Nancy Murphy
Thank you for the introduction. We'd like to say that we have eight children. They're all girls except the first seven. It has been a wild ride, I have to say, in our home, having so many sons. We're getting towards the tail end; we only have two left at home, our daughter's a junior and our last son is a senior so we'll be empty-nesters before too long.
We'd like to especially thank the Wheelwrights today for their kindness and hospitality. We've known them since we were in Boston, which now it's unbelievable that it's been such a long time but it's my husband presided over the Boston Massachusetts mission from 1997-2000.
The Wheelwrights have been such great examples to us. They have truly blessed our lives more than they'll probably ever know. We have such love and admiration for them and we thank them for the invitation, for the opportunity to be here, and for their warm hospitality.
Also, I'd just like to recognize our friends Dave and Laurie Porter who are in the audience. I knew them when we were at BYU (Provo) ten years ago or so; not very long. Actually, it's been many years, more than we'd like to count. We're grateful to see them again and to rekindle that friendship.
Elder Faust once shared an experience he had during the time when the BYU-Jerusalem Center was being constructed. The government had asked the Church that they not proselyte, and that that would be part of the agreement for them to give them the permits and the necessary things to be able to build the BYU-Jerusalem Center. The Church of course agreed; it made that concession that there would be no proselyting done by any of the members of the Church who would come there.
During one particular meeting the Secretary of the Interior came up to Elder Faust and he said, "We believe you. We trust you that you will not do any proselyting as a church. But when your church members are here, what will we do about the light in their eyes?"
That story has always touched my heart and when we have the chance to speak to groups like this, I like to look at your eyes, and I want you to know how grateful I am for the light in your eyes and the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ that emanates forth from you, and what a blessing it is to be here with you.
We have a son who was fortunate enough, or unfortunate enough, whichever way you want to look at it, a couple of years ago to be drafted into the NFL [National Football League]. It's been a really tough couple of years. It's certainly not a nurturing environment. He was drafted by the Miami Dolphins, and the coaches there have been pretty tough; speaking of one coach in particular, when Shawn first got there, he went up to a veteran player and said [referring to the coach], "Does this guy every smile?" This guy replied to Shawn, "I don't know, I've only been here nine years." That's just a joke; it didn't really happen.
Because the topic today is happiness, I thought it'd be fun to start off laughing, and to remind all of us that we need to smile. And that is a part of being happy.
If you were to go home right now and google the word happiness, you would come up with at least ”this was a couple of days ago when I did it so it's changing all the time ”at least 709,100,596 hits. If you were to go on Amazon and search for books on happiness, you'd come up with 1,060,329 books. Isn't that amazing? Happiness seems to be a pretty hot commodity. We all want to be happy. We're all looking for ways to be happy. And let me ask you one question ”Why? Why do you think we all want to be happy? Well, my eyes were opened to the answer to that question when I first read this quote by Elder Jack Goaslind,
Our yearnings for happiness were implanted in our hearts by Deity. They represent a kind of homesickness, for we have a residual memory of our premortal existence. They are also a foretaste of the fulness of joy that is promised to the faithful. (Jack H. Goaslind, "Happiness," Ensign, May 1986, 52)
Our Heavenly Father knows all there is to know about happiness. We know this because His plan for us is called The Plan of Happiness. The reason we are here in mortality, indeed the whole purpose for our creation is that we might understand, and feel firsthand, joy.
In 2 Nephi 2:25 we read, "Men are, that they might have joy."
It was the prophet Mormon who taught,
And then cometh the judgment of the Holy One upon them; and then cometh the time that he that is filthy shall be filthy still; and he that is righteous shall be righteous still; he that is happy shall be happy still; and he that is unhappy shall be unhappy still. (Mormon 9:14)
Happiness and joy are not for this life alone. As we make the choice to feel those things in our lives today, we develop the capacity to likewise feel them in the world to come.
I'd like to share quickly a few statistics about happiness that I think are interesting. There are about ten times more depression now than there was in the 60s. Today the average age when depression begins is 14 ½ compared to 29 ½ in 1960. 60% of students with the highest levels of happiness and lowest amounts of depression have strong ties to family and friends. There is a way to measure the happiest country, and this year Denmark is the happiest country. And Zimbabwe is the least happy. Happiness has risen in forty countries in the past five years and decreased in only five. Studies show that money doesn't buy happiness. In 1957, 52% of the population in Great Britain said that they were very happy. In 2005 the number was only 36%, even though the British have tripled their wealth in the last fifty years. Studies also show that once your basic needs are met, more money does not necessarily equal more happiness. Lottery winners do not end up happier. Happy people live longer, up to 9 years longer ”and healthy people are happy, but happy people are healthier. A person's proximity to happy people, especially your spouses, your siblings, neighbors, roommates, and friends makes them happy too. Similarly, a Harvard study shows that if you're friend's friend is happy, it has a bigger impact on you being happy than an extra $5,000 would. Those who consider themselves religious are unquestionably happier. In interpersonal virtues like kindness, gratitude, loving others ”those virtues are more tied to happiness than cerebral virtues such as intelligence, curiosity, reasoning abilities. We all want to live long and prosper, don't we? Well, happiness can help us to that. Heavy cigarette smoking can take about six years off your life. Happiness can add as many as nine years to your life. A study of college students found that happiness levels in college were a reliable predictor of income sixteen years later. The happier students were making up to $25,000 more than those who had not been happy. Happiness comes from the Icelandic word happ, which is the same as words like haphazard and happenstance.
We cannot leave our happiness to chance. It cannot be happenstance. We have to make the decision every single day to be happy; being happy is a conscious decision that we make. Sister Hinckley spoke of this when she said, "In life we can laugh or we can cry; I prefer to laugh; crying gives me a headache" [Quoted in Virginia H. Pearce, ed., Glimpses into the Life and Heart of Marjorie Pay Hinckley (1999), 107]. The Book of Mormon teaches us specific lessons about how we can find happiness. The curriculum, this is your homework assignment because we don't have time in this forum today to discuss this, if you will read in 2 Nephi 5:10-27, this is Nephi's lesson; he is teaching us how to be happy. It is the record of his people, how they lived, what they did, and how those things translated into happiness. What a blessing for us to have the scriptures to lead us in the ways that we need to go to be able to find true happiness in our lives. As Elder Goaslind said, "The Book of Mormon makes it clear that happiness is our destiny" (Jack H. Goaslind, "Happiness," Ensign, May 1986, 52).
When Adam and Even partook of the fruit in the Garden of Eden, their eyes were opened to the truth. The scripture that was read earlier taught us that so that they now could realize how they would be able to recognize, understand, and feel joy. It is just the same for us. If we would open our eyes, we would see the joy and happiness around us. We will recognize how we can find true happiness in our own lives as we make that decision to do so every single day. I bear testimony to the truthfulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I testify that it is the atonement that is our primary source of true joy and life. I am grateful for the gospel in my own life and blessed every day by the principles and ordinances of the gospel. I am grateful for a husband who honors his priesthood and who leads our children and family in the ways of righteousness, and I leave that testimony with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
Dale Murphy
Thank you, Nancy. And thank you to President and Sister Wheelwright for the invitation to be here and for their hospitality, not only here but in Boston as well where, as Nancy said, we had no idea what we were doing. It was fun to get to know the Wheelwrights and other good friends of ours in Boston. It's an honor to be here; it's an honor to be in your presence and to hear of your stories from the Wheelwrights, some of your stories of faith and dedication. It's truly been inspiring to be here on campus and to be here with you.
As we've both mentioned, Nancy and I have eight kids. There's not too many ball players that have that many kids. I can remember when we had our sixth boy one of my team members came up to me and said, "Hey, Murph, you, you read the bible? I said, "Yeah. Yeah, I read the bible." He said, "You know, it says in there multiply and replenish the Earth, not Mars and Jupiter too." So we decided to only have two more after that.
It was a humbling experience being in Boston. It was so great to have the Wheelwrights there. Sister Wheelwright volunteered in the office for a while as one of my many secretaries who tried to keep me organized; it was a little bit of a challenge; a full-time job for many of them. We appreciate that. What a humbling experience it was.
As Nancy mentioned, I didn't grow up in the Church and joined the Church while I was playing baseball, and hadn't had the opportunity to serve a mission. So here I am, called as a mission president and I don't have any idea what a district or zone is.
One particularly humbling experience that I'll never forget we lived close to the office went down to the office late one night to do a couple of things. I had recently returned from a mission president's seminar at mission president's seminar you get together and you share ideas about how to move the work forward and try some unique things that other missions are trying, and so I instituted a program. I thought it was a great idea until I got a phone call late one night; I was the only one there. I picked up the phone, and I said, "Hello," and the voice on the other end said, "Yeah, I need another box of the Joseph Smith pamphlets and another box of Book of Mormons for that new program that our crazy mission president has started. I thought to myself, cleaned out my ears, and said, 'Did I hear that right?' I said, "Elder, do you know who you're talking to?" And he said, "No." And I said, "Well this just happens to be that crazy mission president you're talking about." And he said, "President, do you know who you're talking to?" And I said, "No, I don't." Then he said, "Well, see you later." Quick thinking Elder. That's just a joke too. I have to say that or, you know how it goes.
I'll never forget President Monson's counsel to us in the MTC [Missionary Training Center] prior to [our] going to Boston. He said, "Now presidents, you've got to remember names." And I'm thinking, "This is President Monson; he remembers everything. I got no chance remembering names." But eventually I got to know the names of the Elders and did a pretty good job of remembering them. He said, "You're going to have to remember them for a long time after their missions." President Monson shared a story. Twenty-five years after he served as mission president, he got a tap on his shoulder and he turned around. There was a father and a young son standing there; the father said to President Monson, "President, do you remember me?" President Monson said, "I looked at him, and I added a few pounds to his frame, and I said, 'You're Elder Johnson from Lehi, Utah, and your dad worked for Utah Power.' " This father nudged his son and said, "See, I told you he'd remember me." And President Monson said he turned around and looked up in the air and said, "Please God, don't do that to me again." Our missionaries know that they need to introduce themselves to Nancy and me when we see them.
One day I got a call in Boston from a reporter from the Boston Globe; he said, "I'd like to follow some of your missionaries around and see what you do." I said, "You want to follow them around during the day?" He said, "Actually, we'd like to have a photographer follow them all day and be there in the evening with them and really do the story and we'd like to go to some of your meetings. Not some of your regular Sunday meetings but some of your meetings during the week with the missionaries." I got a little nervous about it.
We didn't have very many reporters show up to our zone conferences. I called our area president, Elder Marlin Jensen, and I asked him what he thought. He said, "Invite him to everything that we're going to do" he was getting ready to tour our mission. I said, "Okay, I'll have him come." He [the reporter] followed the missionaries as they talked to people throughout the day in Boston and was there in the evenings when they had companionship prayer. The next day he came to zone conference. As you know, zone conference isn't like your typical Sunday meetings. We get into the nuts and bolts of how missionary work is to be improved and how we can do better. I'll never forget what Elder Jensen said to this reporter after our zone conference was over. He walked up to him [the reporter] and said, "Now you know what we do, and you'll probably have an interesting story. But when you find out why we do it, you're going to really have yourself some kind of story then."
My testimony of the gospel, of missionary work, and why we do what we do was certainly enhanced by the faith and dedication of the young missionaries and the missionary couples that served in the Massachusetts Boston Mission with us. It was a tremendous experience. We're thankful for it.
Baseball players have said a number of things. Some of them are funny; some of them are interesting.
I'll never forget what a teammate of mine said after I was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in 1990. John Kruk was the first baseman. A reporter came up to John and said, "John, describe your team. You've made a few trades; you've got Dale Murphy here now." John looked around the locker room at the twenty-five guys and said, "Well, we've got twenty-four morons and one Mormon." I think that was a compliment. That's probably also the first John Kruk quote you've had here at Brigham Young University-Hawaii.
Satchel Paige ”long time pitcher during the Negro leagues and got a chance in the major leagues, but not the chance he deserved” had rules for staying young. A couple of them are "avoid fried meats that angry up the blood." My favorite is "avoid running at all times." He famously said what he's best known for, saying, "Don't look back; something may be gaining on you."
The hope that the gospel brings gives us the blessing of not looking back ”not looking back in our lives with doubts and worry on the way things have been. Happiness and hope is truly the center of the gospel and the principle and things that we embrace.
During my career I had many slumps. A slump is not a good thing for a baseball player. Before I got drafted in high school, it seemed like every day was a pretty good day. I'd get a couple hits I wouldn't hit a home run every day it seemed to come pretty easy. When I got into professional baseball I found out that it wasn't going to be like that every day. As I went through my minor league career trying to make it to the major leagues, I experienced a number of slumps. What I figured out was, "I need to figure out how to get out of these slumps." One of the challenges when you're not hitting well in baseball is you start getting negative thoughts, you start to lose hope, and you start to think that yesterday's strike outs will lead to more strike outs today. Now during my career I was in to some doozies, as they say, as far as slumps go. Those of you who have played baseball or are familiar with softball or baseball will understand what I say here in a minute; you may need to explain it to those who don't understand the game. I can remember swinging at some pretty bad pitches. In fact I can remember walking back to the dugout and thinking to myself, "If that ball hadn't have taken a bad hop, I'd have hit it."
I learned to be teachable during the challenging times in these slumps. I learned to get back in the batter's box with some determination, somehow, and swing for the fences. I also learned that it was a blessing to have a coach that believed in you. That no matter what was happening, if you had a bad day, or a bad couple of days, he'd put you back out there and thought that you could improve.
Now some guys went into slumps, tried all this stuff, it didn't work, and ended up not having a baseball career. And sometimes, eventually, coaches stopped believing in you and giving you a chance.
But I'm thankful that in this life we know that God will never give up on us. Jeffrey R. Holland, in a talk entitled, "Remember Lot's Wife" spoke of the perils of looking back and of lacking faith in the future. He said, speaking to students much like you,
You may have the same questions that I had when I was a student. Some of the questions may be, 'Is there any future for me? What does a new year, or a new semester, or a new major, or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?'... To all such of every generation I call out, [Elder Holland reminds us] "Remember Lot's wife." Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ is the "high priest of good things to come." (Brigham Young University Devotional, January 13, 2009)
Challenges will come and challenges will go but the one constant in our life is that we will always need to repent and to grow. May we always remember the counsel of Alma, which reads,
And now, O my son Helaman, behold, thou art in thy youth, and therefore, I beseech of thee that thou wilt hear my words and learn of me; for I do know that whosoever shall put their trust in God shall be supported in their trials, and their troubles, and their afflictions, and shall be lifted up at the last day. (Alma 36:3)
May we concentrate on the lifted part of that verse, instead of the trials, troubles, and afflictions.
I add my testimony to Alma's that I know that we will be lifted through the challenges that we have, and that happiness is within our reach.
As I went through my career, it wasn't that I stopped having slumps and tough times ”but from the things I was able to apply through there, I was able to get through them. To me, that is what our life was about. That happiness, joy, and a cheerful countenance comes from understanding the hope that the gospel brings, and from understanding the hope that the atonement brings into our lives.
When I write our missionary sons, I always like to say at the end, somewhere, press forward. And I think that it is from an understanding and a strong testimony of the gospel that we can press forward with a steadfastness in Christ having a perfect brightness of hope (2 Nephi 31:20).
Many years ago a friend and teammate of mine asked me about where I was going to church, what I knew about baptism, and if I knew that there was a prophet of the Lord on the earth today. Of course I told him that I had no idea what he was talking about. But he talked to me for about two hours about his membership in the Church. This was one of our many bus rides in the minor leagues.
After we got off the bus, he said, "How do you feel, Dale, about the things we've talked about?" I said, "It was interesting. I feel good about it." He said, "Well that's good; I've got a couple of guys that I want you to meet with." I thought, "A couple of guys ”what does that mean?" It was a few days later and my friend Barry Bonell brought the missionaries over to my apartment in a small town of Greenwood, South Carolina. I was able to hear the gospel taught, and unfold, and feel the spirit of the restoration”and I knew that my life was going to change from that first discussion.
One of the great blessings I had as a mission president was to go out with the missionaries ”again, something that I hadn't experienced as a young man, not being a member of the Church. To go out with the missionaries” I did it for one week straight. Elder Marlin Jensen thought it would be a good idea, when he was our Area President, for me to get out there and see what it was really like for the missionaries. I went out with a companionship, ate what they ate, carried their backpacks like they carried their backpacks” it was a walking area. I drove out there from Belmont, from the mission home. They were excited to see me because, being in a walking area, they didn't have a car. They said, "President, are we going to be able to use your car this week?" I said, "This is a walking area, elders; we're walking." That lasted about a day. Then I said, "Okay, we're riding from now on."
I went to member dinner appointments when there weren't any members at home to feed us. I said, "Elders, does this happen every once in a while?" [They answered,] "Yeah, yeah, every once in a while. No big deal."
We got home and my first mistake was that I started on fast Sunday. I was a little tired, and a little hungry, and a little thirsty when we got home that first night. I said, "Well, what are we having to eat?" One of the elders opened the fridge and he said, "Well, we've got some potato salad left over from the ward social. And we have some yogurt." It was great.
We stopped at the store and had steak every night after that. I don't know if I really found out what it was like to be a missionary. It only took me a couple of days. I learned real quickly why missionaries are the age that they are. I had trouble keeping up.
It was a great experience, and what I remembered the most ”besides the fact that my feet were tired, I only did it for a week, and I was trying to figure out how they were doing this for two years” I'll never forget knocking on a random door in downtown Whistler Massachusetts, being let in, and being able to teach a first discussion and to teach the restoration. To feel from going from the street into somebody's apartment, testifying of the reality of the restoration of the gospel through the Prophet Joseph Smith, feeling something that was undeniable, and realizing that they felt something. They may not choose to go further with it but to know that they felt something; that there was a spirit that was present there is something that I will never forget, from our experiences in Boston with those missionaries. It strengthened my testimony again of the restoration.
As I took those discussion back in South Carolina back in 1975, I remember feeling that spirit and knowing that my life was about to change. I'll be forever grateful for someone who asked me if I was interested. To those young missionaries” one from Los Angeles and one from Canada, who were called to South Carolina and taught me the gospel, I knew then and I know now with greater surety and understanding that the gospel has been restored through the Prophet Joseph Smith, that President Monson is our prophet, is the Lord's prophet here upon the earth today, and that the Lord lives, and that the atonement is real and has power and impact to change our lives, and gives us the chance and the opportunity to happy, and hopeful, and faithful in this life. And I leave that testimony with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.