Preparing the Way

By now, I hope you see that the Lord’s tender mercies not only come in many different ways, but they are given for many different purposes as well. Sometimes, they come simply as a way to move the Lord’s work forward. The following is a powerful example of a divine signature that did just that.

In 1996, LeGrand Black and his wife, Marcia, of Blanding, Utah, led a group of Church Educational System administrators and their wives on a trip to the Hole in the Rock. Lynn and I were privileged to be part of that trip.

LeGrand and Marcia were the ones who first introduced me to the story of these incredible pioneers and the divine signatures they experienced on their arduous journey. Their love for those early pioneers was influential in my writing the story of the San Juan Mission.¹

One day, a few months ago, I was explaining the concept of divine signatures to a group where LeGrand was present. Afterward, he shared an experience from his life that illustrated how the Lord can move the work forward by a simple, but divine, intervention. At my request, LeGrand has agreed to share his story here. I am grateful to him for doing so. I am grateful to him and Marcia for providing me with another defining experience as we crossed the red rock country of Southern Utah.

The Lord’s Hand in Lithuania

My vocation throughout my life has been teaching for the Church Educational System (CES) as a seminary and institute teacher. In 1999, this career was interrupted for a few years by a wonderful opportunity to work for the Scripture Translation Department of the Church.

Jim Berlin, a former seminary teacher and personal friend, recommended me for the translation job. I remember Jim saying that one of the main differences I would notice between working in CES and in the Translation Department is that in CES the Lord honors agency, while in Translation no person or thing is allowed to stand in the way.

“When the time comes for a people to receive their first edition of the Book of Mormon you will see the Lord work miracles on a daily basis,” Jim said. I thought maybe he was being a little facetious, but I soon learned firsthand what he meant.

After my initial training, I was assigned as the project manager for various languages in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. One of those projects was to translate the first Lithuanian edition of the Book of Mormon.

Nephi prophesied: “And I would, my brethren, that ye should know that all the kindreds of the earth cannot be blessed unless he shall make bare his arm in the eyes of the nations. Wherefore, the Lord God will proceed to make bare his arm in the eyes of all the nations, in bringing about his covenants and his gospel unto those who are of the house of Israel” (1 Nephi 22:10–11).

The small Baltic nation of Lithuania witnessed the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to move His work forward with great power. One privilege of working in translation is observing how the Lord raises up a “plowboy” in every land. One soon sees the Lord’s arm in the translator’s preparation. In Lithuania, the Lord’s “plowboy” raised up to translate their scriptures was Genadijus Motiejunas.

Genadijus Motiejunas was born in Kaunas, Lithuania. A modified passage from the Prophet Joseph’s life perfectly describes Genadijus: “Some time in the second year of our [liberation from the Soviet Union], there was in the place where we lived an unusual excitement on the subject of religion. . . . During this time of great excitement my mind was called up to serious reflection and great uneasiness” (Joseph Smith–History 1:5, 8).

Genadijus joined with the Baptists and became obsessed with the study of the scriptures. He was a very devout and charitable man and soon became one of the respected leaders of the Baptist Church in Kaunas, Lithuania. Together with other ministers, Genadijus made a promise never to speak with representatives or read the scriptures of a new, suspicious sect in Lithuania called “the Mormons.”

At this time, the leaders of the Baptist Church desired to write a declaration of beliefs for their membership, and Genadijus was invited to join the effort. After several weeks spent composing their “articles of faith,” Genadijus became uneasy that the drafters were interpreting the scriptures too narrowly. He recommended that the scriptures be allowed to stand on their own stated doctrines without undue human meddling or interpretation.

His recommendations were ignored, so Genadijus made his worries a matter of prayer. He felt inspired to persist with his objections. When he again voiced his disapproval of their work, he was dismissed from the Baptist Church and his job—not because he dared to disagree, but because he claimed to have received inspiration from God on the matter. His peers firmly reminded him that personal revelation had ceased with the original Church of Christ.

Genadijus became depressed. He poured out his heart to the Lord. He felt he had been prompted to devote his life to bringing souls to Christ but was now separated from the vehicle that allowed him to accomplish that work.

A very short time later, two LDS missionaries, Sisters Cristal Hammaker and Heather Baer knocked on his door. Genadijus was initially repulsed as he saw the Book of Mormon the sisters were carrying. The very book so feared by his brethren! He was reluctant to hear the sisters or accept any literature from them and sent the missionaries on their way.

After the sisters left the apartment, Genadijus’s wife, Alfreda, voiced her disappointment about not having the Book of Mormon to read as she had recently been overtaken with a curiosity about the ancient inhabitants of the Americas. Alfreda wanted to examine the book for herself.

Then a thought flickered in Genadijus’s mind: “My recent separation from the Baptist Church has freed me from my promise to never touch this strange book.” Morally, he could now at least hold the Book of Mormon. Alfreda quickly sent her husband in pursuit of the departing missionaries.

As he and his wife read the book, their faith and testimony of this work grew with every verse. He read the Book of Mormon in a month, and then he started reading the Doctrine and Covenants. What he read answered so many of the questions he had been struggling with. Eventually both Genadijus and Alfreda were baptized into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

When I made my first trip to Lithuania I was very nervous about gaining the trust and confidence of our new native translator. Many in this recently liberated Soviet State were reluctant to open up to outsiders or talk freely, especially about matters of religion. It seemed to me that a “bond of brotherhood” would be critical to accomplishing the work of scripture translation, the most spiritually intense work of the Restoration. On that first flight, I prayed all the way across the ocean that the Lord would prepare a way for me to develop this bond of brotherhood.

When I first met with Genadijus and his dear wife in their home, I asked them to relate their conversion story. With great enthusiasm they brought out a large photo album of their “angels,” as they called the two sister missionaries who met their family and taught them the gospel. What a surprise it was for me when I looked at the photographs and recognized both of the sister missionaries!

I practically shouted, “I know these sisters! I taught Sister Heather Baer in seminary in Kennewick, Washington. Later, I taught Sister Cristal Hammaker in institute classes in Price, Utah.”

Genadijus gazed at me in wonder. “You are the teacher of my angels?” he whispered. “Then you may be my teacher.”

This “coincidence” makes one ponder the intricate planning of “Heaven’s Correlation Committee.” Two of my former students, one from Washington and the other from Utah, were both called to serve in Lithuania. Both traveled halfway around the world to serve as missionary companions in Kaunas, where very few of the missionaries in Lithuania served. They were led to the Motiejunas apartment, one of literally tens of thousands of apartments in the area. And, of course, the timing of their visit had to be perfect. Still bound to his oath never to open the Book of Mormon, Genadijus, would have curtly dismissed the missionaries only days earlier.

Because I knew and had taught the “angels” who introduced Genadijus to the gospel, an instant bond of trust and friendship was forged. This relationship was a powerful blessing as we worked on the translation project together. The Lithuanian Book of Mormon was published in December 2000, a remarkably short time for a first edition Book of Mormon. Genadijus eventually translated into Lithuanian the very Book of Mormon he once vowed never to touch!

I’m not a mathematician, but if I were, I’d love to try to calculate the mathematical probability of having all the necessary elements come together exactly the way they did and at exactly the right time to make this happen. With more than three hundred missions in the world and about fifty thousand missionaries at that time, what are the chances that two girls from different states, who both had been taught by Brother Black, would end up in the same mission, let alone as companions? Those odds must surely be astronomically huge.

“He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep” (Psalm 121:4).

Notes

^1. This is a historical novel I wrote titled The Undaunted: The Miracle of the Hole-in-the-Rock Pioneers (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2009).