Chapter 14
Different Now
In February 1972, Elder Spencer W. Kimball was despairing. Radiation treatments had removed his throat cancer but had ravaged his already-weakened voice, and now he could not speak above a whisper. His failing heart also continued to be a source of anxiety and physical weakness. “I am definitely losing,” he wrote in his journal.
Mindful of Elder Kimball’s poor health, the First Presidency lightened his travel schedule. He attended the dedications of the Ogden and Provo Temples, issued calls to prospective missionaries, and advised the newly created Church Historical Department and its growing staff of professionals. He was grateful that he could still serve the Lord in these ways, but more and more he worried about being a burden on the Church.
As his condition worsened, he and Camilla met with Presidents Harold B. Lee and N. Eldon Tanner. Dr. Russell M. Nelson joined them to lend medical expertise to the discussion.
“I am a dying man,” Elder Kimball explained. “I can feel my life slipping. At the present rate of deterioration, it is my belief that I can live only about two more months.”
He was unlikely to recover, he told the group, without a complex surgery. Dr. Nelson, who was familiar with the procedure, explained that it consisted of two distinct surgeries. “First, the defective aortic valve would require removal and replacement with a prosthetic aortic valve,” he said. “Second, the left anterior descending coronary artery would have to be revascularized with a bypass graft.”
“What would the risks be with such a procedure?” asked President Lee.
Considering Elder Kimball’s advanced age, Dr. Nelson did not know. “We have no experience doing both operations on patients in this age group,” he said. “All I can say is, it would entail extremely high risk.”
“I’m an old man and ready to die,” Elder Kimball said wearily. “The Lord could heal me instantly and for as long as He wanted me. But why would He want me when I am getting older and others could do what I am doing and do it better?”
President Lee shot to his feet. “Spencer,” he said, pounding his fist on his desk, “you have been called! You are not to die. You are to do everything that you need to do in order to care for yourself and continue to live!”
“All right,” Elder Kimball said, “then I will have the operation.”
Two months later, on the other side of the United States, thousands of screaming girls greeted the Osmond brothers—Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, and Donny—as they stepped onto a coliseum stage in Hampton, Virginia. Ranging in age from fourteen to twenty-two, the brothers wore white bell-bottom jumpsuits with high collars and sparkling rhinestones. When they started to sing and dance, the fans kept on screaming.
Offstage, Olive Osmond thought it was cute the way the girls gawked over her sons. When she and her husband, George Osmond, had married in the Salt Lake Temple during World War II, they could not have imagined that their children would become pop music stars—and some of the most famous Latter-day Saints in the world. Their first two sons, Virl and Tom, were hard of hearing, and a doctor had tried to persuade Olive and George not to have more children. But the couple had seven more, all of them with full hearing.
At a young age, Alan, Wayne, Merrill, Jay, and Donny learned to sing in harmony and became regular performers on a nationally broadcast television show. When they got older, though, they wanted to trade their repertoire of old-fashioned songs for a more contemporary sound.
Many young people liked the driving beat and electric guitars in rock music. Yet some Church leaders were concerned that it was too provocative. Olive and George shared these concerns, but they and their children believed rock music could promote goodness as well. Olive thought her sons could have a positive influence on the world—if only their music could reach the right audience.
“You have a special mission,” she would tell the boys. “God gave you this talent for a reason.”
In 1970, the brothers recorded a song called “One Bad Apple,” with Merrill and Donny on lead vocals. The record was a hit, making the boys celebrities almost overnight. After that, Olive and George worked hard to help their sons keep the commandments. While other rock stars were drinking and using drugs, the Osmonds obeyed the Word of Wisdom. Instead of going to wild parties, the brothers held home evenings with their family, attended church, and gave devotionals while on tour.
After becoming famous, the brothers met with President Joseph Fielding Smith, who reminded them of their duty to always share the gospel. Later, his counselor Harold B. Lee reminded them that the world was watching them and might judge the Church based on their actions. He encouraged them to avoid morally dangerous situations and to stand up for what they believed.
“There will always be two choices,” he taught them. “Always choose that which will bring you closest to the celestial kingdom.” He then quoted the Savior’s words from the Sermon on the Mount: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”
Before long, many people in the United States associated the Church with the Osmonds. When speaking with the press, Olive almost always mentioned her religion and its influence on the family’s wholesome lifestyle and cheerful music. In their own interactions with reporters, the boys also talked openly about their faith, and fans often sent them mail with questions about the Church. Since the growth of the Church had been especially rapid in the United States, there were usually wards and branches in the cities where the Osmonds performed, making it easier for fans to get in contact with missionaries and meet other Latter-day Saints.
Recently, in fact, the Church News had featured excerpts of letters from people who came to know the Church through the Osmonds. One fan had started researching the Latter-day Saints after seeing the happiness and closeness of the Osmond family. “I knew it had something to do with your religion,” they wrote.
During the concert in Virginia, the youngest Osmond, eight-year-old Jimmy, joined his brothers onstage for a song. Olive remained backstage with her twelve-year-old daughter, Marie, answering questions from a local reporter.
“I try to make a home away from home,” Olive explained. She thought the family was closer now that they were on tour together. In fact, the brothers were collaborating on an ambitious new album—something more profound and personal than anything they’d done so far.
“They are doing what God intended them to,” she said. “The kids they attract are looking to them for something.”
One month later, on the morning of April 12, 1972, Dr. Russell M. Nelson readied himself to perform open-heart surgery. He had performed hundreds of operations in his life, but never on an apostle of the Lord. And although he had prayed about Elder Kimball’s procedure and pondered how best to perform it, he was not confident that he or any surgeon could do it successfully.
At his own request, Dr. Nelson had received a blessing from President Lee and President Tanner the day before. Placing their hands on his head, they blessed him that he might perform the surgery without error. They told him he had no reason to fear his inadequacies. The Lord had raised him up to perform this operation.
The procedure began at eight o’clock. In the operating room, an anesthesiologist sedated Elder Kimball, while Dr. Nelson’s resident assistant stood ready with several nurses and other members of the surgical team. A heart-lung machine waited nearby, ready to oxygenate and pump Elder Kimball’s blood.
Under Dr. Nelson’s direction, the team worked skillfully to replace the damaged valve with a prosthesis—a small plastic ball inside a metal cage. The device was about half the circumference of his thumb.
After fitting the valve in place, Dr. Nelson began to stitch. With one precise suture after another, he slowly connected the ring at the base of the valve to the surrounding tissue.
He then turned his attention to bypassing an obstruction blocking blood flow into the heart. Locating an artery running down Elder Kimball’s chest, he severed its lower end and placed the artery just below the blocked blood vessel. Once again, the doctor stitched with tiny, intricate sutures until the healthy artery was firmly attached.
As he worked, Dr. Nelson marveled at how smoothly the operation was going. It required thousands of intricate maneuvers, each requiring painstaking technique. Yet not a single error had occurred. When the time finally came to disconnect Elder Kimball from the heart-lung machine, more than four hours after the surgery started, the medical staff jolted his heart with electricity, and it immediately jumped back to life.
After the surgery, Dr. Nelson called President Lee. The First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve were gathered in the temple, fasting and praying for Elder Kimball. As Dr. Nelson described the procedure, he told President Lee that he felt like a baseball pitcher who had just pitched a perfect game. The Lord had magnified his skills, allowing him to perform the operation exactly as promised in the priesthood blessing.
President Lee was overjoyed. “Brother Kimball is making good progress and is off the heart machine,” he told the apostles. “The Lord has answered our prayers.”
That same month, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, forty-one-year-old Helvécio Martins was driving home from work when a traffic jam forced him to stop. The line of cars in front of him seemed to have no end, and it did not look like the gridlock would clear up anytime soon.
Helvécio took a moment to reflect on the spiritual dissatisfaction he had been feeling for years. Since his youth, he had worked hard to climb his way out of poverty. He dropped out of school at age eleven and became an orange picker. Later, after his family moved to Rio, he worked as a courier. His employers trusted him and appreciated his diligence. Eventually, he met and married Rudá Tourinho de Assis, who encouraged him to attend night school.
After years of persistence, Helvécio obtained a high school diploma and graduated from university with a degree in accounting. He then began working for an oil company, and in time he became head of a department with more than two hundred employees.
Meanwhile he and Rudá and their two children, Marcus and Marisa, enjoyed invitations to social events with prominent people. It was a lifestyle far better than anything Helvécio could have imagined.
But despite his success, Helvécio felt unfulfilled. He and Rudá had tried various religions, participating in Spiritualist practices and later exploring several Christian denominations. No matter where they went, they felt something lacking.
Sitting in traffic, Helvécio’s frustration grew. He opened his car door and stepped onto the road. “My God,” he prayed, “I know you are there someplace, but I don’t know where. Is it possible you don’t see the confusion my family and I are experiencing? Is it possible you don’t realize we are searching for something and that we don’t even know what it is? Why don’t you help us?”
When he finished making his plea, the traffic began to clear. Helvécio returned to his car and drove on, soon forgetting the incident.
Two weeks later, the Martinses found a card slipped under their door. On one side it had a picture of the Savior, and on the other was a meeting schedule for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The card intrigued Helvécio, and he took it to work the next day.
“Boss, don’t go there,” one of his employees said. “That is a church for North Americans. If you don’t know a member, I wouldn’t even try to go.”
Helvécio believed his employee and set aside his interest in the Church. But a short time later, two missionaries, Thomas McIntire and Steve Richards, showed up at the Martinses’ door. The moment they entered, Helvécio noticed a calm feeling fill the home.
The missionaries introduced themselves. “We have a blessing for your family if you would like one,” they said.
“Yes,” Helvécio said. But first he had questions.
They discussed some general information about the Church, and then Helvécio raised a difficult question—one that mattered to him as a descendant of enslaved people from Africa. “Given that your church is headquartered in the United States,” he said, “how does your religion treat Blacks? Are they allowed into the church?”
Elder McIntire looked embarrassed. “Sir,” he said, “do you really want to know?”
“Yes,” said Helvécio.
Elder McIntire explained that Black people could be baptized and participate as members of the Church but were not allowed to hold the priesthood or attend the temple. Helvécio and Rudá accepted his answer and asked more questions about the priesthood and the gospel. The missionaries answered each question calmly and thoroughly.
By the time the missionaries left, four and a half hours had passed. That night, Helvécio and Rudá discussed what the missionaries had taught them. They were impressed by the missionaries’ lesson and felt that their questions had been answered fully.
A short time later, the Martinses attended their first sacrament meeting. The service was beautiful, and the congregation welcomed them warmly. Not long after, the branch president stopped by the Martinses’ home and introduced them to two men who would be their home teachers.
As the family continued attending church and meeting with the missionaries, their faith grew. One day, they attended an especially powerful meeting of the Rio de Janeiro District, and they knew that they needed to join the Church.
“We are different now,” thirteen-year-old Marcus said a week later as the family drove home from Sunday School. “Your faces glow, and I know what is causing it—the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Helvécio pulled the car to a stop at the side of the road, where the family broke down in tears. When the Martinses returned to the chapel that evening for sacrament meeting, they told their branch president they were ready to be baptized.
One day around this time, the Osmonds’ manager, Ed Leffler, asked the family if they wanted to perform in England. The brothers’ song “Down by the Lazy River” and Donny’s solo recording of “Puppy Love” were hits in the United States and Canada. Everyone in North America seemed to know about the Osmond brothers, and now teenagers in Europe were taking notice too.
“Sure,” Olive said, “but on one condition—that I can meet the queen.”
She was joking, but Ed took her comment seriously. “I’ll see if that can be arranged,” he said.
A short time later, Ed informed the family that he had lined up a performance for Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip. And Olive was going to get her wish. She and George had an invitation to meet with the royal couple during the intermission.
Olive couldn’t believe it. She purchased a formal dress and some white gloves for the occasion. She also bought a brand-new set of scriptures and dared herself to give it as a gift to the queen.
The Osmonds arrived in London in May and spent a few days rehearsing their songs. The performance took place on May 22, 1972, at the London Palladium, a famous theater in the city’s West End. It was a televised charity concert featuring singers, actors, and comedians from the United Kingdom and United States.
Olive and George sat in the audience with Marie during the first half of the show. At intermission, Lew Grade, the man who had organized the show, touched George on the arm. “Come quickly,” he said.
Olive and George stood up and hurried after Lew. Before she reached the end of the aisle, though, Olive realized that she’d left her gift for the queen beneath her seat. For a split second, she thought about leaving the scriptures there. But she had spent much of the previous night marking and annotating her favorite passages for the queen. And she knew she’d never have the chance again. Turning around, she ran back to her seat and grabbed the book.
Once Lew ushered her and George into the presence of the queen, Olive approached the royal couple, curtsied, exchanged a few words with them, and moved on without delivering her gift. She then looked back and saw that George had stopped to speak with Prince Philip about their mutual interest in hunting and fishing.
Noticing another member of the royal family standing nearby, Olive approached him with her copy of the standard works. “Would you mind giving the queen this little gift after I have left?” she asked.
The man looked at Olive with a twinkle in his eye. “Elizabeth!” he said. “Mrs. Osmond has brought you a present.”
“How lovely,” said the queen. “Please come here.”
Embarrassed, Olive obeyed. “I wanted to bring you a gift,” she explained, hardly knowing where she found the words. “It’s difficult to know what to give a queen, so I brought you our most valuable possession.”
“Can you part with it?” asked the queen.
“Yes,” said Olive, “I have another one just like it.”
The queen looked at the scriptures. “Thank you, Mrs. Osmond. I’ll cherish this,” she said. “I’m going to put it on my mantel.”
Olive relaxed and chatted briefly about her family with the queen. They then returned to their seats to watch the boys perform.
Later, as the family was getting ready to fly home, Ed Leffler approached Olive. “What do you think?” he asked.
“It was the thrill of a lifetime,” Olive said. “I was even able to give her a copy of the Book of Mormon.”
“You what?” Ed said, visibly upset. “That’s about the worst thing you could have possibly done.” He explained that as head of the Church of England, the queen was not in a position to accept the teachings of the Book of Mormon.
Ed’s words troubled Olive. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone. She simply believed the queen had a right to hear the restored gospel as much as anyone else. Had she really done something wrong?
Once the family boarded the airplane and everyone was settled, Olive sat down and started reading her scriptures. The pages fell open, and her eyes rested on Doctrine and Covenants 1:23: “That the fulness of my gospel might be proclaimed by the weak and the simple unto the ends of the world, and before kings and rulers.”
The words comforted Olive. Her doubts fled, and she knew she had done the right thing.
On the evening of June 15, 1972, eighteen-year-old Maeta Holiday smiled as she stood with more than five hundred high school seniors in a gymnasium in Southern California. In a few moments, she and her classmates would receive their high school diplomas and begin the next stage of their lives. They wore matching caps and gowns, with female students in red and male students in black.
For Maeta, the graduation meant that her time in the Indian Student Placement Program was coming to an end. Soon she would be leaving her foster family to start a new life for herself. Like many graduates of the placement program, she planned to attend Brigham Young University. More than five hundred Native Americans, most of whom were Navajo like Maeta, currently attended BYU. The school offered generous scholarships to these students, and Maeta’s foster parents, Venna and Spencer Black, had helped her apply for the aid.
Maeta knew the Blacks would continue to support her. When she came to live with them four years earlier, they had immediately treated her like a daughter. They gave her a stable home and helped her feel, for the first time in her life, that she was part of a loving family. And even though she had joined the Church long before she lived with them, they showed her what a family could be when it was centered in the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Not all students in the placement program had such good experiences with their foster families. Some students did not feel welcome in their foster homes or get along with their foster parents or siblings. Others resisted their foster families’ efforts to introduce them to non-Native culture. At the same time, some students found ways to value both their heritage and their placement program experience. They returned to the reservations, strengthened their communities, and lived fulfilling lives as Latter-day Saints there.
For her part, Maeta was still haunted by her painful experiences as a child. She did not want the kind of life her parents or grandparents lived. Venna, however, had encouraged her to value her Navajo heritage. “You should be proud of who you are,” Venna once told her. “God knows you are special because the Book of Mormon is about your people.” Like many Saints at the time, Venna understood Book of Mormon promises to apply to Native Americans. When she looked at Maeta, she saw a descendant of Lehi and Sariah, entitled to covenant blessings.
“Maeta, I want this for you,” Venna had said. “I want you to get married in the temple someday. And I want you to keep going to church, and I just want to let you know that you are special, and we love you.”
As Maeta received her diploma, she still did not fully understand or accept everything Venna had taught her. And as much as she admired her foster family, she did not know if she could have a successful marriage or family herself. After witnessing her parents’ divorce and her mother’s struggle to care for her own children, she had no interest in marriage or raising a family.
Following her graduation, Maeta learned that her application to BYU had been accepted. As she boarded the bus to Provo, she thought about her future—and her faith. Attending church and seminary had been an important part of the Indian Student Placement Program. But did she want the restored gospel to be a part of her future?
“Well, if I’m going to BYU, I wonder what I need to do,” she thought. “Should I be part of the Church or should I not?”
She began to think about the lessons she learned from Venna and Spencer. Her life had not been easy, but she had been blessed to live with them and become part of their family.
“I do believe in God,” she thought. “He has been there all this time.”
On August 26, 1972, Isabel Santana and her husband, Juan Machuca, could feel the excitement in the air as they parked their yellow Volkswagen outside the Auditorio Nacional in Mexico City. More than sixteen thousand Saints from Mexico and Central America had converged on the large event center for an area general conference. For many, the conference would be their first time hearing general authorities speak in person.
The Church had begun holding area general conferences under the direction of President Joseph Fielding Smith. Since most Church members could not attend general conference in Salt Lake City, the local conferences gave them an opportunity to gather together and receive instruction from local and general authorities. The first area general conference had been held in Manchester, England, in 1971. With more than eighty thousand Church members, Mexico was home to the largest population of Saints outside the United States, making it an ideal place to hold such a conference.
Isabel and Juan were amazed as they made their way to the event center. There were Church members from all over Mexico and as far away as Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica, and Panama. Some of the Saints had traveled three thousand miles to be there. One woman from northwestern Mexico had scrubbed her neighbors’ laundry for five months to earn enough money to make the trip. Some Saints had paid their way by selling tacos and tamales, washing cars, or doing yardwork. Others had sold belongings or borrowed money so they could come. A few people were fasting because they did not have money for food. Fortunately, Benemérito provided lodging for many of the Saints from far away.
As the Machucas waited in line to enter the auditorium, a car pulled up nearby, and out stepped Spencer W. Kimball and his wife, Camilla. Four months had passed since Elder Kimball’s heart surgery, and he had already recovered enough to resume many of his responsibilities in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. In fact, he was scheduled to address the Saints later that afternoon.
Although President Joseph Fielding Smith had helped plan the conference, he had passed away before he could attend. His death marked the end of decades of a long and devoted life of service on behalf of the Church and its members. As an apostle, he had written widely on gospel doctrine and historical topics, promoted genealogical and temple work, and dedicated the Philippines and Korea for the preaching of the gospel. As Church president, he authorized the first stakes in Peru and South Africa, dramatically increased seminaries and institutes around the world, revitalized the Church’s public communications, and professionalized Church departments.
“There is no work that any of us can engage in that is as important as preaching the gospel and building up the Church and kingdom of God on earth,” he had told the Saints at his final general conference. “And so we invite all our Father’s children, everywhere, to believe in Christ, to receive Him as He is revealed by living prophets, and to join The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
His successor, Harold B. Lee, had since been set apart as president of the Church, making Elder Kimball the new president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Once Isabel and Juan gained entrance to the Auditorio Nacional, they found seats among the thousands of Saints. The auditorium had four tiers of seating around a stage area. A choir of Church members from northern Mexico filled the stand. In front of them was a pulpit and a section of high-backed chairs for the general authorities and other speakers.
The conference opened with a talk from President Marion G. Romney, who had been born and raised in the Latter-day Saint colonies in northern Mexico and had recently been made a counselor in the First Presidency. Speaking in Spanish, he told them of his love for the Saints of Mexico and Central America and his appreciation for the Mexican government.
President N. Eldon Tanner then spoke, celebrating the strength of the Church in Mexico and the other Spanish-speaking nations of the Americas. “Growth is taking place, and leadership is being developed throughout the world,” he declared through an interpreter. To assist these developing leaders, the Church’s General Handbook of Instructions had recently been correlated and translated into over a dozen languages, including Spanish. Leaders across the world could administer the Church according to the same pattern.
“It is marvelous to see how people are accepting the gospel and coming into the Church and kingdom of God,” President Tanner testified, “all bearing testimony to the blessings that it affords them, realizing that it is the Church of Jesus Christ.”
Listening to the speakers made Isabel feel glad to be a Mexican Latter-day Saint. Her education at Benemérito had taught her the value of being a Church member, of making the restored gospel a central part of her life. When she first arrived at the school, she had been a timid girl without a clear sense of her spiritual potential. But her teachers had blessed her in countless ways. She had developed a daily routine of study and prayer, and she walked with confidence and a fervent testimony of truth.
Now, surrounded by so many Saints, she couldn’t help but rejoice. “I’m from here,” she thought. “I belong to this.”