Page 53 - Berg_Mortuary_Bishops_Guide

BERG MORTUARY 53
ent. I seem to remember the scene in our living room…., my beloved mother weeping with her
little dying five-year-old child in her arms and all of us crowding around.”

Even more difficult for young Spencer was the news he received two years later, when he and
his brothers and sisters were called home from school one morning. They ran home and were
met by their bishop, who gathered them around him and told them that their mother had died
the day before. President Kimball later recalled: “it came as a thunderbolt. I ran from the house
out in the backyard to be alone in my deluge of tears. Out of sight and sound, away from ev-
erybody, I sobbed and sobbed. Each time I said the word ‘Ma’ fresh floods of tears

gushed forth until I was drained dry. Ma—dead! But she couldn’t be! Life couldn’t go on for
us. My eleven-year-old heart seemed to burst.”
Fifty years later, Elder Spencer W. Kimball, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, found himself far away from home, recovering from major surgery. Unable to sleep,

he recalled the day his mother died: “I feel like sobbing again now…as my memory takes me
over those sod paths.”
Facing the deep sadness of such experiences, Spencer W. Kimball always found comfort in
prayer and in the principles of the gospel. Even in his childhood, he knew where to turn to
receive peace. A family friend wrote of young Spencer’s prayers—”how the loss of his moth-
er weighed so heavily upon his little heart and yet how bravely he battled with his grief and
sought comfort from the only source.”

In his ministry, President Kimball frequently offered words of solace to those who mourned
the loss of loved ones. He testified of eternal principles, assuring the Saints that death is not the
end of existence. Speaking at a funeral, he once said:

“We are limited in our visions. With our eyes we can see but a few miles. With our ears we
can hear but a few years. We are encased, enclosed, as it were, in a room, but when our light
goes out of this life, then we see beyond mortal limitations….
“The walls go down, time ends and distance fades and vanishes as we go into eternity…and
we immediately emerge into a great world in which there are no earthly limitations.”

TEACHINGS OF SPENCER W. KIMBALL IN HIS WISDOM, GOD

DOES NOT ALWAYS PREVENT TRAGEDY

The daily newspaper screamed the headlines: “Plane Crash Kills 43. No Survivors of Mountain
Tragedy.” And thousands of voices joined in a chorus: “Why did the Lord let this terrible thing
happen?”
Two automobiles crashed when one went through a red light, and six people were killed.