I have had this talk in my email for quite some time now. And I like to delete emails when I can. So I am posting this talk here on my blog. Mainly for my boys. Cassidy Schiller was their YM's President for several years and is an awesome example of a super cool, yet God-fearing, man. (Cassidy is on the far-right in the picture, with the red hat.)
This talk includes the high-adventure the YM went on, as well as Cassidy's testimony and stories from his mission. I know most won't read this, and that's fine! I just want to have a copy of it for my boys to have. :) I did highlight where he spoke about Miles - so if you just want to read that part you can. Yes, it made me proud of my man-child Miles.
The sun was giving us just enough light to see without our flashlights as we left camp on August 2nd, with the goal of reaching the summit of Uncompahgre Peak. The air was cool, ground muddy and grass was completely soaked from the big the thunderstorm that had hit the night before. We were going to have to bushwhack or go without the help of a trail for about a mile and a half or so. But if you know me at all and as the young men can probably testify to you, it was probably twice that far. Not long after we left camp, there was not one dry shoe or sock and 6 teenage boys had all suddenly become, dead silent. As we were finding our way, we went through several marshes that only added to the wetness and joy we were experiencing. Not much further and everyone had lost feeling in pretty much all their toes and hands. It was a cold morning and we were making it worse with every step we took through that tall and very wet grass. We had all already hiked about 12 miles into camp the day before, fully loaded with our backpacks that contained all we needed for the next couple days. Now, the boys were so quiet, as they were probably all trying to figure out how they were ever going to be able to survive the day and wanting to kill the guy leading the way, that we came right up on a small group of feeding bull elk. Once we finally found the trail that would lead us to the summit, we stopped so I could take inventory of everyone’s current situation. All 6 of them in a single file line and still not speaking, I asked who was wet. All hands went up. I asked who was cold, all hands went up. I asked if anyone had a headache yet. I think all but one or two raised their hands. I then asked if they had brought the Tylenol or ibuprofen that was on the gear list with them. In unison they all said, no. Anticipating this response weeks before, I had packed plenty of extras.
So, my first question of the day would be this, why on earth would anyone want to get up before the sun, leave a very warm sleeping bag and hike through such miserable conditions of their own free will and choice? Why would you want to get soaked walking through tall, wet grass? Or as my wife puts it, why would you want to go to the woods and pretend you are homeless for a few days?
As I was playing pharmacist on the side of the mountain hoping to remedy the headache issue associated with high altitude, I told them I knew they were miserable, wet, cold and in pain. I told them they just had to push through it as best they could and once the sun hits us, all would be good again in the world. We could see where the sun was finally making its presence known on the peak above us, that gave everyone some hope and once we hit that sun, boy did it feel incredible! Jackets began to be shed in mere minutes and the drying out process was already making us feel better. Now we had a trail that would take is to the top of the 14 thousand foot peak and we made it! Was it hard? Yes, it was. For some it was easier than others. Some had to be pushed a bit by their peers to make it all the way to the top. I so admired the determination of every one of them to not quit until they made the summit. They weren’t going to be intimidated and beaten by the mountain and they were rewarded with the most spectacular view anyone could imagine. We ended up hiking about 36 -38 miles in 3 days most of which, did seem like they were uphill somehow. It really is a beautiful place though, a site that won’t soon be forgotten.
Beautiful views weren’t the only reason we planned high adventure the way we did though. We actually planned it so that it would be hard! So, when you boys were assuming we intentionally made life difficult for you, you were right! We wanted every boy to be pushed to their limits and I think all of them were, with the exception of
Miles Maxwell. I’m convinced that Miles Maxwell, pound for pound, is the toughest, strongest human being that I know. The pack he carried weighed more than I do I’m pretty sure and he was constantly helping others carry even more! He single handedly hauled 20 frozen hamburgers 12 miles to our base camp, on top of all his other gear.We did try and make it hard, make it stretch the boys a bit and put their limits to the test. Make them hike hard one day with a heavy pack, only to get up early the next and do it again. Make them go up Uncompahgre Peak quickly so we could summit before storms hit, make them cross freezing cold rivers that for some, hit about mid thigh. So again, why on earth would we do that?
One of my favorite quotes of all time sums up the answer to that question pretty well I think. “Life isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care who you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently, if you let it. Nothing is going to hit as hard as life. Life is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s about how much you can take and keep moving forward” and that’s how you beat all that life throws at you. You push through the tired leg feeling of life, the headaches and fatigue. I would add to that quote, that overcoming life’s challenges is part of what makes life so great! Just as the reward for pushing yourself up a mountain is a beautiful view, the reward for overcoming trials and difficulties in our lives is even more rewarding, as we little by little, become more like our Savior with the end goal of obtaining Exaltation. Life is hard, it was designed that way. President Hinkley once said, “Anyone who imagines that bliss is normal is going to waste a lot of time running around shouting that he’s been robbed. The fact is that most putts don’t drop, most beef is tough, most children grow up to just be people, most successful marriages require a high degree of mutual toleration, most jobs are more often dull than otherwise. Life is like an old time rail journey…delays…sidetracks, smoke, dust, cinders and jolts, interspersed only occasionally by beautiful vistas and thrilling burst of speed. The trick is to thank God for letting you have the ride.”
My hope is that whenever the trials and tests of life are bearing down on you, whenever the fierce winds of the adversary are upon you and they will be. I hope the experience of doing hard things like we did on high adventure will give you the confidence to know that you can push through them, gain the knowledge the Lord is trying to teach and then, that you will experience the joy that comes by overcoming and not ever giving up. I hope that you’ll remember that icy cold morning, those burning legs pushing you up hill, those swift water, river crossings you conquered, that pack that weighed a million pounds, getting altitude sickness on the side of the mountain, those boot soles we had to lash back on the bottom of your boots with paracord, because you never gave up out there and I know you will conquer hard things throughout your lives by never giving up.
In my Spanish mission scriptures, I have a drawing of a big crane that is eating a frog. He’s got the entire frog in his mouth and halfway down his throat. The only thing you can see are the frog’s hands, clinched around the bird’s neck, preventing him from being eaten. The caption of the drawing simply states, “Never Give Up!” Elder Jeffrey R Holland made a statement in General Conference a few years back that I loved so much, he says “Don't you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead. Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don’t come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come.”
We can’t possibly expect to navigate the difficulties of life without the help of our Heavenly Father and for Him, nothing is impossible. Sometimes when the storms of life are bearing down on us, we think that mountains can’t be moved, that miracles cease to exist, that our Father in Heaven doesn’t care about us anymore or we think that perhaps, we have gone too far down the path of sin to ever get back. To quote Elder Holland again, if you can’t already tell, he’s my favorite apostle, if we can choose favorites? “However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”
I want to share a very personal story from my mission about my good friend and fellow missionary, Elder Pollero. Which, while we are on the subject of missions, I’ll say to the young men one last time, Go on a mission. You’ve heard me say it every Sunday for the past 3 ½ years and it still remains just as true today, as it was when we started, a mission will change your life and will bless you so much you can’t begin to comprehend it, so do it! Back to my story. Some of you heard this story at Youth Conference already and my daughter Bentley knows it word for word, as she rehearsed my entire youth conference spiel to my wife after Samantha got back from here trip.
I have to preface the story by first telling you about Paraguayan buses. Just imagine if you will one of the Frist Student or Laid Law buses that we have here in town. Now imagine that bus being like the 1970’s version of that bus. Imagine rotted, overly worn out, wood floor boards with gaping holes that could be found anywhere throughout the bus. Imagine a loud diesel engine that could shake your insides when kicked into high gear. Take the sound system that Brother Wayne Whitcomb has in his car and amplify the sound of that by about 20, oh and add about 5-10 chickens and roosters walking around and you’ve got yourself a Paraguayan bus! They were obnoxious and above all else, they were loud! It was actually a mission rule that whenever we got on those buses, we had to ask he chauffer if he would turn his music down long enough for us to share a quick message. 9 times out of 10, they would turn it down and then we would still have to shout at the top of our lungs a quick passage of scripture, testimony or short message. Then, as most have heard my story before, we would sing a verse of I am a Child of God. Yes me, the guy that couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, the guy that couldn’t tell you the difference between a cliff note and a treble clef was there singing on a bus for two straight years… That’s when I learned that the Lord has a sense of humor. Anyways and then the bus driver would immediately turn the music back on and we would then make our way throughout the bus talking to people about the gospel and we would have to yell in their ears for them to be able to hear us. So, that gives you some info you’ll need for the rest of the story. My companion and I traveled to an area to conduct a baptismal interview one evening for an entire family that was being baptized! It was so exciting to see an entire family wanting to be baptized, that didn’t happen all that often and it was such a wonderful moment. During the course of that interview the mother of the family stopped me and asked if I knew Elder Pollero, who had been transferred out of the area a few weeks prior to the interview. I told her that I knew him well and that he was one of my good friends. She said that she wanted me to be sure to tell him that her and her family were going to be baptized and that his persistence, patience and love of the family was a big reason why they finally decided to read the Book of Mormon and investigate the church. Apparently, when he was in the area he had gone by and taught the family quite a few times and it wasn’t always warmly accepted by her especially. She said she knew that members of the church didn’t drink or smoke so she would go to the store while he was there and buy alcohol and cigarettes and bring them back to the house and drink and smoke as much as she could while he was there teaching. We that wouldn’t deter him, she would go in a turn up the sound on her big stereo and try and make it so he couldn’t hear or talk to anyone. She tried all ways to get rid of him but he kept coming by and finally she thought, why is he so persistent? What is he sharing? Could it be true? And she found out and gained a testimony of the gospel for herself. She just wanted Elder Pollero to know how thankful she was for him, even though he wasn’t the one that ever saw them finally go to church or read the scriptures and wouldn’t be there when they got baptized. I told her I would do my best to get that message to him. As we left, I had the distinct impression that I needed to call Elder Pollero right then and there. I actually didn’t have his phone number but had the number to the zone leaders of the area he was in, so I called them and asked if they could give me his number. They said no problem with the number but that I wouldn’t be able to get through to speak to him because he was in the middle of nowhere and had no service, ever. They said they never really knew if he was even dead or alive and only spoke to him once a week at Zone meetings when he was in town. I thanked them and took down his number and thought, I’ll just wait to call him on P-Day when he would be in town. By now, we had walked all the way to the bus stop to catch a bus back to our apartment and I had the impression again, call Elder Pollero now. I thought, why am I feeling this impression? The Lord knows he doesn’t have service, there is no point. The prompting came again, so I listened and began dialing. Of course, as soon as I heard a ring tone, our bus shows up. The last bus of the night. We couldn’t just take the next bus, otherwise we’d have to walk about 30 miles back to our apartment that night. So we get on and remember what I told you about Paraguyan buses.. There was no way possible I would be able to hear anything on a bus, but I figured it didn’t really matter because he wasn’t going to be able to answer anyways… As soon as that thought left my mind, I heard Elder Pollero on the other end of my phone say “Hello?” Me being shocked that #1 I got through to him and that #2, I could actually hear him speaking, said, this is Elder Schiller, what’s up?! He said Elder Schiller I have no idea how I am speaking to you right now, I have you on speaker phone and I can see that my phone literally says, “no service” right now. Yet, you are coming in loud and clear. It was impossible that we could be speaking right now. I told him I was on a bus and could hear every word he was saying even though I couldn’t hear my own thoughts it was so loud! I then told him about the Ramirez family that was being baptized and all that dear sister wanted him to know. I could hear a silence come over the phone and then Elder Pollero, struggling for the words said, Elder Schiller, you have no idea how happy that makes me feel and how badly I needed to hear about that family tonight. He told me he had really been struggling as of late, wondering why he kept going around preaching the gospel, his family was going through really difficult times and that he was actually thinking about going home from his mission early because he didn’t think he had it in him anymore. That phone call was very timely and after I spoke to Elder Pollero about it when we both left for home, he said that phone call changed his life. Knowing that his efforts weren’t in vain, that people were actually listening and that his efforts were making a difference in the lives of others and above all else, knowing that his Father in Heaven loved him enough to provide a cell phone signal where there never had been before, to tell him about it.
He learned that day that out Father in Heaven is always aware of our situations and concerned for us and is always there to help us. Sometimes we have to go through difficulties and challenges, difficulties and challenges that the Lord knows we need. Things that stretch us and make us grow just as lifting weights initially tears our muscles down, so they can grow back bigger and stronger to be better prepared to withstand greater pressure and challenges that lie ahead. We just have to have the faith to keep pushing through them and trust that our Heavenly Father is always there for us. Our Father in Heaven, who is Father over all the worlds and universes imaginable, cares so much for each of us individually that he knows and cares what we eat for breakfast each day. He’s always there and our lives and business is always his #1 concern, of that I testify and add the words from Moses 1:39, “This is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man”. Nothing is impossible for the Lord, not even providing a cell phone signal where there isn’t, to make His love for one of His children known when he needed it most. The church is true, I know it without a doubt. The Book of Mormon is true. I know because I have prayed to know if it’s true and I, in reality received an answer that it is. I know Joseph Smith was the prophet of the restoration and that he in fact did see God the Father and Jesus Christ that spring day. I know we have a Savior that suffered for us so that we don’t have to and that we can feel peace and joy again in our lives, no matter how far gone we imagine we are, His arm is always extended towards us. Nobody will ever take these truths from me and I am thankfully every day for the knowledge of this things. May we never quit trying, nor give up is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
