Miracles Can Occur

In the October general conference of 2008 President Thomas S. Monson made a request to Church members:

“There [are] areas of the world where our influence is limited and where we are not allowed to share the gospel freely. As did President Spencer W. Kimball over 32 years ago, I urge you to pray for the opening of those areas, that we might share with them the joy of the gospel. As we prayed then in response to President Kimball’s pleadings, we saw miracles unfold as country after country, formerly closed to the Church, was opened. Such will transpire again as we pray with faith” (Ensign, Nov 2008, 6).

The request was repeated a year later:

“I would ask that your faith and prayers continue to be offered in behalf of those areas where our influence is limited and where we are not allowed to share the gospel freely at this time. Miracles can occur as we do so” (Ensign, Nov 2009, 6)

During the past year and a half, we
have responded to the prophet’s call in almost all our prayers together and in
many of our public prayers. It was something we could easily do as our small
part in following the prophet. It required no sacrifice in time or means. But to
our amazement, we rarely, if ever, hear a public prayer offered in a Church
setting where the person praying asks for the “opening of those areas”.

The expression “quick to observe” has come to mind. It’s an expression from the Book of Mormon where young Mormon, at age 10, was described as a “sober child” and “quick to observe” (Mormon 1:2).

Elder David A. Bednar has said that “the capacity of being ‘quick to observe’” is an underappreciated spiritual gift and that “when we are quick to observe, we promptly look or notice and obey” (Ensign, Dec 2006, 30).

In our Curriculum Development staff meetings since the last general conference we have discussed ways to encourage Church members to respond to President Monson’s requests. We decided that for our part we could at least prepare this report for family and friends, focusing on the phrase, “miracles can occur”.

President Kimball’s Pleadings

In President Monson’s October 2008 talk, he referred to President Spencer W. Kimball’s “pleadings” over 32 years ago and the miracles that unfolded. Here is President Kimball’s first published plea:

"We have launched a prayer campaign throughout the Church and hope that all people, parents, youth, and children, will join in a serious continuous petition to the Lord to open the gates of the nations and soften the hearts of the kings and the rulers to the end that missionaries may enter all the lands and teach the gospel in the approved way.

“While it looks difficult, it is not impossible. We repeat the words given to Abraham and Sarah, when she was promised a son; and she was already ninety years old, barren and past the period of childbearing. And when she laughed, thinking it a ridiculous promise, the voice said, “Is any thing too hard for the Lord? … Sarah shall have a son.” (Gen. 18:14.) And she had a son.” (Ensign, Oct 1975, 70)

Two years later, Elder Dean L. Larsen of the Seventy explained that President Kimball’s prayer campaign began with the other General Authorities, asking all the Saints to join them (Ensign, Oct 1977, 36).

We well remember the prayers during that period in the Church. Courtney was serving in a stake presidency in New Jersey at the time and President Kimball’s request filtered down to Latter-day Saints through the regular channels of Church leadership. Someone explained that a “continuous petition” meant that at any given moment somewhere in the worldwide Church a prayer was being offered to open the doors of the nations. In response, members started including the request in family prayers and in public prayers whenever we remembered to do so.

Then in 1978, President Kimball repeated his plea in general conference as follows:

“I’m hoping that, beginning now, the prayers of the Saints will be greatly increased from what they have been in the past, that we will never think of praying except we pray for the Lord to establish his program and make it possible that we can carry the gospel to his people as he has commanded. It is my deep interest and great prayer to you that this will be accomplished” (Ensign, Nov. 1978, 46).

Courtney recollects that, thereafter, public and private prayers by Church members included President Kimball’s request with an ever-increasing frequency that was unforgettable.

Miracle in the Winter of 1976-77

During the same time period that we were being asked to pray for the opening of the doors of the nations, there was unusually harsh weather in the United States. It was characterized by extreme cold along the east coast during the winter of 1976-77 and simultaneous drought conditions in the Intermountain West.

Courtney was mostly conscious of conditions in and around the New York metropolitan area because that’s where he lived at the time. Starting in November 1976 the temperature was well below normal almost every day. As a result, furnaces were running more than usual and this contributed to the energy crisis at the time. Near the end of January 1977, Church meetings were cancelled because of the cold. According to Courtney’s journal on 31 January, the governor of NJ ordered home thermostats set at 65 degrees during the day and 60 degrees at night.

Only days before, the weather forecasts indicated that there would be no relief from the cold through February. Rivers were frozen and pipes were beginning to freeze in homes. There was no running water in the McGregor kitchen because of frozen pipes on that side of the house. Courtney remembers one morning while shaving, listening to a radio commentator talk about the possibility of evacuation of the metropolitan area. Unbelievable, he thought! With pipes freezing and no end of cold weather in sight there could be a life-threatening shortage of water.

On the 29^th of January 1977 we received word that the First Presidency had called on Church members to include in their fasting and prayers the next Sunday (6 February 1977) a plea for a change in the unusual weather conditions.

Courtney made the following entry in his journal for 14 February 1977 (a week after the fast):

“The weekend was almost spring-like – a warm thaw – even at night – temperatures in the high 40s. I believe the first thaw since Thanksgiving. Several prayers yesterday in our meetings expressed thanks for answers to our earlier prayers and fasting”.

Within a few days the temperatures plunged below normal again and on Sunday, 20 February 1977 the stake president received a call from President Ezra Taft Benson asking the Church to remember in all their prayers, both public and private, to call on the Lord for relief from the elements. It was to be a continuous petition.

Warmer weather followed immediately and temperatures were above normal for weeks. Months later Courtney collected official data from the National Weather Service and plotted it as shown below. We are satisfied that the data support a miraculous change in the weather following the prayers of the Saints.

Unfolding Miracles of the late 1980s

The thaw on the east coast of the US in the winter of 1977 was a miracle that came quickly. Bigger miracles, including the “thaw” of the cold war took longer but happened nevertheless.

The cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union began after the Second World War and was the major force in world politics for most of the second half of the twentieth century. Leaders on both sides changed over the years but the cold war continued on some level until the late 1980s. For purposes of this report I present the following miraculous elements that preceded the end of the cold war and the opening of doors for the missionaries in middle and eastern Europe.

Influence of Leaders on the World Stage

Ronald Reagan, President of the United States from 20 Jan 1981 to 20 Jan 1989, Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 4 May 1979 to 28 Nov 1990 and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 11 Mar 1985 to 24 Aug 1991.

It seemed miraculous at the time, and still does, that the administrations of these three leaders overlapped for the crucial years of 1985 through 1989.

Of particular interest is the timing of Gorbachev’s rise to power. It took the deaths, within three years, of three Soviet Leaders: Leonid Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and, Constantin Chernenko, for Gorbachev to be elected General Secretary by the Politburo in 1985. He was from the younger generation of Soviet leaders and far more open to reform. What he wanted, though, was to reform the Communist system, not end it. But as one scholar observed: “Thatcher and Reagan recognized [that] once Communism began to liberalize, it was doomed. Their faith in liberty brought strength to the West, destruction to the totalitarians, and a peaceful victory in the Cold War.” (Ted R. Bromund, September 28, 2009, “How Margaret Thatcher Helped to End the Cold War”, WebMemo #2631)

One journalist made the following assessment:

“In their very different ways [Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev] combined to extend democracy and to make a market economy the mark of a successful state. [They] did that by promoting market forces: Gorbachev did it by accepting the bankruptcy of the socialist system.” (Reagan and Thatcher by Geoffrey Smith, London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991)

Margaret Thatcher published the following insight:

“I always believed that our western system would ultimately triumph, if we did not throw our advantages away, because it rested on the unique, almost limitless, creativity and vitality of individuals. Even a system like that of the Soviets, which set out to crush the individual, could never totally succeed in doing so. ... This also implied that at some time the right individual could challenge even the system which he had used to attain power. ... I spotted [Gorbachev] because I was searching for someone like him”. (Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, 1993, p. 452)

There were other leaders who played a prominent role in the 1980s.

One was Pope John Paul II, who championed hope and freedom in his home country of Poland. On 13 January 1990, the pope gave the following in his explanation for the rapid and unexpected changes in Eastern Europe. Notice his interesting choice of words: “The irresistible thirst for freedom brought down walls and opened doors.” (Witness to Hope: the Biography of Pope John Paul II, by George Weigel, 2005, p. 609)

Fall of the Berlin Wall and the End of the Cold War

On 12 June 1987 President Ronald Reagan gave a speech in front of the Brandenberg Gate commemorating the 750^th anniversary of Berlin. To a cheering crowd of about 45,000 he spoke of liberty, freedom and peace. Included in his speech were the following words that were to become famous: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”. While the speech with its challenge was mostly symbolic, it came to represent the wave of changes taking place at the time. In 29 months the wall did come down – dismantled by the German Democratic Republic.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 Nov 1989 (left photo) is perhaps the most recognizable symbol of the beginning of the end of the cold war.

The official end of the Cold War came in late 1991 with the final collapse of the Soviet Union. Only God could have orchestrated the many leaders, people, and events that led to this stunning outcome. The miraculous nature of it all can be summed up in one way by the following quote: “Churchill said in [his] Iron Curtain speech (1946) that World War II could have been prevented ‘without the firing of a single shot’. Reagan, heeding Churchill’s vivid lesson, brought the Cold War to an end ‘without firing a single shot’ [as] Margaret Thatcher [has] observed. (Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders by Steven F. Hayward, 2005, p

Influence of Church Leaders

Just as the world needed leaders to bring about a climate of freedom in eastern Europe, so also the Church needed leaders to be raised up, prepared to help missionaries through the gates that were beginning to open. Enter Elder Russell M. Nelson.

Elder Russell M. Nelson was ordained an Apostle by President Spencer W. Kimball on 12 April 1984. The next year (Nov 1985), and a week after President Ezra Taft Benson was set apart as President of the Church, the First Presidency assigned Elder Nelson with first contact responsibility for the work in all Europe, succeeding President Monson.

While the work of many Church leaders and members contributed to the establishment of the Church in middle and Eastern Europe, Elder Hans B. Ringger (member of the Seventy and Europe Area Presidency at the time) was particularly suited to work with Elder Nelson.

Elder Nelson gave the following description:

“Elder Ringger is a native of Switzerland, a professional architect and electrical engineer. His partnership with me on these assignments has been most unusual to government leaders who were accustomed to dealing with professional clergymen. In fact, our uniqueness has at times been disarming. Invariably, our hosts have been startled, to say the least, when they have been introduced to an American heart surgeon and a Swiss architect, now joined in giving full-time service to their Church.” (Ensign, December 1991, 8)

During Elder Nelson’s five year assignment, from 1986 through 1990, he and Elder Ringger visited government officials in the following countries: Poland, German Democratic Republic, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). President Monson accompanied in visits to Poland and the German Democratic Republic. Progress was made in each case toward the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of the Church. (See Ensign, December 1991, pp. 6-17)

One example of the many miraculous events that unfolded was told by Elder Nelson:

“Upon authorization by the First Presidency, I was privileged to dedicate the land of Hungary on Mt. Gellért in Budapest, Easter Sunday, 19 April 1987. Two days later, Elder Ringger and I met with the chairman of the Council of Religious Affairs, Imre Miklos. Our reception at first was a bit tense. It was clear that we were neither welcome nor wanted. Things were not going particularly well. But then I felt impressed to let this leader know that two days prior to this meeting, I had offered a special apostolic prayer for his country and for its people. As this was mentioned, his countenance changed. Now he was listening. A meeting planned for thirty minutes lasted an hour and a half. From that point forward, he became our friend and advocate. Several subsequent meetings were successfully held. Fourteen months later, Elder Ringger and I returned to Budapest for formal ceremonies with Mr. Miklos on 14 June 1988 that confirmed official recognition for the Church in Hungary. (Ensign, December 1991, pp. 11-12)

Another example occurred on 28 October 1988 when President Monson, accompanied by Elders Nelson and Ringger and other Church leaders met in East Berlin with the head of the German Democratic Republic, Chairman Erich Honecker, and his deputies. They were all seated around a large round table. President Monson tells the story as follows:

“Chairman Honecker began, ‘We know members of your Church believe in work; you’ve proven that. We know you believe in the family; you’ve demonstrated that. We know you are good citizens in whatever country you claim as home; we have observed that. The floor is yours. Make your desires known.’

“I began, ‘Chairman Honecker, at the dedication and open house for the temple in Freiberg, 89,890 of your countrymen stood in line, at times up to four hours, frequently in the rain, that they might see a house of God. In the city of Leipzig, at the dedication of the stake center, 12,000 people attended the open house. In the city of Dresden there were 29,000 visitors; in the city of Zwickau, 5,300. And every week of the year 1,500 to 1,800 people visit the temple grounds in the city of Freiberg. They want to know what we believe. We would like to tell them that we believe in honoring and obeying and sustaining the law of the land. We would like to explain our desire to achieve strong family units. These are but two of our beliefs. We cannot answer questions, and we cannot convey our feelings, because we have no missionary representatives here as we do in other countries. The young men and young women whom we would like to have come to your country as missionary representatives would love your nation and your people. More particularly, they would leave an influence with your people which would be ennobling. Then we would like to see young men and young women from your nation who are members of our Church serve as missionary representatives in many nations, such as in America, in Canada, and in a host of others. They will return better prepared to assume positions of responsibility in your land.’

“Chairman Honecker then spoke for perhaps thirty minutes, describing his objectives and viewpoints and detailing the progress made by his nation. At length, he smiled and addressed me and the group, saying, “We know you. We trust you. We have had experience with you. Your missionary request is approved.”

"My spirit literally soared out of the room. The meeting was concluded. As we left the beautiful government chambers, Elder Russell Nelson turned to me and said, “Notice how the sunshine is penetrating this hall. It’s almost as though our Heavenly Father is saying, ‘I am pleased.’ ”. . .

“As I reflect on these events, my thoughts turn to the Master’s words, “In nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things.” (D&C 59:21.) I confess the hand of God in the miraculous events pertaining to the Church in the German Democratic Republic. (Ensign, May 1989, 50)

Influence of Temples and Temple Prayers

When Spencer W. Kimball became President of the Church in 1973 there were 15 operating temples. When he died in 1985 there were 36. In his dedicatory prayers, President Kimball was true to his own teaching and eloquently pleaded for the opening of doors. Here is one example from the dedication of the Seattle Washington Temple:

“Our gracious Father, there are national gates which seemingly need to be unlocked and doors that need to be opened, and hearts of kings, presidents, emperors, and ministers which need to be softened, that they may permit the gospel to be taken to their people. Let Thy Spirit rest mightily upon them, we pray Thee.”

Many prayers offered in temples during the late 70s and 80s were patterned after President Kimball’s teachings and his personal example. This report provides ample evidence of the answers to President Kimball’s prayers and what must have been millions of other prayers by the Latter-day Saints.

Of special interest is the Freiberg Germany temple dedicated in 1985. Elder Nelson said: “The spiritual radiation from that temple deserves much credit for the changes that have occurred. This house of the Lord was the pivot point around which all good things subsequently seemed to turn.” (Ensign, Dec 1991, 9)

As it happened, President Kimball died before the miracles that he prayed for came to pass. The timing is in the Lord’s own hands. Leaders were raised up before and after to carry on in preaching the gospel to all the world.

President Ezra Taft Benson presided over the Church during the unfolding of these miracles. It was he who many years earlier, at the end of World War II and under the direction of the prophet, led a rescue mission to the struggling people of German-speaking Europe. It was he who over many years preached for freedom and had courageously spoken to Church members in Moscow in 1959. President Benson lived to reap part of his harvest with the news that the Church was officially recognized in Russia (See Ensign, Dec 1993, pp. 36-37).

President Thomas S. Monson shepherded the work in middle and eastern Europe for about two decades prior to Elder Nelson’s assignment. He helped prepare the way and also witnessed many of the miracles that came about.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, who was called as an Apostle at the same time as Elder Nelson, succeeded him with first contact responsibility for Europe. He made many remarkable contributions as missions were established in the newly-opened countries.

Summary and Forward-Looking Comments

Many miracles unfolded during the relatively brief period from 1985 to 1991. They occurred among leaders in the world and in the Church and demonstrate the Lord’s great power in answering our continuous prayer. We echo the words of President Gordon B. Hinckley in his dedicatory prayer of the San Diego California Temple in April 1993: “We thank thee for the spread of thy work across the world, that thou art moving in thy power to open the doors of the nations to thine ordained messengers.”

There are many doors yet to be opened. The map of the world on display in the Missionary Department of the Church Office Building shows the countries where there are no established missions.

Those areas where we have little or no influence include the nations of northern Africa, the Middle East and China – a great swath of the earth largely dominated by Islamic and other non-Christian cultures. The population of these areas is at least 2 billion, almost one third of the world’s population.

We believe in miracles. We know that they occur because we have witnessed them. As we continue to pray, we fully expect to see miraculous changes on the world stage as well as within the Church.