When President Osguthorpe first arrived in the mission field, the South Dakota Rapid City Mission was baptizing, on average, something around 20 investigators a month. Overall, that represented around 1 or 2 converts per missionary, per year. President Osguthorpe is reported to have said, “We could do nothing, and still baptize as many people. Something is seriously wrong here.” As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, he concluded that what we lacked was faith. We didn’t believe we could bring more people to Christ. South Dakotans were just too hardened. They just didn’t care about what we had to offer. We didn’t believe the promise made in the scriptures that the field was white, and ready to harvest. We saw the field as dead and trampled, and believed it was time to move on.

At about the same time, I believe, President Hinckley challenged mission presidents to double of the number of converts coming into the church. President Osguthorpe took that challenge seriously. He taught. He instructed. He raised our visions. He showed us what could be. He sparked whatever faith was remaining and turned it into a flame. Miracles happened. I remember sitting in zone conference when President Osguthorpe played a recording of a phone call he had made earlier that week. It was a personal conversation between himself and President Hinckley (President Hinckley referred to him as “Russ”), in which he reported that the mission had more than accomplished its goal of doubling the number of converts. President Hinckley’s loving reply was, “That is excellent. Just excellent. Thank you. Now you hold on to them! Hold on to them. Let’s keep them.” During President Osguthorpe’s last month on the mission, I believe every missionary in the mission brought someone into the church. Continue reading →

My former mission president, Russell Osguthorpe, is presently the director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at BYU. Recently, he published a book called Choose to Learn. I stopped by his office a few months ago, and he gave me a copy of the book. I’ve been re-reading it, and the book is basically a transcript of our mission zone conferences. He ran the mission like he would a classroom, and I believe that he was a master at teaching. Anyways, the book reminded me of a diagram that President Osguthorpe showed us while we were missionaries:

Most missionaries, he said, fall under the “natural man” category. Most of them want to do the right thing for the right reasons, but don’t, for two reasons: (1) they succumb to temptation and/or lack focus, or (2) simply do not know how to share the gospel. For example, a missionary might want to serve others and teach the Gospel because he loves the Savior and because he loves people. However, he might struggle getting up on time in the mornings. He might alienate people in the way he teaches. He might be too shy to approach people on the street. He might have trouble focusing during scripture study. He might not know how to invite members to participate. Every missionary has something they could do better, and to that extent, they reside in the natural man category. Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking a lot since then about what makes a good movie. A lot of times, I’ll go see a movie in the theaters with some friends, and while walking out of the theater, a friend will say, “That was a great movie!” or “That movie was meh.” But what does either claim actually mean about the film? What follows here is simply my own attempt to construe the issue in a way that makes sense to me.

A few months ago, the internet was raving about the movie True Grit, which is a remake of an old John Wayne movie. A number of my friends had gone to see it, and each of them told me that it is a “must see” film. So my parents and I went to see it. The cinematography was beautiful. The acting was superb. The directing was masterful. The pacing was perfect. It was a very well-made film. And yet, I felt a little sick afterwards. I realized that I really disliked it, but not for any flaw I could find in the film’s technique or style. I disliked it because I didn’t feel as if I was a better person for having seen it. It didn’t invite me to change or see the world differently. It just did a really good job of telling a not very good story.

Now, you are free to completely disagree with me. You may have loved True Grit, and have been inspired by it to be a better person. This is all subjective, to some degree. However, I’m sure you’ve all seen films where you realized that the filmmaker has done a masterful job of telling a somewhat morally questionable story. Continue reading →

I meant to post this yesterday, but somehow it got lost in all my travels back to Utah from DC. Yesterday, August 6, was the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. In that nuclear blast, over 60,000 non-combatant men, women, and children were killed.

The tragedy that occurred on this day never should have happened. It never needed to happen.

Because we are nationalists, we are quick to defend our nation when it is accused of wrongdoing. However, we must avoid the “it’s not wrong when we do it” mentality. If any other nation had dropped the nuclear bomb, I suspect that we would have unanimously condemned the act as a war crime. However, because our own nation did it, we struggle to rationalize the act and explain away our guilt. We invent historical narratives, based in unproven (and in many cases discounted) hypotheticals, that try to explain why it was necessary to do what we did.

Here is what President J. Reuben Clark of the First Presidency said about the event in General Conference in 1946: Continue reading →