Mary McKenna & Blake McKeown—Australia

Real-life challenges lead an Australian lifeguard to reflect on his testimony

We Need What You’ve Got

In the middle of 1998, Mary McKenna, a returned missionary from Brisbane, Australia, traveled to Provo, Utah, to learn more about Especially for Youth, a five-day conference for young Latter-day Saints in the United States. Mary had heard a lot about EFY a year earlier while attending Education Week—a series of classes, devotionals, and other activities for adults and teenagers held each year on the campus of Brigham Young University.

During her earlier visit, she had attended a class taught by Brad Wilcox, a popular speaker and author among English-speaking Latter-day Saint youth. After class, she had stopped to talk with him about Education Week.

“This probably sounds really crazy,” she had said, “but I’m a youth leader in Australia, and we need what you’ve got.”

In the century and a half since the first branch was organized in Australia, the Church there had grown to nearly one hundred thousand members. There were stakes in almost every major Australian city and a temple in Sydney. But many youth were struggling, and some were not going on to serve missions, get married in the temple, or stay active in the Church. They felt disconnected from each other and needed role models who could show them how to stay close to God and live His commandments.

As Brad had listened to Mary talk about the challenges of youth in Australia, tears had welled up in his eyes, and he told her more about EFY. Like typical stake youth conferences, EFY was designed to strengthen the faith of young people. But rather than being run by local stakes, it was sponsored by BYU and supervised by young single adult counselors. Hearing Brad describe how joyful it was for the youth, Mary had felt that an experience like EFY could help young women and men in Australia.

She had spent the next several months working to make the idea a reality. Church leaders in and around Brisbane had been supportive, forming a committee of Saints from local stakes to organize an event like EFY in their area.

Now, one year later, Mary was back in Provo meeting with Susan Overstreet, the director of EFY, on BYU’s campus. The university was unable to sponsor EFY sessions outside North America, but Susan had been helping Mary and the Brisbane committee. She took Mary to a counselor training event and introduced her to other EFY leaders. Meanwhile, Brad Wilcox and another EFY speaker, Matt Richardson, agreed to come to Australia and speak at the event.

Mary returned to Australia, and over the next few months, the committee met regularly to plan the event, with each participating stake taking the lead in planning the food, housing, devotionals, music, and other responsibilities. Stake presidents recommended additional speakers, and Mary found young adults to serve as counselors. Some were returned missionaries, some were preparing for missions, and others had no plans to serve a mission at all. Mary arranged training courses for everyone.

The committee hoped to make EFY welcoming for all youth in the Brisbane area, not just Latter-day Saints. Unlike the program in the United States, which cost hundreds of dollars to attend, the Australian EFY would be subsidized by local stakes so people could attend at a low cost. And while everyone in attendance was expected to uphold Church standards at the conference, the committee encouraged stakes to invite youth who were not members.

In April 1999, Mary and her committee launched the first Especially for Youth event outside of North America at a stake center in Brisbane. Nearly a thousand teenagers from the city and the surrounding area came. When Brad and Matt got in front of the crowd, the first thing they did was lead them in some cheers. The youth were a bit taken aback, but they joined in enthusiastically. It was immediately clear that EFY was not a typical Church conference.

Youth at the first Especially for Youth in Brisbane, Australia, 1999. (Courtesy Elise Buckle.)

Over the next few days, the youth learned from speakers, sang songs, enjoyed dances and talent shows, and shared their testimonies. Photographers, meanwhile, snapped pictures for a slideshow on the last day.

Mary was thrilled by how much the youth and their counselors enjoyed EFY. Everyone who took part in the event, it seemed, went home with stronger faith in Jesus Christ. Counselors who hadn’t planned on serving missions changed their minds and submitted their missionary applications. Some of the youth who weren’t members of the Church when they attended went on to meet with missionaries and accept baptism. And young single adult counselors returned to their wards wanting to serve in Young Women and Young Men.

Especially for Youth had gone incredibly well in Brisbane—and Mary and the committee were ready to do it again.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

Time for Youth in Australia

Five years later, fourteen-year-old Blake McKeown arrived at a stake center in Baulkham Hills, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, with his seventeen-year-old brother, Wade. Typically, the stake center was a calm, quiet place. But today, a large canopy tent had been set up in the parking lot, and the grounds were teeming with youth from stakes across New South Wales. They had come to take part in an Especially for Youth conference—now known in Australia as Time for Youth, or TFY.

After the success of EFY in Brisbane, the area presidency encouraged stakes in Australia and New Zealand to organize events of their own. In 2002, Mary McKenna and her committee organized a TFY in Brisbane and one in New Zealand in 2003. The TFY in Baulkham Hills was the first one held in Australia outside of Brisbane.

Although Blake had grown up in the Church, he had never seen so many Latter-day Saint youth in one place before. He and Wade were from Penrith, about a forty-five-minute drive from the Baulkham Hills stake center. They had a strong youth group in their ward, but Latter-day Saints made up only half of 1 percent of Australia’s population, so youth activities—even at the stake level—rarely had more than a few dozen people attending. In Blake’s high school, there were only two members of the Church besides him and his brother.

Once TFY got underway, he and Wade rarely saw each other. Following the EFY model, everyone at the event joined a small group led by a young single adult counselor. In these groups, the youth rotated through activities. They also took part in service projects, listened to devotionals and talks, learned songs, studied the scriptures, cheered each other on in a talent show, and attended a dance.

The theme of the conference was “We Believe,” with a focus on that year’s seminary course of study, the Doctrine and Covenants. The speakers and counselors drew on the theme as they shared spiritual experiences and encouraged participants to come unto Christ, pray, keep journals, and live the other fundamentals of the gospel. Testimony meetings also gave the youth an opportunity to share their witness of the Savior and His restored gospel with their peers.

In church, Blake was often restless in meetings, but he came to TFY with a good foundation of faith from his parents. He and Wade were third-generation Latter-day Saints, and their parents and grandparents had always been great examples of faith and service.

The Young Men program had also strengthened him. As a deacon, Blake had been called as the quorum president. His bishop asked him to select two counselors and a secretary from the eleven other boys in his quorum. After praying for guidance, Blake came back to the bishop the next week with three names. The bishop showed Blake his own list, which had the same three boys. He had arranged the names in a different order, but he adjusted his list to match Blake’s. The experience had given Blake confidence in prayer and in his ability to lead.

Blake wasn’t very outgoing, but he enjoyed making new friends from other wards and stakes at TFY. At the end of each day, he and Wade would return home to rest up before heading back early the next morning.

Neither of them noticed how three days at TFY affected them, but their mother saw changes. Amid the fun and games, TFY provided youth with opportunities to feel the Spirit in a new environment. When Blake and Wade returned, they were more focused on the scriptures and a little more confident in their testimonies.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

Bondi Rescue

A few short years later, Blake was eighteen years old, preparing to graduate from high school—and he needed a plan. If he started university, he wouldn’t be allowed to pause his studies for longer than a year. And since he intended to serve a two-year mission when he turned nineteen, he decided to get a seasonal job after graduation rather than follow many of his peers to university.

Blake had been a lifeguard at a pool near his home, and he liked the work. Recently, Bondi Rescue, a new reality television show about lifeguards at Sydney’s popular Bondi Beach, got him thinking about ocean lifeguarding. Although Bondi Beach was around forty miles from his home, he decided to take part in a one-week “work experience” program there, which introduced him to the day-to-day duties of the job. He also took a fitness test required for anyone who wanted to be a beach lifeguard.

The test was challenging, but Blake was ready for it. As a deacon, he had gotten interested in athletics after going mountain biking with the young men in his stake. Although the Church had adopted Scouting as part of its Young Men program in the early twentieth century, it was seldom used in most countries outside the United States and Canada. In Australia, about a third of local units participated in Scouting. Blake’s stake was not one of them. In such instances, leaders used a special guide prepared by the Church for planning Young Men activities.

The leader who took the young men mountain biking, Matt Green, went on to introduce Blake to the triathlon, a sport that combines swimming, bicycling, and running. Under Matt’s coaching and mentorship, Blake had developed discipline and focus. When he took the fitness test at Bondi Beach, Blake’s years of training and competing paid off. He performed well and was hired as a trainee lifeguard.

Blake McKeown on the set of Bondi Rescue, circa 2007. (Courtesy Mary McKenna.)

After his high school graduation, Blake began working every weekday at the beach. The job did not guarantee him time on Bondi Rescue, but the show’s producers soon had camera crews recording him as he learned how to use lifeguard equipment, help beachgoers, and enforce beach rules. They also caught the moment when he rescued a person from the ocean for the first time.

Blake enjoyed the work. As the only Church member on staff, he felt a little intimidated by the other lifeguards, whose lives and values were very different from his own. But he never felt pressured to drop his standards around them.

In early 2007, Blake and other lifeguards responded when a man was spotted struggling in a treacherous part of the water. They searched for forty-five minutes, but there was no sign of a drowned or struggling swimmer, and none of the twenty-five thousand beachgoers had reported a missing friend or family member. Ultimately, the lifeguards gave up the search, hoping whoever they saw had found his way back to shore.

Two hours later, a young man approached Blake at the lifeguard tower. He said he couldn’t find his father. “Just stay there for a second,” Blake told the young man. He then went and informed the other lifeguards.

The crew rushed back into the water on boards and a Jet Ski. They also called in a police helicopter to patrol the ocean from above. Blake, meanwhile, stayed with the young man and his mother, asking questions about the missing man. But even as Blake calmly spoke to them, he worried that their husband and father was dead.

With daylight fading, one of the rescuers spotted someone under the waves. A lifeguard dove in and carried the man back to shore. They tried to resuscitate him, but it was too late.

Blake reeled at the news. How had he and the other lifeguards lost track of the man, especially when the beach had been so well patrolled? Blake had never thought much about death, and no one close to him had ever died. Now death felt very real to him.

It was late when Blake finished work that night. As he thought about the senselessness of the tragedy he’d just witnessed, he reflected on the plan of salvation. All his life, he had been taught that death was not the end of existence, that Jesus Christ had made it possible for everyone to rise in the Resurrection.

In the weeks that followed, faith in these principles gave him comfort.

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.

Testifying to Ten Million Viewers

The next year, Blake McKeown was back on Sydney’s Bondi Beach for another summer of lifeguard training in front of the TV camera. His appearance on the second season of Bondi Rescue had made him a local celebrity in Australia. Every now and then, while shopping in his hometown or riding a train to work, he’d notice people glancing his way and discreetly pointing. The attention was a little annoying, but he couldn’t complain. He liked getting paid to hang out on the beach day after day with his friends. “How could life get any better?” he wondered.

His parents were concerned, though. Had the fame of being on television changed his priorities? Blake had gotten the lifeguarding job a year earlier to make money while waiting to serve a full-time mission. Now his nineteenth birthday had long since come and gone.

“What do I do?” his mother asked their bishop one day. “How’s this going to turn out?”

“I don’t know,” the bishop replied, also concerned. “He was doing so well.”

Blake tried to reassure his parents. He told them that he was praying to know the right time to serve. He just didn’t feel like the time had come yet. “It’s important that I go, not when I go,” he told them, echoing something his father had always told him.

Then his brother Wade returned from his mission to Japan. Wade saw his parents’ concern and talked to Blake. Blake took Wade’s words to heart and began thinking more seriously about leaving on a mission. “If the Church is true,” he told himself, “then I have to go on a mission.”

He thought about his testimony and the Church. Growing up, he had attended TFY, the multiday youth conference in Australia, which had spread to countries in South America and Europe in 2006 under the Especially for Youth name. He had also faithfully attended early-morning seminary and other Church activities. He may not have always been excited to go, but he had tried to keep the commandments and do what was right. And he had faith in Jesus Christ and in the truth of the restored gospel. That was reason enough to serve.

Blake soon submitted his missionary application. It was a moment of unprecedented opportunities for missionary work. In recent years, Church leaders had “raised the bar” for missionary service, emphasizing the need for committed elders and sisters with high moral standards who knew how to hear and respond to the Holy Spirit. The Church had also introduced service missions for young people with certain health conditions or for whom traditional proselytizing missions weren’t a good fit.

When Blake’s call came, he received an assignment to serve a full-time proselytizing mission in the Philippines Baguio Mission, one of fifteen missions in the country. All he had left to do was tell his fellow lifeguards.

A short time later, during a filming of Bondi Rescue, Blake spoke to the cameras about his faith. “Growing up, I’ve always been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” he said. “I go to church every Sunday. I guess I have a bit stricter standards that I live by, but other than that, I’m just a normal person.”

After Blake’s shift ended, the show’s producers had him put on a suit and tie. He then walked to the main lifeguard tower and knocked on the door. “I guess my hands are gonna have to get used to that,” he said, looking at the camera.

The lifeguards greeted him with good-natured laughs. “Do you like it?” he asked, showing them his suit. “It’s me for the next two years.”

“Where are you going?” one of the lifeguards asked.

“To the Philippines,” Blake said. “I’m serving my mission, for my church.”

“You’re Mormon?” said another lifeguard.

“Yeah,” Blake said. “I think I’ve got the best thing in my life, so why shouldn’t I share it with other people?”

Blake explained that he would soon be leaving for the United States to receive missionary training and learn Tagalog. He would then go to his assigned field of service. “We’ll be actively knocking on doors,” he said, “and just trying to teach people about Jesus Christ.”

“Well, man, all the best,” a lifeguard said, shaking Blake’s hand and pulling him into a warm embrace. Blake was sad to leave the beach, and he knew he was going to miss his friends. But he was eager to begin his mission and do good in the world.

Back home, Blake told Wade about the experience. “My challenge as a missionary was to speak to ten people a day in Japan,” Wade said. “You’ve just done that to ten million people in one go.”

See the full text in Gospel Library for notes and source citations.