Enos, Part 3

"Father," I prayed, "I know that I could be the missionary Thou wouldst have me be if you took away my stutter."

I knelt in the chapel. I listened. I could hear the rumble of the heater somewhere in the background, accompanied by the hum of the lights. I heard my own breathing. But I heard no evidence of the Divine breaking the barrier between heaven and earth.

I shut off the lights and locked up the church again. Inside our trailer, Elder Findlay was still asleep. My note lay untouched on the counter; I scooped it up and threw it away.

After shedding my clothes and sliding back into bed, I glared at the ceiling. I couldn't have afforded to pray all night as Enos had; hadn't my half hour of fervent prayer been enough? Surely God valued quality over quantity.

In the morning, we gave a lesson to a pair of Navajo men walking by the side of the road. Both had been previously baptized but neither knew what baptism meant and neither had been to church in years. We discussed the commitments associated with baptism. In the process, I still stuttered as I taught them. Apparently, the Lord had not heard me.

I would labor the rest of my mission under the impression that the Lord had heard my desperate prayer, but that He had mysterious purposes for me that He didn't bother to share. I continued on — teaching, working, stuttering — until the end, blindly deferring to the Lord's judgment. But not without grumbling.

It would be much later that I discovered exactly how the Lord had answered my prayers.