CHILDREN OF THE PROPHETS

CHILDREN OF THE PROPHETS

And behold, ye are the children of the prophets; and ye are of the house of Israel; and ye are of the covenant … 3 Nephi 20:25

He was a good kid, not a whole lot of discipline. He and his girlfriend came up to school together from the outskirts of nowhere, both high-energy excited to be away from home. His uncle, a stake president, alerted us, pleading that we do what we could. We assured him we would. So *Jeremy was contacted and invited to participate. To our surprise and delight, he came in his Subaru Brat (little tiny car with an all but unusable pickup bed attached), to everything, and brought his girlfriend with him. Soon she was a member, and they were married right after their freshman year.

They struggled, but came for counseling. Then the student ward was dissolved back into the town ward, which was split, and the newlyweds were in the other ward. I lost track of them.

Much later the wards were put back together, and I was retained as bishop of the combined ward. I noticed that Jeremy and wife were still in town, now the parents of 4 children, the oldest about nine, not baptized. No one from the ward they had been in knew them. Efforts were made to help them choose to join the ranks of the active, but those efforts were not successful.

Not long after being released as bishop, I received a new home teaching route that included Jeremy and family. I found them in a trailer park, crammed into a single-wide. He received me with open arms, but had to persuade his wife to come out from the back and join us. She sat sullen and distracted, speaking in monosyllables only when spoken to. It was the same every month. Soon Jeremy was committing to bring the family to church, to having the children who were old enough baptized, and to have his oldest, now twelve, ordained a deacon and prepare for a mission. He regretted his inactivity and its effect on the family, but he was going to make up for it. His wife just sat there, glassy-eyed.

They came. He was home. His children were scared. His wife was a zombie. But they came, week after week.

One Sunday, he was there by himself. His wife and children were back near Nowhere, visiting “her mother.” I set up a home teaching visit.

Jeremy answered the door of an otherwise empty trailer. “We’re having problems. We’re separated. Just temporarily, mind you, until we can work things out. I just found out she’s been seeing someone for quite awhile now, some bucko she dated in high school before I came along. But we’ll get through this, we will. I want so bad for my kids to have what I finally know to be true, what I had right at the tip of my fingers when I was their age, but didn’t ever really grasp. I wish I had gone on a mission, and I want for my sons to have that experience that I never had. We’ve going to get this resolved – we’ve got to.”

A few months later the divorce was final. Jeremy was a broken man. But, he stayed active.

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*Amelia met *Spencer, fell in love, took the missionary discussions, was baptized, and married the lout. Before you know it he quit going to church, began breaking the Word of Wisdom, started seeing other women, left Amelia and followed one of the home-wreckers to an adjoining state. Amelia healed her broken heart by exercising even more faith in her newfound religion.

We moved.

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Who is that sitting next to the bishop on his left? I should know him. Let’s see, he wouldn’t have had snow white hair twenty years ago. Hm-m. NO! Jeremy? Couldn’t be. It is! That’s Jeremy!

Sitting by the *Brassfield family in Sacrament meeting on that same visit to Stillwater twenty years after we had moved, I checked the program. Sure enough: “Second Counselor . . . Jeremy Cummings.”

He must have recognized us from the stand, for as soon as the meeting was over, there he was, throwing his arms around me. “Oh, Bro. Boyce! I wouldn’t be here without you. I’m serious. Thank you from the depths of my soul. You know who I married, don’t you? We have a little girl, Amelia and I. She’s 7 now. I didn’t even know life could be this good. By the way, just in case you decide to move back, the best ward is north of Main Street.”

For the second time that day, I caught a glimpse of heaven.