I am grateful for this opportunity to speak with you today, and I will be even more grateful in about 30 minutes.
I would like to address my comments today to those who might be struggling with the realities of mortality, the tests that each of us may be going through or will go through in our walk through mortality.
First, I want to assure you that our personal trials and tests are all part of Heavenly Father's plan of happiness. This beautiful earth was created as a testing ground for those of us who kept their first estate. And because it is our Father's plan—who is perfect—then by some deductive reasoning this is a perfect test, designed specifically for you and for me.
The concept of a perfect test is demonstrated in the very popular children's book written by Roald Dahl titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Most of you are familiar with the book or the two movies based on the book. My second-grade teacher read it to us in class prior to our field trip to the Y&S candy factory that made Twizzler red licorice in New Mexico. Notice how this story is similar to our journey through this mortal existence.
The story begins with an eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka, who has decided to open the doors of his chocolate factory for the first time in many years. He has hidden five golden tickets in chocolate bars shipped all over the world. Whoever buys the chocolate bar with the golden tickets is allowed to bring one guest and take the grand tour of his amazing chocolate factory. For the child in each of us, I'm not sure anything could be quite as great as touring a chocolate factory. Unknown to the five children and their guest, the tour is just half the story. The real reason Mr. Wonka comes up with this plan is that he is getting old and wants to find someone to take over the factory—someone he can trust with all his secret chocolate recipes. So, during the tour, Mr. Wonka devises a test—a special test—for each of the children who found a golden ticket. The child who passes his or her test would become the heir to the entire Wonka enterprise.
The five lucky children who find the golden tickets are the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the spoiled and petulant Verruca Salt, the gum chewing addict Violet Beauregard, the TV-obsessed Mike Teavee, and the poverty-stricken Charlie Bucket.
The group meets in front of the magnificent gate of the chocolate factory at the predetermined day and begins their magical tour of the chocolate factory. One by one, each child is presented their test, each test perfectly crafted and disguised as part of the tour.
Augustus Gloop is the first child tested. He just cannot resist the idea of swimming and drinking from the river of pure chocolate. While attempting to lean over and take a drink, ignoring the warnings of Mr. Wonka to not touch the chocolate as to contaminate the entire river, he falls in and is eventually sucked up through a tube and off to another part of the factory. Augustus fails his test.
Next, Verruca Salt just has to have a cute little trained squirrel. Like everything else in her life, she demands that her daddy buy one. When Mr. Wonka tells the Salts that the squirrels are not for sale, she throws a fit and climbs over the railing she was told not to cross and ends up in the garbage chute, thus failing her test.
Violet Beauregard is presented with a test that she just can't refuse. She is the world champion bubblegum chewer; she has been chewing the same piece of gum for almost a year! A prototype gumball is being researched at the factory that will allow the chewer to actually eat their supper. Although it has not been tested on humans—and against the warnings of Mr. Wonka—Violet just has to try it. As she puts the gumball in her mouth, she enjoys the most delightful turkey dinner with all the trimmings—until she gets to desert, and instead of eating a blueberry pie, she becomes a blueberry. Violet fails her test.
Mike Teavee, who is obsessed with TV, fails his test because he just can't resist being part of the process of beaming from one place to another over the TV waves. He jumps in front of the machine to be transmitted-and poof, he is gone, lost in the airwaves over the chocolate factory, thus failing his test.
Then, lastly, there is the poverty-stricken little boy, Charlie Bucket. Part of his test is actually presented to him prior to entering the tour of the factory. When he finds the last golden ticket, as he runs home to tell his family, he is approached by a man from a competing candy company, offering Charlie a large sum of money if he will steal a piece of candy—a Gobstopper-during his tour and give it to him after the tour is over. So, during the tour, when the group enters the room where the Gobstoppers are being made, Charlie puts one in his pocket. At the end of the tour, Charlie and his grandpa are the only ones left. All the other kids have disappeared as the result of failing their test. Charlie has a change of heart and gives the Gobstopper back to Mr. Wonka. Charlie has passed the test. The man who offered to buy the Gobstopper from Charlie actually works for Mr. Wonka.
Just as Willie Wonka wanted to bestow his chocolate kingdom unto those who passed the test, our loving Heavenly Father has promised everything that the Father has could be ours if we are valiant in our tests here in mortality.
I would now like to share the story of two individuals who went through—and are going through—the tests in their lives and, through their faith, were and are able to overcome them. Hopefully, reviewing their stories, we will have the increased faith to be able to overcome our own trials and tests in life.
I remember my seminary teacher telling the story of Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt my freshman year of high school. I'm not sure why this particular story has stayed so strong with me; I didn't come from a large family.
If you recall the story from Genesis, Joseph was the eleventh son of Jacob. One night, Joseph has a dream, and in that dream he and all his brothers are in the field binding sheaves of cornstalk into bundles. Joseph's sheave stands upright, and all his brothers' sheaves are surrounding his, and they all make obeisance, or bow, to Joseph's sheaf. Now, I know that there are some students in the audience today that understand family dynamics, some probably better than I. But I do understand this simple rule: if you have a dream and you are basically the baby of the family, you don't go around telling your older brothers that they are going to one day bow down before you and worship you.
Joseph does share the vision with his older siblings, and you can imagine how it is received. They are not very happy. Then, to add some more problems to the family dynamics, Jacob has a special coat of many colors made specifically for Joseph. The perception of his older brothers is that their father loves him more and that Joseph is so arrogant that he thinks he is going to be their ruler.
So the story of the many trials and tests of Joseph begins fairly unassumingly, with Jacob asking Joseph to go and check on his older brothers out tending their flocks in the fields. Joseph searches for his brothers and eventually finds them in the valley of Dothan. As Joseph approaches his brothers, they can see him from afar because of his coat of many colors. They begin at that moment to devise a plan to kill their younger brother.
Ruben hears of their plan to slay Joseph, and he intervenes and says, "You can throw him into that pit, but you will not slay him." So when Joseph arrives to greet his brothers, they bind him, remove his coat of many colors, and throw him into a pit used to catch wild beasts.
While the brothers are eating their dinner that night, Judah comes up with a different plan. He had seen a band of Ishmaelites carrying all kinds of spices on their way to Egypt to sell their wares. He proposes that they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites and that they in turn sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. That way they get money for their brother and do not have the blood of their brother on their hands. So they agree and sell Joseph into slavery for 20 pieces of silver. To convince their father that Joseph was dead, they kill a kid from their herd of goats and sprinkle its blood on the coat of many colors. They then go home and show their father the coat and say they found this on their way home; has he seen Joseph? Jacob sees the coat splattered with blood and mourns for his son's apparent death for many days.
In our family, we kind of have this saying that we say jokingly—"That would be considered a bad day"—when something happens that we didn't expect or we see an event happen in the world. I would count being thrown into a pit with no food or water by your older brothers and then sold into slavery in a distant country as having a bad day. For a lot of us, including myself, I would be tempted to say in my prayer as I see my homeland fading into the distance, "Lord, how does this happen to me? I saw in a dream they were supposed to bow down to me; now I'm being sold into slavery."
This is where we begin to see a glimmer of the true character and faith of Joseph. He has no control over what just happened, save it be not sharing his dream with his brothers. Yet Joseph doesn't pout or blame God for his troubles. He has faith and exercises that faith. Joseph arrives in Egypt and is bought by Potiphar, who happens to be an officer of the Pharaoh and captain of the guard. In Genesis 39:2-4 we read, "And the Lord was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all that he did to prosper in his hand. And Joseph found grace in his sight, and he served him: and he made him overseer over his house, and all that he had he put into his hand."
So Joseph decides if he is going to be a slave, he is going to be the best slave he can be. Not only does Joseph become the best slave, but the Lord blesses Joseph and Potiphar because of Joseph. Genesis 39:5: "The Lord blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the Lord was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field."
Joseph soon becomes in charge of all the doings in Potiphar's estate. Joseph also gets the attention of Potiphar's wife. She makes several advances toward Joseph, and he refuses each of them. Finally, one day when Potiphar is away and no other of the Egyptian men are around, Potiphar's wife makes another advance toward Joseph. This time Joseph flees and runs away, but in so doing, Potiphar's wife rips the shirt off Joseph. She makes up this elaborate story when Potiphar returns that Joseph had made some advances toward her and that she had screamed for her life, and Joseph had run away, but she had been able to grab a piece of his clothing as he ran away. When she tells this story to Potiphar, whom do you think he is going to believe? His wife or a Hebrew slave from Canaan? Potiphar has Joseph thrown into the king's prison. Joseph is having a bad day!
Again we see a glimpse into Joseph's character. Joseph does not lose faith in the Lord. He doesn't curse his God because he was falsely accused and thrown into prison. We read in Genesis 39:21-22, "But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison committed to Joseph's hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it."
While Joseph is over all the prisoners in the prison, two members of the Pharaoh's staff—the butler and the baker—had upset the king and had been thrown into prison. We don't know how long these two had been in prison; the scriptures say a "season." We can infer that it must have been long enough for Joseph to get to know them personally and to sense that one day something wasn't right. Joseph asks them what is bothering them.
They respond they have dreamed a dream, but there is no one to interpret them. Joseph answers, "Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell them to me, and my God will interpret them for you." Not sure I would have been so forthcoming on interpreting a dream. The last time Joseph talked about a dream, he got thrown in a pit and sold into slavery. But, nonetheless, that doesn't stop Joseph.
The butler tells Joseph about his dream first. He sees a vine with three branches, and on the third branch there is a cluster of ripe grapes. And he takes Pharaoh's cup and presses the grapes into wine and gives the cup to Pharaoh, and he drinks it. After hearing the butler's dream, Joseph tells him that the three branches are three days, and in three days the butler will be released from prison and will be restored back to his previous position as the Pharaoh's butler. Joseph then asks the butler to remember him when he is released and maybe find a positon outside of prison with the Pharaoh.
The baker hears the interpretation of the butler's dream, and since it is good, he tells Joseph that he too had a dream. The baker then tells Joseph of his dream. He dreams that he has three white baskets on his head. Each basket has all manner of baked treats for the Pharaoh, and the birds come down and eat all the bread out of the baskets on his head. Joseph tells the baker the interpretation of his dream is the three baskets are three days, and in three days the Pharaoh will cut off his head. The birds are going to eat his flesh. Notice that Joseph doesn't bother to tell the baker to remember him.
Sure enough, in three days exactly, what Joseph had interpreted in both the butler's and the baker's dream come to fruition, right down to the birds eating the flesh of the headless baker. But to Joseph's chagrin, the butler forgets about Joseph. Again, another bad day for Joseph.
Now fast forward two full years. Joseph is still in prison—in charge of all the goings on, but still a prisoner. The Pharaoh announces that he has had a dream. In his dream, he sees seven fatted cows and seven skinny cows, and in a separate dream he sees seven full ears of corn and seven thin ears of corn. The Pharaoh calls for all the magicians and wise men in the land, but no one can interpret the dream. Then the butler tells the Pharaoh what had transpired two years ago when he had been thrown in prison and how a young Hebrew boy who was a servant to the captain of the prison guard had interpreted his dream and the baker's dream, and how they both had come true.
You can imagine the shock Joseph receives when the Pharaoh's guards come to get Joseph out of prison. The scriptures say he had to shave, change his clothes, and hastily appear before the Pharaoh.
The Pharaoh greets Joseph and tells him that he has heard that he can interpret dreams. In Genesis 41:16 Joseph responds, "It is not in me: God shall give Pharaoh an answer of peace."
I'm sure all of you are familiar with the interpretation of the dream. Joseph tells the Pharaoh that both dreams are really just one but doubled for effectiveness—there will be seven years of feast and seven years of famine-and that the dream is a warning to the Pharaoh of what God is about to do.
Pharaoh puts Joseph in charge over the storage of all the grain during the feast years and of dispersing the grain in the famine years. He gives Joseph his ring and dresses him in very costly apparel and even gives Joseph his second chariot!
Joseph's father and brothers are in Canaan, and they don't get the warning of the feast and famine years. The famine hits all the land, not just Egypt. News travels that Egypt has grain to sell. Jacob sends all 10 boys but does not let Benjamin go to Egypt to buy grain for their families. All 10 brothers come before Joseph and bow down with their faces to the earth, thus fulfilling the dream Joseph had told them some 15 or more years ago. You can imagine the struggle that is before Joseph. Here are all 10 brothers that sold him into slavery and caused him so much pain and anguish in his life, now desiring to buy grain to sustain their families and their herds. Think what you would do. I am guessing that if this had been my life's story and not Joseph's, the ending might have been a little different. Joseph hides his identity from his brothers and has them go back and get their younger brother. When they return and all 12 are together again, Joseph reveals himself, and you can imagine the family reunion they had that day.
Now, I would like to fast forward a few thousand years and introduce you to a former student of mine who has gone through, and continues to go through, some great trials and tests in his life. I have asked for his permission to share his story. I do not share his story for you to feel sorry for him or to have pity toward him. He doesn't need your pity. I share his story to somehow give you hope and strength, as we all go through our own trials here in mortality. Let me introduce you to Ammon Butcher. As you can see, Ammon was a typical boy doing typical boy things in his home state of Texas. Ammon is part of a large family: he has four brothers and three sisters.
Ammon loved sports, and in Texas everyone played football. He played football, but his true passion was wrestling. His passion paid off, and he became a very good wrestler. He wrestled in junior high and high school. Then one Saturday in January 2007, everything changed.
Ammon was participating in a high school wrestling tournament as a junior. He was engaged in a very tough match. His opponent was very aggressive and very strong. No one really knows exactly what happened, as there was no video of the match. What Ammon does recall is his opponent had him around his waist and was on top of Ammon. As Ammon stood up and tried to break free from his grasp, he was only able to break free of one hand, so his opponent quickly grabbed Ammon around one of his legs and spun to throw him back to the mat. In what is a completely legal move—and performed frequently in most wrestling matches—Ammon fell awkwardly on his neck. At that moment, Ammon's life changed forever. He lay fully conscious but motionless on the mat. He could not move or feel anything from the chest down. The medical diagnosis was a C4-C5 dislocation and compression. He did not technically break his neck; it was dislocated, and the dislocation put tremendous pressure on his spinal cord and caused irreparable damage. Ammon spent 26 days in intensive care. He weighed in that Saturday morning of the wrestling tournament 139.6 pounds. When he left the ICU, he weighed 110 pounds.
Fortunately for Ammon, he had his family, some great mentors from his high school, his wrestling coach, and an undeniable faith in our Savior. Though his experiences after the accident were never feelings of self-pity, just normal-day life had become enormously difficult. Ammon's mother would frequently tell her son, "Get up; you have to get back out there. Focus on what you can do. Someday you will have to provide for yourself and a family."
After the accident, there was a tremendous outpouring of support. Ammon remembers so many giving of their time, their means, and their talents. Emails flooded his inbox, monetary donations were made, letters poured in from across the globe, and good people were constantly by his bedside. The hospital actually had to move Ammon to a larger room to accommodate all the visitors.
After almost a full year of rehabilitation, Ammon needed to set new goals based on his new reality of life. Ammon was a fair student in high school but never really applied himself. Luckily for him, he did well enough in high school to not have failed any classes.
He began looking at his options of a potential career path. Ammon recalls thinking that he never really focused on academics, so he really didn't know what he could do. Obviously, any type of trade was out of the question without the use of his hands and legs. When he returned to high school, he faced the very strong possibility of failing a class for the very first time. He was struggling with coping with his new reality. However, once he got a grip on his new life, he began to realize he had some ability in the academic arena that he never really knew he had before the accident.
Once his high school grades began to improve and he took the college entrance exams, college was a strong possibility. He began to realize that it would have to be his mind to propel him to the heights he wanted to go.
Ammon enrolled at BYU-Idaho and decided to pursue a degree in accounting. I realize I'm completely biased here, but I have to admit it was the best decision he had made thus far. I met Ammon for the first time when he was a sophomore taking an Accounting 202 class I was teaching. Since that first meeting in 2011, I have been blessed to know him.
Due to his limitations of being in a motorized wheelchair, Rexburg and BYU-Idaho did present some challenges. For Ammon, attending winter semester was out of the question. I did kid him on multiple occasions that I'm sure the engineering department could retrofit his wheelchair with tracks, and we could put some skis on the front, and he could have a motorized snow machine. But this was totally impractical.
It would be my wish for everyone within the sound of my voice to have the chance to meet Ammon in person. I know it would change your life. I am a different person because of my interactions with Ammon.
Ammon did very well with his studies here and graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting in the fall of 2013. He was honored as one of our top accounting students and was invited to give the student address at the College of Business and Communication convocation that semester.
Graduate school is pushed pretty strongly in our profession. If you don't go on and get a master's degree, most states require 150 credit hours beyond high school in order to sit for the CPA exam. Ammon wanted to get his master's. He applied to all the large schools in Texas. He was actually accepted to University of Texas at Austin and SMU. UT-Austin is in the top five nationally for accounting programs. Brother Packard, an accounting faculty member here on campus, suggested Ammon apply to the Ohio State University's Fisher School of Business. He applied, and actually a week before he was going to send his acceptance letter to UT-Austin, he received a call from the recruiting and admissions coordinator at Ohio State University inviting him to come out to Columbus and take a tour of the school.
When Ammon first met Dr. Arya, the department chair for the Master of Accounting program, he had no idea of Ammon's disability. They offered Ammon a full-tuition scholarship with room and board and a monthly stipend. The value of this scholarship is roughly $65,000.
Ammon still maintained a love for wrestling and spoke of his love for it with Dr. Araya. He then got Ammon in touch with the OSU wrestling coach, Tom Ryan. When Coach Ryan offered Ammon a manager positon with the OSU wrestling team for the year he would be on campus, Ammon was sold. Ammon attended OSU and received his Master of Accounting degree in April 2015.
He also worked with Coach Ryan on building a leadership training program for the wrestling team. Ammon said, "Success in wrestling requires a person to make a multitude of little decisions correctly and the same in life. Through my injury, recovery, and transition to a new life, I have thought long and hard about the purpose of adversity, and I've asked, what is it about the second person that passes a barrier that the first could not and the next barrier that a third could pass but the second could not? I am working with Coach Ryan to develop a structured program to address areas where student athletes are guided in the process of making right decisions under extreme stress that over time will accumulate to success in all areas of their life, not just performance on the mat." As you can see, Ammon had a very positive impact on the wrestling program at OSU.
I recall Ammon visiting me in my office one day, and like a typical accountant he said, "Brother Foutz, do you have any idea how much it costs for me to function each month?" I told him I actually had no idea. He said, "It takes over 12 people each month for me to function. I need someone to help me get out of bed, shower, and get dressed. I need someone to cook and help me eat. I need someone to help with some of my daily tasks at school. And then I need someone at night to help me get ready for bed and then help to get into bed. I have figured it out, and I am going to have to make a lot of money in order for me to be self-sufficient and not a burden to society.
Little did Ammon know that the Lord was working his magic and guiding Ammon and his decisions. Unknown to Ammon at the time he decided to go to Ohio State, there was actually an apartment complex built specifically for individuals with disabilities like Ammon's. Each apartment is built and designed in such a way that lifts for his bed to lift him in and out are built into the celling. The lift can carry him right from his bed to the bathroom. There is 24-hour support available at the touch of a button, or it can be voice activated. There is transportation to and from his apartment to anywhere in Columbus.
This apartment has given Ammon the ability to work as a staff accountant with a large health care organization that has its headquarters in Columbus. He has begun his path to being self-sufficient.
To quote Ammon, "I have drunk from the bitter cup, but I refuse to be bitter. Just like muscles in the body, the spirit needs stress to grow, and that is what I take from my accident—through it I have grown my spirit. I am also fortunate to learn I could get excited about what I could do with my mind. I don't spend any time thinking about my injury or what could have been. I let the research take care of itself. If there is a therapy that can help me, great. But until that time, I am not thinking about it. There is too much to accomplish, and I'm not going to get caught up in worrying about something that only might happen; there are things I can make happen and lives I can touch. That is what drives me."
I am looking forward to following from a distance what Ammon will do next. He continues to amaze me and motivates me to be a better teacher, father, husband, and child of our Heavenly Father.
For Joseph or Ammon, it would have been be easy to say, "Look this is bad. I've had some tough things happen to me, and I'm done; I'm over it," and blame God or someone else for what happened. Instead, they both turned to their Lord and Savior and said, "I can handle this test before me, and with my faith and belief in our Heavenly father I can survive."
I know there are many within the sound of my voice that are experiencing very difficult things, or you will encounter very difficult tests. Some might not seem as significant as Ammon's or Joseph's, but they are significant to you. That is part of the plan of happiness. We signed up for them. They are tests perfectly designed for each of us. It's important that we realize that. You can't look at your roommate or spouse or brother or sister and say, "Why are they struggling with that? I wouldn't have any problem handling that trial or test." Well, guess what? It's not your trial; it's theirs—perfectly designed for them. It is your job to give aid when needed and help when asked for.
It's important to realize that we do not have to go through these tests alone. Through the enabling power of the Atonement, the Savior is there for each of us. He knows how it feels because He has felt it. He suffered for you and for me. This I know because I have felt his help and been strengthened by His presence in my times of need. And I stand here as a witness that He will do the same for you. But you have to ask.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.