Isaiah wrote that in the latter days, God would work a mighty work, "even a marvellous work and a wonder" which would confound the wisdom of the wise and put to flight the understanding of the prudent. (Isaiah 29: 14)
As part of the collective marvel and wonder of the latter-day Restoration of the fullness of the Gospel, which brings untold blessings to all of the human family, I want to share another work and wonder fashioned by the Father of us all—though more narrow, no less wondrous or marvelous to consider.
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The story I'll tell begins in 1898, in a small town north of Rome. It was here, at a place called Fabriano that a boy was born. His name: Enrico Mengarelli.
As a child, Enrico attended parochial schools operated by the church which dominated his homeland. One day, a classmate was late for school. Sitting farther back in the room, Enrico and a friend of his laughed at a joke one of them made about the tardy pupil. Their teacher, a priest of the sect, overheard the fun they were making out of the girl, and didn't take kindly to their irreverent sense of humor.
The teacher marched both boys outside and, taking a tree branch in hand, beat them severely. During the beating, Enrico's back was broken.
After this encounter, and for the rest of his life, he wanted nothing to do with the church that sponsored his school.
At the age of fourteen, Enrico immigrated to America. This was October of 1912, during a war between Italy and the Ottoman Empire. He made his way to join relatives in southeastern Kansas, where he would live out the rest of his days mining coal and farming.
There he met and married a fellow Italian immigrant girl and established a family with her, welcoming three children.
A few decades passed in peaceful enjoyment of his American dream being realized through dedicated work and devotion to his family.
Both of his sons answered the call to serve during the Second World War. The younger, Johnny, served as a sailor in the navy. The older, Augustine, returned to Europe as a soldier in the army. He first set his foot upon the beach at Normandy, France in June 1944, on D-Day.
Augustine served as a combat medic, making his way through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, and into Germany.
At a certain point during this great crusade, he was alone, and terrified at facing the real possibility of losing his life, leaving his wife and young son to the care of others.
How could he adequately communicate his love for them? How could he ensure that all would be well with them?
He was then making a painful physical and mental journey from the peaceful comfort of home and family, out into a hostile war, where his life could easily meet a violent end.
But how could he make the spiritual journey back from this dark solitude and the ravishing rage of the present to a future state of sublime security?
He had summoned all the strength he could scrape from his own scant supply.
Having reached the extent of what was available inward, he reached upward.
He prayed, as best he knew how.
His prayer followed the pattern of a typical expression of longing, common among the fighting men of this war who have been in similar circumstances.
He asked that he be allowed to survive the war and return home to his family. He promised God that if He protected him through the dangerous days ahead, he would take his family to church every week and work to teach them the Gospel.
In response to his prayer—by his own account—the heavens were opened to him, and he received a personal visitation by a heavenly being.
In this clear vision, he saw and heard the risen Lord, Jesus Christ.
He was told that he would survive the war and safely return to his earthly family.
Into that damp foxhole—digged to provide protection from piercing projectiles—the light of God descended, driving away darkness and dispelling doubt. That light penetrated to the very soul and caused a heart to brightly burn.
Apparently, his humble offering was acceptable to the Lord.
He moved on through the rest of the war, satisfied that his life would have meaning and purpose, in addition to being extended beyond an untimely, wartime end.
His life was changed, and he would change the lives of others.
He would go on to raise a family with six children, and establish himself at the head of a new family culture that embraced a tradition of religious fervor built on openness, and a direct desire for divine direction.
Unlike some others who make such a promise at such a time, Augustine kept his word.
He led his family every Sunday to worship at their cozy community church.
He could reach his arms all the way down the pew to any of the mischievous among his brood, calling their attention back to the service with a quick thump on the top of the head. Clear expectations were kept, but there were certainly no tree branches to be found in his methods for religious training!
As they grew, the family would file off, then regroup to compose their own "ecumenical council" of sorts. Each sibling would find themself persuaded differently in matters of faith, and would contribute opposing views to the table. Not all opposition was adversarial, but there certainly was a lot of lively discussion on a wide range of topics!
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Our story continues through this generation with the third of those six kids, born to Augustine.
Her name, Cleo, was given after her mother. Though, throughout her life she went by her middle name: Roselle.
Driven by a feeling of need to get her life straight with the Lord, Roselle embarked on a journey into the wilderness to find herself, and to find God.
This journey took her to Arizona after college, where she taught at a small boarding school among the Navajo people.
A short time after arriving there she encountered young missionaries who introduced her to the Book of Mormon. They taught her to read the Book and seek answers to questions among its pages.
Like some others, these missionaries weren't above using a little guile in guiding her (See Alma 18: 22-23). When she asked why she was required to refer to them as "Elder Stone" and "Elder Mumford" instead of calling them by their first names, she was told to read the Book of Mormon to find the answer.
Nowhere in the Book of Mormon does it answer this question!
She read the whole Book, though not in vain.
She found exactly what she was seeking, even if it wasn't what she was looking for at the time.
These young men were her peers, though spiritually on a different track and pace. Their spiritual soberness didn't entirely cloak them from Roselle's piercing eye. Their positions as official ministers didn't preclude their potential as interesting romantic prospects—their sacred prophetic priesthood callings notwithstanding!
The frustrating, flirtatious exchanges about first names only opened the way for sincerity to surface.
Her bigger question was about the light she saw in them. These missionaries seemed to glow with a warm radiance that indicated something deeper than only good looks.
Roselle decided they had something that she didn't have. She wanted to know what it was, and how she could have it also. This she privately pondered, and took to the Lord Himself in prayer as she read the Book of Mormon.
Over a process of learning the truths contained in the Book of Mormon, she grew gradually in light and truth—and in readiness—until a momentous explosion of light burst upon her.
The answer didn't come as she was sitting on the canyon rim where she often retired for reading, pondering and prayer. It came after she had clearly outlined her petition to God, and had decided to press on, going about her normal daily activities while trusting in Him.
She described it as something like a bolt of lightning, where she instantly knew in a moment of crystal clarity that she too could have what those missionaries had.
If she took up the Savior's invitation to follow Him through baptismal water at the hands of a divinely authorized priest, she could have all the light they had shone.
She took those steps down into the water, and spiritually saw it "part," perhaps as miraculously as did the children of Israel crossing the Jordan to enter the promised land—indeed the very water Jesus was laid under at the hands of John (Joshua, chapters 3 & 4).
(This parting of the water for her was not literal. She suffered lifelong terror at the thought of putting her face in water, but at the one critical moment in her life requiring total immersion, she felt no fear.)
The night before her baptism, Roselle was visited by several dark spirits, seeking to dissuade her from her decision by intimidation. She pressed on, trusting in the earlier revelation showing her the clear path to peace and safety.
Thankfully for those that come later in this story, she carried out her design to walk after the Savior more closely.
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Around the same time Roselle was taking steps to bring herself out of obscurity and into the light, another important figure was making progress on a parallel track in a different place.
This man was named Dwight, after the supreme commander of allied forces during the invasion of Normandy at D-Day.
His life had put him on a track to include military service, continuing the tradition of his father during the Second World War, his great grandfather in the American Civil War, and two of his fourth great grandfathers, who served during the American Revolution.
Dwight's military service culminated in an encounter that settled his own yearnings for meaning and spiritual safety.
While in a barracks, he caught sight of a peculiar sort of clothing kept by a fellow soldier, Ted.
Dwight asked Ted what the clothing was for. Ted replied that it had to do with his religion and priesthood, and which he had received in a Temple of God.
The idea of priesthood garments worn under the regular military clothing intrigued Dwight.
He had become acquainted with some aspects of priestly practice through his association with fraternal orders. The idea of a formal church that claimed to exercise priesthood functions including investments of sacred clothing during temple rituals was worthy of further review.
He asked more questions, and got more answers.
He learned about God's priesthood—its restoration by heavenly messengers, its intended effects, attendant blessings, and prescribed forms and rituals. This new knowledge supplanted the incomplete picture conveyed through a centuries-old reliance on Freemasonry and other remnants.
In clear and simple terms, he learned about the plan of salvation, answering lingering questions about the purpose of life: What happened before we were born? Who are we? Why are we here on Earth? Where are we going after we die?
He met with missionaries and received baptism at the hands of authorized servants of the Lord.
He was ordained to the priesthood, and began to enjoy its fuller blessings, of which he had only known a blurry type and shadow by earlier associations and ceremonies.
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After independent journeys in search of fuller spiritual lives, these two paths crossed, and combined.
Roselle met Dwight in a Kansas hay field.
They married and established a new family, of which I am their third child.
I can't express the full gratefulness I feel for the "marvelous work and wonder" that God has been carefully crafting in my family. Over years and generations, He has been cultivating and tending, pulling and purging, planting and pruning. He designs to bring about a rich harvest of fruit, to which I am now striving to contribute.
My efforts to bring to pass immortality and eternal life for my own family through the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be met with more joy than I have yet experienced, and are the result of a long tradition of family devotion and sacrifice, evident to me in the storied chronicles of my ancestors. They have provided me a strong foundation for continuing to build ever higher.
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If I am guilty of being a little too distant as the generations widen in my branching family tree, it is not intended to cause discord among my relatives.
I'm not forgetting or burying the traditions of the past, any more than building upon a foundation conceals it from easy viewing. I am carrying on the traditions of my progenitors in the realest sense—by continuing to grow and expand into the family that God intends.
I am not erasing their influence, but rather honoring those who have come before me—those who, in their own time, have likewise pioneered positive changes for themselves and for future generations.
By venturing farther out into an increasingly expansive sphere, I am not diminishing their importance, but am actually magnifying it.
As Whitman penned,
"The powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
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The Lord works over generations to bring about His purposes. His work within families spans and spills, spreads and secures. Sometimes it seethes, but always in the end it soothes.
He is patient. The unfolding of His plans might appear slow to us, due to our narrow perspective, which is sometimes wholly saturated with our day-to-day concerns—the "here and now" of our frenetic, even flittering and frail existence, which to Him passes in a flash.
No matter how short the interval of time during an individual life, the changes that can be wrought and the bonds to be forged can solidify in a miraculous moment, sending powerful connections between heaven and earth, of immediate import, as well as establishing expectations of eternal consequence.
Like bridges of iron, they may bend and sway in a stiff wind. But they don't easily break or burn.
His magnificent promise is that He will always reach down to lift us by covenant, as soon as we are willing and ready to accept His help.
He honors those who desire to live according to righteous covenants. He magnifies their efforts by providing ways for their truest desires to find fulfillment. Those who put their trust in Him are not neglected or turned away because of their particular circumstances of religious or social affiliation. Any and all who repent and serve God are given the opportunity of the full blessings made available to the children of God,
"For thus saith the Lord—I, the Lord, am merciful and gracious unto those who fear me, and delight to honor those who serve me in righteousness and in truth unto the end."
Doc. & Cov. 76: 5 (See also Exodus 20: 5-6; 2 Nephi 26: 23-33)
Psalm 128
See also:
Mark 10: 29-30
Luke 9: 57-62
Luke 14: 26-33