“Earth’s Crammed with Heaven” | LeGrand Richards | October 1977

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Elder LeGrand Richards, author of A Marvelous Work and a Wonder, shares some reminiscences from his many years in missionary work for the Church.

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"I greet all of you wonderful students and your teachers here this morning and tell you how proud I am of all of you and of this great institution and of your desire to be here for what this institution can offer to you. I appreciate the music and I appreciate that lovely prayer by Brother Ricks; I need it badly. So I pray the Lord will bless me while I stand here this morning.

In trying to think what I might say to you that would be of most interest, I decided that I would not preach doctrine to you. (I could do that–if you do not believe it, read A Marvelous Work and a Wonder and Israel! Do You Know?) I imagine that I might be the oldest person here this morning (there could be others, but I doubt that), so I figure that I have seen more things during my period of mortality than any of you have. You know that it is a habit of old people to reminisce–I thought that first I would tell you a few things out of ancient history; and then, with all these missionaries over here, I might end up with some missionary stories.

First, you have already been told by President Oaks that I am the oldest living General Authority. I want to tell you that I have known all of the General Authorities of this Church since the days of Wilford Woodruff, and I think I have heard all these Brethren preach. That is a good many General Authorities when you count all the members of the Twelve that there have been, and all the presidents of the Church. My father raised us in the country, out in Tooele, and there never passed a conference after we were old enough to sit still when he did not bring his boys–three of us–in to attend the general conferences. Of course, we did not have automobiles in those days, nor paved roads; but with the old white-top and our team we would drive in. My father wanted his boys to know all of the General Authorities of the Church, so he wanted us to attend all the conferences so we could hear them speak.

I was in the Salt Lake Tabernacle when Wilford Woodruff delivered what I think was the last talk he gave before he died, that in which he told how marvelously the Spirit of the Lord had guided and directed him through the years of his life. It has been over eighty years ago, but I can remember to this day some of the things that he spoke in that conference. I am going to mention a couple of them; you have heard them, but I heard him give them.

While he was traveling with his wife in the South, once in the middle of the night the Spirit said, “Get up and move your team and wagon.” He got up out of his wagon and moved his team from where it was tied to an oak–then along came a twister and picked that oak up and threw it right where his wagon had been standing. That oak had stood a hundred years, and yet while he was in his wagon that night a twister came and picked it up. And I can hear Brother Woodruff saying, “If I hadn’t listened to the Spirit of the Lord, it might have cost us our lives.” Then he told, in that same conference, about bringing a group of converts from Great Britain. They landed down in New Orleans and he was negotiating with a captain there to take them up the river to St. Louis, where they had arranged to cross the plains to these valleys of the mountains. And, he said, while he was negotiating, something said, “Don’t go on that boat, neither you nor your people.” So he thanked the captain and they did not embark. That boat had no more than sailed up the river when it caught fire and burned, and not a soul on it was saved. And I can hear President Woodruff as he stood there, all these eighty years ago, saying, “If I hadn’t listened to the promptings of the spirit of the Lord, we wouldn’t have had Brother So-and-so [naming one of the good Brethren] and Brother So-and-so”—another of the good Brethren who was with him in that group he brought from Europe."
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