August, and the Book of Mormon

August. The month makes me think of hot sunshine, weary air conditioners, lemonade cravings, cold backyard pools, premature back to school anxiety—and an urgent desire to read the Book of Mormon.

Weird, I know, and a very strange end-of-summer tradition. It all started four years ago. I was eighteen and was getting ready to start my freshman year at BYU. School started on August 30th that year. During June, July, and the first part of August I was still working my high school job and getting ready to move away from home for the first time.

As I started packing, I went through all the memories I had stored for all my growing up years. In a box under my bed I found a packet of envelopes I had received from a Young Women’s New Beginnings activity the year before. Inside each envelope was a spiritual thought with a scripture reading assignment from the Book of Mormon. Our leaders had called this scripture study program a “30-day Walk with Christ” and had challenged us to open an envelope a day and, by following the reading assignments, read the entire Book of Mormon in a month.

I had lasted less than a week. Swim practice and choir concerts had gotten in the way, and only a couple of envelopes had ever been opened. As I came across the packet again, however, I decided not to pack the envelopes away yet and set them aside, outside the cardboard box. I hadn’t been able to do the 30-day walk before, but wouldn’t this be a perfect time, right before I left for college? I felt like I could use a great spiritual boost just before I moved away from home for the first time.

I planned the thirty days so that I would finish reading the Book of Mormon right before my mom and I drove to BYU. I wasn’t perfect; some days I forgot or didn’t have time for the full reading assignment so I’d have to catch up and do double the next day, but I did it. After I reached the goal, I didn’t think too much about it—my mind was suddenly occupied with class schedules, buying textbooks, making friends, and settling into dorm life—but looking back I can see that reading the Book of Mormon in those thirty days just before I went to college did bless my life, immensely. The “spiritual boost,” as I called it to myself, helped me remember who I was even though I was in a new place, far from home, and making my own decisions.

That was the first time I read entire the Book of Mormon during the month of August. A year later, August 2005, I was back home again and working for the summer. In the Ensign that month, the First Presidency message, by President Hinckley, was about the Book of Mormon. President Hinckley began his message by talking about Parley P. Pratt’s experience with the Book of Mormon and how Pratt eventually wrote the hymns “An Angel From on High” (#13) and “The Morning Breaks (#1). President Hinckley’s message then continues as he adds his own praise for the Book of Mormon:

"Today, a century and three-quarters after its first publication, the Book of Mormon is more widely read than at any time in its history. Whereas there were 5,000 copies in that first edition, about 5,000,000 are currently distributed each year, and the Book or selections from the Book are available in 106 languages. Its appeal is as timeless as truth, as universal as mankind. It is the only book that contains within its covers a promise that by divine power the reader may know with certainty of its truth."

It is President Hinckley’s memorable challenge that we all remember the most about the August 2005 First Presidency Message: “I offer a challenge to members of the Church throughout the world and to our friends everywhere to read or reread the Book of Mormon. . . . Without reservation I promise you that if each of you will observe this simple program, regardless of how many times you previously may have read the Book of Mormon, there will come into your lives and into your homes an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord, a strengthened resolution to walk in obedience to His commandments, and a stronger testimony of the living reality of the Son of God.”

August 2005 was the second August that I read the Book of Mormon, thanks to President Hinckley’s challenge. My summer job was the most monotonous employment imaginable: I was pulling staples for a large company’s record archiving project. It was good money, but very, very boring. We were allowed to listen to headphones as we prepared the documents for scanning, and so I spent most of the summer checking out books on tape and CD at the library and listening to them at work. After the August 2005 Ensign came out, I decided to listen to an audio recording of the Book of Mormon before I left my job and went back to BYU. The recording was about 24 hours long, so covered just about three work days. I decided to save this book for last.

My last three days of work were amazing! I had never read the Book of Mormon in so short a time before. Listening to the audio recording was a unique experience too. I remember I popped in the first CD and started pulling staples, but it only took about five minutes until I had to grab some scratch paper and take some notes. I kept a pen handy next to my work so I could write down phrases that had struck me or thoughts I had during the reading. What amazed me most was the entire book fit together so much better than it ever had before; because I was covering the whole history and chronology in just three days, I understood where all the flashbacks and break-off groups fit in to the book as a whole.

At the end of my three day Book of Mormon spree I had eleven pages, front and back, of notes, thoughts, and impressions from that reading. I couldn’t help writing things down as I listened. I still have those notes, the record of when I reread the Book of Mormon just after I turned nineteen years old. By fulfilling the prophet’s challenge, I, with the rest of the Church, truly felt “an added measure of the Spirit of the Lord” in my life for the rest of that year.

Because of these two previous experiences, when August rolled around in 2006 I felt this intense intrinsic urge to read the Book of Mormon again. I had stayed in Provo that whole summer to work as an EFY counselor, and I finished my final EFY session the last week of July. I had a few weeks off of work before school started after Labor Day, so I decided to give in to that desire and challenged myself to read the entire book before school started. I spent all my free time reading the Book of Mormon. It took me a couple of weeks because I had other things going on as well, but I remember how great it was to pull my picnic blanket onto the lawn in front of my student apartment complex on a free afternoon and read the scriptures just because I wanted to.

The same thing happened the next year. August 2007 began and I felt this habitual desire to read the Book of Mormon during the month, so I did. This year will be my fifth year in a row that I’ve read the Book of Mormon during the month of August. It’s become a given activity at this time of year for me now, but this year, like every year, is a little different. President Hinckley’s challenge is a treasured memory for all of us now. This year is also the first time I won’t be going back to school in the fall because I graduated from BYU in April. As I look back on the past five Augusts, I am so grateful for the inspiration I had to rely on the scriptures to give me the strength I needed to get through transitional times that seemed to come every year, in August. I hope I can always be sensitive to do what the Holy Ghost tells me that my spirit needs, and I hope that throughout my life I will always read the Book of Mormon in August.

Pioneer Legacy

Much to my mother’s disappointment, my brother was born just after midnight on July 25th. No, the disappointment wasn’t my brother, it was the date. When she went into labor the day before, Mother was so excited that the baby would be born on the 24th of July. That would mean that he would have parades and celebrations on every birthday of his life, but instead he came into the world just a few minutes too late.

I have heard this story over and over again, and the funny thing is that I don’t think my brother has ever seen a Pioneer Day parade. We grew up in California, and the 24th of July wasn’t a holiday to anyone else in our town except other ward members; everyone still had to go to work. We did celebrate, but without any thing like a parade. Primary singing time for the entire month of July was always dedicated to “Pioneer Children Sang as They Walked” and “To be a Pioneer,” and there was usually a ward barbecue on that day, or as near to it as possible.

In 1997, however, our primary registered a pioneer float in our town’s Fourth of July parade. The parade still wasn’t on my brother’s birthday, but at the age of almost five he dressed up with the rest of us and marched behind the pioneer float. During the weeks before, my mother sewed calico and gingham bonnets and dresses for my sisters and me. Dad even joined in the preparations and fitted a frame of chicken wire over our play wagon and covered it in white paper.

By celebrating Pioneer Day in our ward and family, I learned at a young age to appreciate the Church members who sacrificed so much to protect the Church from persecution so many years ago. In recent years, however, I’ve realized that there are other pioneers that have influence my life who never pushed a handcart or walked thousands of miles. In the First Presidency Message of the July 2008 Ensign, President Uchtdorf talks about the importance of pioneers of all kinds. He mentions how he does not have ancestors that were 19th century pioneers who crossed into the Salt Lake Valley. However, he claims that these saints are his “spiritual ancestry, as they are for each and every member of the Church” because they “established . . . a spiritual foundation for the building of the kingdom of God in all the nations of the world” (p. 5).

President Uchtdorf’s acknowledgment that he has no pioneer ancestry surprised me, but of course it makes sense because his family joined the Church in Germany during World War II. Then I remembered that my mother also has no literal pioneer ancestors. My father’s ancestors were pioneers who had joined the early saints in Nauvoo before crossing the plains, but my mother’s family history is different. Her parents joined and fell away from the Church before she can remember. Even though her parents were never active again, my mother says that faithful home teachers came to their home regularly just the same. These home teachers urged my mother’s parents to allow to her to be baptized. Her mother didn’t give permission until my mother was nine.

After that time, her family still was not active in the Church. But one day when my mother was thirteen she noticed a copy of Bruce R. McConkie’s Mormon Doctrine in the house. She was drawn to the book and felt a strong impression that she needed to start going back to Church. She went alone at first, and then her older sister joined her. Years later, her older brother also reentered activity. All three of them had temple marriages, and because of their faithfulness all fourteen of the children of their combined families have been born in the covenant. Out of us fourteen—myself, my siblings, and my cousins—we have so far had five full-time missions, four temple weddings, and two more children born in the covenant. There are no handcarts or wagons in my mother’s ancestry, but the fruits of the labors of the pioneer legacy of her and her siblings have been great.

The 19th century pioneers crossed the plains to the Salt Lake Valley to build Zion, God’s kingdom on earth. My mother journeyed away from the habits of a less active family in order to build her own Zion home. I may think that the pioneering of faith is a thing of the past that belongs to my Mormon pioneer ancestors and my valiant mother, but President Uchtdorf reminds us that we all are pioneers, that we must be diligent in strengthening our families and “building a spiritual foundation that will establish the Church in every part of the world.” Each of us can trace our spiritual heritage to the first member of our family to accept the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that first member might even be ourselves. No matter where the heritage of testimony began, we each have a charge to continue the pioneer legacy. My brother wasn’t born on the 24th of July, but he and I both carry the pioneer legacies of our parents and ancestors—a sacred trust of faith.

"Born on the Fourth of July"

My grandma always sings “Yankee Doodle Dandy” on the Fourth of July, but for a special reason of her own in addition to the season of American patriotism. This year, my grandma’s sweetheart, Grandpa, will celebrate his eighty-fourth birthday on the Fourth of July. By looking back at memories of the Fourth of July celebrations of my childhood, I’ve realized that my feelings of gratitude for our country were also “born on the Fourth of July” as I’ve become grateful for the family with which I lived those memories.

When I was a kid, the morning of the Fourth of July at my home involved weaving red, white, and blue crepe paper in the spokes of my bicycle and curling trails of patriotic ribbon for the handlebars—necessary preparations for our town’s Fourth of July parade. The parade always started with a crowd of parents leading children on bicycles, tricycles, wagons, and strollers all decorated for the holiday. Anyone could join in as long as you lined up in time. Before the parade, our family went to our ward building for the Boy Scouts’ flag raising and the annual ward Independence Day pancake breakfast. At the parade, when we had finished our circle around the four-block downtown, we found a seat on a curb and waited for floats to drive by and throw candy. Later, in the afternoon, we had barbecue at home, and when it got dark Dad would drive us around to look for professional firework displays because in our county we weren’t allowed to light our own.

That was Fourth of July at home, but sometimes our family traveled to my dad’s hometown of Rexburg, Idaho for the holiday. Because of Grandpa’s birthday, Independence Day in Rexburg always seemed like a double-holiday to me, and our routine at Grandma’s house was slightly different than from ours back home. Rexburg was a bigger city than my hometown, and instead of riding my own bike in the parade, the highlight of the holiday was seeing Grandpa ride in the parade in a nice convertible. When I was very young I thought that Grandpa rode in the parade in a fancy car because it was his birthday, but I later learned that it was because Grandpa served as an Idaho state senator for twenty-five years.

After my cousins and I caught as much candy as possible from the parade, we went back to Grandma’s house for a giant patriotic sheet cake decorated with “Happy Birthday, Grandpa!” Later that night, my uncles and older cousins would light fireworks in the driveway and when ours were all burned out we’d sit around in lawn chairs and watch the neighbor’s. Both at home and at Grandma’s, the Fourth of July always ended up being the perfect day.

But when these memories occurred, I wasn’t that proud or grateful to be an American; I was just a kid trying to catch candy in the parade. I had dozens of elementary school lessons about Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, the pilgrims, and others who helped form our country, but I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the freedoms we enjoy. However, now that I look back at the parades, barbecues, and fireworks that color my Fourth of July memories, I realize that an appreciation for our country is in them because my Fourth of July memories are all about my family. The holiday allows families to get together, but the freedoms we have in our nation allow our families to stay together each and every day because we can make a living and live the religion and values we hold dear. Looking back, for me the patriotic spirit started as I watched my grandpa—a solid citizen, an honest farmer, and a loving father and grandfather—ride in the annual Rexburg Fourth of July parade.

Memories of Grandpa’s birthday remind me that the tradition of patriotism and gratitude for our country is fostered in every child by memories that are “born on the Fourth of July.” All in all, my Fourth of July memories spiral down to my family and gratitude to God for those memories and that family—a prayer of gratitude and commitment that for us, as individuals and families, “In God We Trust.”

*Add a comment!
What meaningful Fourth of July memories have occurred in your life?