It is of the Savior’s mercy that I wish to speak. Almost as if the veil parted, I sensed a coming day when I would embrace the Savior and with tears of thanksgiving and love say, “Thank you for extending me mercy.” It was a tender moment, and both of us shed many tears of gratitude. “Thank you for extending me mercy,” he whispered as his whole body shook with weeping. He completed his mission and accompanied us to the temple before he flew home.Īs he came into the celestial room, I greeted him with the customary “I love you.” Tears streamed down his face. He wasn’t an all-star, but now he had made it. Yet I could see some of me in him, and I wanted him to succeed. Perhaps it would have been easier to have just sent him home. And the cycle of rebuke, repentance, recommitment, and relapse would start all over again.
His renewed commitment seldom lasted very long, however. Yet he would always promise me that he would try harder. On more than one occasion, I told him that I was going to send him home. In fact, many of the gray hairs that came after I was called as mission president can be attributed to him. One elder in particular had given me more than his share of grief. (Perhaps Elder Uchtdorf had the same feelings about me!)
I must admit, however, that it was easier to express those sentiments to some missionaries than it was to others. Elder Uchtdorf’s expression of love at that moment was a monumentally transforming event for me, and I wanted my missionaries to feel something akin to what I felt from him. It was a critical turning point of our mission-a time when I felt totally overwhelmed and inadequate. Uchtdorf, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, at an area mission presidents’ seminar at the first of our mission. I had been the beneficiary of just such a hug and tender expressions by Elder Dieter F. It became my practice to greet each elder and sister as they entered the celestial room with a big hug and a whispered expression of my love and appreciation for their service and commitment. While presiding over the Illinois Peoria Mission, my wife and I had the privilege of taking every group of departing missionaries on their last day in the mission field to the Nauvoo Temple for an endowment session.