35 Years Ago

This morning as I ate breakfast, I read the Salt Lake Tribune. Peggy Fletcher Stack wrote an article about the 35^th year anniversary of the blacks receiving the priesthood. I remembered Mom coming home from town that day and telling me that George could have the priesthood. I gave her quizzing look because she had to remind me who George was.. I was thinking of another George who I knew in Salt Lake my first year of college. He was strange and I am pretty sure he might have passed the sacrament in the branch I sometimes attended. When Mom mentioned it was my FHE (family home evening) brother from Ricks College then I understood. George came to Ricks College my second semester there. He wasn’t a member, but he still returned for a second time. I found out the following fall that he had been in my brother, John’s and my roommate, Deb’s branch the previous year while I had been in Salt Lake. Toward the end of the semester, George joined the church; students from the 8^th and 29^th branch were in attendance. I think it was the biggest convert baptism that I ever attended. As I look back on George’s baptism, I realize it took him a lot of courage to join the church. He joined knowing he would not have the full benefits of membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. In April of 1978, he wasn’t able to have the priesthood, serve a mission or even marry in the temple. But on June 8, 1978 all that changed for George and other Mormons of African heritage. Now I know of a biracial young man serving in Brazil and his brother who has been called to serve in California later this year. Most weeks in Sacrament Meeting, I see a young man from Africa pass the sacrament to members in the church. All because President Spencer W. Kimball announced that the priesthood was to be extended all worthy males 12 and over, 35 years on warm June day.