Chapter 20
Marvelous and Wonderful Way
Five years into his presidency, Spencer W. Kimball was feeling the effects of his age. He turned eighty-four years old in March 1979. His doctor advised him to get more rest to save his strength, yet he and his wife, Camilla, continued to keep a busy travel schedule. To do everything he wanted to do, he woke up early and went to bed late, with only a short nap after lunch.
“I don’t want to be saved in this world,” he told his doctor. “I want to be exalted in the world to come.”
His age caught up with him in the summer. Doctors found blood pooling beneath his skull, and they immediately sent him to surgery to relieve the pressure on his brain. The operation was a success, and one month later, President and Sister Kimball were traveling again—this time to Jerusalem.
The prophet was visiting the Holy Land to dedicate the Orson Hyde Memorial Garden, a beautiful five-acre park the Church had recently constructed on the Mount of Olives. Created at the invitation of Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek and funded by thirty thousand private donors, the park was named for the latter-day apostle who came to the city in 1841 to dedicate the land for the gathering of the people of Judah and as a land of promise for Abraham’s descendants. Mayor Kollek wanted to create more green spaces around Jerusalem, and he had worked with Elder Howard W. Hunter to make the park a reality.
The prophet’s visit to Jerusalem, like the memorial garden, reflected the Church’s desire to add to the light and truth people cherished around the world. President Kimball had immense respect for the religious traditions found in the Holy Land and elsewhere. He taught that salvation and lasting happiness came only through Jesus Christ. Yet he affirmed that God’s light had inspired Muhammad, Confucius, the Protestant reformers, and other religious leaders. He also believed that Socrates, Plato, and other great thinkers had been enlightened by God.
“Our message,” the First Presidency had recently declared, “is one of special love and concern for the eternal welfare of all men and women, regardless of religious belief, race, or nationality.”
On October 24, 1979, the anniversary of Elder Hyde’s dedicatory prayer, President Kimball linked arms with Mayor Kollek as they followed a winding path down through the garden. The prophet walked with difficulty, but it felt good to be at the park. From the garden, he could see many sites where the Savior had walked and taught.
At the base of the hill, a platform had been set up for the dedication. Elder Hunter opened the service, and a choir of nearly three hundred Saints, including BYU students studying in the city, sang “The Morning Breaks.” Mayor Kollek then rose and spoke of the long history of Jerusalem.
“I wish you to continue as many generations as we have,” he told the Saints, “and that this good relationship between you and us should persist during all these coming centuries.”
When it was President Kimball’s turn to speak, he marveled at the sacred history around him. “Jesus Christ traversed this mount on several occasions,” he said. “In a garden called Gethsemane, just below us, He fulfilled that part of His Atonement which enables us to return to our Heavenly Father.”
Bowing his head, he offered a prayer dedicating the garden to God and His glory. “Let it be a haven,” he declared, “where all who come may meditate upon the glory which Thou hast shed upon Jerusalem in ages past and the greater glory yet to be.”
David Galbraith, the Church’s district president in Israel, closed the meeting with a benediction. “May this spiritual garden, with its magnificent view, be a source of inspiration and a place of meditation for Muslims, Christians, and Jews alike,” he prayed. “May it serve to unite us all in the bonds of brotherhood and peace.”
Before the Kimballs left the city, David showed them some property near the memorial garden. For several years, the Church had wanted to build a campus in Jerusalem to house BYU’s study abroad students, provide a meetinghouse for the local branch of Saints, and serve as a welcome center for visitors. This site had a striking view of the Temple Mount, but strict zoning laws made it impossible for private organizations to build on the property. Still, President Kimball thought it was the best location he’d seen for the center.
The Kimballs returned to Salt Lake City on October 26, tired but happy. A short time later, as President Kimball prepared to attend area conferences in Australia and New Zealand, he noticed that his left hand was numb. He checked himself into the hospital, and his doctors discovered more blood pooling beneath his skull.
The next morning, the prophet was back in the operating room.
Around this same time, thirty-five-year-old Silvia Allred and her family moved from Costa Rica to Guatemala. A convert from El Salvador, Silvia had served a mission in Guatemala some fifteen years earlier, and she was eager to return with her husband, Jeff, and their six young children.
Jeff was the Church’s director for temporal affairs in Central America. This position—and others like it around the world—had been created in 1979 to help the Presiding Bishopric’s Office with such tasks as distributing Church curriculum, maintaining Church properties, and purchasing sites for new meetinghouses.
The Allreds arrived in Guatemala City at the start of the school year. They enrolled their children in an English-language school with local and international students. On Sundays, the family attended a large Spanish-speaking ward in the city.
When Silvia was a missionary in the 1960s, there were about eleven thousand Church members and no stakes in Central America. She had spent much of her time serving in small, struggling branches where missionaries provided most of the leadership. Although Guatemalans spoke many languages and dialects, she and the other missionaries had taught exclusively in Spanish.
Since then, Church membership had exploded across Latin America. By 1980, Guatemala alone had five stakes, about eighteen thousand Church members, and strong local leadership. The neighboring countries of El Salvador, Costa Rica, Honduras, and Panama also had stakes of their own. And almost a thousand women and men from Central America were now serving full-time missions.
But with this growth had come the need for changes. More and more Indigenous people were joining the Church in Central America, and many of them did not speak Spanish. Other converts also needed help learning and understanding the teachings of the restored gospel.
To meet these needs, the Church had approved the translation of portions of the Book of Mormon into local Indigenous languages—K’iche’, Q’eqchi’, Kaqchikel, and Mam. New converts could also study Gospel Principles, a simple, easy-to-read Sunday School manual the Church had recently produced to teach basic truths to members everywhere.
Greater growth had also required adjustments to how Latter-day Saints around the world met together each week. For half a century, the Church had held Sunday School, priesthood, and sacrament meetings at different times on the Sabbath, with Primary, Relief Society, and youth meetings on weekdays. But Saints who lived far from their meetinghouses and did not have cars or access to public transportation often found this schedule challenging.
Recently, apostle Boyd K. Packer had come to Guatemala and dedicated nine small meetinghouses in the nation’s highlands. These meetinghouses greatly reduced the travel time for many Church members, and Jeff recommended building more of them throughout rural Central America. Mission leaders in the Guatemalan highlands had also implemented a meeting schedule that let rural Saints meet only once during the week. Under the new plan, Primary children met together while men and women held their own meetings. Saints of all ages then met together for sacrament meeting.
Silvia and Jeff’s ward in Guatemala City followed the traditional meeting schedule. But in 1980, just as the Allreds were settling into their new home, the First Presidency announced a Churchwide meeting schedule much like the one used in rural Guatemala. Instead of holding meetings at different times during the week, all wards and branches would now meet on Sundays for a three-hour block of meetings.
In congregations where this schedule had been tested, Church attendance had improved, and Saints had more time to teach and study the gospel at home. Church leaders hoped the same thing would happen now throughout the world. They encouraged families to spend the Sabbath day together and make their home a place where everyone could find love, encouragement, support, and appreciation. With oil costs rising across the globe, Church leaders also hoped the new schedule would allow the Saints to conserve fuel and save on transportation costs.
Silvia could see the wisdom of having a meeting schedule that worked for Saints anywhere in the world. Her daughters would be able to attend Young Women classes on Sunday when they became teenagers, and Jeff and their sons would not have to get up as early to attend morning priesthood meetings.
Still, the new schedule would take some getting used to.
On April 6, 1980, apostle Gordon B. Hinckley awoke to a beautiful Easter morning. It was the 150th anniversary of the Church. He and President Spencer W. Kimball had come to Fayette, New York, to broadcast part of general conference from the Peter and Mary Whitmer farm, where the Saints had held their first meeting in 1830.
The Church had much to celebrate on its sesquicentennial. The restored gospel of Jesus Christ had spread to eighty-one countries—nearly half the nations of the world—bringing purpose, hope, and healing to people who had long yearned for its message. The number of temples was on the rise, with new houses of the Lord announced or under construction in Argentina, Australia, Chile, Japan, Mexico, Samoa, Tahiti, Tonga, and the United States. And thanks to the faithful payment of tithes, coupled with wise financial investments, the Church was building hundreds of new meetinghouses each year. Although local Saints continued to pay a small percentage for these buildings, the Church no longer called labor missionaries to do the construction.
Yet Elder Hinckley knew the Church still faced significant opposition. In many places around the world, congregations struggled to retain new members, and Elder Hinckley estimated that half of the Church’s 4.5 million members were not practicing their faith. There were also people who viewed the Church’s rapid worldwide growth, financial security, and distinctive teachings as threats to mainstream Christianity, leading critics to produce pamphlets, books, and films attacking the Latter-day Saints.
Other people objected when the First Presidency spoke on current political issues, claiming it was inappropriate for the Church to do so publicly. In response to criticism of the Church’s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, Elder Hinckley had recently drafted a major Church statement on the subject. Published in February 1980, the statement expressed support for the equal rights of women, reiterated the First Presidency’s concerns about the ERA, and affirmed the Church’s right to speak on moral issues.
Having studied Church history, Elder Hinckley knew the Saints experienced cycles of good times and bad. Through it all, the Church had grown stronger. “So it will be in the future,” he had recently reminded his fellow apostles. “The Church shall grow and prosper and enlarge in a marvelous and wonderful way.”
The Church had never broadcast general conference from two locations before, so Elder Hinckley arrived at the Whitmer farm two hours early to make sure everything was in order.
Under his direction, the Church had recently built a historic log home and a modern meetinghouse on the Whitmer property. He and President Kimball planned to address the Saints from inside the home. If everything worked as planned, a large satellite dish on the site would transmit the proceedings in real time to the Salt Lake Tabernacle and chapels around the world.
After inspecting the home, Elder Hinckley and President Kimball rehearsed their talks. Knowing the prophet was still recovering from his recent surgeries, Elder Hinckley wondered if he had the strength to deliver his remarks. The day before, President Kimball had looked and sounded tired as he opened the conference in the Tabernacle. Now, as he rehearsed his talk, he continued to speak with difficulty.
It pained Elder Hinckley to see the prophet struggle. Recently, the Church had implemented a new policy whereby older members of the First Quorum of the Seventy retired from active duty. Church presidents and apostles continued to serve to the end of their lives, however, and they sometimes experienced health problems that made it difficult to be out among the Saints. At such times, the counselors in the First Presidency usually did more to assist the president. Sadly, President Kimball’s counselors, N. Eldon Tanner and Marion G. Romney, were in poor health as well, and they could not always give the prophet all the support he needed.
The broadcast started at noon. In the Whitmer cabin, Elder Hinckley and President Kimball watched a television feed of President Tanner opening the conference session in the Tabernacle. After a prayer and hymns by the choir, President Kimball stood, and the feed switched to a shot of him in the log home, welcoming the Saints.
“Standing here today,” he said, “we review in our minds the mighty faith and works of those who, from this humble beginning, gave so much to help move the Church to its present wondrous stature; and more importantly, we behold through the eye of faith a vision of its sure and glorious future.”
As Elder Hinckley watched, he felt like he had seen a miracle. President Kimball was speaking without any difficulty!
When the prophet finished his talk, Elder Hinckley presented a special proclamation from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
“The mission of the Church today, as it has been from the beginning, is to teach the gospel of Christ to all the world,” he declared. “It is our obligation, therefore, to teach faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to plead with the people of the earth for individual repentance, to administer the sacred ordinances of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.”
Elder Hinckley felt the Spirit powerfully as he read the proclamation. “We contemplate humbly and gratefully the sacrifices of those who have gone before us,” he said. “We are resolved to build on that heritage for the blessing and benefit of those who follow.”
Shortly after the Church adopted the consolidated meeting schedule, Silvia Allred’s bishop in Guatemala City asked to meet with her. “The sisters in the Primary are having great difficulty in implementing the new program,” he said.
Since Primary was now held at the same time as adult classes, Primary teachers had to miss the Sunday School, Relief Society, and priesthood meetings they had long enjoyed. Primary now lasted twice as long as it did before, and managing energetic children for that long could be exhausting.
“The sisters don’t know what to do with two hours of Primary,” the bishop explained, “so they are just taking the children to the garden to play.” The bishop wanted the Primary leaders to follow the new program precisely. “You can help us do this,” he told Silvia.
In Primary, Silvia found the biggest challenge to be “sharing time,” when the children all met together to learn more about living the gospel of Jesus Christ. Silvia worked with the Primary leaders to include music, visual aids, and playacting in their lessons. And before long, the children loved to participate. In one gospel-themed activity, they put together a big puzzle. In another, they sang louder or softer whenever a leader raised or lowered the temperature on a make-believe thermometer. The children also acted out scripture stories, like Jesus’s parable of the good Samaritan.
Silvia’s time in Primary was short-lived, though. While visiting Salt Lake City in April 1980, she and Jeff learned that the First Presidency planned to move the Central American headquarters of the temporal affairs office out of Guatemala. For more than two decades, the country had been enmeshed in civil war, and rebel groups were gaining strength.
Although Silvia and Jeff had been mindful of the conflict since moving to Guatemala, their family had carried out a normal routine, attending church and school, shopping, and going on family outings without much concern.
Still, one month after the Allreds returned from Utah, the Church moved the temporal affairs office to San José, Costa Rica. The relocation would not be ideal for Jeff, whose work projects were mainly in Guatemala and El Salvador. And Silvia had mixed feelings about moving back to Costa Rica. She and her family had lived in Guatemala for less than a year, and Silvia liked being part of the Church’s great growth in the country. She had especially enjoyed watching young Guatemalan men and women saving money for missions and growing spiritually in their youth and seminary classes.
In July 1980, just before the family moved away, their ward threw them a small farewell party. Though the people of Guatemala faced ongoing trials, the Allreds knew the Saints there would continue to thrive. The civil war was not interfering with Church meetings, and no mission leaders or missionaries were being removed from the country.
Despite their sadness, the Allreds were willing to go where the Lord directed, and no matter where they were, they were excited to help build His kingdom.
At the time the Allreds moved to Costa Rica, twenty-year-old Olga Kovářová was studying physical education at a university in Brno, Czechoslovakia. In one of her classes, she learned about yoga and its benefits on the mind and body. Fascinated, she wanted to learn more.
One day, a classmate told her about a local yoga instructor, Otakar Vojkůvka. Olga agreed to go with her to meet him.
Otakar was a small, elderly man, and he smiled as he answered the door. Olga felt an instant connection to him. During the visit, he asked her and her friend if they were happy.
“We don’t know,” they replied honestly.
Otakar told them about the trials he’d faced in life. In the 1940s, he had run a profitable factory. But after a Soviet-influenced government gained power in Czechoslovakia, the state seized the factory and sent Otakar to a prison camp, leaving his wife, Terezie Vojkůvková, to raise their two children alone for a time. Terezie had since died, and Otakar now lived with his son, Gád, and his family.
As Olga listened to Otakar’s story, she was astonished. Most people she knew in her country were cheerless and cynical. She wondered how Otakar could be so happy after experiencing so many hard things.
Olga soon visited Otakar again. This time Gád was there too. “So,” he said, “you are interested in yoga?”
“I don’t know anything about yoga,” Olga said, “but I would like to learn because you all seem to be so happy. I assume it’s because of yoga.”
They began discussing spirituality and the purpose of life. “God sent us to earth to sow joy, life, and love into souls,” Otakar told her.
Growing up in an atheistic society, Olga had never given God or the purpose of life much thought. Her ancestors had been Protestants, though, and now she found that she had many questions about religion. Unlike her professors and schoolmates, who discouraged interest in religion, Otakar took her questions seriously and lent her books on the subject.
As Olga studied, she longed to find more purpose in life. She continued meeting with Otakar, growing happier as he taught her about his beliefs. He talked more about his Christian faith and his devotion to God. And the more Olga learned, the more she yearned for a spiritual community.
One day, Otakar recommended that she read a book by Elder John A. Widtsoe about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After her reading, she told Otakar she was fascinated by the Saints. “Could you give me the address of a Czech Mormon?” she asked.
“You don’t need any address,” Otakar said. “You are in the home of one of them.”
Otakar had been baptized shortly before World War II and was one of the earliest Church members in Czechoslovakia. In 1950, when the Czechoslovak government forced all foreign Latter-day Saint missionaries to leave the country, he and some 245 Church members had continued to practice their faith, worshipping together in private homes in Prague, Plzeň, and Brno.
As Olga learned more, she borrowed a Book of Mormon from Otakar. When she read the words of Lehi, “Men are that they might have joy,” she felt as though she had discovered a lost truth. Love and light seemed to flood every cell in her body. She knew, without a doubt, that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ lived. She felt Their love for her and for all people everywhere.
For the first time in her life, she knelt in prayer and poured out her gratitude to God. And in the morning, she went to Otakar’s apartment and asked, “Is there any way I can start my life like a new person?”
“Yes, there is,” he said. He opened his Bible and showed her Jesus’s teachings about baptism.
“What does it mean to enter the kingdom of God?” she asked.
“To become Christ’s disciple,” he said. He then explained that she would need to be baptized and keep God’s commandments. He told her about some lessons she’d need to receive first and invited her to visit his home the next Sunday for a gathering of Saints. Olga happily accepted.
They met in a room on the upper floor of Otakar’s apartment. A few sofas offered seating for the small group, and the blinds were pulled down to prevent neighbors who were wary of religion from seeing inside. Looking around, Olga was surprised to find that the seven members were the age of her parents and grandparents.
“Is this Church meant for old people only?” she wondered. “What am I doing here?”