March 3, 2001 letter to missionary brother McKay:
I was reviewing the things Bryce needed to do before he could "play" and he looked at me with puppy dog eyes and said, "Mom, the sun is shining.  I can see it through all the windows.  It is calling to me and I just have to go outside.  I have to skateboard.  I will do everything tonight when it is dark. "
So being the softy that I am, I let him go and where is he now that it is dark????        

Bryce Growing Up...

I picked up binders to put them back in a bookshelf and noticed Bryce's journal that I kept as he was growing up.  Jan. 29, 1989 I wrote:
Bryce is 17 months old.  He is getting cabin fever.  When he wants to go outside, he pulls down all the coats ( his is too short to reach) or gets his boots.  He likes to play the piano and dance to music.  He is very cranky at church.  The new schedule is right at his nap time, 12:00 p.m. His vocabulary is: bye, bye, bird, and MOM!  However he babbles incoherently all day.  He likes to talk on the phone alot.  He can carry a five minute conversation all by himself. When he wants a bottle, he gets one and brings it to me.  He still sucks on a nuk. 
Feb. 5 1989  Bryce likes to talk alot during FHE.  We don't listen to the lesson--we just laugh at him.  He's good entertainment.  He can climb up on his horse and high chair now.  If he wants to get down he shakes the tray and if he doesn't want to get down he hangs onto the tray so you can't take it off.  
Feb. 12, 1989   Bryce loves to seat on the baseboard heaters--he uses them as chairs.  He also stands on the kitchen heater and watches the deer in the back yard.  He really has cabin fever.  I usually take him out in the afternoon and he walks down the middle of the street.  He hates to have his hair washed and cutting it requires several people to hold him down. 

Mozambique and What Donna Wrote

These are Willy's parents with Sister Kimball in the MTC.  They are now in Mozambique serving as Welfare Directors for our church.  Donna and I email as often as time allows...they are pretty busy.  This morning I got an email from Donna about Bryce...this is the second time she has met someone that knew of him while serving in Cape Town. This is what she said:
Well today after church we were just hanging around the chapel trying not to wonder why we were there and we met this fellow who spoke perfect English. The missionaries introduced us and it was this Brother Million and his new wife. They were just visiting for the holiday's.
His real name Million Magaia. Well as we visited he said he served in Cape Town so when I asked when sure enough it was during Bryce's mission. And when I asked about him he said which one. I said the blond one. Was he killed he asked and I said yes. He said 'yes, I knew him. I did not serve with him but he served with my best friend Elder Tete'. He also said he was around him so much. He said everyone loved this missionary. He said he was a very CALM missionary and people liked this about him.
He said he was doing a very funny thing. He wondered if he ever did this when he got home. He said Bryce was saving all the money his grandmother sent him and when he got home he was going to take his grandmother out to a nice lunch.
He also said how sad everyone was when they learned of Bryce's passing. He just talked about being around him,his calmness, what a good missionary he was and he said on their mission they were taught very much to keep good journals. I told him about Bryce's journals. He said he has struggled writing in his since home but now he will work harder to write more. He said the missionaries serving at the time he was there were a very special group of missionaries. He said all were very good missionaries and that their mission president taught them so much. He said President Egan tried to teach them everything he knew while he was their president.  He kept commenting on how much he learned on his mission and how lucky he was to go on his mission.
I of course had a hard time listening to him without crying the whole time. I told him excuse me for taking so much of his time and being so emotional. He said thank you for taking him back to his mission again. I told him I needed to go right away and send you an email.He wanted me to let you know how great a missionary your son was and how much they all loved him.

Bryce's Homecoming Talk Oct 2009

 Hello it is good to see everyone today. Well I really enjoyed my time serving a mission in South Africa, I am great full for all of the support that I have received while I have been gone, I know there are other’s out there that have had to choose between Serving a mission or having there family and friends accept them. I am especially great full for my family. I am happy that Dallin has the opportunity to now serve. I am excited to be back at home… everything is still a bit strange for me right now. I am already missing many things that I got to experience while I was serving in South Africa. I had so many experiences that have helped others and myself to grow in the gospel, one of the things that I got to experience the most was receiving direction and answers from prayer.  Over the past two years I have had the wonderful opportunity to teach many people about how to use the power of prayer.  As I have taught I have seen that there are many things that people don’t quite understand about prayer… I have also been able to enlarge my own understanding about this wonderful source of communication and guidance that we can have with our Heavenly Father. Today I will be speaking about 5 different key points that have helped me to use the power that can come through prayer. I pray that some of the things I share may be of benefit to you as it has been for me. The five points are.

1.     Having an understanding of who it is that we pray to.

2.     How do I pray? Why am I praying? What is it that you want? Be specific.

3.     Recognizing, responding, and understanding answers to prayers.

4.     Expressing gratitude and Accounting

5.     Making our prayers reach Heaven.

Homecoming Talk Oct. 2008 Prayer

1.     Who do we pray to?

Elder Faerch, Elder Christensen

There is a surprising number of people in the world today, even amongst us members of the church, who do not fully understand who or what we pray to.  In Preach My gospel the very first line of the very first lesson that we teach says. “God is our Heavenly Father. We are His children. He has a body of flesh and bone that is glorified and perfected. He loves us.” To me you couldn’t explain anymore clearer than Preach My Gospel does about who our Father in Heaven is, and this is who we pray to. Not some spirit that doesn’t have a body that just floats around everywhere, we don’t pray to the mother Mary, or the Holy Ghost, we don’t even pray to Jesus Christ. We only pray to God, our Father in Heaven. There are so many people in the world today who are confused about the true nature of God, we are so blessed to be taught at a young age in Primary the Difference between God and Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost, there are so many people who don’t have a clue who they pray to. Thankfully if someone is sincere and has pure motives, God will come down and help them to there own level of understanding. As members of the only true and living church, we know who God is, but how often do we stop to think about who we are actually praying to? There was a senior missionary couple who I served closely around.. And I had many opportunities to speak and interact with this particular couple, Elder and Sister Ward. Now Elder ward shared with me something that I will always remember and that I have thought about and used every day since he shared this special bit of information with me. He was at our boarding for some reason or another and we got talking and the subject of prayer was brought up, and he told me “I can never pray until I can see who it is that I am praying to.” Well I thought about this for a while and it made a whole lot of sense to me. How often do we take the time to think and to visualize our Father in Heaven? It can make a world of difference in our prayers. When we can see who it is that we are praying to our prayers become more meaningful, more sincere, I have found that it is easier to understand what my Father in Heavens will for me is.  The bible dictionary helps us to understand why we need to learn our relationship with God to have meaningful prayers. It says. “As soon as we learn the true relationship in which we stand towards God (namely, God is our Father, and we are his children) then at once the prayer becomes natural and instinctive on our part.  Many of the so called difficulties about prayer arise from forgetting this relationship.” I know that what the bible dictionary says is true. When we come to know who God is our prayer will flow naturally, we won’t have to worry about our clumsy thought and we can just pray, and this will benefit ourselves and others greatly.

How do I pray? Why am I praying? Homecoming Talk 2009

2        How do I pray? Why am I praying?

  What is the order of prayer? When should I pray?  God has given to His prophets instructions about how and when He wants us to pray to him. How to pray is very simple. God does not want it to be difficult for us to communicate with Him. He loves us and wants very much to hear from us. We first start by addressing Our Father in Heaven. Any respectful way to do this is appropriate. Next we can express gratitude for our many blessings. Then we can ask about anything that concerns us, or for direction or guidance. Finally we always close in the name of Jesus Christ. It is that easy. As a missionary I had made up a card with these four simple steps of the order of pray that I could carry around and give to people who were concerned with what to do and say when they pray. It had 4 simple steps. #1. Address Heavenly Father. #2. We thank thee…#3. We ask thee…#4. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen. I remember giving one of these cards to a young man about 16 years old who was concerned that he would not be able to pray, I quickly gave him one of these prayer cards, and explained to him how to use it. He agreed to pray, and he prayed the following. Heavenly Father……. We thank thee for blessing us…….we ask thee for…..blessing us. And then he concluded his prayer. Well his prayer was very short… maybe didn’t make the most sense, but he had probably the most important element we need in prayer. He was sincere. He was willing. He never had really prayed before but he was willing to give it a try. Now that is the order in which we should pray for most occasions, and with this order of prayer There is a special language we use, we show our greatest respect when we pray to God. We can do this by using words like Thee and Thou instead of saying you. We take time to think about the desires of our heart, rather than mumble out meaningless words and sentences that do not come from the heart. Now this is how we should pray, but just as important as knowing how is when. This answer is very simple though and can be found in 2 Nephi 32 V. 9 where it says. 9 But behold, I say unto you that ye must pray always, and not faint; that ye must not perform any thing unto the Lord save in the first place ye shall pray unto the Father in the name of Christ…. We always need to be praying. Just before I came home I had an interview with my mission President. President Probst... and we discussed about how many times a day we pray as missionaries… and we came up with 30 prayers a day could be quite a normal day. He told me that lots of missionaries will go home and will not feel the spirit like they did when they were on a mission and it discourages them… he said it was because they were not praying like they used to. If we are always praying at every opportunity, we will always see the Lords hand in our life; we will always feel the spirit. Last about the order of prayer is we need to always remember to close in the name of Jesus Christ. He is the one who makes it possible to return to live in Gods presence, He is the one that makes anything good possible. Now that is the order that we most often use when we pray, and it is an important part of prayer, but still like I mentioned before, sincerity is the most important thing we need in our prayers. One thing that I have been able to learn that makes sincere prayers even better though is sincere prayers with a specific purpose. I have come to learn that sincere, specific prayer with a specific purpose, get specific answers with specific blessing. Now I know that Heavenly Father knows what we need, and He wants so much to give it to us, but unless we ask for it, He will most likely not give us that which we desire. The scriptures tell us “Ask and ye shall receive knock and it shall be opened unto you.” (Share story of investigators asking specifically to know if the Book of Mormon is true.) Now that we have established how we pray, let’s go over why we pray. Well if you think about it whenever we pray it is because we want something… I’m not saying that we are selfish, but when we pray we have a purpose we want to get something done. Whether its we want to have a safe trip as we travel, or we want our food to be blessed, or we just want to express our thanks to God because we have been blessed so much, and we want Him to know of our gratitude. There is always something we should want to accomplish in our prayers. God is this way also He always wants to get something done, he doesn’t do things that don’t have any meaning. The trick though is we need to be willing and able to find out and accept what it is that God wants for us. We may think we already know what we need, what we want accomplished. But God really does know so much better. I think that the key to finding out what it is that God really wants for us is simply diligence and obedience. If we do what we have been asked and continue to do it, regardless of what the outcome may be, we will prove ourselves worthy to do Gods will, thus God will revile His will to us because we will do something with the instructions that He gives us. When we can accomplish this we will have a perfect understanding of why we pray and what it is that we need to pray for.

Installment 3 on Homecoming Talk Oct. 2008Elder

Elder Swasey, Elder Ronny, Elder Christensen   King Williams town South Africa

3        Recognizing, and responding from answers to prayers.

   I don’t think it is always easy for us to recognize answers to our prayers.  God makes us put forth some sort of effort on our part usually and He works in this pattern to cause us to learn and grow. Elder Richard G. Scott says that our responses to prayer often come a piece at a time until we receive the whole answer. When me and my companion would go and follow up on a lesson that we had taught to an investigator, we would have them explain as much as they could to us, and then we would help them with the parts that they were missing. We could have easily just re-taught them the lesson, but we knew that when they had to think and participate they would gain so much more from our visits. I think the same principal we used is very similar with what our Heavenly Father does. He could easily just tell us everything we need to know, but then the effort on our part is lost and we won’t grow. Answers to prayers are always available, whether its yes, no, go here, go there, do this or do that, be patient I’ll take care of it, or answer could be simply use your best judgment it will be fine. We just have to be able to be in tune with the spirit enough and listening and we will always find our answers whatever it may be. Being in a place that is conducive to the spirit will always help with us accomplishing this task.  (Tell in Your own words I remember an experience I had just a few months ago, were my companion and I were preparing a meeting for the missionaries in our area, we knelt down and prayed before we started planning …. Nothing…. In a place where the spirit could prompt and the spirit prompted me that we needed to pray again. We responded to the prompting that we received and then the revelation flowed) When we respond to the answers that we have identified that God has given us.  He gives us more. Because we have proven that we will respond. As a missionary you get to watch the restoration dvd many times, and you begin to be able to quote it. One of my favorite quotes from that film is a part where…… I contend that God has given to each of us the ability to think… to reason for our selves.  And it is true although we should always seek instruction and guidance from our Heavenly Father, we should also use our own skill and judgment for many things. For example God will probably not tell you what flavor of  ice cream to buy while you are at the store. PMG explains this really well there is a quote by Dallin H Oaks in PMG under the chapter following the spirit where it says.