Scott Quoted Alma 32 Word for Word — Scripture He Had Never Read (Twin Falls, Idaho, 1989–91)

In 1989–91, Elder Chad Wright was serving a mission in Twin Falls, Idaho, with his companion Elder Benson. They were teaching a family the missionaries had been visiting for about a year and a half with little progress: a single mother, Henrietta, known as Hank, and her two children, Dorothy (Dotsy) and Scott. Hank and Dotsy were baptized, but Scott, about nineteen, would not commit — and the missionaries sensed something was holding him back that he was not saying.

One day the two missionaries sat down with him to find out what it was. After deflecting with a couple of surface concerns, Scott finally looked up with tears in his eyes and admitted the real obstacle: 'I don't feel like God wants me. I don't feel like he will accept someone like me, who has sinned, who has been as far away from him as you can get... I don't trust that God will be able to accept me and will love me.'

Elder Wright, who had memorized some 300 scriptures and often taught without carrying his scriptures, found his mind suddenly a complete blank — not one scripture came. He panicked and silently prayed for help. He happened to have his scriptures that day; without knowing what he was doing, he opened them and read the first thing he saw: Alma 5:32–33 — 'Repent, repent, for the Lord God hath spoken it! Behold, he sendeth an invitation unto all men, for the arms of mercy are extended towards them... and he saith: repent, and I will receive you.'

The room fell silent. Scott knew the elder had not read a scripture to him in all their visits — that he had had nothing, and had opened the book blindly and found the exact answer to his fear. Then came the second miracle. Scott looked up and said: 'Elder Wright, do you know how I feel right now? I feel like somebody has planted this seed in my heart, and it's starting to grow, and it's getting bigger, and the more it grows the more love I feel, and I just want more.'

Scott was describing, almost word for word, Alma 32:28 — 'we will compare the word unto a seed... if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed or a good seed... it will begin to swell within your breasts... it beginneth to enlarge my soul... it beginneth to be delicious to me' — a passage he had never read and never heard. The elders had never shared Alma 32 with the family, and Scott never participated in the scriptures. When Elder Wright showed him the chapter, Scott's jaw dropped: he had quoted scripture he did not know existed. There was dead silence for ten seconds. When Scott was asked when he would be baptized, he set a date two weeks later. Elder Wright calls this experience, next to his own testimony of the Book of Mormon, the one that has made the biggest difference in his life — proof to him that God lives and is involved in the details of our lives.