The Answer That Fit

When my employer decided to introduce a new marketing program, I was asked to give a thirty-minute presentation to twenty regional salespeople from across the country.

Wanting to present a creative message, I chose from my dresser drawer several T-shirts I had collected from different areas around the United States. While I was organizing the shirts for my presentation, I felt impressed to add one more that I’d passed over because I didn’t feel I’d have the courage to display it.

My plan was to hold up one shirt at a time and ask the appropriate salesperson how the new program could help the area represented on the T-shirt. For example, I would display a T-shirt from San Francisco and ask the northern California salesperson how he could implement the program there.

My audience had fun during my presentation, and a strong rapport developed among us. When I reached the last shirt in my pile, I felt a brief wave of concern about holding it up—but I wanted to act upon the impression I had received earlier. The shirt read, “I’d rather be Mormon.” To my relief, the group responded positively as we talked about Salt Lake City.

Just as I was about to put the shirt down, I felt an impression to toss it to the Los Angeles salesperson in the second row. He looked surprised as he caught it. After the meeting he came forward and asked, “Why did you throw me that shirt?” I told him simply that I felt I should.

The salesperson confided to me that he’d been having a discouraging year of too much traveling and consumption of alcohol. Feeling that his life was out of control, he’d joined Alcoholics Anonymous several months before. Lately he’d been feeling that it was time to take the next step to improve his life: embracing a religion.

“Last night in my hotel room,” he said, “I finally felt good enough to pray. Among other things, I asked God whether I should join the church I was raised in, my neighbor’s church, or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, of which my wife is a member. I felt good about the prayer, but I didn’t feel I had received an answer—until you threw me that shirt!”

As the Lord has promised, when we share the gospel he will give us the things we should say and do “in the very hour, yea, in the very moment” we need them (see D&C 100:5–8; compare 2 Ne. 32:3, 5; D&C 84:80, 85).