The Wyoming Cowboy

I am going to [tell you a] story, quickly, about a young man who was called into the mission field. He felt inadequate for the call—his grammar was poor, he did not know how to talk to people, and he felt that he could not carry out his mission. The reason he had this inferiority complex was because he had to quit school when he was 15 years of age because his father passed away. This boy became the family breadwinner—he had to take over the ranch in Wyoming. The bishop assured him, however, that his place was in the mission field now that he was nineteen.

So into the mission field he traveled, half-way around the world, and there on his very first day he was told that Sister Johnson was having the missionaries for dinner, which was the custom of that mission. On the first day they went to her home and tasted the food of that land and learned something of the customs. Sister Johnson’s husband was not a member of the Church. He knew the scriptures very, very well—he knew everything that a Mormon missionary did not know on his first day in the mission field. After dinner he would get these missionaries in a corner. He would try to embarrass them, and he found great delight in doing so. More often than not the missionaries went home determined that was not going to happen to them again, so they set their alarm clocks up thirty minutes earlier in order that they might get some extra studying in.

But here comes our young cowboy from Wyoming, feeling inadequate in his calling. Mr. Johnson was in the corner with him after dinner, and the missionary was embarrassed till tears came to his eyes. The thought came into his heart, “I will go to my mission president in the morning and tell him that I must be released. I have come into the mission field unprepared.” Just then something lifted him right out of his chair, and he stood up to his full six-foot-four-inches of Wyoming cowboy. He reached over and took Mr. Johnson by the shoulders, and he pulled him in real close. He said, “Now, Mr. Johnson, I do not know how to argue these things with you. I do not know how to debate with you. I have not had a lot of schooling, but I know why I had to come half-way around the world. If you will just stand here for four or five minutes, I am going to tell you about it.” Mr. Johnson had no choice. The young elder from Wyoming then had a captive audience. Then, for the next five or six minutes, this young cowboy from Wyoming told the man the Joseph Smith story—the story that rang true in his heart. He had been taught the story at the knee of his mother. He used to read the story as he rode the range. He loved it and he knew that it was true, and so he told it to Mr. Johnson with all of the sincerity of his heart. After five or six minutes had gone by, there were tears in other eyes.

To make a long story short, there was a baptism about four or five weeks later. I think you know who was baptized and who did the baptizing. Mr. Johnson had heard the Joseph Smith story from every missionary who had ever been in his home—some who had been all of the way through college, some who had their gifts developed; but never had he heard it with the gift of the Spirit of God like he heard it from the unschooled lips of a cowboy from Wyoming on that wonderful day. He was listening to something beyond the words that were traveling from lip to ear. There was something from the heart of this young missionary into his heart—bearing witness to him, “This young man is telling me the truth. Poorly as he is telling it, poor as his grammar is, I know that it is true because God is revealing it to me.” And he joined this great church. (Robert L. Simpson, “Gifts of the Spirit,” in Outstanding Stories by General Authorities, comp. Leon R. Hartshorn [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1970–73], 1:179–180)

The words of Alma, and also the words of Amulek, which were declared unto the people who were in the land of Ammonihah. And also they are cast into prison, and delivered by the miraculous power of God which was in them, according to the record of Alma. [Note: This preamble was included in the original edition of the Book of Mormon published in 1830.]