Sunday, April 22, 2012

Building up Zion


Elder Holland
While President of BYU
Coach LaVell Edwards told me last week that as the team was returning to Provo about 2:00 a.m., following [an important] game, he and his wife couldn't help overhearing two of his players talking in the seat just behind them in the bus. They were not talking about beating a traditional powerhouse... They were not talking about how the offense had sparkled or how the defense had dug in. They were not talking about a conference championship or an undefeated season, or about a national ranking. 

They were talking about the one player's recent baptism into the Church, along with his wife who is also a student athlete here. He spoke of his eager anticipation of receiving the priesthood and of a future sealing in the temple. Indeed, there seemed to be only one disappointment in this whole conversation, and it wasn't about the ball game. 

It was that this young man had not known--and joined--the Church early enough to be able to serve a mission. At that, the other player, in reply, spoke of how much his mission had meant to him and how it had given real direction to his life. Much of this young man's life had been spent without a father in the home and I happen to know what it has meant to his mother to have him bear the priesthood and serve a mission. 

Coach and Sister Edwards said they had a little trouble fighting down the lumps in their throats, thinking of these 260-pound behemoths sitting behind them--kids who eat steel girders for breakfast and concrete slabs for lunch--talking quietly after one of BYU's greatest football wins ever, of baptism and priesthood and mission and temples… 

"When we conclude to make a Zion," said Brigham Young, "we will make it, and this work commences in the heart of each person. I have Zion in my view constantly," he said. "We are not going to wait for angels, or for Enoch. . . to come and build [it], but we are going to build it [ourselves]" (JD 9:284).

  Sept 11, 1984

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