I never saw Garth again.
The week he re-married his ex-wife was tough, but again, Heavenly Father was watching out for me. I got a remarkable phone call one morning from a woman I had never met. She was the mother of my brother's old girl-friend.
"You're going to think I'm pretty strange," she began as soon as I answered the phone, "but I was wondering if you would like to go to Education Week in Utah with my daughters this week?" Before I could ask any questions she hurried on. "My daughters and I bought tickets to go, but at the last minute I have to back out. The girls are going anyway, and I hate to waste a good ticket, so I was trying to think of someone to give it to, and for some reason your name came to mind. I know it's crazy, but there it is. Would you like to go?"
Would I like to go? Of course I would! There were all kinds of last minute preparations and juggling that had to be done to get the kids taken care of, but everything fell into place easily. Obviously, this was another of Heavenly Father's tender mercies, and I was so grateful.
Education week is held on the Brigham Young University Campus, and is a full week of classes, devotionals, and programs designed to lift, teach, and motivate people to live the gospel better. I had never been, but always wanted to. It turned out to be just as wonderful as I imagined.
One of my favorite classes was about hope. The teacher used an analogy of mountain climbing to help us understand that principle.
He suggested that we imagine we had decided to scale Mount Everest. It would take a lot of preparation and planning, of course, but after training and getting everything ready, we set out. We have bought all our supplies and hired a guide, so we fly to the foothills of the Himalayas, and then begin to climb.
Climbing Mount Everest takes many days and lots of equipment, including oxygen for when you get so high you can’t breath without help. Each day you climb and climb. In the evenings you set up camp. Eventually you reach the point where the oxygen gets so thin you have to use tanks to breath. Your guide tells you that you are getting near the top of Mount Everest, but you haven’t been able to see it for days because of the clouds surrounding the top of the mountain.
You get to the point where you have only got enough oxygen left for three more days of climbing, but the guide assures you that is enough. Although you haven’t been able to see the summit the guide says you are close and should be able to reach the top in at least two days. You make camp that evening and go to bed in your tent, excited about being so close to reaching your goal. In the middle of the night you are awakened by the howling of the wind, and in the morning when you look out of your tent all you see is white. A huge storm has blown in and you can’t climb until it gets over. All day you sit in your tent, frustrated because you can't climb. Still, you have enough oxygen to climb two more days before you have to start back down.
The next morning you wake up to hear the blizzard still blowing. Now you are getting worried, as well as frustrated. If the storm doesn’t let up tomorrow you won’t have a chance to finish your climb. You go to bed that night hoping and praying that the storm will blow itself out and that you will be able to at least get close to the summit tomorrow.
In the morning you wake early to the sound of silence. The storm is over. Quickly you get dressed and crawl out of your tent. You are the first person up, but you can’t wait to see how close you are to the summit. The whole world is now covered in snow, and everything is white and glistening. You look up to see if you can see the top of the mountain, but it is still hidden by clouds. You decide to walk to a rock a little way from camp, hoping from there you’ll be able to see the summit better. After hiking a little way you look up again and see that the clouds are beginning to break up. You stand there on the rock, waiting, as the clouds drift apart and finally you are able to see the summit of Mount Everest, and you are almost there! You are so close that you will be able to reach the top in less than an hour! That is hope!
Then the speaker said, “Now, here’s the deal. That is how far you were on your journey to heaven on the day you were born! You already climbed most of the way in pre-mortal life. Now all you have to do is finish the last little bit while here on earth. The thing is, we need the clouds to part occasionally to remind us how close we really are to our goal, and to give us the hope and courage to keep going. Because we can make it!”
