Having Hope In Adversity

Talk presented March 7, 2020, in Joplin Stake Conference:

Life is beautiful … Life is amazing … Life is hard … Life is Challenging …

Life can be a really tough row to hoe!

Priesthood leaders on the Stake sugar beet farm
in Granger posing with their work hoes, including
Bro. Peterson, second from left; Dwayne Johnson;
and Gordon Evans, second from right.  

There’s adversity of numerous kinds – including genetical, physical and emotional ones. There are ones caused by the actions or decisions made by others -- or even those brought upon ourselves by our own choices.

When I was in my early teens, we were often called to work on our stake welfare farms, including planting tomatoes, harvesting tomatoes and picking corn. The hardest assignment was weeding the sugar beets.

How many have had that great opportunity?

How many have ever seen a sugar beet?

John Havlicek of
the Boston Celtics
from 1962 to 1978.

I could do about three rows, each about 100 yards long, before my back and arm were aching, and I was drenched in sweat. Those types of activities made me realize I shouldn’t make a career out of manual labor.

When I was in 8^th grade, my father had a personal chat with me about my future career plans. I told him I was going to be a professional basketball player. I pictured myself as the next John Havlicek of the Boston Celtics.

Mario Lanza,
1921-1959

He then asked what I would do if I couldn’t be a pro player. What was my backup plan? I quickly said I’d be a professional singer, maybe like Mario Lanza. 

The same year I was
on West Lake Junior
High basketball team,
I was named the
"Most Fit" in
Coach Newton's
gym classes.

Then he asked: What then, if that doesn’t work out? I wrestled with my thoughts for a bit, then suggested I would become a writer or journalist – despite the fact my spelling and grammar were terrible. I figured I’d have an editor to fix those things.

After a lot of practice and overcoming many injuries, my basketball career reached all the way up to – the last spot on the bench of our junior high basketball team. 

And the pinnacle of my singing career was – high school madrigals and Concert Choir. I had a great time in both

Granger High School Madrigals
1967-68. I'm on the 2nd row, far right.

pursuits, but those career dreams were dashed. Still, I was confident my Father in Heaven would help me find something else.

That something else was a career in writing and journalism, starting with our high school newspaper, then as church mission public relations director, and then as an editor of the BYU newspaper, which led to a 35-year career as an editor at the daily newspaper, The Deseret News.

Sounds simple enough, but actually that path was filled with challenges and adversity!

Elder Neal A. Maxwell once said: “One’s life . . . cannot be both faith-filled and stress-free. . . . Therefore, how can you and I really expect to glide naively through life, as if to say, ”Lord, give me experience – but not grief, not sorrow, not pain, not opposition, not betrayal, and certainly not to be forsaken. Keep from me, Lord, all those experiences which made Thee what Thou art! Then let me come and dwell with Thee and fully share Thy joy!” (end quote)

The Lord knows we need to experience the bad and the good in life as we climb that figurative ladder back to him.

Growing up, I had real trouble with my shoulders – which led to surgeries on both. But those setbacks didn’t stop me from playing basketball as much as time would permit.

The large rock nicked my left-leg calf muscle, which
put my leg into spasms and I was helped down!

And at a Scout camp, I was almost killed when a large boulder came crashing down the mountainside, and I stood there frozen. In a split second, my brother pushed me out of the way. I was nicked in the left-leg calf muscle, but was alive! The rock, however, plummeted down the mountainside and killed a member of our troop. We were devastated.

Elder Adhemar Damiani of the Seventy has said: “As part of our mortal probation, we pass through affliction, pain, and disappointment. Only in Jesus Christ can we find peace. … His gospel gives us the strength and the eternal perspective to face what is coming with good cheer.” (end quote)

Elder Hunt on crutches and
left leg in full cast at San
Jose, Costa Rica, airport set
to fly home to Granger.

The words, eternal perspective, played a critical part in the challenge I faced when I was 20 years old, more than half a century ago, and serving a mission in Costa Rica. After several months of pain in my left leg and two surgeries, the doctors discovered I had bone cancer. One day later, I was on my way back home to Utah where I was told that the only way to maybe beat the cancer was to have my left leg amputated. Remember, this was before chemo and radiation therapy.

Two things happened to turn my hope into faith. The night before the surgery, I prayed long and hard about my future. Was I going to survive? And if I survived, could I make it without basketball and as an amputee?  Finally, I received a spiritual assurance that I had a good life ahead, even that I would eventually marry and have a family.

Elder Hunt standing in front of Pres. Milton E. Smith,
left, and Elder Delbert L. Stapley of the Quorum of
Twelve, and other missionaries in the San Jose area. 

Then, a couple of days following the surgery, I received a blessing from Elder Delbert L. Stapley, who I had previously met when he visited our mission in Costa Rica. His blessing was amazing: He first spoke with God and explained to Him my situation. Then, after a pause, he proceeded to bless me. Part of that blessing was a command that if there was any cancer left in my body that it would leave and never return.

Five years later, the doctor who had performed the surgery, said he really hadn’t expected me to survive. He credited Elder Stapley’s blessing for the miracle.

I soon was back in school at BYU and receiving assistance from the Utah Division of Rehabilitation, which made it possible for me to go on and earn my college diploma.

I was blessed in many ways, but those college years and the ensuing couple of years were really tough, emotionally. My self-esteem suffered, and I started my career at Deseret News emotionally and spiritually low. What saved me was realizing that I could actually change and repent. That I could break the chains Satan had wrapped around me.

That spiritual reawakening came while reading Pres. Kimball’s book “The Miracle of Foregiveness” – that, along with getting involved in Young Adults, which is where I met Nancy. She was the one who helped me through the repentance process. Finally I had hope again – I had regained my eternal perspective.

The Lord makes no secret that He will test our faith and our obedience. “We will prove them herewith,” He said, “to see if they will do all things whatsoever the Lord their God shall command them.”

Elder Dallin H. Oaks has said: “Most of us experience some measure of what the scriptures call ‘the furnace of affliction.’ Some are submerged in service to a disadvantaged family member. Others suffer the death of a loved one or the loss or postponement of a righteous goal like marriage or childbearing. Still others struggle with personal impairments or with feelings of rejection, inadequacy, or depression.

Pres. Dallin H. Oaks

[But] Through the justice and mercy of a loving Father in Heaven, the refinement and sanctification possible through such experiences can help us achieve what God desires us to become....

Father Lehi promised his son Jacob that God would ‘consecrate [his] afflictions for [his] gain.’

The Prophet Joseph was promised that ‘thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment; and then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high.’ (end quote)

Joseph Smith Jr.

Enduring well means living faithfully despite our trials and misfortune. It means learning from these trials and experiences and thus becoming more like our Father in Heaven.

Eternal perspective allows us to understand that if we endure well these things and learn from them, then we can look forward to living with our Father in Heaven – and even eventually living the kind of life that God lives! That’s a pretty awesome promise!

Lee & Nancy Hunt

Now, more than 60 years since that blessing from Elder Stapley, I’m still hanging on – married to my sweet Nancy for nearly 45 years, and treasuring my five children and 17 grandchildren. But I still have daily afflictions and challenges.

So, I pray that we will hold on through our trials, become closer to our Father in Heaven as we do so, and hold tight to our eternal perspective, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

These quotes I wasn’t able to use due to time constraints, but well worth review on the subject:

Pres. Russell M. Nelson

Pres. Russell M. Nelson has said: “True repentance is not an event. It is a never-ending privilege. It is fundamental to progression….” (end quote)

Why does our Father in Heaven allow these burdens?

Wouldn’t it be nice to not have any? Life would be so easy – but would we learn anything if life was all bliss?

Is there a reason for life’s adversities?

Elder Quentin L. Cook

Elder Quentin L. Cook has said: “Adversity should not be viewed as either disfavor from the Lord or a withdrawal of His blessings. Opposition in all things is part of the refiner’s fire to prepare us for an eternal celestial destiny.” (end quote)

And many of these adversities and afflictions require us to turn away from sin and despair and take hold of Christ’s Atoning Sacrifice through repentance.

Elder Bruce C. Hafen

Elder Bruce C. Hafen has said: “The great Mediator asks for our repentance not because we must ‘repay’ him in exchange for his paying our debt to justice, but because repentance initiates a developmental process that, with the Savior’s help, leads us along the path to a saintly character.” (end quote)

Pres. Russell M. Nelson has said: “True repentance is not an event. It is a never-ending privilege. It is fundamental to progression….” (end quote)

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf testified: “… that when we

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf

embark upon or continue the incredible journey that leads to God, our lives will be better. This does not mean that our lives will be free from sorrow. We all know of faithful followers of Christ who suffer tragedy and injustice–Jesus Christ Himself suffered more than anyone.... In fact, sometimes it seems that our lives are more difficult because we are trying to live our faith. Following the Savior will not remove all of your trials. However, it will remove the barriers between you and the help your Heavenly Father wants to give you.” (end quote)

Elder M. Russell Ballard

Elder M. Russell Ballard has said: “No matter how difficult the trail, and regardless of how heavy our load, we can take comfort in knowing that others before us have borne life’s most grievous trials and tragedies by looking to heaven for peace, comfort, and hopeful assurance. We can know as they knew that God is our Father, that He cares about us individually and collectively, and that as long as we continue to exercise our faith and trust in Him, there is nothing to fear in the journey.” (end quote)

I’ve always loved the Book of Mormon story of Alma and his people who fled into the wilderness and were eventually captured by the Lamanites and forced to labor for them. But the Lord, instead of immediately rescuing them from the Lamanites, he first helped them handle their burdens:

 In Mosiah, Chapter 12, verse 15: And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.”

Elder D. Todd
Christofferson

Elder D. Todd Christofferson has said: “Exercising agency in a setting that sometimes includes opposition and hardship is what makes life more than a simple multiple-choice test. God is interested in what we are becoming as a result of our choices. He is not satisfied if our exercise of moral agency is simply a robotic effort at keeping some rules. Our Savior wants us to become something, not just do some things. He is endeavoring to make us independently strong …” (end quote)

Snowstorm Miracle amidst Canyon Tragedy

My wife’s brother Bruce Westwood and his wife, Chris, once owned a business in which they repossessed cars and trucks and then transported them to their rightful owners whether that be in Utah or in other states.

He sometimes had members of his extended family help in transporting said vehicles. I volunteered a couple of times to make some extra money. Both jobs involved snowstorms, but the craziest one involved my oldest son, Jason, on his 11^th birthday in 1990. I probably included him for his birthday!

Jason wearing his
DesNews T-shirt

In the middle of December, Jason and I headed out of Salt Lake City for a vehicle transportation job in Wyoming with several other drivers. By the time we arrived in Kemmerer at the shop where the vehicle was being stored, a snowstorm had started to blanket everything, including the roads. The idea of driving back in a snowstorm in Wyoming was disconcerting, to say the least.

The other drivers were to head on their way back East, and I and Jason were supposed to head back to Salt Lake. But then I found out that the truck I was assigned to drive back was a standard!  

Time to freak out! How could Bruce make such a crazy mistake!?

I’m a left-leg amputee. I don’t have a leg to do the clutch! Plus, I never ever learned how to drive a clutch – even when I had two legs. I had always drove my parents’ cars, which had automatic transmissions. How could I drive the pickup and do the clutch at the same time – with only one leg. And not to mention in a snowstorm that was growing more intense every minute we debated what to do.

When we called Bruce and told him the problem, he said he forgot I only had one leg. He didn’t make the clutch connection! Oops!

But he insisted I could still do it – that we really didn’t have any other choice. I don’t think he really realized that I didn’t know how to do the clutch and get into the different gears.

Well, here we go!

W. Lee Hunt on his
40th birthday in 1990.

Jason and I rode in the cab as one of the other drivers gave me some clutch clutch tips as we headed back to the intersection outside Kemmerer of highway 30 and 189. Then he and the other men left us and headed east on highway 30, and Jason and I headed south on 189.

So, how was I able to do the clutch and push on the gas at the same time? That became Jason’s job!

He had to crawl down around me and get down on the floor of the cab and push the clutch in and release it on my command. Getting into the first gear worked out OK, but we had to drive really slow – not just because of my inexperience, but because the snowstorm had gotten so bad that it was almost a whiteout!

We – well, actually I – could see only a few hundred feet ahead of us, plus keeping the truck on the road was a scary chore. Every once in a while, Jason would poke his head up and look around. When we came to the I-80 onramp, we had to slow down to stay on the road but had to go fast enough so the truck wouldn’t stall. Then, when we got on the onramp, we had to hurry up and change gears twice.

Once we were on I-80, it became a tedious process of staying within the tracks in the snow on the roadway, seeing through the crazy blizzard and keeping up the speed of about 25 to 35 miles per hour. Finally, we were in Echo Canyon and on our way back to Utah.

Did I mention that we were following the tracks made by the semis which were ahead of us?

Well, all of a sudden, the tracks in the snow seemed to head left and off the roadway! I caught myself and kept heading straight ahead.

Then I saw where the semitruck and trailer had ended up!

Way down below us in the eastbound lane of I-80, I could see the wreckage of the semi and its trailer, which had slammed into a Greyhound bus that was going east up the canyon. I was shocked, but I tried to keep calm so Jason wouldn’t get frightened.

Here’s what the Deseret News said about the crash:

WORK UNDER WAY TO IDENTIFY VICTIMS

By Deseret News  Dec 19, 1990, 12:00am MST

Steve Fidel and Marianne Funk, Staff Writers

1990 Greyhound bus.

Work to identify seven victims of one of Utah's worst highway accidents continued Wednesday after Tuesday's collision between a Greyhound bus and a semitrailer truck.

Twenty-one crash victims were hospitalized, some of them in critical condition, Wednesday morning, and a number of the Chicago-bound bus's 45 passengers spent the night in private homes in Evanston after being checked at Evanston Regional Hospital.Denver-based investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board were also expected to arrive Wednesday to begin investigating circumstances surrounding the crash, which law enforcement officers blamed on high winds, blowing snow and icy roads at the accident site 13 miles west of Evanston on I-80.

Snowstorm on I-80
 in Wyoming

Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Gene Ercanbrack said that at about 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, a Wanship Enterprises semi loaded with frozen hams drifted to the right shoulder of the westbound lanes and then possibly jackknifed after the driver tried to bring the truck under    control. It then slid off the left side of the lanes and dropped about 15 feet across an embankment in the median onto the eastbound lanes where it hit the Greyhound bus broadside.

The impact knocked the bus off the road, and it slid about 100 yards on its side before coming to rest against a fence at the bottom of another 15-foot embankment.

In the meantime, a second semi that was following the bus collided with the Wan-ship Enterprises truck, leaving the two trucks blocking the eastbound lanes of I-80 for more than six hours.

The bus driver, Bud McVey of Fillmore, saw the semi coming but was unable to get out of the way. He did have time to shout "Hold on, hold on" to the passengers, he told his wife in a phone conversation from Evanston later Tuesday.

Only the driver's seat is equipped with seat belts. McVey was shaken up and the drivers of both trucks were among those injured, according to Sgt. Ron Gale, investigating officer for the UHP. Passengers on the bus spoke of babies crying and people screaming as they stepped over some of the victims and scrambled out of the bus through the broken-out windshield. McVey, a trained emergency medical technician who spent two years assisting EMT crews in Fillmore, called on passing motorists for help and then began assessing the needs of his passengers. "He said it was an unreal situation. He described it as being unimaginable, even after the work he had done on the EMT team," said his wife.

"The dead were mingled with the injured," she said. "It was impossible (for McVey) to use some of the skills and training he had because people were piled on top of each other. EMTs are trained never to move people until they are properly packed."

She said McVey did not break any bones, as had been reported earlier, but suffered mostly emotional trauma.

A chain reaction of less serious accidents followed as vehicles approaching the crash site were caught off guard by the traffic jam and near-blizzard conditions. UHP troopers closed the interstate in both directions, at Coalville to the west and Evanston to the east, until midafternoon.

"They called in every available trooper from Heber, Evanston and Coalville," said UHP spokesman Gary Whitney. The troopers were also assisted by officers from Summit County, Kamas and state troopers from Wyoming.

Echo Canyon in
good weather

Weather conditions in the hours following the accident were still bad enough that all but one of the air ambulances responding could get no closer than Coalville, which is more than 10 miles west of the accident site. One helicopter that did get through battled low visibility by skimming just above the highway as it flew down the canyon toward Coal-ville after leaving the crash site.

  "We sent our plane and we sent both choppers," said LDS Hospital spokesman Craig Rasmussen. "The plane (sent by the hospital) wasn't able to land. One chopper was turned back because of the weather. The other touched down at Echo Junction (near Coalville). They wouldn't let it go all the way to the scene." …

The bus passengers with less serious injuries were sent to an Army National Guard armory in Evanston after being treated in the Evanston hospital's emergency room. Representatives from the Red Cross, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and Catholic Community Services helped care for the stranded travelers at the armory and then helped them find private homes to stay in during the night.

Army National Guard Sgt. Bob June said passengers began arriving at the armory at about 12:30 p.m. …

Greyhound spokesman George Graveley said the Chicago-bound bus No. 5001, which was on route No. 1314 and left Salt Lake City at 8 a.m. bound for Chicago, was carrying 43 passengers. Troopers at the scene put the passenger count at 45. Rasmussen said the Evanston hospital treated 41 of the accident victims in its emergency room. Eighteen were admitted for an overnight stay, but none had serious injuries, he said.

Morgan resident Blaine Whimpey was driving toward Evanston when he arrived at the accident scene several minutes after the crash. "I could see the bus. There were people up on top of the bus pulling people out," he said.

All of the people he saw emerging from the bus were hurt. "They were just all moaning and groaning and freezing. They wanted a warm place to get into," Whimpey said. "The traffic backup was a mile and a half to two miles. We were just grabbing (passengers) and walking down the road and throwing them in cars."

Parley's Canyon
in snowstorm
(KSL News Radio)

Jason and had to keep going slowly down the canyon. Then we headed over to Parley’s Canyon and down the canyon and onto the 21^st South Freeway. We never stalled out until we came to the offramp at Redwood Rd., which was just a couple-hundred yards away from Bruce’s office. Fortunately, Jason and I were able to get the truck going again and we virtually coasted into the parking lot at Bruce’s office.

What a crazy ride! What a terrible experience! What a miracle! Our Father in Heaven once again rescued me (and my son Jason) out of a crazy situation!