I’ve Waited Nearly 50 Years to Tell This Missionary Story

Thanks to Rick Bennett for allowing us to share this story.

I’ve waited nearly 50 Years to tell this missionary story and it may be the greatest conversion story I’ve ever witnessed. A note before you begin:

This story is Chapter 12 of the book I have just written about my mission and the experiences that followed my return home from serving in Indiana beginning in 1976. It is longer than most of the stories I share here, but I hope you’ll stay with me to the end.

Nearly fifty years ago, I knelt on a living room floor with a woman who had been searching for the courage to trust God again. What happened in that room became one of the most sacred missionary experiences of my life. And almost fifty years later, the Lord allowed me to discover the rest of the story. I believe this is a missionary story you won’t soon forget.

When people ask about my mission, they naturally think of Indiana. So do I.

Those two years shaped me in ways I could never have imagined. They taught me the restored gospel, but they also taught me something even more important. They taught me how to recognize the quiet whisperings of the Holy Ghost. They taught me that people rarely need another argument. More often, they need someone willing to listen long enough to discover what is really standing between them and the Savior.

When I returned home, I thought my missionary service had ended. I was wrong. About a year later, I received another missionary calling. I was called as a stake missionary in the Fresno California East Stake. Twice each week I accompanied the full-time missionaries as they taught investigators and shared the gospel. To me, it felt like being given a small piece of my mission back.

If I’m being honest, a part of me never wanted my mission to end. I loved teaching the gospel. I loved watching the Spirit soften hearts. I loved seeing people discover for themselves that Heavenly Father knew them personally. Serving as a stake missionary gave me another opportunity to experience those same sacred moments.

One evening the elders asked if I would accompany them to visit a woman named Carol Parrish. The name immediately caught my attention. Growing up, Bob Parrish had been one of my father’s closest friends. I wondered if there might be a connection.

Fill the Font

As we drove to Carol’s home, the elders explained her situation. She had been taught by several different companionships over the course of more than a year. She loved the Church. She believed the restored gospel. She enjoyed meeting with the missionaries. But she had never committed to baptism. They had reached the point where they honestly didn’t know what else to teach.

I listened quietly. As a brand-new missionary, I probably would have been wondering which discussion to present or which scripture might answer her questions. But my mission had changed me.

During those two years, the Lord had patiently taught me something I hadn’t understood as a new missionary. Before you can help someone move forward, you first have to understand what is holding them back. Experience had taught me that the obstacle is often not a lack of knowledge. It is something much deeper.

I didn’t know what Carol’s obstacle was. But I felt impressed that before we taught another lesson, we needed to discover it. Before we entered her home, I quietly asked the elders if they would allow me to begin our discussion that evening. They graciously agreed.

When Carol answered the door, I smiled and asked, “Are you related to Bob Parrish?” She smiled. “Yes. He’s my husband. He passed away several years ago.” We spent a few minutes talking about Bob and my father, and before long we were all comfortably seated in her living room.

I looked at Carol and said, “Carol, I understand you’ve been taught by several sets of missionaries over the past year, but you still haven’t committed to be baptized. Is that right?” She nodded. “Yes.” I paused for a moment. Then I asked the question that had been on my mind ever since the elders told me her story. “So then… …what’s your problem?”

It wasn’t intended to embarrass her. It wasn’t criticism. It was simply an honest question. I felt there was something beneath the surface that no discussion or scripture could resolve until we understood what it was.

For a moment she looked surprised. Then her eyes filled with tears. Slowly, she began telling us what had happened. Years earlier she had belonged to another church. During one of the most difficult periods of her life, she had felt abandoned by the very people she trusted most. The experience had wounded her deeply.

She wasn’t struggling with the restored gospel. She believed it. She wasn’t struggling with Joseph Smith. She believed him. She wasn’t struggling with the Book of Mormon. She believed it too. Her struggle wasn’t doctrine. It was trust. She was afraid to give her heart to another church and risk being hurt again.

As she spoke, I felt another unmistakable prompting. I said, “Carol, would it be alright if we knelt together in prayer?” She quietly agreed. The six of us—Carol, her two daughters, the elders, and I—knelt together in a circle on her living room floor and joined hands.

I asked if each of us would offer a prayer. Then I made one small request. “Carol, would you pray last?” There was a reason. I wanted the Spirit to build with each prayer. I hoped that by the time it was Carol’s turn, she would no longer be speaking from fear. She would be speaking from faith.

One by one we prayed. With every prayer the Spirit grew stronger. Soon that little living room felt almost sacred. To this day, I have never forgotten what I felt. The Spirit was so powerful that I actually opened my eyes for a brief moment. Part of me wondered if angels were standing in the room. That feeling has never left me.

Finally it was Carol’s turn. She prayed. When she finished, there was complete silence. Then she quietly spoke three words I’ll never forget. “Fill the font.”

She didn’t need another discussion. She didn’t need another scripture. She didn’t need another answer. The Holy Ghost had answered the only question that mattered. Fear had surrendered to faith. Carol was baptized shortly afterward.

Do You Remember Me?

Years passed. Life moved on. Like so many people we meet during our missions, Carol and I eventually lost touch. We each raised families, built careers, and followed the paths the Lord had prepared for us. Although I occasionally wondered what had become of her, I assumed I would probably never know.

Then one day, completely out of the blue, I received a message on Facebook from someone whose name I didn’t recognize. She asked a simple question. “Are you Rick Bennett from Fresno, California?” I answered that I was. She replied, “Do you remember me? I’m Bob Parrish’s youngest daughter.” Of course I remembered Bob and his family.

Then she asked the question that immediately took me back nearly fifty years. “Do you remember Carol Parrish?” I smiled as I read her message. “Of course I do.” Then she told me something I never expected to hear. Carol had been trying to find me for years.

During a family gathering, they had been talking about how Carol had joined the Church. As they reminisced about those early days, Carol mentioned that she had often wondered whatever became of the young missionary who had helped her find the faith to be baptized. So her daughter decided to see if she could find me. Against all odds… she did.

She gave me Carol’s phone number and encouraged me to give her a call. Within a few days, we were talking on the telephone as though no time had passed. Although nearly fifty years separated us, it felt as though we had simply picked up a conversation that had been interrupted yesterday.

At the time, I was in the middle of building our new home in North Idaho. I told Carol, “As soon as the house is finished, I’m coming to see you.” A few months later, that’s exactly what I did. I drove to Florence, Oregon.

When I arrived, Carol suggested we meet for breakfast before going to her home. As we greeted one another, we shared a hug that had been nearly fifty years in the making. There was nothing awkward about it. It simply felt like seeing an old friend again.

Over breakfast, we began catching up on half a century of life. Then we went to her home. And we talked. And talked. And talked. We spent the entire day together, sharing stories, remembering old friends, laughing about forgotten experiences, and filling in nearly fifty years of missing memories.

She wanted to know about my life. About my family. About my children and grandchildren. She asked about my work, my years in business, and the path my life had taken since leaving California. I wanted to hear about her life. We talked about Bob. We talked about her family. We talked about the years that had passed. And, of course, we talked about that unforgettable evening when four people knelt together in her living room and the Holy Ghost changed a life.

That evening I took her to dinner. We found ourselves doing exactly what we had done all day. Talking. Laughing. Remembering.

One of the greatest joys of our reunion was learning what the Lord had done with Carol’s life. Today she serves as a family history missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. From a small office in her own home, she spends several hours each day helping people from around the world learn how to use FamilySearch. She answers questions, solves problems, and helps families discover their ancestors.

As she described her work, I couldn’t help but smile. The woman who had once struggled for more than a year to find the courage to be baptized was now helping build the Lord’s kingdom every single day.

While Carol and I were reconnecting by phone, and while I was still in the middle of building our new home in North Idaho, I shared a very personal story on Facebook. It wasn’t about my mission. It wasn’t about Carol. It was about my own journey.

I wrote about the struggles I experienced as a young husband and father, trying to discover who the Lord wanted me to become. I shared the doubts, the disappointments, and the lessons I had learned over the years. Looking back, I realized that the Lord had been weaving every experience—both joyful and painful—into a tapestry of purpose far greater than I could have understood at the time.

A few days later, Carol responded. Her words brought tears to my eyes. She remembered that evening in her living room almost exactly as I did. She remembered the fear she had carried. She remembered the prayer. She remembered the promise that if she trusted the Lord, He would never leave her.

But then she shared something I had never known. For nearly fifty years, whenever someone struggled with faith or questioned whether they could trust the Lord, she found herself telling them the story of that evening. The experience that had changed her life had become part of the way she strengthened the faith of others.

For almost fifty years, I had remembered that sacred evening from my side of the room. Now, for the first time, I was seeing it through hers. Reading her words touched me deeply.

As I drove home from Florence, I found myself thinking about that evening in Carol’s living room so many years earlier. At the time, I thought I was simply helping one woman overcome her fear and take the next step in her faith. I had no way of knowing what the Lord would do with that decision. I couldn’t see the years that lay ahead. I couldn’t see the family she would help strengthen. I couldn’t see the countless people she would one day help through her own missionary service. And I certainly couldn’t have imagined that nearly fifty years later the Lord would allow us to sit across the table from one another again and remember it all.

As missionaries, we rarely get to see the ending of the stories we help begin. Usually we plant a seed, bear our testimony, and move on to another town, another family, another investigator. The Lord stays behind. He nurtures the seed. He watches it grow.

Every once in a great while He allows us to come back and see the harvest. That was His gift to me.

My mission taught me how to teach. The Lord taught me how to listen. Nearly fifty years later, Carol taught me one more lesson. Never underestimate what the Lord can do with one sincere testimony offered in faith. You may never see the harvest. But He always does.