Monte J. Brough

October 2003
In June of the year I was 12 years old, I was injured in a horse accident while delivering newspapers in my old hometown of Randolph, Utah. I was placed in a wheelchair for six months, until I first walked on Christmas Day. I remember the members of my deacons quorum presidency coming to my home to visit me—Dale Rex, Doug McKinnon, and others who were 13-year-old leaders in the deacons quorum presidency. They seemed to understand their responsibility to me as a member of their quorum. I recently was standing at the luggage retrieval at the Salt Lake City International Airport when a woman came to me and asked my name. I recognized her as a former South Rich High School classmate from years ago. She had changed since I had last seen her. You all know how you feel at the old dreaded high school reunion. She had added some gray hair and a few wrinkles. (Of course, I hadn't changed.) It was obvious that she was meeting her missionary child, who was returning from a mission. It surprised me. While she was yet in school, her family, who were not members of the Church, had moved into our small community. Her name was Alice Gomez. She was about the same age as me and my friends. I remembered that she was friendly and always polite but that she never did attend any of our Church meetings. I said to her, "Alice, tell me your story. You are obviously now an active member of the Church, but you never joined while we were going to school." Her answer was condemning: "No one ever asked me!" Wow! Our quorum really dropped the ball on that one. Recently reported to me was the story of a young priests quorum in Jamaica who decided they would help the missionaries with their work. So this quorum of young men went knocking on doors, trying to find appointments for the missionaries. They soon found more referrals than the missionaries could handle. A priests quorum in Kaysville, Utah, decided they would not lose one member of their quorum. The whole quorum would go to a less-active member's home and have their Sunday lesson sitting around the less-active boy's bed. Soon that young man joined his quorum in taking the Sunday lesson to another home.