In Every Time of Trouble

To my son,

                Lately I have been listening to the fourth Saints book that was published recently. It relates stories of Latter-day Saints from 1955 to 2020, and I have loved learning the accounts of faithful members of the Church who have overcome incredible challenges. Their experiences to me highlight this promise of the Lord to His people: “Lift up your heads and be of good comfort, for I know of the covenant which ye have made unto me; and I will covenant with my people and deliver them out of bondage. And I will also ease the burdens which are put upon your shoulders, that even you cannot feel them upon your backs, even while you are in bondage; and this will I do that ye may stand as witnesses for me hereafter, and that ye may know of a surety that I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions” (Mosiah 24:13-14). As we keep our covenants with the Lord, He is always there to help us through whatever difficulties we may be in. One story that I was unfamiliar with before is that of Nguyen Van The and his wife Lien from Vietnam. He was the branch president of the Saigon Branch in May 1975 when the North Vietnamese came with tanks and great military force to take control of their city. As that threat was upon them, he met with his branch and worked to evacuate them through the help of the United States. The story relates, “The created an evacuation list that identified which Saints would leave first…. The’s wife, Lien, and their three small children were among the Saints on the list. The branch members insisted that The’s family evacuate immediately so he could give his full attention to evacuating everyone else. As branch president, The felt it was his duty to be the last to leave. Lien and the children, along with her mother and sisters, flew out of Saigon a few hours later.” They made it safely out, but he was not so lucky.

The story continues, “The following day, the North Vietnamese shelled the airport in Saigon, damaging the runway and preventing military transport aircraft from landing. Then, over the next forty-eight hours, helicopters evacuated the remaining Americans and whatever Vietnamese refugees they could carry. The rushed to the U.S. embassy, hoping to find a way out for him and the other Saints still in the city. When he arrived, the building was on fire and smoke was choking the sky. Firefighters and crowds had gathered outside, but the embassy itself was empty. The Americans had already left the city.” The's wife and children arrived in California a week later, and they became part of a refugee camp and did their best to survive with very little. They were cold and sick and did not have enough food to eat, but Lien tried to keep the faith. The book relates, “She prayed continually that her husband would remain strong, believing that if she could survive her ordeal, then he could survive his. She had heard nothing from him since her flight out of Saigon. But a few weeks after her arrival, Elder A. Theodore Tuttle of the First Council of the Seventy came to the camp and gave Lien a personal message from President Spencer W. Kimball, who had visited the camp and met with refugees shortly before she got there. ‘I testify that your husband will be preserved,’ the prophet’s message declared, ‘and that you will be reunited as a family in the Lord’s own due time.’ Now, as Lien rocked her crying baby each morning, she cried too. ‘Please,’ she begged the Lord, ‘let me get through just this day.’” She surely must have held fast to that promise to the Lord, trusting that in time she could be reunited with her husband.

                Eventually Nguyen Van The became a prisoner of war. The book relates that he “was imprisoned in Thành Ông Năm, a squalid Vietnamese fortress serving as a prison camp. He was desperate for news of his wife and children, but the camp had largely cut him off from the outside world. All he knew about his family’s whereabouts came from a telegram from the president of the Hong Kong Mission: ‘Lien and family fine. With Church.’” How hard that must have been for him to be separated from his family, to be imprisoned, and to know almost nothing about his loved ones were doing. The book described life for him in the prison camp this way: “The and his fellow captives were organized into units and housed in rat-infested barracks. They slept on bare floors until their captors had them build beds out of steel slabs. Meager and spoiled food, along with the unsanitary conditions in camp, left the men vulnerable to sicknesses like dysentery and beriberi. Reeducation also involved backbreaking labor and political indoctrination. When not cutting trees or tending crops to feed the camp, the men were forced to memorize propaganda and confess their crimes against North Vietnam. Anyone who broke camp rules could expect a brutal beating or solitary confinement in a dumpster-like iron box.” Despite the terrible conditions, he clung to his faith in Jesus Christ as he prayed, fasted, and recited to himself memorized scriptures. Finally, after nearly two years there he was able to go free, and he “managed to leave Vietnam on an old fishing boat” and became a refugee in Malaysia. Finally in January 1978, The came to Utah, and after nearly three years of being separated he was reunited with his family. The words of the prophet to his wife Lien had proven true, and the Lord had preserved their family despite incredible hardships.    

Their experience reminds me of these words of the Savior to the Prophet Joseph Smith that we read recently: “He would have extended his arm and supported you against all the fiery darts of the adversary; and he would have been with you in every time of trouble” (Doctrine and Covenants 3:8). As we keep our covenants with the Lord, He will be with us in every time of trouble. We will all have times of great difficulty—hopefully not has harrowing and dramatic as Nguyen Van The and his family—and as we keep our covenants with the Lord, He promises to be with us no matter what happens. When you struggle, look back on the experiences of faithful followers of the Savior like this Vietnamese family and you will be reminded that the Lord always comes to the aid of His saints. And as long as you continue to strive to follow Him and keep the promises you made at baptism, you are one of his saints. Always remember this incredible promise from Him to those who seek to do His work: “I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up” (Doctrine and Covenants 84:88). Angels, the Holy Ghost, and the Savior Himself all promise to help us as we go through life’s greatest challenges! Stay true and you will always find divine help through your problems.

Love,

Dad