How Great Shall Be My Joy!

Send us Fan Mail Join me in this latest episode recorded live on May 9 of 2026 from the Frankfurt train station in Frankfurt Germany. This is the number one site or city if you will that downloads my podcast around the world out of some 600 or so cities!  I am thrilled in this episode to share three stories of outstanding men, all of  whom I met in the last couple of days on my four temple, four d...

Send us Fan Mail Enjoy this interview with 6 full-time missionaries from the Washington DC North Mission: Elder White (St. George, Utah), Elder Larsen (Draper, Utah), Elder Cushing (Ridgecrest, CA). Elder Edwards (Tooele, Utah), Sister Watts (Gilbert, AZ), and Sister Adams (Nampa, ID)  Find out why these talented young people, ages 18-21, spend 60 hours a week telling people about Jesus Christ and...

Send us Fan Mail How would you like to be in the top 1% of all member missionaries in the Church? I believe there’s a simple and easy way to do that using Facebook and activities that are currently going on in your ward. Five weeks ago, I started doing weekly posts on Facebook either highlighting podcast episodes or just highlighting people in our ward who are involved in our weekly Bible study cl...

Send us Fan Mail Adopted. Jewish ancestry. Abandoned. Christian upbringing. Heavy drinking. Suicide attempts. No money. Had to leave home. And he’s still only 17… Then the Book of Mormon and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints came into his life—miraculously. It was a sister missionary who showed up at his door late one evening and encouraged him to continue reading the Book of Mormon...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Vaughan is a simple man with a simple story. He visited 22 different churches before he joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I asked him to sum up what his experience had been like, he kept it very simple: “Just come to church once,” he said, “… and see how you feel.“  Michael usually sits at the sacrament table and helps bless the sacrament every w...

Send us Fan Mail Did you ever wish you just had a business card that you could give to anyone anytime anywhere that invited them to come to church with you? Well, a couple of weeks ago I created just that for our ward in Washington DC. For a whopping total of $33, including shipping, I designed a business card on Vistaprint that invites people to come to church with us on Sundays, and gives them a...

Send us Fan Mail I've known her since high school. She was the accompanist for our acapella choir. She was really good. In 2010, she uploaded her first music video to the new channel, Youtube. She hoped it would get 100 views. In three weeks, it got over 100,000 views. Now, 14 years later, her Christian songs have been viewed over 50 million times! Enjoy this podcast episode where I interview...

Send us Fan Mail Today I had the privilege of interviewing performing celebrity Merrill Osmond. The location was the Washington DC Temple Visitors Center, where he and his wife, Mary, are serving a full-time mission. What a joy to hear about his lifetime of service as a member missionary! Did you know some people are called by the First Presidency to be "lifetime missionaries"? It happen...

Send us Fan Mail I first met Lewis Bramley a year ago when he moved into the Washington DC 3rd Ward. I was struck by his beautiful Scottish accent. I was fortunate as the ward mission leader that they called Louis and his wife, Gillian, to be ward missionaries. At one of their first correlation meetings, I invited them to tell us their story. Lewis’ conversion story really touched my heart. Conseq...

Send us Fan Mail The Washington DC Temple Open House is currently going on. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to visit and share with five people the opportunity to visit our temple open house.  It’s rare that that many missionary opportunities naturally surface in one day, so I made it the topic of this podcast. Whether at work, at the actual open house, or in an elevator, natural opportunities to...

Send us Fan Mail Hola es la palabra en ingles por hola. Así es como tienden a comenzar todas las relaciones nuevas: alguien dice hola. También es el acrónimo perfecto para guiar a las personas en la obra misional exitosa de los miembros. La H significa hola o cómo hacer esto; la O significa observar, la L significa escuchar y la a significa actuar. Seguir este sencillo acrónimo le ayudará a ser un...

Send us Fan Mail Hola (Oh-law)  is the Spanish word for hello. It’s how all new relationships tend to start out: somebody says hello.  It’s also a perfect acronym to guide people involved in member missionary work. The H stands for How, (we then insert the preposition “to”), the O stands for Observe, the L for Listen, and the A for Act. How to Observe, Listen, and Act as a Member Missionary.  This...

Send us Fan Mail She’s named after her grandmother, and that’s a good thing.  Her grandmother served on the general board of the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 25 years. Then she was called to be the president of the same organization and served there for another 25 years.  Her mother was the personal secretary to Dr. James E. T...

Send us Fan Mail Michael Seay is a realtor in the Washington DC area. He’s been a friend of mine for about 30 years. He is one of the most loving people I’ve ever met. He’s the first guy I’ve seen in my life who told fellow employees that he loves them right there in the work environment. That stunned me! He is also one of the best member missionaries that I’ve ever met. I was delighted to intervi...

Send us Fan Mail Music has a way of healing people. James Leith  Macbeth Bain knew that.  Born in Scotland in 1840, he was known to his friends as simply Brother James. He was a musician, poet, a mystic, and had a great interest in healing. In 1906 he published a book called “The Brotherhood of Healing.”  His song Brother James Air was first published in 1915 as part of a New Year’s greeting. He f...

Send us Fan Mail Have you ever felt like there was more out there in life for you? Maybe something was missing but you’re not sure what? Brian felt the same way. Surrounded by loving family at a young age, he was exposed to four different churches, Brian eventually found The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and has never looked back. This is his story, told by himself.  He has a special...

Send us Fan Mail She just graduated from Harvard, and she found heaven while she was there. Part of it came in meeting my nephew, Westley Cook, part of it came from learning about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while on campus, and the rest came from Harvard itself.  Meet Alyssa, an accomplished chemistry major who believes in miracles. If you’ve ever wondered if God has a plan fo...

Send us Fan Mail Enjoy this wonderful conversation I had this afternoon with my 89-year-old mother.  She understands the need for temples and how to be involved in genealogical work as well as anyone I know.  She is the mother of 11 children. She has 56 grandchildren and 9 great-grandchildren.   She was widowed at the age of 47 with 10 children at home and one child on a mission. She faithfully mo...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes, the best podcasts don’t have any words. Instead, they have music. And music heals the soul. Recently, while visiting my mother in Utah, I sat down at her piano and started to try to play a favorite hymn of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Written by James Wallis, that hymn is called “Come, Ye Children of the Lord.” I had never played the song before. I s...

Send us Fan Mail I run a Facebook ad for one dollar a day, offering to give people a free copy of the Book of Mormon in my local area. I’ve run it for about 10 days and 263 people have seen it so far.  One of the people who saw it commented that his “...ancestor had translated the book!” Sure enough, his relative is apparently Oliver Cowdery! The connection goes back to upstate New York and even i...

Send us Fan Mail Meet Clayton and Marla Foulger, two of the best people on the planet. They had the privilege of being involved with Yitbarek and his family’s conversion.  Their humble attitude about member missionary work is inspiring and instructive. Their story about Elder Eyring, while they presided over the London Mission, is priceless.  Catch the spirit of these two wonderful people, and of...

Send us Fan Mail The members of the Church needed a ride to the airport. He was their Uber driver. They invited him to their home, he met the missionaries, and read the Book of Mormon. He went to the visitors’ center in Washington DC, told his wife about it, and then joined the Church. With his strong testimony, he picked up two copies of the Book of Mormon in his own Ethiopian language and travel...

Send us Fan Mail In response to President Nelson’s email of January 1, 2020, I designed my own plan to share the gospel and the message of the Restoration with as many people as possible. As of August 16, I have shared this message with 51 people. I am about to release my third member missionary book, which details the experiences I’ve had with these 51 people. This episode is the 24th podcast epi...

Send us Fan Mail I don’t know if you’ve ever been used publicly as an example of how NOT to do member missionary work, but I have! It happened when I was a student at BYU in front of about 2000 people. The incident occurred on a plane flight to New Zealand when I was 21. Little did I know that a man I met on that flight, Wayne Chamberlain, would later come to B.Y.U. as a regional representative an...

Send us Fan Mail One of the great general conference talks that’s been given on member missionary work was given in October 2001 by Elder Dallin H Oaks. That talk, Sharing the Gospe l, was a foundational talk for me as I served at that time as the bishop of a ward in the Washington DC Stake. Member missionary work was an important theme of my service as bishop and I leaned on this talk a great dea...