In America at that time one could go into a movie and sit anywhere in any seat and stay as long as you wanted and see the movie two or three times. 

Not knowing where the other was, the one man felt impressed to go to the movies. He went in and sat down only to discover the person sitting next to him was the man from the East. He got the case with the microfilm and took it back to have it developed. 

After the microfilm was developed it was sent to the church office in Salt Lake. Many of these are in the Granite vaults and are now being digitized. When I was released the mission president,knowing that I was taking a VW bus back to the United States, asked me to take a shipment of microfilm back to Salt Lake City. He gave it to me in Hanover when he met with us. I put it in the back motor compartment of the minibus and stored the vehicle in a garage in Hannover. When I left my companions in Paris after our travels I flew back to Hanover and picked up the minibus and drove to Bremerhaven where I delivered it to the steamship line to be put aboard the US America. We later boarded the ship in Southampton and later landed in New York and drove across America to Salt Lake where I gave up the microfilm at the church office building. 

 

Richard Ranglack and Paul Langheinrich came to Salt Lake City and lived on the Avenues.  Paul was in our ward and we had dinner at their home.  They used to treat our children with chocolate. His daughter Marianne was Alice's good friend.  

 

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Family

Family is the original department of health education and welfare. 

This is not an original quote from me, but comes from a TV program that we watch. I think however that it expresses my feelings. It is really true. I think the recent change in the church to emphasize the Family centered church supported programs is tailored for a time as this. 

Many years ago Elder Bruce R. McConkie came to the Riverton Wyoming stake and taught the principles of priesthood correlation.

The first principle is the family and the individual do everything in the church.

The second principle is the church exists to help the family and the individual.

The third principal at that time was that home teaching was the vehicle through which the church supported the family and the individual. Now we have the concept of ministering which is an expansion of home teaching in that it broadens the scope.

There are so many forces, which undermine the concept of the family being the center. Young people find so many things to pull them away from their parents and siblings. Such things as that are not necessarily bad. Sport activities and other social distractions and school activities take the place of family centered activities. It became a problem that the teaching of gospel subjects and general knowledge no longer was the priority of the family. It was often left to the church organizations.   Two income families became more and more common and as a result the children were left to caretakers, or on their own.

Although we went to school we were taught at home. My mother used to read to us. She read stories and poetry. We would go over our spelling words and math problems. We read the scriptures. 

We did not have TV and listened to the radio programs occasionally. 

When we were in Lander they didn’t have the national radio programs like Bob Hope, Amos and Andy, Lux radio theater etc. 

We grew up in a totally different environment. We did not have youth sports unless it was in high school. 

Our family was the center of health as well. We did not go to the doctor very often. Mother took care of the styes on our eyes and our boils and scrapes. When we got bronchitis we were given a mustard plaster and made to breathe steam in a homemade tent with tincture of benzoin and menthol. Later we used Vick’s vapor rub. When we got a sore throat we got our throats seabed with Merthiolate. That was much more preferable than tincture of iodine. Antibiotics were not available. I am not suggesting that we go back to those days, but I do think that we could do a better job of centering health around the family. Each family should document and keep records of illnesses and immunizations. In the future this will be more important. 

When my grandmother Stucki would need help, her children came to her aid. She stayed with us in Denver and taught me to mend runs in nylon stockings and to darn socks. She stayed with us in Cheyenne and Lander. As a widow she had only a small income from her deceased husband’s insurance policy. She would stay at her other children’s homes as well. I suppose that she received some money from them from time to time. She did not go to the bishop for fast offering support and was not on government welfare assistance. The family took care of her. Thus, the family was the welfare department. 

She worked sewing for people and provided for her own needs. She once told her son, Wendell, when he asked her about receiving fast offering that it was for the poor people not her family. 

We will see the time when the family will be even more central to our well-being and safety and our spiritual health. 

Please strengthen your family ties and love them and above all strengthen your and their testimonies of Christ. 

Love,

Grandpa

Peas and me

Today I went to Bangerter Farms and bought garden peas. I really like them with potatoes in a cream sauce. 

I will have to tell you about my adventure in the pea patch. When I was about four years old we were living in Rexburg and my father had a garden in the back yard. I would go out and lay down in the row between the pea vines and pick the ripe peas and eat them until I was full. 

We had gardens off and on while I was growing up. Peas and corn on the cob were and still are my favorite vegetables. 

I like them fresh and can’t stand them from the can. I barely tolerate them frozen. 

When we lived in Lander we had a big garden. We raised a lot of peas. My mother would cook them with new potatoes. We had so many peas that my mother froze them after blanching them. 

Because shelling the peas was hard work, we developed a quick way to shell the peas. We had an old fashioned washer with a wringer. We would place the pea in the wringer and the pod would come out the back and the shelled peas would fall into a tub in the front. We could shell a lot of peas in a very short time that way. After my parents got an automatic washer we had to shell them the old fashioned way. 

My father preferred the Laxton Progress variety. They can be planted as late as July for harvest in September. 

My father, at one time, worked at a job on a pea seed farm, rouging peas.  This endeavor was to raise peas that were later sold for seed and not to be eaten.  He would go along the rows of peas and hoe out the weeds and look for the rouge plants that he called ‘rabbit-ears’.  These were plants that were not true to the variety that were desirable for seed. He would then pull up the rabbit-ear plant.  The crop of peas was then allowed to grow to maturity and then when the vines were brown and dry, a special combine harvester would come and go over the field and separate the dried seed from the pods and vines and then they would be sold for seed to be used the next year.  He said that the region of Idaho where he lived was ideal for cultivating peas, because of warm days and cool nights.

How about eating some fresh peas and remember me.

Love,

Grandpa