Enos 1:12

[pam]

Enos 1Â*

12 And it came to pass that after I had prayed and labored with all diligence, the Lord said unto me: I will grant unto thee according to thy desires, because of thy faith.

Quote for Discussion

On a rainy summer afternoon in 1958, I unwittingly traced the One Step into the Dark Pattern while tracting along a gravel road on a hillside above Baden, Switzerland. As we walked from home to home, I was suddenly laid low by a speck of dust in my right eye. I learned, as one who had worn brand- new contact lenses for only five days, that a mote feels like a beam. I quickly extracted the lens, cleaned it and prepared to reinsert it. As I held my finger at the ready, a gust of wind swept the lens from my fingertip. My lens was gone with the wind, and I was aghast - - and virtually blind, being plunged instantly into 20/600 vision in one eye, which had been miraculously corrected only a week earlier to 20/20.

Elder Neil Reading and I began to search on hands and knees in the wet gravel, sweeping an 8-foot radius about my point of loss. We searched unsuccessfully for 20 minutes. Half-blind and half- despairing, I suggested that while we were already in position, we should pray. I reasoned with the Lord, told him about my need to see; about our need to meet our three investigator families that evening; about my feeling that there was more to be gained by finding the lens than by my learning whatever I was to learn from the loss. As I concluded the prayer and stood up, I received one of those Joseph Smith "flashes of intelligence." It surprised me, but I reacted at once. Explaining the plan to my startled companion, I stood on my feet in the same place I had stood earlier, squeezed out my left contact lens and was plunged into the distorted virtual blindness of 20/600 vision. I had begun my step into the dark.

Assured that my companion was on his knees and at the ready, I put my left lens in my mouth, extracted it and, mounting it on my finger some 6 inches from my face, I waited -- but not for long. A slight breeze caught my left lens, and it was gone. My step into the dark was now complete. I stood stock still, heart in throat, until Elder Reading said, "I see it. It's still in the air."

"Don't lose it," I pled.

"It's still up," he whispered, now 10 feet away. Then, from even further away, he exclaimed, "It's starting to fall!"

"Keep your eye on it," I pled again.

"I see it! I see it!" he said. There was a long pause and then, "Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!"

I braced.

"Oh my gosh," he said, "it's landed, and" -- pause ... pause ... pause -- "it's landed almost right on top of the other lens!"

"You see the other lens?" I shouted.

"Yes, it's right here!"

Unable to see a thing, I crawled over to him. Slowly, he planted in my palm, in order, my left and right lenses -- my seer stones. I wet the lenses and, with my back to the wind and sheltered by my companion's hovering frame, I implanted them: "And there was light and it was good." And we knelt, and full of gratitude I thanked our God for tender mercies. We pressed on to the next house, filled with wonder at a God who knows each sparrow's fall and the exact whereabouts in Switzerland of Elder Cracroft's right contact lens.

Taken from Diving Design by Richard Cracroft (Richard H. Cracroft is the former dean of the college of humanities at Brigham Young University. He also served as president of the Switzerland Zurich Mission)