This ward has grown and there are a lot of young marrieds who I do not know and who don’t know me or my family. I won’t reintroduce myself by name because it’s correct in the program.

I’m married to Cari Clark, the pretty lady over there sitting in the pews where we can normally be found, in the nursery between the Summers and the Wittwer families.

- Ethan, turns 30 on the 17^th, married, one baby boy Gibson age year and a half. He and his wife live in Provo, UT. He went on a mission from 2003 to 2005 and served in Salt Lake City – South.

- Julie, age 26. One baby girl named Birdie, age six months. She and her husband live in Holliday, UT.

- Meredith, age 23. She works and lives in Salt Lake City, UT and will flying out for Christmas in a week.

All three children were raised in this ward, which we have been members of since 1987. That’s 26 years. That makes us old-timers along with the Cregos, the Ortons, the Butchers, the Whalens and so on.

And the old saying is true: “Had I known what fun grandchildren would be I’d have had them first.”

I presently teach the Priests in the third hour and my wife works as a public affairs coordinator.

This talk is about Joseph Smith, but I plan to get to him in a roundabout way, starting with the Book of Mormon, arguably his most profound accomplishment.

I brought an historical artifact. (Show your 1976 edition Book of Mormon and describe how you got it, when Mike gave it to you in 1978, and how you put it on a shelf and didn’t read it until a year later.)

I wonder if we sometimes take the Book of Mormon for granted. For us, too often, it is a frayed text sitting on a cart to be handed out to those who forgot to bring their scriptures to class. Or it’s a book on the floor to be picked up after a meeting and put away with the hymn books. Or it is a challenge to be issued at the beginning of each year: read the Book of Mormon in its entirety. Or it is simply a book, although a great, fundamental one. But what it really is, is a modern day miracle.

These are comments by Robert K. Dellenbach from the April 1995 General Conference. He describes the production of new Books of Mormon in varied languages:

Just as in Joseph Smith’s day, the ability to translate holy writ today is a spiritual gift from God. Unlike Joseph’s day, however, many of our modern translators utilize computers and word processors, lexicons and encyclopedias to help and guide them in their sacred assignment. The modern work is extensive, and each step must be critically analyzed by Church translation experts. Yet, even with the most competent member translators and advanced technology available, the entire process, from beginning to publication, requires approximately four years.

So the next time you go to the Visitor’s Center and see all those Books of Mormon in many various languages on that big table – which is something I always like to see when I’m there - reflect that it took about four years to produce each of them.

Elder Dellenbach continues: The conditions under which Joseph translated were less than ideal. His life was threatened and mobs tried to rob him of the plates, requiring him to hide the ancient records and often move them from place to place (see JS—H 1:60). Joseph had no telephone, no dictating equipment, fax, word processor, or copy machine—not even electric light.

Joseph had little formal education, perhaps no more than three years of elementary school. Prior to his translation Joseph had not enrolled in a university. There were no literary magazines or academic periodicals delivered to his doorstep. He never visited South America or the Middle East. He belonged to no professional societies, had performed no extensive research projects, nor did he have learned colleagues with whom to discuss the ancient text of the plates. He may have studied basic reading, writing, and arithmetic and perhaps a little American history. We know he read the Bible in English, but by the standards of the world, Joseph was neither a scholar nor a theologian, much less a professional translator of Holy Scriptures.

In preparing for this conference address, I had the glorious experience of quietly examining several pages of Joseph’s original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, which is safely protected in the Church archive. I was overwhelmed at the purity of the transcription, which had only a very few insignificant corrections, such as a misspelled word. Joseph’s original manuscript is so perfect it could only have come from one source—divine revelation.

Joseph’s many responsibilities often interrupted the translation process, sometimes for several months. Yet, once Joseph was free to dedicate his entire effort to translation, the work surged forward and he translated eight to ten pages a day, completing the preponderance of the Book of Mormon translation in approximately sixty-three working days.

Joseph’s original English translation, except for a few minor grammatical and textual emendations, remains the text that we use today and is the standard for all other language translations of the Book of Mormon throughout the world. Could any one of us today produce such a work? Could a thousand of the world’s best theologians and scholars of ancient languages or antiquities write a similar book of such supernal, transcendent value?

No other person with such limited education and facility as Joseph has single-handedly translated in such a short period of time from ancient writings over five hundred pages of scriptural text. That translation now has seventy-three million books in distribution.

Joseph’s translation of this ancient, sacred scripture has withstood the scrutiny of many skeptics. The Book of Mormon stands as a miraculous work for the world to examine.

I examined it. When I first started reading this remarkable book I asked myself, “Is it what it purports to be? Is it a chronicle, or history, or is it an obvious fraud?” I was then 23. I had read a lot before that time, and most of my reading consisted of non-fictional books about history. I hadn’t even gotten half way through the book before I realized that, 1.) Yes, this book read and seemed like a book of history, 2.) It also contained great spiritual truth of inestimable value, and, most importantly, 3.) Now that I knew this, I had to act upon that knowledge.

So I arranged for my baptism, surprising my Mormon high school friends and stunning my parents.

I am now 57, and have read countless other non-fiction historical works since my 23^rd birthday. I am now currently re-reading the Book of Mormon; every day I read a little. What comes back to me pure and obvious is that, once again, this work is what it purports to be. It is a chronicle of the dealings of the Lord with the people in the New World and it still contains great spiritual truth of inestimable value. And yes, I still have to act upon that knowledge.

This Friday my wife and I celebrate 33 years of marriage, and I have been a member of this church for 34 years. Recently, in a church conference talk, a general authority mentioned doubts. Do I get them? Sure. But when I do I think back on two things. For the past 34 years I have had the opportunity to taste of the fruit of active church membership, paying my tithing, attending church, serving in callings and socializing with you. I cannot imagine any better way of living my life for that time. So the fruit is good. I’m no farmer – I’m from Los Angeles, after all – but I know that if the fruit is good, the branch is sound. If the branch is sound the trunk is intact and solid. The trunk of our church is, of course, Jesus Christ and His teachings. One might consider that the branches connected to that trunk is the work of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, which brings us to Jesus Christ. There are no better fruit trees in the orchard.

The other thing I always come back to when I have my doubts is Joseph Smith. He did many things: he founded a major Christian denomination, he established a Relief Society for women (the nation’s oldest continually running women’s organization), he healed the sick, he settled a major city on the Mississippi river, he translated the Book of Mormon. But my testimony often comes back to what he couldn’t do: write the Book of Mormon.

The following text is taken from the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, Vol. 8, Ch. 11. It’s by way of a challenge he issued to students of his taking a class in Middle Eastern studies.

"Since Joseph Smith was younger than most of you and not nearly so experienced or well-educated as any of you at the time he copyrighted the Book of Mormon, it should not be too much to ask you to hand in by the end of the semester (which will give you more time than he had) a paper of, say, five to six hundred pages in length. Call it a sacred book if you will, and give it the form of a history. Tell of a community of wandering Jews in ancient times; have all sorts of characters in your story, and involve them in all sorts of public and private vicissitudes; give them names--hundreds of them--pretending that they are real Hebrew and Egyptian names of circa 600 b.c.; be lavish with cultural and technical details--manners and customs, arts and industries, political and religious institutions, rites, and traditions, include long and complicated military and economic histories; have your narrative cover a thousand years without any large gaps; keep a number of interrelated local histories going at once; feel free to introduce religious controversy and philosophical discussion, but always in a plausible setting; observe the appropriate literary conventions and explain the derivation and transmission of your varied historical materials.

"Above all, do not ever contradict yourself! For now we come to the really hard part of this little assignment. You and I know that you are making this all up--we have our little joke--but just the same you are going to be required to have your paper published when you finish it, not as fiction or romance, but as a true history! After you have handed it in you may make no changes in it (in this class we always use the first edition of the Book of Mormon); what is more, you are to invite any and all scholars to read and criticize your work freely, explaining to them that it is a sacred book on a par with the Bible. If they seem over-skeptical, you might tell them that you translated the book from original records by the aid of the Urim and Thummim--they will love that! Further to allay their misgivings, you might tell them that the original manuscript was on golden plates, and that you got the plates from an angel. Now go to work and good luck!

"To date no student has carried out this assignment, which, of course, was not meant seriously. But why not? If anybody could write the Book of Mormon, as we have been so often assured, it is high time that somebody, some devoted and learned minister of the gospel, let us say, performed the invaluable public service of showing the world that it can be done."

Hugh Nibley died in 2005. As far as I know, nobody has yet risen to the challenge he set forth.

When I first took the discussions from the missionaries, the topics began with what we now call The First Vision, when Joseph Smith prayed in a woodland grove and beheld God the Father, Jesus Christ his son and the Holy Spirit in the Spring of 1820. There’s a good reason for beginning the discussions this way. If you can accept that this actually happened to Joseph Smith, everything else that follows – everything Smith did plus church history – flows from it. It is an absolutely foundational event.

James E. Faust, in a conference talk in April 1984, states:

There has been no event more glorious, more controversial, nor more important in the story of Joseph Smith than this vision. It is possibly the most singular event to occur on the earth since the Resurrection.

Bear testimony about the mission of Joseph Smith and the importance of the Book of Mormon in leading souls to Jesus Christ, conclude.