Chapter 12
A Complete Way of Life
“I am very much concerned about my throat,” Elder Spencer W. Kimball wrote in his journal on January 8, 1970. “My voice seems to be deteriorating slowly.”
In the dozen years since doctors removed a cancerous vocal cord, his voice had been little more than a rough whisper. Yet this setback had hardly slowed his Church service. Since establishing the São Paulo Stake in 1966, Elder Kimball had organized the first stakes in Argentina and Uruguay, dedicated Colombia for missionary work, and ministered to Saints in Ecuador. He had also written an influential book, The Miracle of Forgiveness, and begun serving as chair of the Church’s budget committee and missionary committee.
But with his voice worsening, he had consulted a doctor, worried that the cancer had come back. The doctor had discovered a red spot on the left side of Elder Kimball’s throat and performed two biopsies. This further strained the apostle’s voice, compelling him to amplify his speech with a small microphone worn around his neck.
Elder Kimball returned to the hospital on January 12 to learn the prognosis. After studying the results of the biopsies and consulting with other experts, the doctor believed the cancer had returned, and there was little hope that Elder Kimball’s voice could be saved.
As Elder Kimball considered how to move forward with treatment, he wondered if he ought to withdraw from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles to make room for a more capable man.
The next day, Elder Kimball told N. Eldon Tanner what the doctor had said, and President Tanner recommended that the general authorities hold a special fast on his behalf. Two days later, the general authorities gathered in the temple, and Harold B. Lee offered a heartfelt prayer. When he finished, Elder Kimball took a seat in the middle of the room, and Gordon B. Hinckley anointed his head with oil. The other apostles in the room then gathered in a circle around Elder Kimball, and President Tanner sealed the anointing and blessed him.
During the blessing, Elder Kimball felt a nearness to his Heavenly Father and his quorum members. The heavy burden he carried seemed to fall away, and he knew that if God wanted him to continue in his ministry, then He would find a way for him to do so, with or without his voice. After the blessing, Elder Lee wrapped Elder Kimball in an embrace. Other apostles in the circle said they felt blessed to take part in such a powerful and unifying spiritual experience.
On Sunday morning, three days after the blessing, Elder Kimball’s neighbor telephoned him unexpectedly. She had heard that President McKay had died, and she wanted to know if it was true.
“I have not heard,” Elder Kimball replied. He began making calls, and before long, he learned that the prophet had indeed passed away earlier that morning.
Elder Kimball hurried over to the Church Administration Building. Both Joseph Fielding Smith, the senior apostle, and Harold B. Lee were meeting with the McKay family. Elder Kimball found Joseph Anderson and Arthur Haycock, the secretaries to the First Presidency and the Twelve, and they spent several hours calling general authorities to tell them the news.
President McKay’s death saddened the Church. His love for the Saints around the world was legendary. He had led the Church for nearly nineteen years, and two-thirds of its three million members had been baptized while he was president. When he succeeded George Albert Smith in April 1951, the Church had 184 stakes. Now, in 1970, it had 500 stakes, including fourteen stakes in Australia and New Zealand, thirteen stakes in Europe, and the first stakes in Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, Tonga, Uruguay, and Western Samoa.
Almost 90 percent of the new stakes during the McKay administration were formed in the United States and Canada, where Church growth remained high. In North America, the Church’s reputation benefited from prominent Latter-day Saints like J. Willard Marriott, founder of a large hotel chain, and George W. Romney, who had been chief executive of American Motors Corporation and governor of the state of Michigan.
President McKay had dedicated five temples in four countries and overseen the translation of temple ordinances into a dozen languages. General conference, likewise, had become even more available as two hundred television stations and dozens of radio stations in North, Central, and South America broadcast the proceedings. As a champion of missionary work and Church education, President McKay had greatly expanded the Church’s efforts in both areas. And his implementation of the correlation program, which he considered his most important work as Church president, had made the simple truths of the restored gospel more accessible to a worldwide audience.
Thousands of Saints came to President McKay’s funeral to pay their respects. A short time later, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles met to sustain Joseph Fielding Smith as the new president of the Church. At ninety-three, President Smith was the oldest man ever to lead the Church. He came to the office with nearly sixty years of experience as an apostle, and the Saints respected his considerable knowledge of Church history and the scriptures. As the son of President Joseph F. Smith, he was also the grandson of Hyrum Smith, brother of the prophet Joseph.
President Smith called Harold B. Lee and N. Eldon Tanner to be his counselors in the First Presidency. Since President Lee’s new duties prevented him from serving as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Kimball was set apart to serve as president of the quorum in his place.
Against the advice of a doctor friend, who urged him to seek cancer treatment in California, Elder Kimball set aside his health concerns after President McKay’s death, choosing instead to focus on his apostolic duties. He remained unsure how best to treat the disease, and since his speaking had improved since the blessing, he did not want to undergo any surgery that put his voice at risk.
As President Lee set him apart in his new calling, he spoke of Elder Kimball’s health concerns, offering words of comfort and hope.
“We bless particularly your voice,” he said, “pleading with the Lord to preserve your ability to communicate by voice as well as by writing instructions, that you may live in the earth as long as life shall be sweet unto you, and until the Lord says it is enough.”
Shortly after arriving in California, Maeta Holiday went to a shopping mall with Venna Black, her foster mother in the Indian Student Placement Program. Maeta had never gone to the mall before, so she paid close attention to every turn Venna made in the car.
At the mall, Maeta picked out some clothes she needed, but when it was time to go, Venna wasn’t sure how to get back home. “I can’t remember where I’m supposed to go,” she told Maeta.
“Well, go here,” Maeta said, directing Venna down the right street. She then led Venna back to the house, turn by turn.
Venna was impressed. “How do you know how to get home?” she asked.
“I’m always observant,” Maeta said. Memorizing landmarks was a habit she had gained while herding sheep as a young girl on the Navajo reservation. If she did not pay attention to landmarks, she might not make it home.
Maeta started attending the local high school soon after this experience. Her first few days there were scary. The school was much bigger than any she had attended before. Its crowded hallways were lined with lockers. Almost all the students were white, and as far as she knew, she was the only student from the placement program there. She did not sense racial prejudice from her peers, though, as some students in the program did at other schools. Her classmates welcomed her, and she quickly made friends.
Like other youth in her ward, Maeta attended early-morning seminary. She and her foster sister Lucy woke up every weekday morning at five o’clock so they could make it to the ward meetinghouse on time for class. On her first day of seminary, Maeta waited in her chair, not really knowing why she was there until class started. Then she figured it out. “Ah,” she thought, “we learn about the Church.”
Maeta was not too interested in seminary. She was surprised and confused when she found out that she would be given a grade in the class. “How can you be graded for your beliefs?” she wondered. Would God be giving her the grade? Still, she and Lucy rarely missed the class.
During her first year of high school, Maeta joined a school choir. The next year, she played basketball, which she had learned while attending boarding school in Arizona. She excelled at the sport and became point guard for her team. She liked making layups and scoring from the side of the foul line. But she was also good at passing the ball to the other players. At the end of the season, her teammates and coaches voted her most valuable player.
The placement program recommended that students return after each school year to live with their birth families for the summer. Maeta did not like going back home or spending time with her troubled mother, Evelyn. But Venna believed it was important for Maeta to stay connected to her roots and encouraged her to write home every month. Every time summer rolled around, Maeta would catch the bus to Arizona.
In the spring of 1970, as Maeta was finishing her second year in high school, she learned that her mother’s home had burned down. No one was hurt, and Maeta was not worried about her family. Venna, however, helped Maeta buy some things to replace what her younger brothers and sisters lost in the fire.
On the day Maeta left for Arizona, Venna dropped her off at the bus stop with cardboard boxes full of food, clothing, and blankets. “This is for your family,” she explained. “This is from our ward.”
As Maeta watched the boxes being loaded into the bus’s luggage compartment, she was overcome with emotion. When she first arrived in California, she had been suspicious of the Blacks’ kindness, wondering if they had taken her in just to do their housework. She had since come to know that they cared about her. But until she saw the boxes, she did not know how much her foster family loved her.
And she had not known how much she loved them.
Later that year, sixteen-year-old Kazuhiko Yamashita was looking to escape the sun on a hot July morning in Osaka, Japan. He and his older brother, Masahito, had traveled for hours to attend Expo ’70, a world’s fair featuring hundreds of awe-inspiring displays and pavilions from nations and organizations around the globe. Its theme was “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,” and wherever visitors looked, they could see evidence of Japan’s impressive recovery from the devastation of World War II.
Kazuhiko and Masahito had already visited a few exhibits together. At the United States Pavilion, they saw one of the expo’s most popular exhibits: a moonstone brought back from the historic lunar landing the year before.
But today the brothers had split up, as Masahito looked for engineering exhibits and Kazuhiko wandered the expo grounds with his camera. Kazuhiko wanted to go into the Japan Pavilion to see what kinds of exhibits his home country was showing the world. But by the time he arrived at the pavilion, the line stretched far outside the entrance. A staff member told him the wait was at least two hours.
Rather than stand so long under the hot sun, Kazuhiko moved on, walking for five or ten minutes before seeing a pavilion that looked like a beautiful white building. It had two levels and a tall spire with a golden statue of a man blowing a long trumpet. Kazuhiko did not know what the pavilion was, but it didn’t have a line, so he would not have to wait to get inside.
Passing through a Japanese-style garden, he entered a lobby where a guide gathered him and other guests for a tour. The pavilion, Kazuhiko soon learned, provided information about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members. The Church had showcased popular exhibits at other world expositions, but this was the first time it had brought a pavilion to a country where Christianity was not the major religion. The ground floor of the building had a twelve-foot marble replica of the Christus, a statue by Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. There was also a photographic exhibit about the everyday activities of Church members around Japan.
Kazuhiko’s family was Buddhist, and he knew nothing about Jesus Christ or a Heavenly Father. But after he and the other guests moved to the second floor of the pavilion, they entered a series of rooms that taught them about the Savior’s ministry and His role in the Creation of the world. They learned about God’s plan of happiness and the Restoration of the gospel of Christ through a boy prophet named Joseph Smith.
The tour ended in a small theater with a Japanese version of Man’s Search for Happiness, the short film the Church had debuted at the New York World’s Fair in 1964. At the urging of local mission leaders Ed and Chieko Okazaki, the Japanese film was shot locally with popular Japanese actors, some of whom Kazuhiko recognized. But the questions raised in the film—Where had he come from? Why was he here? Where was he going?—were new to him. He had never given them any thought. And he wasn’t sure if he believed the answers the pavilion had given him.
On his way out of the theater, Kazuhiko saw a man standing in the hall.
“Do you believe it?” Kazuhiko asked, referring to the film.
“Yes, I do,” the man said without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
Kazuhiko left the pavilion and continued exploring the expo, but he hadn’t gone far when he realized he had left his camera behind. He hurried back to the exhibit, where a staff member found the missing camera.
As a show of gratitude, Kazuhiko bought a Japanese copy of the Book of Mormon and left his name and address with the staff member, even though he wasn’t especially interested in learning more about the Church.
Three months later, a pair of missionaries showed up at his home outside Tokyo. He had not expected them to actually visit, but he was happy to see them—and willing to hear what they had to say.
In September 1970, Relief Society general president Belle Spafford stood in the Salt Lake Tabernacle in front of thousands of Latter-day Saint women at the Relief Society’s annual conference. The event was usually a time of rejoicing, as women from across the world came together to share experiences and receive instruction from their leaders. This conference, however, was more somber than others.
“We are living in a period of time characterized by crisis after crisis,” President Spafford said. In the United States, images of war and civil unrest flashed across television screens every day. Racial strife remained high, and the assassinations of prominent politicians and civil rights leaders shocked the nation. Young people continued to protest against the Vietnam War. Peace and tranquility seemed fleeting.
The Relief Society itself was in a time of transition as the organization adapted to Church correlation. In the past, Relief Society members had raised their own funds and created budgets that were then approved by priesthood leaders. Recently, however, the First Presidency had announced that Relief Societies would be funded by ward or branch budgets.
Under the new system, local priesthood leaders assigned each ward organization a set amount to spend every year. Individual Relief Societies could continue to control how they spent their funds without the added burden of fundraising for their organization. But since Relief Societies were now constrained by a limited budget, they lost some of the financial independence they had enjoyed over the years. Relief Society bazaars, time-honored fundraising events where women displayed and sold their handicrafts, also came to an end.
Other changes affected governance. As part of its social services work, the Relief Society had been in charge of the Indian Student Placement Program, Church adoption and foster care services, and a rehabilitation program for troubled youth. But these programs were largely confined to the western United States, and the desire to extend social services to the global Church membership under a single, correlated organization prompted restructuring.
In 1969, Church leaders created Unified Social Services, which brought all these initiatives together under the leadership of priesthood officers. President Spafford continued as an adviser, but she no longer directed the programs.
As the Relief Society adjusted to the changes, President Spafford and her counselors were candid about the potential problems they saw. When they learned that the Adult Correlation Committee was tasked with writing Relief Society lessons, the presidency spoke up. In the end, the Relief Society wrote its own lessons with input and reviews by the committee.
President Spafford recognized the need for Relief Society to adapt as the restored gospel spread across the globe. The Church’s magazine for international readers was now being translated into seventeen languages. Yet the Relief Society Magazine was published only in English and Spanish.
To help reach as many readers as possible with correlated messages, leaders had recently proposed changes to Church publications. In June 1970, they announced that most current magazines, including the Instructor, the Improvement Era, and the Relief Society Magazine, would be retired. Longstanding English-language magazines in the missions, such as the Millennial Star in the United Kingdom and Cumorah’s Southern Messenger in South Africa, would also come to an end. In their place, the Church would publish three new magazines, each speaking to a particular age group: the Ensign for adults, the New Era for youth, and the Friend for children.
Standing before her audience in the Tabernacle, President Spafford knew that many women were grappling with the recent changes, just as she had. Her presidency had received letters from women who were grieving over the news about the end of the magazine. And President Spafford could understand their sorrow. When the idea was first proposed, she had objected, feeling that the magazine served an important purpose in the Church and in the lives of the sisters. What could she say now to bring healing and comfort?
She took as her theme a passage from the Book of Mormon: “We lived after the manner of happiness.” When faced with trying times, the people of Nephi did not slacken their effort. They kept the commandments of God as best they could. And they were industrious, raising flocks and herds and sowing and harvesting crops.
So it could be with Relief Society. Organizational changes did not alter the things that led to happiness: righteousness, compassionate service, creative expression, and community involvement.
“Relief Society offers limitless opportunities,” President Spafford testified, “to nourish the essential elements of a happy life.”
In February 1971, six years after his conversion, Darius Gray was living in Salt Lake City. As a member of the Church, he had enjoyed the fellowship of many Saints who befriended him and helped him adapt to his new faith. He had also met a few Church members who mistreated him because he was Black. But he clung to the powerful words he had heard the night before his baptism: “This is the restored gospel, and you are to join.”
Darius worked as a reporter for KSL-TV, a local news station. Before getting the job, he’d never considered a career in journalism. Then he met Arch Madsen, the president of the Church-owned communications company that oversaw KSL. Finding Arch to be friendly and direct, Darius took the job. It felt as if God were laying out a path for him.
After Darius was hired, he pursued a degree in journalism from the University of Utah. He also took an active part in his Salt Lake City ward and served as its Sunday School superintendent. Through Arch, he met Monroe Fleming, a Black Latter-day Saint working at the Hotel Utah. Monroe’s wife, Frances, was a fourth-generation Saint and a great-granddaughter of Jane Manning James. The Flemings invited him over for dinner, spoke candidly about their experiences in the Church, and introduced him to other members of Salt Lake City’s Black Latter-day Saint community.
Among the people Darius met was Lucile Bankhead, the community’s beloved matriarch. Like Frances Fleming, she was a descendant of Black Latter-day Saint pioneers and had grown up in the Church. He also met Eugene Orr, who had joined the Church in 1968 and married a woman he met in Utah, Leitha Derricott. Now Eugene and Leitha hosted summer picnics to help fellowship their Black friends in the area.
Darius was particularly impressed by Ruffin Bridgeforth, a Black man who had moved to Utah in 1944 as an employee of the U.S. military. Ruffin and his wife, Helena, joined the Church in 1953 and raised their children in the faith. Darius admired Ruffin’s steadfastness, quiet wisdom, and gentle manner. Over the years, Ruffin had become close friends with Elder Thomas S. Monson and other Church leaders. He often spoke to wards, stakes, and missions about Black members in the Church.
One day, Darius received a telephone call from Heber Wolsey, the head of public relations at BYU. He knew Darius’s work at KSL and occasionally sought his help when BYU faced a race-related controversy.
Recently, the university had been under intense public scrutiny over the Church’s priesthood restriction, and political activists sometimes staged demonstrations and boycotted BYU sporting events. The controversy had spiked in October 1969, when fourteen Black football players at the University of Wyoming asked to wear black armbands during their upcoming game against BYU. Their coach had kicked them off the team, drawing media attention and sparking protests.
Now activists in Wyoming were calling for another protest, this time at a basketball game against BYU. When BYU president Ernest L. Wilkinson learned of the plan, he issued a written statement in defense of the university and dispatched Heber to speak with the organizers. But the activists wanted to meet a Black member of the Church, so Heber was calling to ask if Darius could catch a plane to Wyoming.
“How soon?” Darius asked.
“Oh,” said Heber, “in the next thirty minutes.”
Darius rushed to the airport and caught the flight. When he arrived at the university, Heber whisked him off to a packed auditorium. They took their seats at the front, across from the leading activists. Darius maintained a friendly smile, but as he answered their questions, he could tell some of them were unhappy that he was defending the Church. Still, he determined to be true to himself and his beliefs.
During one meeting that weekend, someone accused Darius of disgracing his race by joining the Church. Darius replied, “I was born Black. I am Black now. I will die Black. I am proud of my Black heritage. And I will fight for just Black causes with every power I have.”
He then paused. “I am also a Mormon,” he added, proudly. “The Mormon church has answers for me I have found nowhere else. There is no conflict between the color of my skin and my religion.”
Despite Darius and Heber’s efforts, Wyoming students staged a demonstration before and during the game. As Darius observed them, he empathized with their desire for racial equality, yet he did not think they fully understood the Church or its teachings.
“If they were willing to demonstrate universally against prejudice and inequity wherever it may be, but not against the principles of the Mormon faith,” he later reflected, “I would have been willing to join them.”
On January 19, 1971, Anthony Obinna, a forty-two-year-old Nigerian schoolteacher, took out a pen and a blue sheet of paper to write a letter to the president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I have read several books in search of salvation,” he wrote, “and at last found the answer.”
During the last few years, Anthony, his wife, Fidelia, and their children had been largely confined to their house while the Nigerian civil war raged around them. One day, as Anthony passed the long hours of uncertainty, he had flipped open an old magazine and seen something he was not expecting: a picture of a tall, stately stone building with several large spires.
He had seen the building once before—in a dream he’d had before the civil war broke out. In the dream, the Savior had guided him to the magnificent building. It was full of people, all of them dressed in white.
“What is this?” Anthony had asked.
“These are people who attend the temple,” the Savior replied.
“What are they doing?”
“They are praying. They pray here always.”
When he woke, Anthony had yearned to know more about the things he had seen. He recounted the dream to Fidelia and his friends, asking what they thought it might mean. No one could help him. He finally asked a reverend for guidance. The reverend could not interpret the dream either, but he told Anthony that if the dream was of God, then his questions would someday be resolved.
As soon as Anthony saw the image in the magazine, he knew he’d found his answer. At the top of the picture was a caption identifying it as the temple in Salt Lake City.
“Mormons—officially the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—are different,” the article began. It recounted the Church’s history and explained some of its basic doctrine. “It is a complete way of life,” the article said. “The religious spark that fires such a community of effort is a belief that everyone on earth is a spiritual son or daughter of God.”
The article had set Anthony’s mind racing. He lived near his brothers, so he immediately gathered them together and told them about the picture and his dream.
“You’re sure about that building?” his brother Francis asked.
Unfortunately, he had not been able to write to Church headquarters at that time because of a wartime blockade. Nor was he aware of any of Nigeria’s unofficial Latter-day Saint congregations. Many of them had scattered during the war, losing contact with each other and the Church. Some believers, like Honesty John Ekong, were never heard from again. But now that the war was over, nothing kept Anthony from contacting the Church.
Continuing his letter to the Church president, Anthony expressed his wish to have a branch of the Church in his town. “Mormonism is indeed unique among religions,” he wrote.
A few weeks later, he received a letter. “At the present time we do not have any official representatives from Salt Lake City in your country,” it read. “If you wish, I shall be glad to correspond with you concerning the religious teachings of Jesus Christ.”
The letter was signed by LaMar Williams, Missionary Department.