Brightly beams

our Father’s mercy, from His lighthouse evermore. But to us, He gives the keeping

of the lights along the shore.

Dark, the night of sin has settled. Loud the angry billows roar. Eager eyes are watching, longing

for the lights along the shore. Trim your feeble lamp, my brother. Some poor sailor tempest tossed,

trying now to make the harbor

in the darkness may be lost. Let the lower lights be burning Send a gleam across the wave. Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue you. You may save.

I don't want to deprive you of the opportunity to go and look up for yourself what a lower light is. That was hymn number 335: “Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy.”

Brothers and sisters, I would submit to you

that unity is achieved when we as lower lights strive to, and in fact do, align ourselves with He who is the

ultimate upper light.

Like most of you, I was given a

painting by the McDermott Foundation. It sits in my office.

It’s the one of Elijah in First Kings, chapter 19.

About a year and a half ago, I found out I was going to be deploying to Qatar.

I thought I was going to be going to Turkey, and that did not happen.

Instead, my orders were changed— at least in my mind.

I don’t know if there were actual orders, but it changed.

They they said, you're going to go to Qatar. I was not expecting that.

Immediately thereafter, though, I had the very distinct impression

from the Holy Ghost that I

needed to make a coin. And it was prompted by First Kings 19.

I ordered 300 of them. On one side is the Christus and a scripture from the New Testament. On the back side, it's blank.

But it references First Kings 19, 12. Be still and know that I am God.

I relied upon that greatly

over the course of seven months in Qatar.

I arrived on the second of July, and it was hot. And I was jet-lagged, and I was there three weeks before anyone else in my rotation. I didn’t know why, but I was there. And I was ready to serve.

Two days later, on the Fourth of July,

as I was contemplating and grateful for the great land in which we live,

I was sitting in a service for one of my fellow chaplains, at the very back of the room. It's the one I thought that I was going to be taking over. So as I sat there contemplating and thinking, a hymn was played.

And as the hymn was playing, I had the very distinct impression.

Words came into my mind. The words were, “Jonathan,

“you need to help your Afghan brothers and sisters.”

I had no idea what that meant.

I was not following what was going on in the war in Afghanistan.

And to be honest, I didn't want to know.

But I took that to heart, because the impression was so distinct. Three days later, I was called as the branch president of the Doha Third Branch.

Three days later, I was awakened early in the morning with the words of my mind.

“Listen more. Listen better.”

So I then called Church headquarters.

I called Brother Clawson, and I said, “Brother Clawson,

“I have no idea what’s going on right now,

“but I’m following the impression that I was given.

“And I feel like I should talk to you.” And he said, “That’s great, Jonathan.

“I want you to talk to somebody.”

And that’s this wonderful man right here, Boyce Fitzgerald.

I also talked to our vice wing commander, who just so happens— the number two person on the base, who I eventually called as my First Counselor. He was the vice wing commander, Brother Jeremy Williams.

A few days later, I sat down with Jeremy and our then clerk,

Nathan Hammond. Excuse me, Nathan Kinghorn,

who—it just so happened to be that he—was a lawyer.

What are the chances that an LDS chaplain actually deploys to the Qatar? The one before me was Ammon Larsen, and Ammon had to come home early for ...

for other reasons. I’m not going to go into detail there.

So Jeremy and Nathan and I sat down, and we began to brainstorm. And with the help of Brother Fitzgerald—

how many times did we talk, Brother Fitzgerald, in July and August?

Well, we probably—we talked a lot at first. And then as a plan came together, less. But we probably talked three or four times a week initially, and then it tapered off as it became clear what needed to be done. What I appreciated the most about Brother Fitzgerald—you don’t know this; I haven't told you. What I appreciated the most was that every time that we talked,

he was cognizant of the mantle that was mine as the branch president.

And he would say, “President Dawson”—

I don't know if these are actually words, but this is the way it was in my head— “The mantle is yours.

“The decision will come.”

And so Jeremy and Nathan and Boyce and others— we talked and we talked and we talked and we strategized. And we did a whole bunch of things for a lot of weeks. Later in July,

I had the distinct impression I needed to tell the congregation,

the branch brothers and sisters. We had two at the time—sisters.

We were so thankful for our sisters there. It was wonderful.

One was a first sergeant, and one was a new member.

What a blessing they were to our branch.

But I had the impression that we should,

talk about and should consider the fact that deployments are super-hard and to—we all know this term— embrace the suck. It’s okay that we’re away from families, because we can be here together and we can find out and figure out how to unify together as a branch family. So let's do things together. And so we did. We set up just a whole bunch of different things, actually, and it was a lot of fun. And we invited people who weren't members of our faith. What a wonderful outreach opportunity it was. It was a beautiful thing to do.

But the message that I shared with them I’ll share with you, and the message was:

Over the course of your deployment, please take the time to learn for yourself how to thrive and not just survive, because it’s easy to go on a deployment and think to yourself, “I’m just going to survive this. “It’s only six months of my life. It’s only nine months of my life. “It’s only a year of my life. “I’m going to put my head down and I’m going to go.”

But how can you thrive and not just survive?

I did that through the help of our elders quorum president.

He was my confidant. He was my chaplain, Alan Jensen. More on him later.

Fast-forward to the 14th and 15th of August.

I sent a text to Brother Fitzgerald, and it was a very simple text.

I believe I said something like, “Do I have the thumbs up or are we a go?”

Now, what that meant in our vernacular— because we’ve been talking so much— was what? What did that mean?

That you had the funds. We had pre-approved funds that if Afghan refugees were there and you were able to reach them, serve them, had permission, that you could immediately act and ... Right.

We would we would get the funds to you immediately.

So I can’t speak to the other branches, but in the air force, we are driven by checklists and we are driven by process. by process And— so sorry, I didn’t mean for the knife hand to come out. So what that means— right?—what that means is that sometimes we’re a little slow getting things done because that's not a part of a process yet. Well, what happened was there was no process. This had never happened before. So it’s called an LOA, line of accounting.

They were not set up. We were not by law— we, the air force—allowed to spend funds in the way that we knew that we needed to spend funds. And so that’s where —enter LDS Charities from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we were given $25,000, which we went and got there from one of the local wards, and it was cash.

I don't know if you've ever carried $25,000 of someone else's money before,

but it's not fun. But President Jensen, Alan Jensen, my oldest former president, and I went together and got those funds. And then we began to spend those funds.

Alan is a member of the Navy Reserve.

We found—I’m not going to use the word “commandeered.” We creatively acquired a 15-passenger van,

and we subsequently filled that van. I lost track of how many times over the course of the next—I’m not sure if it was—four or five days.

And we would make a list. They were called operating locations.

So we’d go to an operating location. We’d say, “What do you need?”

Inevitably, the list was too long.

Inevitably, we knew we couldn't make ends meet. Inevitably.

We would purchase these things, and every single time we left the store, we would think to ourselves.

We would look at each other and we would verbalize this and say, “There is no way that we have enough money to spend to pay for all of this.”

Can I? Can I paint a surer picture? Yes, please. So imagine you’re at this remote military base, and suddenly thousands of refugees are coming in. And although the military, you know, gives you “three hots and a cot,” as we used to say, there were unaccompanied minors, you know, orphans on these flights that didn't know where their parents were

and mothers without diapers and formula, and so on.

So imagine, just imagine, that situation and how to fill the gap.

It's quite daunting.

So these people literally left their homes with nothing more than the clothes on their back, most of them.

The last time we left the store, on the 21st of August— we didn’t know this was the last time— with that initial influx of funds from LDS Charities, we left the store with 11 riyals.

That's equivalent to just over $3.

Somehow the widow's mite stretched every time we went to the store. We would walk down the aisles,

we would look at each other, and we would just know that's not what we're to get. Even though that's what the list says, we're going to get something else.

I used to joke—I will never do this again— but I used to joke about what a burden it would be to be a bishop or a branch president. And I would say these words, “I would not wish that upon my enemy.” I have learned that when you are called,

and when you have the mantle, you receive beyond your means.

We worked 18-hour days for six weeks straight.

I got a cot and put [it] in my office, and I slept there. So I slept; I would take 20-minute power naps.

And that's how I survived for six weeks. So the first week is what I just described.

I talked to Boyce again and said, “Hey, Boyce.” Please, what’d I say?

Well, $25,000 really does not go far in a situation like that.

So in my position, I can approve $25,000 immediately. That actually has changed in part because of this experience,

because we can now do $75,000 for emergency situations. And that's without a proposal or that's just, you know,

being able to get things done quickly through priesthood lines.

But while he was spending the first $25,000,

we’d gone to the Presiding Bishopric and identified several million dollars that we could use all over the world, because this wasn't just happening here in Qatar. It was happening all around our area and some places in the US. So we set up an emergency funding, and we were able to— I was able to tell President Chaplain Dawson that he could have. We put $75,000 aside for him, and if he needed more, just let me know.

So we then began to eat into that 75,000.

By that time, the world heard about it, and we were getting packages, thousands upon thousands of packages a day. And I saw that these packages were going to disparate places all over the base. So I took it upon myself —and initially I got in quite a bit of a trouble for this, but I'd do it all over again.

I set up what I called a donation center, because that's exactly what it was. And we again

strategically acquired some space, and we began to fill rooms and rooms and rooms full of things. I’m going to show that here in just a second.

I want to tell you: I’m nothing special.

I’m just some guy who’s trying to live right,

who makes mistakes every day.

But I’m grateful for a loving Savior who helps us,

who, if we will allow him to, will unite us—Himself with us.

The picture up here—

the one on your left, my right—I was shown that picture by another chaplain.

When I first got to Qatar, and I came— that picture came to mean so much to me. I’m the person with the blindfold on.

And the person beside me

are others who helped me to be able to do the things that we were able to do.

The other one, I’m sure, is self-explanatory: the lost one,

the lost black sheep.

To your far left—that’s President Jensen. I’m not sure which

vanload that was, but we took some pictures because LDS Charities asked us to. That’s a hangar.

This must have been very early on, because later that hangar would have been full.

There were literally tens of thousands of Afghan citizens that

came through Qatar.

And we filled this—what we later deemed as an operating location—

and up to 11 more. At any given time, we had tens of thousands of people there and our tarmac, which was only supposed to have about 20 planes on it, had anywhere from 50 to 60. It was miraculous in so, so many ways.

Another picture with Alan.

The sister in the middle there, she was a member of our church. She was a senior master sergeant, first sergeant: Brooke.

She was fantastic and she helped us all so much.

The picture there on your left, my right—

that’s another congregation in Doha that began also then to donate things to us. The vans—those are vans of members of our church. We started to do one of them —when the donation center started, like I said, we got donations from all over Doha. We got donations from all over the world.

I don't know if you can see it.

That is a box of diapers, and on the bottom of it,

someone had the foresight— sorry—to write the words “You are loved. You are not forgotten.”

The picture of the roses—one night as Alan and I were out shopping,

I found those two roses on the ground. And they reminded me of my bride.

And so I took a picture and sent it to her later.

That is a note that an Afghan girl gave to me.

That's a master sergeant who was in our supply.

All of these small things helped to unify us,

helped us to stand behind a common cause that was important to us all.

That made all the difference to our Afghan brothers and sisters:

more supplies, more people helping out, rooms that were filled.

Those are all Latter-day Saints who came and helped and donated hours.

In the end, I believe it was some 2 million pounds of things, valued at more millions of dollars than that. And 5- or 6- or 8,000 hours of volunteered service to the donation center. Those are all diapers in the background.

Some people would just spend —no kidding—10 or 12 or 15 hours a day there helping us. We would fill and disseminate and fill and disseminate the three or four rooms that we had, sometimes two and three times a day. More, more pictures. Our time is short.

That’s my chaplain assistant, my religious affairs airman.

That is very indicative of how we all felt.

Those are the gentlemen that helped us when we were shopping.

Brothers and sisters, I want to bear you my testimony that

if we will simply listen and be in the right place at the right time

and strive to be the lower light that follows the upper light,

that we can do amazing things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.

I just want to tell you all that there is a structure in place that if you find yourself in the situation that the Church has the ability to help out, regardless of where you’re at in emergency or even nonemergency situations when it comes to humanitarian aid. Thank you for your service. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.