1972, Testimony of Wallace Aroet Hale

Testimony of Wallace Aroet Hale

May 1972, Murray 10th Ward, Murray West Stake, Mission Farewell of Grandson, Randall Whitney Hale

Eighty-five years is quite a load to carry all this way here, especially for this occasion, but I am thankful to meet with you and partake of the sacrament and in honor to another one of my grandsons. By way of testimony, I would like to relate an experience that came to me when I was a young missionary in the mission field. I think it will help Brother Randy, as well as all of us.

My oldest brother died when he was on the missions. He took typhoid fever in Maryland, and Brother McMurrin, Joseph W. McMurrin, came out to Oakley and preached his sermon, his funeral sermon, and I took a liking to Brother McMurrin, and when I was called, I wanted him to set me apart for my mission. They recorded mission blessings in those days and among one of the things Brother McMurrin told me that in answer to prayer my tongue would be loosed and I would speak fluently the words of life and salvation to the convincing of the honest in heart and the confounding of those who think they are wise.

Way out in the panhandle of Oklahoma, that runs way out to New Mexico and Arizona, there was a bunch of men having an argument over the Mormon Church, and they decided to write to President Joseph F. Smith, our President [Joseph Fielding Smith] now’s father. And they asked a lot of questions, very reasonable, and President Smith sent the letter to President Bennion to Independence, Missouri, and he sent it down into Oklahoma to our conference president. I was laboring with a young Elder about out in the middle of Oklahoma, and he asked us to go out there and answer these questions. So we figured we had about three hundred miles to walk. It was near conference, so we knew we would have to hurry.

When we located this man, he was a – talk about a hippie! He was sitting outside a little old cabin, a retired old lawyer. He had tobacco juice running down his beard and you just can’t hardly think how he looked. We told him we had walked six hundred miles and three hundred miles out there to answer his questions and he thought it was one of the biggest jokes he ever heard. He just fell back and laughed and laughed at us. He didn’t even take us in his house.

We left then and walked back across the northeast corner of Texas back into Oklahoma for our conference. I know there was a family of Saints living out in the western part of Oklahoma and we looked them up in a city one late afternoon. The sister, when we reached their place, fixed us something to eat, then showed us in their big front room, stirred up the old fire, the old back log, and that was the last time we saw anybody till night.

In the night we noticed there was quite a lot of confusion out in the kitchen. We didn’t know just what was going on and pretty quick they started to carrying in chairs, made benches or planks across benches and chairs making room for quite a crowd. Now, I thought, “Well, that’s nice of them. That’s why they haven’t come to visit with us at all – they’ve been out advertising a meeting. We’re going to have a cottage meeting.”

Pretty quick the people started filing in. They nearly filled the house and I felt that I was nearly ready to take over, when in walked the – oh! – the brightest looking man that I ever saw – a fine big man. He walked behind the table they had set for the speaker. He laid down his books and I happened to look across and saw, oh!, The Mountain Meadow Massacre, Brigham Young’s Nineteen Wives, Adam, God, and . . . and those other books. They just about scared me to death. I know my young companion hadn’t talked or know little about the gospel and I knew I didn’t know too much. I didn’t know if I’d ever met or talked with one of the Reorganized people in my life. He got behind the pulpit and he started to tell them what all he had accomplished. He even said, “I want to tell you folks I’ve had the angels turn the passages of scriptures for me while I preach!” And it just scared me to death! There I was – I didn’t have a book or no preparation at all but he hadn’t talked five minutes till it seems as though I was just lifted up and I walked right around and stood beside him.

Pretty quick I challenged some of his statements. He started talking and I wanted to bear testimony that my tongue was loosed. And I did speak things as I – way beyond my power or knowledge at that time. And before I had talked to him five minutes, he started to trembling just like a man that was having the chills and fever. Every part of his body was shaking. When he started to talk his chin would just rattle! And all at once he reached down and grabbed his books and beat it across the room to the door. When he got to the door, he stopped and said, “I want to tell you folks that the brains to the Church went to Utah.” He slammed the door and we never seen anymore of him, but he left a nice little congregation there for two young boys in the twentieth year to preach the Gospel as it had been restored and with the same authority that had been restored to the Prophet Joseph Smith.

I know the Lord will help Randy in the mission field if he puts his trust in the Father in Heaven. I know that He lives and that He will bless us all. I often think of the works of Solomon when he had been blessed with more wisdom than anybody in his day, had gained all the riches that he needed above all the men at that time, and in closing his writing the Book of Ecclesiastes, he says: “Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; Fear God and keep His commandments, for it is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.”

May the Lord bless and help us to do right and further His work in the Earth, I pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.