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Transcript

It was a Wednesday night, and I was in the kitchen. And I was doing what every good mission mother does. I was making cookies for the missionaries.

My husband came in, and he said, "The phone's for you." I picked up the phone, and immediately President Monson said, "Heidi, how are you?" And I thought to myself, what have I done? Because I couldn't imagine why the President of the Church would be calling me. He said, "I've taken it to the Lord and I've prayed about it, and I want you to write my biography." And, you know, the interesting thing is that, for years, I worked on curriculum committees to write manuals called Presidents of the Church. And I learned to recognize the power of the prophet through these words. So I started by reading all of his talks. He has juggled every responsibility the Church has. He's done it all. But in the midst of all of that, he has been willing to let the Lord use him to lift other people. I went in one day, and it was a really sad day for me because I just wasn't getting it done. And I didn't have the title. And I had to have that title. He was standing in his door, and he said, "How are you today?" And I said, "I'm fine." And he said, "Oh, that's good. Top of the morning to you." He walked into his office. He turned right around, and he came back and he looked at me. And he lifted up his finger, and he went, "Come here." So I went into his office, and I sat down. And he said, "Let me try it this way, Heidi. What's going on? You don't seem to me to be fine." At which point, I broke down and started to weep, and just told him. I was just staggered by the assignment of writing about a prophet of God and feeling the responsibility to do what the Lord would have done. He said, "Every day, when I get up, I'm going to kneel down, and I'm going to ask the Lord to help you. I'm going to pray for you by name. Do you have faith that will happen?" I said, "I do." Well, it was only a couple of days. I was sitting one night with my husband, and we were going over the list of all of the titles that I had come up with for this book that wasn't coming together. And all of a sudden, into my mind came the name of the book, is To the Rescue. And then I started to cry because I knew where that came from, and I knew that that was the result of prayer. I think when he says, To the Rescue, it's not just the person that needs to be rescued. It's the rescuer, too. Because we make that connection with the Lord, and we're His hands. And we're never the same again. The sweetest experience I know in life is to feel a prompting and act upon it and later find out that it was the fulfillment of someone's prayer or someone's need. And I always want the Lord to know that if he needs an errand run, Tom Monson will run that errand for him.

Heidi Swinton Interview: President Monson Biography

Description
Author Heidi Swinton relates a story from President Thomas S. Monson's biography and bears her testimony.
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