Back-row Seats, Front-row Experience
May 15, 2022 was a beautiful Sunday morning in Jicin, Czech Republic. My sister Jamie and I were sitting in the corner of the back-row of a small latter-day saint chapel on the ground floor of a residential building. It was our first morning in the country, and we had driven up so we could visit a nearby rock park. But we decided that first we would attend a local sacrament meeting.
Having been in the country for less than 20 hours, it was clear that things were very different from where we lived in Iowa and Utah. The food, grocery stores, architecture, language, and so many other things proved the culture was different. But that’s why we go on vacation isn’t it? to experience something new. This morning, however, it wasn’t what was new to me that left an impression but what was familiar.
Earlier when we arrived at the chapel, we tried to be inconspicuous and made our way to the very back. As other saints came in we observed how they greeted one another with warm smiles, hugs and kisses, some members appearing to greet every person in the room before selecting a seat. As we observed the saints of Jicin, Jamie said to me, “These people love each other so much!” Inevitably, a friendly man came to sit near us and greeted us with well practiced English! He was kind and made sure one of the sister missionaries sat by us to translate the meeting’s proceedings. As it turned out, this sister missionary was on her last Sunday as a missionary and would be back Pocatello, Idaho – our hometown – before Jamie and I finished our trip!
The whole sacrament meeting experience had an aura of familiarity. Despite the difference in language and appearance, every moment was permeated with a spiritual feeling I know well and love maybe more than any other feeling. As the sacrament was blessed and passed, I felt the same sense of renewal I hope to feel every week when recommitting myself to Jesus Christ and His gospel. I also wondered at what sort of role the young men and women here might play in the future church. Already an apostle and member of the First Presidency had come from the Czech Republic. What other roles would these saints play? When we sang hymns, I listened carefully to the songs I know so well sung in words I couldn’t understand.
Through our interpreter, we learned it was ward conference and that the two speakers that day were the bishop and the stake president. The bishop talked about his apple orchard and the regular care his trees required for producing the best fruit. He related this to the care we need to take of our testimonies and of the church so we can receive the full blessings of the Lord. He also enthusiastically expressed his hope and confidence that if the saints in the country dug deep in their focus on the gospel, the prophet would announce plans for a temple in Prague in 2025. This hit home hard because of the recent urging from stake leaders in Iowa to work and pray that the state would very soon be blessed with a temple. The stake president also spoke on the need to strengthen our testimonies. He quoted extensively from President Nelson and bore a powerful testimony the Savior, the restoration, the Book of Mormon, and a living prophet.
As the stake president spoke, I remembered a few years earlier reading an article in the Church News that the first stake in the Czech Republic had been organized. I found the article online and realized that it was exactly six years since the stake was organized on May 15, 2016! Our sister missionary confirmed that the stake president we had just heard was the same who was set apart by the Czech born apostle President Uchtdorf. To me, sitting in this meeting was sitting with real life pioneers. And after the meeting when President Pilka came to shake our hands, I felt like I was shaking the hand of a celebrity. From the beginning to the end, I couldn’t help but recall what President Nelson said during an “unforgettable” general conference two years earlier.
“We live in a day that ‘our forefathers have awaited with anxious expectation.’ We have front-row seats to witness live what the prophet Nephi saw only in vision, that ‘the power of the Lamb of God’ would descend ‘upon the covenant people of the Lord, who were scattered upon all the face of the earth; and they were armed with righteousness and with power of God in great glory.’”
Sitting in this small chapel, I thought back to when I first heard those words from the Lord’s prophet. I believed what he said and recognized from various church news reports and journal articles that “the covenant people of the Lord” truly are “upon all the face of the earth.” But sitting in person in this humble chapel and seeing with my own eyes “that Zion is being established on every continent” just the same as in my “own neighborhood” (D. Todd Christofferson), made President Nelson’s teachings that much more real to me.
In different ways, prophets in all ages have prophesied of a mountain stone “cut out without hands” which would “fill the whole earth.” (Daniel 2:34-35, 1 Nephi 14:14, D&C 133:36-38). They saw and waited for that day with “anxious expectation” (D&C 121:27). On that beautiful spring morning in Jicin, I gained a stronger testimony than ever that whether we are in the back-row of a small chapel in the Czech Republic or in the largest stake in Salt Lake City, we are privileged to witness live the fulfillment of prophecy in front-row seats.
