It was well over a decade ago that I received the Irrevelation. As the Elders Quorum President of the ward with the worst hometeaching stats in the stake, I was not enjoying stake priesthood conference. As my anxiety reached unsustainable levels, I realized that either I was taking my calling way too seriously, or I needed the Lord’s direction. After retiring to a private place and pleading on my knees for the Lord’s guidance, I received the following irrevelation, which I presented to the brethren in priesthood opening exercises the following Sunday:
Now brethren sit yourselves down and listen,
‘Cause I’ve got a story to tell,
About a brother just like you and me who died,
Went to heaven, and then got sent to hell!
When this brother arrived at the pearly gates,
The angel wouldn’t let him through,
He said “Hold on, there son, ‘fore I let you in,
I gotta’ job for you!”
So he sent him down to a rough part of hell,
Where he happened on a couple he knew,
They were hoeing away in the middle of a road,
At weeds that continually grew.
Now they were a’hackin’ and a’slashin’ and a’smackin’ and a’ smashin’
And working’ up a terrible sweat,
But the weeds kept a’ sowin’, the seeds kept a’ growin’,
A challenge that couldn’t be met.
It made our brother sad, that they had it so bad,
‘cause he’d hometaught them seven long years,
He asked them how it happened, and their answer was so movin’
That it nearly brought him to tears…
Now they said: “We haven’t been that evil,
But we didn’t go to church that much,
We haven’t been holding family home evening,
Reading scriptures, or anything such
So our kids have grown up unfaithful,
And have fallen into terrible vice,
It has made their lives tough roads to hoe,
And as their parents we have to pay the price.
We didn’t know that it was that important,
But as our hometeacher you obviously did,
Maybe if you had come a little more often,
Things wouldn’t have turned out as they did.”
“Now I feel like a cad, yes I feel mighty bad,
But I had so very much to do,
I had to make some money, and spend time with my fam’ly
But I shoulda’ made more time for you.
Hometeachin’s what was needed, then you might have succeeded
When you felt the Spirit permeate,
I wish to do it over, I couldn’t feel much lower,
But now I guess it’s just too late.”
Now that angel saw them a’talking
And he was so pleased at the sight,
He heard all our brother had learned
And came down to set him right.
“It’s never too late to start your hometeachin’
No matter how bad you been before,
Just try to be more diligent,
And don’t make excuses no more.
I’m glad to see you’ve learned your lesson,
But before you think to go,
Wander over to that shed right there,
And brother, grab yourself a hoe.”
The Irrevelation [1] was sung in my finest hill-billy baritone to a tune reminiscent of “The Preacher and the Bear”. The brethren were affected deeply and remained silent for some time after I’d retaken my seat. We had over 90% hometeaching that month, after which I was released. My tenure was short, but I feel the Lord’s will was accomplished. Never again have I been blessed to receive anything similar.
[1] irrevelation -> irreverent revelation. God clearly has a sense of humor.
I know that some may find fault, that the language was common to a people of a different time and place, and that the grammar was questionable and the idiom not quite correct (rows are hoed, not roads). Nevertheless, I wrote it as it came to me and as I heard it in my head.
Hah. 🙂 My own home teacher is in leadership and will presumably be joining your hypothetical brother with the hoe, based on stats.
Hoe’d to the rod. ☺ just glad it’s an iron rod. 😃
Around here it would be “brotha grab yo self a ho. ”
(ho=whore for you BYU boys and girls)
It wouldn’t be a truly mormon story without the blatant emotional and spiritual abuse…
My reading of the story is the Revelation was to the Stake president who released you…
Who released you two months too late…
It seems counter to Christ’s atonement to think God consigns anyone to hell because of their home teachers. When I eliminate that as a motivation yet realize God still wants me to home teach, it opens more healthy avenues of motivation with less angst.
I thought that was a mighty powerful example of pure poetic revelation and a remarkable gift from God. I had my own rather boring, windy Irrevelation concerning home teaching, not as piercing as this.
As a new EQP in a struggling ward in the South I was certain that home teaching was the key to solving all of the various problems in the ward. I was decades younger, confident, without children yet, had most weekends off, and I was filled with faith and energy. I gave it everything I had. Initially I stuck with diligent compliance of all the traditional or orthodox methods. But after a few years when it became so obvious that they don’t work, I tried several more creative tactics (including indirectly paying people money to do it) all of which also failed miserably.
I moved back to Utah convinced this was an aberration, a local problem in a single remote ward. But I began to see the same problems in my next ward on the east side of Salt lake that often reported 100% home teaching and had infinite talent and resources in comparison. The problems were not as obvious but the hypocrisy was worse.
My own home teacher was an example. He made an appointment every month and never actually showed up. I was working 15-18 hrs a day, 6 days a week and home teaching was considered a Sabbath violation in that ward. So I had to sneak off from work and then go back and stay longer past midnight for nothing. He always had an excuse when I called him on it. My wife started not being there either and he never noticed.
I was struggling with my own small assignment of only two of the more difficult, petty and demanding people in the ward (who were mere kitty cats compared to the lions and tigers and bears in our ward in the South). The EQP, a retired army colonel was not understanding in the least. He ripped me for keeping the ward from getting 100% and told me I would not be allowed to pray or speak or teach in church if I did not mend my ways.
The EQP first counselor was released when his oldest son was arrested for snorting cocaine. I wondered who would be his replacement, certain and glad it would not be me. The next week at church I noticed my home teacher there with his extended family including his mother bowed down in age in a wheel chair. I suspected he was the replacement and I spent the next 2 hours stewing about it. I composed a short but piercing little rant I was going to deliver when I voted to oppose sustaining him.
At EQ meeting he was announced as the new first counselor and I did not vote when asked all in favor. Just as I was about to raise my hand and then stand to oppose, a miracle occurred. The Lord poured a 5 gallon bucket of compassion on my head that felt like cold water. I was drenched in shocking empathy and love for this man. He was my brother. I did not know his background and this might have been a pinnacle in their family history. I had no desire to disrupt it.
A quiet voice came into my head saying: “Its not the people, it’s the program. REPENT OF HOME TEACHING.” Notice, it did not command for others to repent or for me to call others to repentance on this matter.
I am ashamed to admit that I feared the colonel/EQP more than God. I was assigned another rather lazy home teacher which was fine. I continued to home teach and prayed for the voice in my head that kept reminding me to repent of home teaching to go away, for 2 years. We moved to the Midwest into a rather funky ward with an artist/janitor for an EQP. I opened up to him and he promised me that if I was a diligent and faithful home teacher for the next year I would gain (regain?) a testimony of it and that I would bless the lives of people. I believed him and put the Lord to the test. It would take me a few thousand words to describe the disasters and damage that was done that year under the banner of home teaching.
We moved to where we would finally settle to raise our children and I knew that not home teaching would cause long-term social problems and so I put the Lord to the test again, one final time. Nothing good came of it, and there were only a few little annoyances. Definitely no change of heart, just the drumbeat of repent of home teaching whenever I thought of it. I finally gathered the courage to follow my convictions and told the EQP that I was repenting of home teaching.
A week later I was called to be the EQP. I had a multiple hours long discussion with the stake president including telling him to go back and pray some more, but he insisted that I serve and so I did as long as he understood where I stood. I delegated the home teaching over to counselors who believed in it. I made it totally optional and easy as possible. I focused my high level of energy on better lessons and more activities which gave undeniable results. I remained true to my convictions, not making a single home teaching visit and assigning myself as many as 80 families whom we did not have the horsepower in the quorum to visit. I lasted for a couple of years until other controversies engulfed me and I was released.
During the following decade our ward went through no fewer than 10 EQPs. There is no institutional memory, only arrogance that calling people to repentance works. I explained my experiences to each of them patiently, all of whom wanted me to give it another chance on their watch. I have not relapsed into home teaching. Currently a counselor in the stake presidency is my assigned home teacher. I told him since I don’t personally believe in home teaching, he doesn’t have to come if he doesn’t want to, I won’t tattle on him. I jokingly released him from officially home teaching me and absolved him of any guilt by the powers invested in me. But I said he was welcome to visit as a friend any time. He showed up briefly once about 2 years ago and I am pleased with that. He is a busy man and has other more pressing matters.
Yup. When our young EQP called to set up HT with us, we let him know that we would rather he spent the time serving his very ill and single mother, and his young family, although we would appreciate him checking out our health and welfare on a Sunday. Really, what would be the point of anything else?
I’m also a little puzzled as to why RS has liberalised VT to encompass all contact, but this doesn’t seem to have been extended to Home Teaching. I’d be happy for this to become a group e mail/text from our HTs with spiritual content and direction.
Let’s say ‘no’ to guilt, when already earnestly engaged in a good cause. It wears people’s testimony out.Then we can also lose the defensiveness, and open up a little more to one another.
Side bar;I have a friend who idolises her father, a man who has been a 100per cent home teacher for the past thirty years, divorced twice and is now very unhappily married for the third time. What does it profit a man…