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The Book of Mormon Just Clicks! • followHIM Favorites • February 3-9 • Come Follow Me
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John
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Follow Him Favorites. This is where John and I share a single story to go with each week's lesson. John we are in sections 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the Doctrine and Covenants. This week it's about the translation of the Book of Mormon with Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. However, the story I'm going to share, John, is actually the translation of the Book of Mormon by Judy Brummer. I don't know if you know this story, but it's the Book of Mormon. I know you're thinking, wait, I thought Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon. He did, but so did Judy Brummer. I'm going to tell you how so, John, I think you're going to love this. It's a little bit of a longer story, but totally worth it when you see how it all works out. Judy grows up in Karoo, South Africa. She grew up to a very Methodist family. She said, I love my Methodist family. They're hardworking, good, honest, decent, farm country, bumpkin people. She said her mom was very educated. She taught us the Almighty God is not called almighty for nothing. He can do anything, anywhere, anytime. Her mom. JOHN this is an interesting part of the story. Gwenna At a time when not a lot of women are able in South Africa to get a university education, she was able to get one because her parents, Gwenna's parents, so Judy's grandparents didn't have any sons. What's interesting is in South Africa at the time, if you had a bachelor's degree, you could keep your children out of boarding school until they were 10. Judy and her parents, her family, they grew up on this massive farm. She said, if you did a 360 degree twirl at my house, there was no sign of any other human being. My father owned a 10,000 acre ranch. On the ranch, they had some servants working for them and all of the families of all the servants came from families of the same tribe, the Xhosa tribe. And they only speak the Xhosa language, which is the clicking language that maybe you've seen on a documentary or something. You can look this up online. So, John, you can only learn this language from being a child in it. It's very difficult because Judy says some of the clicking that you do is when you're, you're taking air in instead of taking, instead of pushing air out, which is what we do in our language, but some of it's taking air in. She said it's really hard for an adult, almost impossible for an adult to Learn. But she said, as a child, I learned to speak two languages. I had my one mother, my own mother. And she said, I had my three Xhosa mothers who helped raise me. So she's with these Xhosa tribe members, and those are all her friends. Her little friends are all these Cosa children. Well, eventually she grows up and she goes to Rhodes University. And she was thinking about going into social welfare or social work. One of her friends there, I think it's a roommate or something, she says to her one day, judy, you speak Xhosa fluently. You should sign up to study Xhosa. Her roommate said, that will be easy for you. So she said, purely by accident, I didn't mean to. I signed up for a Cosa class. She said I could speak it fluently. I'd spoken it my whole life, but I'd never learned to read or write it. So years go by. She gets a fantastic job at something known as a fashion house, and her job is taking her all over to department stores throughout South Africa. Well, she's living with three other girls, and she says, you can guess who came knocking on our door. She said this. She said, heavenly Father knew better than to send elders to the door of where four crazy young adult girls lived. She said, I saw these two sisters, Sister Dix and Sister Belle. One of them was a brand new green missionary, super nervous. And in one breath she said, good afternoon. We are missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, more commonly known as the Mormons. Would you like to know more? Well, John, this is kind of funny. She said, I leaned back to my roommate, Vivian and said, would you like to hear more? She said, my mouth was full of watermelon. She said, vivian, would you like to hear more about the morbid church? So, the morbid church. She said that Vivian had a mouthful of watermelon and she just spit it all over the table because she had just said, do you want to know more about the morbid church? And so the two of us just laughed and we thought it was really funny. So the two of them started to laugh really hard. And all of a sudden the thought came to my head, they're going to think you're laughing at them, right? These two missionaries are going to think you laughed at them. Now, don't do that. You would never have the courage to do what they were doing. So bring them in. So she said, I went to the door and I said, sorry, I'm not laughing at you. Please come in, she said. We sat down a Couple other girls come in and they taught us about the first vision. She decides to continue getting the lessons, John, and she's very excited about the church. She's very excited about living prophets. She started to share more with her friends, with her family. And she said, I was very startled at the reaction. I received an avalanche of anti Mormon literature. Well, John, she joins the church and a year later decides she's going to go on a mission. This is when she said, my family thought I had crossed the sanity line. My mother called me and said, do not give up that beautiful job, that incredible job that you have. Don't resign. We're not going to support you during your mission and we're not going to take you in after your mission. Well, she said, once again, I'm pretty cheeky, John. We're gonna have to start using that word, cheeky. She told her mom, I know this is the Lord's church. Don't worry about me. He'll take care of me. She said, this was 1980. I told my branch president that I would go on a mission. Two weeks later, she's in the mission field. So can you imagine John telling your bishop, I'd like to go on a mission. And then two weeks later, because he got an urgent call from someone in Salt Lake City who had heard I could speak the clicking language. No way. Well, why? Here's why, John. There's an African man, his name is Bishop Kawa. K O W A. He had found some church literature from our church, John. Instead of waiting, trying to find out where it's from, he got a piece of, like a piece of board or something and he just spray painted on it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Put it outside his hut and went around preaching what was in the pamphlets. He had no contact with any member of the church. He had nothing. He just kept preaching the gospel. So this Bishop Kawa, I hope that's how you say his name, he had to register his church. It got so big he had to register it. He went to register it as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, only to discover that that name had already been registered. He writes a letter to President Kimball to see if he wants to merge with his church. Like, hey, I have your same name, so you want to merge with me. But he wrote the letter in Africans because maybe he thought President Kimball would understand Afrikaans. Then the mission president heard I could speak this language. Two weeks later, I was speaking to Bishop kala. We baptized 30, then 40, then 50 people at a time. She Said I once remember we had 54 people to be baptized one day. All right, well, you'd think that's a great story. It ends there. It doesn't end there. She says, about three weeks before my mission ended, I got a telegram from my old, old boss. He said, contact me urgently, Alec. She said. So I called him back and he said, when are you finished being a nun? I just. Judy, when are you done being a nun? She said. I said to him, I have three weeks left on my mission and I am not a nun. And he said, okay, the following Monday, 8:00, I want you in the Durban office. She said, I got my exact same job back, so I'll have to speed up this story. John. She marries one of the missionaries in her mission and they're raising their children there in South Africa when the translation department of the church calls her and she said, my first reaction was to run and hide. She said, I made all the excuses. My husband is bishop right now. I have three little kids. There's no way I can help you. So one day, she said, the translating people came to my home. It was a couple from Salt Lake, a couple from South Africa, and Elder Jean R. Cook of the 70s. No kidding. They said, we really feel strongly you need to do this. Elder Cook laid his hands on my head and gave me a blessing. She said, And I knew at that moment why. I was born to a Methodist mother with an education. That's why I was allowed to stay at the ranch until I was 10. That's why I signed up accidentally for my Xhosa class. John this is how she describes translating the Book of Mormon from English to Xhosa. She said I would read the English Book of Mormon and I understood it with a clarity that I cannot explain to you. It was so clear, it was almost like I was there. I knew exactly what every word meant in English. It was so easy to translate into Xhosa, which does not happen to me now. She said, I understood it with a clarity I cannot explain. Even the portions of Isaiah I kept saying to myself, every word is a light bulb that lit up in my brain. She said, I'm not usually this smart. I know it was a gift from God. I did not do it alone. I had helped help. She said, now, listen, John. This is what she says about the Book of Mormon prophets. I felt their different personalities. They were different people. She said, sometimes when you are translating, there's not a really a perfect word. There's two words or three words you could use. And I would ask heavenly Father, please help me know which word Alma would use. And instantly I would know. She said I could feel their personalities. So, John, I know it was a long story, but isn't it beautiful? All of this comes together and Judy Brummer translates the Book of Mormon from English to Xhosa. And she had help. She had help, she said, just like Joseph did, going from reformed Egyptian to English. Right. You got to think it was the same process, that same spirit of revelation that we talk about in these sections. Well, come join us on our full podcast. That wasn't the full podcast, even though it may have felt like it. It's called Follow Him. You can get it wherever you get your podcast. We're in, like I said, Section 6 through 9 this week with Dr. Tonalyn Ford, and she is incredible, the way she walks us through the section and through the translation process. Then come back next week. We'll do another Follow him favorites.