At 20 years old and after being interviewed by the bishop and stake president I was interviewed by Elder Theodore T Tuttle(who was a General Authority seventy) and lived in Lindon, Utah. Elder Tuttle bought a frame home that was owned by Boyd K Packer. However, President Packer had built a new home on the property where the first church had been built many years before. In front of his home was the first and only Linden tree which is where Lindon City got its name.
My MTC experience before leaving the mission was at a home in Salt Lake City, where they had added classrooms. There were over 100 missionaries there when I went. We lived in a home owned by an older couple. They fed us breakfast and dinner. For lunch, we were on our own.
Before I left, Sterling W. Sill laid his hands upon my head and set me apart as a missionary.
My Mission President was George Z Aposhian.
When I started my mission in the fall of September of 1959. I was assigned to work in Raleigh, North Carolina. The first week I was there, I wrote my parents a letter and told them that I was in the North Carolina State Prison (just to make them worry a little). The story behind that is there was a group of missionaries, in a choir group, and they were traveling the mission. They had previously arranged to perform at North Carolina State Prison so we joined them.
In Raleigh, the first lady that I was privileged to baptize was blind. One of her teachers at the school of the blind, who was a member of the church, started talking to her about Jesus. She was interested to know more.
This lady called and asked us to teach her. She eventually joined the church. It was the first baptism I had as a missionary. Her name was Agnes Creech. It was a special experience. Shortly after that, I was transferred to Danville, Virginia.
I had been home for 50 years from my mission experience. I had an assignment at a Missionary Training Center for new missionaries going out. One of those missionaries was leaving for Russia the next day after I met him. I found out he was from Raleigh. I asked him if he ever heard of Agnes Creech.
He said, “My goodness, she’s my mother’s best friend.”
He was going to call his mother the next day because he was leaving. I asked him to have his mother send me a postcard with Agnes’s phone number and address. Two weeks later, I got a full letter from his mother telling me about Agnes.
It was at that point I decided that it was time to take my wife back to Virginia and back to Raleigh, North Carolina and visit Agnes. Sister Querch helped set it all up for me. However, two weeks before we were to leave, Sister Querch called.
She said, “We have a problem. One of the neighbors had given Agnes a new waterbed. The fellows who installed it left too much water in it. The first night she slept in it, she rolled off the bed and broke her hip. She was in the hospital.”
She suggested that I get my airline tickets changed. However, they wouldn’t change it.
She said, “Well, go ahead and come. Agnes is supposed to get out of the hospital in the next couple days.”
She said, “Agnes doesn’t feel like going this morning. She’s still sore from her operation. But you can go ahead and come to the church. I’ll take you to her house after you can talk with her.”
We were at the church and they were having Fast and Testimony Meeting. That’s where people fast for two meals and then donate the money to the poor. They leave time for people to walk up to the stand and bear their testimony. I went up and told them my experience of Baptizing Agnes Creech 50 years earlier. There was a brother and sister Bennett who were quite young when I was there as a missionary but now were in their 70s. As I bore my testimony I explained that they had something to do with my family that they were not aware of. While I was there as a missionary in 1959 they had a young son and a young daughter. Their daughters name was Sue Churé. So I told them becasue I liked that name we had named our first daughter, Angela Churé. And to keep the name going, she had twin daughters and the first one she had name Berkley Churé and the second one was Brighton Heather. So, after sacrament meeting they came up to me and thanked me for carrying on the name. After the meeting was over, I had six women come up to me. They told me what a neat person Agnes Creech was.
One of them said to me, “Are you aware of the new temple here in Raleigh?”
I said, “Yes.”
She said, “They were going to lift Angel Moroni up on top of the temple”. They invited the news media to come and observe it. Because Agnes is blind, we’d asked permission to go up and touch it.” They had Agnes all dressed in white with white gloves on. She went to touch the Angel Moroni.
That night on the news media, the television showed a picture of her touching Angel Moroni. The next morning in the newspaper, it was a picture of her doing the same thing. Then she asked permission to go down in the bottom floor of the temple and touch the oxen, which hold up the baptismal font.
While she was touching the oxen, she found some cracks and holes in the oxen. She reported to the supervisor, and they had to change the dedication of the temples for two weeks later so they could fill those holes and seal them. Then I kept in touch with Agnes for the next year or two.
In May of 2011, Sister Querch called and told me that Agnes had passed away. I had planned to fly out to Raleigh and be there for her funeral.
In the meantime, I had contracted prostate cancer. I was scheduled for that day to leave for California to have treatment. I couldn’t go to the funeral. However, Sister Querch sent me a full copy of the whole funeral.
When we were teaching Agnes, she was married to a man who was also blind. Where they met was at the school of the blind. He told her if she joined the church, he was going to put her out of the house. She went ahead and joined the church. Years later, he also joined. Also, her mother, who lived in Durham, which was 27 miles away, joined the church. It was amazing.
