I served as the president of Brigham Young University-Idaho for almost eight years. One Friday night, my wife and I were speaking to a group of approximately 250 students. It was a leadership retreat, and they had had workshops about leadership and so forth. And to conclude it, my wife and I met with this group of 250 students. The population of the student body at the time was approximately 12,000 students. You need to keep that in mind: 250, 12,000. As we were concluding our time with those young people that night, I just had what I thought was kind of a crazy idea. I said, "Are you willing to participate in an experiment with me?" And they said, "Sure." This was on Friday night. The following Tuesday, Elder Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve, and the Church Commissioner of Education, was coming to BYU-Idaho to speak. I said to these 250 students, "We determine what an Apostle will say. We can pull things out of him if we are prepared.
Are you willing to prepare?" And they said, "Yeah." I said, "I can't tell you how to prepare, but you prepare spiritually to come and be taught by a member of the Quorum of the Twelve." And then I said, "Now, as an outward manifestation of your inward preparation, I want you to wear your absolute Sunday best." We invited the young people to always dress appropriately and dress up for a devotional. But I said, "I don't want you just wearing a white shirt and a tie and Dockers. If you have a suit, you wear a suit. To you sisters, no flip-flops and khaki skirts. If you've got a dress, you wear a dress. Now, it's not about what you wear; it's about a representation of your inner spiritual preparation. Are you ready for that? Will you all do that?" And they said, "Yeah." I said, "Now, here's the experiment. Will each of you go invite--invite five other people to do the same thing? And do it in a way that those five will each go get four, so that each of those four will go get three, each of those three will go get two, and each of those two will go get one." Now, you do the math--that's a lot more than 12,000. They all said, "We will do that." I said, "Great." Tuesday, I walked onto the campus of Brigham Young University-Idaho with 12,000 students. The devotional is at two o'clock in the afternoon on Tuesday. It looked just like this crowd right here. Every young man was in a sport coat or a suit. Every young woman was in a dress. There were, like, six kids who came to the campus who didn't know, and they looked at this and said, "I've got to go home and change my clothes." They didn't know what was going on. When Elder Eyring walked into the Hart Auditorium and he saw these kids, he turned to me and he said, "What is this?" And I said, "Elder Eyring, this is for you. This is our invitation to be taught. We're ready." And he began to weep. How do you go from Friday night with 250 to Tuesday at two o'clock with 12,000 plus? And everybody got it--one by one.
We tend to want to think about, "We're going to give a talk, and it's going to--" No, it's not. Just get one, who will go get one, who will go get one, who will go get one. I have not come to England to be in this meeting. Now I'm here, and I love this, and we're doing important things, but that's not why I'm here. While I'm in England, the Lord sent me to find a one. And along the way, I get to participate in a bunch of meetings, and maybe some good will be done. But the keys of the kingdom were sent here to find a one. You don't talk to a congregation; you talk to assembled ones.
So just go get one, who will get one, who will get one. And that's how it works, and that's how you establish the kingdom, and that's ultimately how thousands come.