Elder Stewart-Longhurst Mission to Santa Rosa, CA

I was 17 years old the first time I experimented with personal revelation.   I doubt it will surprise anyone here to learn that this occurred in the outdoors around a campfire.   I was actually on a pioneer trek.   They had bused the youth in my stake to BYU Provo where they divided us up into pioneer families.   We were assigned a pioneer pa and a pioneer ma, who were BYU students and then took us up into the Uintah Mountains where we were dropped off at a handcart.   Over the next two days, we pulled that handcart 47 miles.   It was one of the most grueling physically challenging events of my life!   But during those two days and 47 miles, I learned the power of prayer.   I mostly prayed that I wouldn’t die. Pa was very good at telling when one of us in our pioneer family was struggling.   And he would have us pull the handcart over to the side of the trail, circle up in a family huddle, and then he would pronounce this prayer for us....

Only minutes after reading our mission call letters, we had all sorts of maps opened, gawking at the mission boundaries.   They run up the coast line from the Golden Gate Bridge to the Oregon Border.   The mission stays on the coast and does not take in the I-5 corridor or Sacramento.   It has small logging towns in the north to very well-to-do commuter communities in the south. The only time I remember being in the mission boundaries was when I was a young boy and my family traveled from my Uncle’s home in Oregon to my other Uncle’s home in Livermore.   Dad drove us down Highway 101.   I remember the red wood forests and a huge wooden statue of a logger, which I was quite sure was Paul Bunyan.   I remember a lot of beach.   And I remember driving into Santa Rosa as we came back into civilization and being impressed with how green and clean it was.   I thought that if I had to ever live in California, Santa Rosa would be the place!   No...