When we lived in Schaumburg, the bishop called me on a Wednesday to give a talk that Sunday. He was very apologetic for how last minute the request was but I'd been thinking about Team Hoyt and the Boston Marathon coming up and knew what I wanted to focus on. It's one of the easiest talks I've ever written. In honor of Dick Hoyt, I'm printing it here:
Good Morning Brothers and Sisters. My name is Danika Wuehler and I moved to this area mid-January with my family. Along with my husband, I have two precious girls: Liesel who is 3 and Ireland who is 1. Our daughters are my heart and soul and I mean that literally. When they were born, it felt as if the Doctor pulled out pieces of my heart and soul and put them into these tiny creatures. They are truly the sugar, spice and everything nice in our little family.
I met my husband Brent at BYU where we attended the same ward. At the time, we teased each other a lot; there was a lot of banter in our relationship, but nothing romantic. I wasn’t particularly interested in him because he’s blond (no offense to the blonds out there) and besides, I had a serious boyfriend. Obviously, things didn’t work out with the boyfriend and I moved to Boston after I graduated. It was 4 years later, at a Christmas party in Arizona that neither of us were supposed to be at, that I ran into my old friend Brent. He was still blond, but aside from that I realized he was everything I’d been hoping for in a mate.
Hope is the topic I’ve been given to talk about today. President Deiter F Uchtdorf notes: Hope is not knowledge, but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us. It is confidence that if we live according to God’s laws and the words of His prophets now, we will receive desired blessings in the future. It is believing and expecting that our prayers will be answered. It is manifest in confidence, optimism, enthusiasm, and patient perseverance.
When I ran into Brent that fateful night, it was after 4 years filled to the brim with discouragement. I had attended every church social function up and down the eastern seaboard. I’d prepared myself for marriage in every possible way I could think of. To make matters worse, many of my non-member coworkers expressed great interest in dating me albeit very little interest in my faith. Meanwhile the guys at church looked at me like a rack of yard tools on sale at Sears. It seemed as if I could break out of my loneliness if I could just walk away from the church. But I could never leave my faith.
Faith is a sister virtue to hope. They go hand in hand as we learn in Hebrews 11:1 (this is the Joseph Smith Translation) Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Well, the evidence for me was definitely invisible. As is a trend in many places, the active LDS girls in my ward outnumbered the active LDS boys 2:1. So many times I looked at those simple statistics and logically knew my chances of finding an eternal companion were slim to none. But I stubbornly held on to hope. I went to yet another church social function. And I found the love of my life. Brent is my everything. Should I happen to possess any good qualities, they are only magnified by him.
Brent moved to Boston to be with me and it’s from Boston that we moved here. Coming from such a city means that we are already accustomed to extreme weather, challenging traffic, a dynamic political landscape and when it comes to baseball, a city that loves the Sox. Boston will always hold a place in our hearts, but it’s ultimately Chicago where we wanted to make our home. We love this area and we are so thrilled to have finally made it here. The ward has been tremendous to us. Every now and again during sacrament meeting I’ll glance over my shoulder and there’s 2 or 3 benches of people waving to the girls or trying to lure them over. Your kindness to them in particular has really touched me. We’re excited to be a part of your ward family.
I had actually been thinking a bit about our old hometown when Bishop Coombs invited me to talk on hope. Tomorrow is a state holiday in Massachusetts- Patriots Day. Among locals it’s known as Marathon Monday. This year will mark the 115th Boston Marathon and it is the oldest, continuous marathon in the world. It’s also among the toughest. From the start, the course runs pretty steadily downward until about mile 16 at which point runners face 3 major hills. The final of the 3 starts at mile 20 and increases in elevation by 90 feet over the next mile. To put that into perspective, 10 feet is considered 1 story of a building so for 1 mile, competitors must run up the equivalent of a 9 story building. The location of this particular hill just happens to coincide at a point in the race when many runners experience a phenomenon known as “hitting the wall”. This last climb is appropriately called Heartbreak Hill.
The Boston Marathon brings all kinds of competitors. There are the elite athletes from all over the world who can run maybe almost as fast as Hannah Coombs. From what I understand she can finish a mile in the time it takes the rest of us to polish off a doughnut. There are the military men and women who begin at 4AM and do the entire course in full fatigues and equipment. But for Bostonians, there are none like the Hoyts.
Dick and Rick Hoyt are a father-son team. Rick was born with cerebral palsy when his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and restricted oxygen flow. Already a quadriplegic, Doctors told Dick to put him in an institution because he would be nothing but a vegetable. But Dick and his wife resolved to raise Rick like every other child. One day, Rick heard about a charity run for a local Massachusetts athlete who had become paralyzed. Rick wanted to give this boy hope and send a message that he could still have a fulfilling life despite his disability. He asked his father to push him in his wheelchair for the race. Dick said yes.
The Hoyts came in second to last in that first race. Rick wrote on his computer that night, “Dad when I'm running it feels like my disability disappears.” That was all his father needed. While Rick was in school and studying, Dick trained by putting a bag of cement in the wheelchair. They entered more races. They got better. Their fellow runners accepted their presence more and more. Finally, they worked their way up to the Boston Marathon.
This year Dick will be just shy of 71 and Rick is now 49. It will be the 27th time father will push son up and over Heartbreak Hill. Regarding his son Dick states, “Rick is my motivator he inspires me. To me he's the one out there competing and I'm just loaning him my arms and my legs so HE can compete.” As if that weren’t enough, Team Hoyt has completed over a thousand races and in 2008 they were inducted into the Ironman Hall of Fame. Those who live or work near the course route may not come out for the elite runners, or the military men and women, but everyone crowds the streets to cheer on the Hoyts.
The Hoyts are a tangible example of hope. As I’ve thought about hope these last few days, the 13th Article of Faith immediately came to mind. We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.
This led to a burning question for me, “What does it mean to hope all things?” Hope is desire expressed in anticipation. I find it poignant that in Spanish the verb for “to hope” is the same one used for “to wait”: esperar. When we told our investigators, “Esperamos averles este sabado” it translated not only as “We hope to see you this Sunday” but “We will wait to see you this Sunday”. I served my mission in East LA and as it was a stateside mission, we had a fair number of visa waiters. These were missionaries who had done their time in the MTC but whose visas had not yet cleared.
I was companions with one such visa waiter when we went to check on some members. They were moving from an apartment on one side of the street to the other and we were a bit chagrined to find they weren’t around. Some moving men were there though and one immediately gravitated towards us. It was not uncommon for the Latin men to take notice of us, particularly when they were drunk. I assumed (based on experience) this was one of those cases. I handed him a First Discussion pamphlet and quickly brushed him off. All companionships were required to have a beeper in East LA for communication and safety reasons. I’d completely forgotten that I’d written my beeper number inside the pamphlet.
Throughout the week I received call after call from this gentleman. He’d mentioned he was from Peru and I jokingly told my companion the crazy Peruano was calling… AGAIN. He left messages but never gave a number to call back. The number on my beeper just showed up as caller id blocked so there was nothing for me to do.
On Sunday we again returned to the members’ home (now across the street) and found the same man standing on the corner in church clothes waiting for us. Hoping we would be there. Esperando. He again asked to come to church with us. To be honest, I was a little annoyed. I bluntly asked him, “Well how long do you want to go to church for? Because it’s THREE hours long! And there are baptisms after that.” Any normal person would walk away from that time commitment but his response shocked me, “Can I be baptized?” I told him he’d have to talk to some people first.
Once we were at church I pulled the Elders aside and told them the situation. After sacrament they quietly took him into a classroom to speak privately. My companion was needed in Primary to play the piano and I momentarily forgot about him. In the middle of Primary, one of the Elders practically stormed up to me to talk about our crazy Peruano.
Turns out he had lived in Utah. He’d had a girlfriend who was Mormon and he’d taken the discussions 3 times. He’d read the Book of Mormon and attended church. The only problem was that he loved to drink and couldn’t give it up. A few months before we ran into him, he’d gotten a DUI and been forced to go to rehab. Now that he had been able to quit drinking, he was ready to be baptized. So he stood on a street corner one Sunday morning and hoped.
Later in my mission one of my fellow Hermanas passed along a note at a zone meeting. It was from my crazy Peruano. He was active and happy and thanked me profusely for all I had done for him. I still have the note but I cannot take any of the credit. Jacob 2:18-19 tells us But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God. And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer to the sick and afflicted. In spite of my shoddy missionary work, my crazy Peruano obtained a hope in Christ.
So, what are we waiting for? Moroni succinctly answers this question in Moroni 7:41 And what is it that ye shall hope for? Behold I say unto you that ye shall have hope through the atonement of Christ and the power of his resurrection, to be raised unto life eternal, and this because of your faith in him according to the promise. Brothers and sisters, we are waiting for the fulfillment of the promises our Father in Heaven has made to us if we come unto Christ.
We all have our own version of Heartbreak Hill. Life brings with it an enormous amount of challenges. Be it finding an eternal companion, overcoming physical ailments or breaking addiction. But before we succumb to hitting the wall and giving up, let us remember our Father in Heaven who gave us his Only Begotten Son. It took place on another hill known as Golgotha. In James E. Talmadge’s Jesus the Christ he comments on the crucifixion, “Great mental stress, poignant emotion either of grief or joy, and intense spiritual struggle are among the recognized causes of heart rupture. The present writer believes that the Lord Jesus died of a broken heart.” Even the Son of God had to climb his own Heartbreak Hill.
Easter is the celebration of Christ’s overcoming that hill. He reversed the effects of death and sin so that we might return to the presence of the Father. Because he has overcome, we too can triumph over our personal Heartbreak Hill. As Neal A Maxwell states, “Given what Jesus died for, are we willing to live with the challenges allotted to us?” Easter is in one week, and in the days leading up to it may we be mindful of not just the sacrifice made on the cross, but in the redemption that followed. It is after all, our Savior who loans us his arms and legs so that we may run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.
Testimony.
