This General Conference Odyssey post is from the priesthood session of the April 1980 General Conference.

John H. Groberg tells a story with a very important message. A Hawaiian family, living in the early 1900s in Hawaii, have a daughter who has contracted a mysterious disease. Back in that day, there was a lot of superstition on the island. The following Sunday, the family went to church as usual, and the father and his son prepared the sacrament, as was typical of them. As the father knelt to bless the bread, the branch president suddenly sprang to his feet, pointed his finger and shouted, “Stop. You can’t touch the sacrament. Your daughter has an unknown disease. Leave immediately while someone else fixes new sacrament bread. We can’t have you here. Go.”

The shaken father gets up, gathers his family, and goes home. When they arrive, the father says, “We will be silent until I am ready to speak.” It takes him a long half hour to collect himself, but then he addresses his family with these words:

“I love you. I love all of you and I want us to be together, forever, as a family. And the only way that can be is for all of us to be good members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and be sealed by his holy priesthood in the temple. This is not the branch president’s church. It is the Church of Jesus Christ. We will not let any man or any amount of hurt or embarrassment or pride keep us from being together forever. Next Sunday we will go back to church. We will stay by ourselves until our daughter’s sickness is known, but we will go back.”

This story is powerful in its message, and I hope it touches someone’s heart today.

Another General Conference Odyssey post:

Problems Solved Better and More Quickly  Marilyn Nielson