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Speaking of the need within the church for senior couples to serve missions. Elder Ronald, a Rasband has said There are so many ways senior missionaries can do what no one else can. You are a remarkable force for good, seasoned in the church and poised to encourage and rescue God's children. A mission might be the greatest chapter in a couple's life.

A good title might be, my Lord, will have Need of Me. The story you're about to hear is a remarkable. Example of that statement, Dwight Potter was born and raised in southeastern North Carolina while Susan Potter was born and raised in southwestern California near the Los Angeles area. They met at Brigham Young University and were married in the LA Temple.

Dwight spent his career as an accounting professional and later as a general manager in the livestock industry while Susan was a stay at home mom, caring for their seven children. Dwight. Did not want her job. They're now grandparents to 14 grandchildren.

This is all in an LDS Living podcast where we ask the question, what does it really mean to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I'm Morgan Pearson, and I am so honored to have Dwight and Susan Potter on the line with me today, brother and sister Potter. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here. Well, I will start by saying that I have known the Potters most of my life and they are wonderful people and I am just so excited to get to introduce you to so many people with this episode.

But I wanted to start out because I think this kind of lays some groundwork for the conversation that we're gonna have. Today, brother Potter, you served your mission as a young man in Belgium speaking French. Right. How did you do with the French language as a young missionary? Well, having been raised in the bad woods of Southeast or North Carolina, I could hardly speak English, so, but uh, when I got my call, I was, I would say I was.

Teased mercilessly that I would be speaking French with a huge southern accent. But in, in Belgium and France, it was the Belgium Brussels mission. French speaking it. It was a wonderful mission, but language is hard and, uh, most missionaries struggle. And initially I sure did, but like most missionaries as well, by the end of my mission, I, I would say I was fluent.

The language of the restored gospel, but not necessarily a whole lot else. But it was a wonderful, okay, so I can relate about the speaking a language with a southern accent. One of the senior missionaries in my mission said Sister Jones speaks pretty good Spanish. She just speaks it a little bit slower than everyone else.

Yeah. I I wanted to ask you all, so you decided that you wanted to serve a senior mission. You had already served one senior mission and you, you wanted to serve another. And I wondered if you could kind of tell listeners why you submitted your mission papers when you did, and then how you felt when the call came.

Well, like you said, we just finished a six month mission from home. Which was kind of practice to see if we could stand each other 24 7 to go on an a two year mission or an 18 month mission. And we thought, well, we'll put our papers in in about a year or two. No hurry. We were building a house, so it was not a big deal to wait a little while.

And then our friends, our really good friends were serving as mission leaders in Ghana. And they called and they said, please come now. They needed an office couple. And so we prayed about it and we said, okay, we'll, we'll go to Ghana earlier than we thought we would go. And so we, she started buying African dresses at a closet full of cotton flowery dresses.

So we turned our mission papers in and. Because a mission leader asked for us and we asked to go there. He said, you'll have your call to Ghana in two weeks. And so about seven weeks later after wondering where our call was, it finally came and we opened it and it was to the North Carolina, Raleigh Mission, not Africa.

Which is where I grew up and where we've lived as a married couple off and on many half our married life, we had lived back in that area. I would say that initially it was a kind of a disappointment because Africa is Africa, but after thinking about it, we thought, what a wonderful opportunity to go and serve as full-time missionaries.

In a place where there are people that we just love so much, and so that's kind of how that call came about. I, I was afraid to go to Africa, but kind of excited, but thinking about going to North Carolina and the possibility of maybe getting to serve where we have lived before it, it was wonderful. And I, I just felt like it was where we were supposed to go.

So you arrive in North Carolina and initially, based on my understanding, it seemed like your mission seemed to be pretty run of the mill initially, but then this movement of sorts starts to happen where a lot of Haitian people. Are coming to North Carolina and have an interest in the gospel. Can you tell listeners about kind of the beginnings of that?

Well, let me start at the MTC. Okay. We got, uh, an email telling us where we were going to be serving, and you'll know what this is, but Woodington. We thought it was in a different stake, but right on the edge of the stake where we lived for so many years and I started being a little bit like Sariah murmuring.

Why would the Lord send us so close to where we would love to be? And and then we get there and we find out that that ward is in the stake. That it had all been redistricted and we were serving in the Goldsboro stake, and it was amazing. And, and we had wonderful experiences in, in the Woodington ward.

They, the, the mission president actually moved the young missionaries out of the ward as soon as we got there, which we thought was a little strange, but we were the missionaries for that award and had some amazing experiences, especially with part member families. And then just a few months after we had served in the Woodington ward, uh, which is in the Golds World stake, the mission president called, and he said that the state president who happens to be your father, had made a request that we accept the second assignment to go and serve in the Mount Olive ward, also in the stake.

And, uh, we have a bit of history in the Mount Olive Ward. Just over 30 years ago, we lived and, and I served as bishop in that ward. So we felt like, okay, uh, they just, because we've been there, we know the people we can go and be a positive influence on the ward and the people there. And we were excited to go and take that second assignment, but just a few weeks after we got there is we just started running into Haitian people.

There are quite a number of Haitians. In the Mount Olive area, Goldsboro and, and the surrounding area, and it, it just, it kind of just snowballed. All the missionaries were suddenly running into Haitians that wanted to talk to them, but the Haitian people, most of them don't speak English. Especially many of these people were people that had just recently come to the United States.

And so they were interested in talking, but nobody could talk to 'em. Well, Haitian is a French dialect, and if the Haitians had gone to high school, all of high school's in French, and so I could talk to them. And so we kept getting referral after referral after referral from the, from the missionaries. We could not keep up with it.

The young missionaries couldn't really help us. They could go with us, but they couldn't really help us. And so, and so, we would, we would begin, uh, we would teach, we were starting to have baptisms. We were starting to have people come to church, more and more people. I was translating into French, which was as close as I could get the sacrament meetings, and then we'd meet together with them for the second hour, and it just kept growing and kept growing.

And then finally after a period of time, we just couldn't keep up with it. Um, and so the mission president called two young missionaries within the mission to come to Mount Olive with the assignment to learn Haitian Creole so that they could, that they could help with the work of, of, and really begin to really take that work of teaching these wonderful Haitian people.

Okay, so just a quick recap so that people can appreciate how crazy this story is. You submit your mission papers thinking you're gonna go to Africa, right? We were confident we were going to Africa. You get a mission call to the place that instead you raised your family, you're originally from Brother Potter, right?

And you get there, you're having kind of a normal mission experience, but then because you knew French from your younger mission, right? You're all of a sudden being flooded with. Teaching request and, and missionary opportunities in French, correct. In Eastern North Carolina, correct. Yeah. And when our state president, your father asked us to go to Mount Olive, he didn't know why.

He just wanted us to go help with the people there, the English speaking people. Right. If you had told me at any point before this that at some point in my life I would be like, I call it the backwoods of North Carolina where I grew up. Teaching people the gospel of Jesus Christ in my mission language.

I could never have foreseen that. Never in my wildest dreams. That's so crazy. Okay, Susan, I wanna ask you, you don't speak French. No. And all of a sudden you're in all of these lessons and. And different situations where you don't speak the language, which a lot of new missionaries can probably relate to that feeling.

It's not a great one. And I imagine that this resulted in your mission looking quite a bit different than you had anticipated or imagined. Was that hard for you? And how do you feel like you found ways to connect with the people despite the language barrier? Well, the first thing I did was download Duolingo.

I started learning a little bit of Haitian Creole and it was helpful. Good. It was hard sitting in meetings where we are supposed to be teaching and elder Potter's doing all the teaching and I'm just kind of smiling and nodding, hugging the people, they, the little kids are great little huggers and I just love them, but it, it was hard not being able to communicate.

I started to. Understand some of the French church words so I could follow along and know where we were. But it was really hard to pay attention. And when they say, okay, sister Potter, bear your testimony. Uh, what are you talking about? So I can, anyway, then they translate for me. But it was, it was very different talking about her giving hugs.

I, I, I, I said a few times while we were out. Sister Potter doesn't speak French, but she speaks the, the language of love. And they could feel, even though there was a a, a, a language barrier, there was actually a really good communication going on of the love that she felt for, for all of these people. I remember when one of the girls said that she would be baptized, she accepted the challenge, she jumped out of her chair and hugged me.

Like I had taught her, I hadn't taught her anything, but I got the first hug and ex and congratulations. And it, that's just how it was. The people are so happy for what they have and what they've been given with the gospel. They have nothing worldly that they have a love of Jesus Christ and they loved the, they loved each other.

They loved us. First of all, that doesn't surprise me at all, knowing you like I do, but second, you know, my, my trainer on my mission. She told me really early on, she said, you may struggle with the language, but you'll find really quickly why you were called to serve a Spanish speaking mission. And she's like, and it won't have anything to do with your ability to speak Spanish.

It'll be. Because of the way that you're able to connect with the people. And I do think there are different kind of personalities that play into different cultures and people that can connect in certain ways that other people might not be able to. And so I think it's neat that you were able to find a way to contribute and to feel a part, despite what I'm sure was hard.

Yeah. But there were so many blessings from that, loving those people. Right. And I think even though I could speak the language, they much preferred to see her.

Well, I, I wanna talk a little bit. When I reached out to the two of you, you sent me a thing that you had written for the mission history, and I was blown away. My dad had given me some kind of background about this. This experience that you all had, but the number of miracles that you experienced was just wild.

And to me it felt kind of like I was reading miracles out of the scriptures, like the kind of things that you don't think happen anymore. So I wondered, could you share some of those miracles that you all saw when you talk about it feeling like the scriptures? When I was in sacrament meeting one day, I looked around.

At all the Haitians with their headphones on listening to the translation, there were probably at that time, 60 attending. There were none. And then six months later we had 60 people there. And I couldn't help but feel that we were in something very historic and something very miraculous and it was kinda like am and going and converting the whole.

Household of the king or one of those kind of stories. It was like, it's just us and these other missionaries. We are nobody special. But look what's happening. It was amazing. And one time he told you that we'd met meet for second meeting with the English speakers and then we'd go have our second hour together.

But it got so busy for Elder Potter 'cause he had to take. Them down the, the guys that had just been baptized down to the bishop to get priesthood interviews and Temple recommend interviews, and then he'd take the girls to get Temple recommend interviews. So he was never in the second hour. Well, one time it was fast Sunday, and we had a short little lesson by the missionaries who didn't speak very well yet, and.

I said, let me bear my testimony. After a bunch of Haitians had born their testimony, I didn't know what they were saying, but I said, I wanna bear my testimony. And I said, it's, you're going to understand. And they were all nodding their heads and I said, okay. I know that God lives. And they nodded. I said, do you understand?

And they nodded their heads and said, and I know that he loves you, that Jesus loves you. Do you understand? They're nodding their heads. Some of 'em started to cry. And I said, I know that Joseph Smith is a prophet. Understand. And they nodded their heads and I said about four basic gospel things that I, that I have a very strong testimony of.

I was in tears. They were in tears, and afterwards one of the ladies who had just been putting off baptism said, I baptized afterwards. I just cried bald. But that was a miracle that they could understand me enough. They didn't know, probably didn't know all the words, but they felt the spirit. We did a lot of, uh, I would call it service work among the Haitian people.

And one of the, one of the things we did was I, I had some contacts with, with a Turkey plant there that processed Turkey meat. And so I was able to go in and get 'em interviews and go with 'em and, and get 'em jobs and. Uh, that, that process, I, I don't know. We lived it and the miracles that we saw, we, we couldn't believe it even though we were living in it.

But one of our early converts, his name was Allen. I went and got him an interview. We went to get him, he had, you have to go through a pre, pre-employment physical we went to, to get that done. And he couldn't see, he hadn't been able, he's like in his mid thirties. And he had been nearsighted since his teenage years, and so we needed to, before he could start work, he had to pass an eye exam to be able to see at least 2040, I think it was within two days we had him appointment to go.

Uh, I mean, it was just. We go to the eye doctor. They never take p walk-ins, but they understood the situation and took him and gave him an eye exam. Then we went over to the one hour eye mart and got him some glasses and he put 'em on. He said, wow, I can see. And then by Monday he was able to go to work.

Well, this story, it, it, it's like all of these stories are intertwined because we had helped Alan move to get that job from, uh. Uh, an agriculture work camp, I guess you would call it, where he lived in pretty bad circumstances, not making any money, not getting many hours. He lived in a little teeny terrible trailer, just torn apart trailer in a corner, one corner of one room, and was paying like $350 a month.

But Alan was such a great guy. He, as soon as he kept the commitment to start reading the Book of Mormon, he was converted. Just in fact, he read the introduction and the introduction. He felt the spirit so strong just reading the introductory pages of the Book of Mormon. But his father-in-law, who he lived with, uh, with some other people that were renting a house.

Actually didn't like the fact that he was thinking about another church from the church that he had been going to or that he went to. And so he asked him to move and that's when he went to this camp. Um, then, uh, so that, that was all great. He had a job and then he asked me, he said, he said, brother Potter, elder Potter, will you, will you help my friend who lives in that same camp to move.

To Mount Olive and help him get a job at Mount Olive. I said, great. The guy's name was Lexi. He's in his late sixties. And so I had an interview set up. I knew we needed to get him moved. We went to pick him up. He had a bag of clothes and that's basically all he had. Uh, we moved him to Mount Olive and, uh, within a couple of days I had a, had him in for an interview and then he had a similar problem when he went in for his pre-employment physical.

He couldn't see good enough, so we got him a pretty quick exam for his eyes. Not only did he, did he have cataracts that were preventing him from being able to see, he also had glaucoma, which was pretty dangerous for him. We were able to get him on meds pretty quick for that, and that settled down. And then by, and I won't go into all the details, we were able to get him a way to pay for his, for his eyes to be operated on for the cataracts.

The surgeon ended up being a member of the church, a Return missionary. He said to me, hi, order Potter. When he saw my name badge, it ended up being a wonderful experience for him and his staff. I would say a spiritual experience for him and his staff. And then we were eventually able to get Lexi use, get his eyes corrected and get him to work.

It took us a little bit longer with him and when he came to church that the week after he got his eyes done. He was so full of smiles. I don't know what he called me, sister Potter. Kind of sounded like that, but I see, I see. He was so excited, but he wasn't a member of the church and we hadn't necessarily pushed that, although we were talking to him about Jesus Christ On one on the first trip for his surgery.

My phone was on the Tabernacle Choir channel. And all creatures of our God and King came on and he started singing to it while we were driving to go to his surgery. It, it just was amazing. He ended up joining the church and guess who his roommate was, but Alan's father-in-law who had asked Alan to move out of the house because he didn't like what that he was studying with us.

And before we left, he had started coming to church with Lexi. And so it just, it seems like there all, there's all these connections and whenever you have one that joins the church or comes in, becomes interested in the church, they have family, they have friends, and they want to tell everybody, and that was part of the growth.

It wasn't just that we or the young missionaries were out trying to find people. They were finding each other as soon as they would be baptized. A couple of other really quick stories. The young missionaries when they were called, they had not been through the MTC, they had served in the missions, uh, teaching in English, and, and, and it was hard for them to try to, from, just from start, from scratch to learn Haitian Creole without that MTC experience.

And about a month after they had there, they had been there, the work was going great except. Elder Potter was the one having it be available for everything, and, and we weren't able to serve together as much as we would've liked. They would write down a phrase or two on the, um, on a card of a lesson from Preach, my gospel from, from, they just translated it.

They, they had it translated. They'd come in, they would read their card, and then I would clean it up. And so that's kind of how it was going. And if there was ever a question asked, they could not an, they could not hear and understand. And so finally one day they were running me ragged and, and, and we, we felt like that they needed to.

Continue to move along. I asked him if the mission president had given him a blessing in conjunction with this assignment that learned Creole. They said, no. I said, okay. This Sunday we're give, the Bishop and I are gonna give you a blessing. That Sunday, we gave them a priesthood blessing on Wednesday, so I wasn't always with them because, because of technology.

We would do things over WhatsApp or on the phone and I would either be with 'em in person or they would call me for the lessons. They called me for a lesson that Wednesday, and, uh, the person, they were teaching their little part of the lesson, and then the person asked a question, and normally I would just kick in and answer the question before I could answer the question.

Those two missionaries answered the question in language I hadn't heard them use before. And from that point on, it just that they were just. Completely able to communicate. And they took over translating in sacred meeting. Before long they took over translating Inac meeting. And then the last story I'll share with you, we had this, uh, older teenage girl.

Her little sisters had been baptized. She had been there with us from the beginning almost. She was taught first and then the sister and she would come, she would help me translate sometimes, but she could not get the feeling that. That she knew that she had the spirit, that the church was true, so she wouldn't commit to be baptized.

And one Saturday morning we, we, we did a lot of temple trips with all these converts. We were trying to get 'em all to the temple to do baptisms as quickly as we could. And we had this temple trip planned for several of our, of our members a Saturday morning. And I got a call that all of them had been called into work that day because it'd been a snow day, there'd been some weather and.

And so they needed to work. And so I had nobody to go and fill the temple appointment, and I wa I was on the phone getting ready to cancel or yeah, getting ready to cancel the appointment at the temple. And I just had this thought come to my mind, what about the young women? And so there were three young women, two of 'em members, and then Finsia is her name.

The, the young woman that had not felt that spirit. I called all three of 'em and asked 'em if they wanted to go to the temple that day, and all three of 'em were available, wanted to go. So we went and picked them up, took 'em to the temple. Obviously wolf couldn't go inside the temple to do the baptisms. But I said, you can walk the ground.

'cause we walked the grounds for just a little bit. I said, you can walk the grounds, you can stay here in the waiting area and just enjoy the temple. We'll be about an hour and we'll be back out. We came back out and uh, we got in the car and I said, how was it? She said, that was the most peace I have ever felt in my life as she sat in the temple.

She just felt the spirit so strong of. Of the Lord. I, I'm not sure why other than she was there and she had a prayer in her heart. She was reading her scripture. She said, I took a very peaceful little nap. And, uh, but she, and then we talked about that and how that was the Holy Ghost all the way home. And then before long she became baptized as well.

And what's really cool about that, the whole time we were teaching her and her sisters. Their mom was around, but she was usually in another room. When we went back to visit last week, it well said, Hey, it's my mom's getting baptized on Sunday, and so we got to go to her mother's baptism, which is also a miracle that we went that week.

And so the whole family now is enjoying the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we finished, when we finished our mission, there were approximately 80 Haitians attending church, and there were eight missionaries in that ward in the Mount Olive ward. Two of 'em were teaching in English and six were teaching in in Creole and French.

It's, it's incredible to me. I mean, I hear you talking about it and I think, okay, the gift of tongues. You know, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Uh, but also just that like snowball effect. And you think about talking again about the Book of Mormon and how people would, would hear about it. And the very first thing that they wanted to do was go tell the people that they cared about.

And it's like, you see that? Sometimes we would knock on doors with the young missionaries and when they opened the door, I would see a book of Mormon on display in their house. Somebody had given them one and yeah, they were just, just talking about the snowball. Allen, who I mentioned, he had a brother living in Western North Carolina and two brothers living in Florida.

They both, all three of them eventually moved to be with him in North Carolina. All three of them joined a church. We, um, we started teaching his wife, who's still in Haiti with his young son over WhatsApp, and that went great. We didn't, she wanted to be baptized, but wanted to wait for her. He wanted husband.

He wanted, they wanted to, they were trying to get together. We were hoping to sponsor her to be able to get her to the United States, but that never worked. And so we contacted the missionaries in Haiti. They started teaching her and the day that she was baptized in Haiti, we attended via Zoom. There were 18 convert baptisms at that day that she was in Haiti, that she was baptized.

Wow. That's incredible. I wonder. Dwight and Susan, how has the faith of these Haitian Saints blessed your life personally? Obviously you've blessed their lives, but I think they blessed our lives. You know, uh, sister Potter talked a little bit about how humble the people are and how they really have nothing.

Haiti really is a mess right now. Uh, that country is. Is overrun with, with gangs and, and, uh, they call 'em bandits. So there's, there's just a lot going on it, it's really almost worse than a third world country because of, of those gangs that are, that are, that are running everything, uh, that're poor. They, they're destitute, they have nothing, and yet they love Jesus Christ.

When we would talk to almost anybody, if we would mention Jesus Christ, they wanted to talk to us. They might not join the church or they may not continue with the lessons or anything, but they loved Jesus Christ. Nobody turned us away, and it was just amazing to see their faith, you know, and their love.

Nobody. The talk by Elder Gado in this last conference that was grateful or smiling faces and grateful hearts or something like that. And he talked about how all the different little areas that he went to that in Africa and they were so poor, and that's every time the people had smiling faces and grateful hearts.

And that's how I felt about the people in Haiti. They had nothing but they had smiling fake faces and grateful hearts. And they shared it with us, and it just built our faith to see how, how much love they had for the savior, how much faith they had in him. And we just were so delighted to be able to serve with them and for them.

So as I, as my dad first told me this story, the very first thing that came to my mind is, I think. Well, for starters, I thought, I've never really done a podcast episode about senior missionaries, and I think that there are so many ways that senior missionaries can serve and it's. A lot different than getting a young mission call, although your, although yours might be a little bit of an exception, but I wondered why would you encourage other senior missionaries to serve and why do you think senior missionaries are needed in the work of salvation today?

Yeah, I, there, like you said, there are so many ways to serve. Uh, we served as MLS member and leader support missionaries in the North Carolina, Raleigh mission. And for us, that really just means do whatever the Lord directs you to do. Whatever inspiration you have, you could do service, you could do, you could teach, you could, our mission president said to make it our own.

However, where we're led, there's not a lot of rules or guidance for senior missionaries, but there's so many, so many places to serve, and I would say most of the time. That you go where you request. Maybe other people are more inspired than we are or were, because we didn't go where we requested. But we feel like the call was so inspired and our mission is not gonna be the same as another senior missionary couple.

Um, well, we got together with the senior missionaries regularly to have activities and after we, we went to the US. North Carolina, the USS, North Carolina, is that what it's called? Mm-hmm. The Battleship? Mm-hmm. And 'cause we'd been there, we wanted to share it with all the senior missionaries and then we went and ate lunch at the beach and it was really fun.

But we always, every time we got together, we had a little kind of testimony meeting where people shared what was going on in their mission. And with whatever they were doing, every single one had miracles to share. Yeah, it, it was, it's quite amazing. But, but it, but it's our testimony that the Lord will take the life experiences, the talents, what your work was, what your family life was.

He'll take those experiences and he'll take that couple and or senior sister or brother and help make that mission unique and tailored for them. Where they can contribute in a wonderful and marvelous way just for them. And so it's our testimony that senior missionaries just have so much capability and, uh, experiences that they can share that will help the members in the area they serve in the, those that are investigating the church.

The Young Missionaries mission, those that aren't even investigating the church, the young missionaries? Well, the missionaries, when you have a mature gospel relationship, I mean, it's just different than when you have young missionaries, 18 years old, right out of high school and then seasoned members. And so sometimes those seasoned members are the ones that really will affect somebody that the young missionaries won't.

We fell in love, not only with the Haitian people and the other Americans and others that we worked with, but the young missionaries and the senior missionaries we worked with. We, and it just made our experience so gratifying. We could, we had young missionaries that we got the whole time. They didn't change on us and it was awesome.

It's so neat. How do you feel, because I, I hear this and I think. How could anybody hear a story like this and not believe that God is in charge and that he has a hand in our lives and an awareness of us and awareness of you all, and awareness of the Haitians that you were able to work with an awareness of the young missionaries.

How did this experience show you the Lord's awareness of you and all involved and also just his ability to care for all of his children so perfectly. So we thought we were going to Africa. We thought we were supposed to go to Africa. We probably would not have put in for a year and a half had we not had that invitation to go there.

We ended up serving two years because we didn't feel like we could leave. And I had the experience I had as a young missionary speaking French, and then lo and behold, there's this window of time as the way I see it, and not to get political, but uh, under the previous administration, Haitians were allowed to come under certain circumstances to the United States, and many of 'em did.

That's now changing. Many of 'em have left since then, even though there's a branch there and there's still many Haitians there, and the work is going great. It's changing. And so there was this window of time that the Lord could use us with our specific abilities, and we would never have put in to go that quickly.

And, and, and lo and behold, we end up with this assignment to go to Mount Olive after the first assignment. And we're there to be a part of Miracle After Miracle among the Haitian people. God just knows us perfectly. He knows what we can do and what we need, and we just, it. It just became so apparent to us that God is so much more in the details of our lives than we could ever imagine, and it was a wonderful blessing for us to be a part of that.

But I guess the way I feel about it, it's really not about us. We're willing to serve. We're glad to be there and to help, but it's about this wonderful Haitian people that God is so mindful of and, and this period of time that they can be blessed, uh, with the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so our testimony of, of God's involvement in our lives.

Is is just huge compared to, you know, we just didn't imagine, couldn't have imagined how much he was aware of us and the people that we would be working with. I've been lately kind of ob obsessed a little bit with this, this concept that. Elder Maxwell talked about it a lot during his ministry, and then there's been a bit more said by other general authorities about kind of this concept that God is a God of the macro and the micro, that he somehow manages to take care of the whole world, but he also manages to take care of us on a very personal level.

And I think this, this experience that you all had is such a beautiful illustration of both of those things that things. Were happening on a macro level that made it possible for these Haitians to, to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. But also things were happening on a micro level to take care of everyone involved.

And so I just think, you know, if we could trust God with the macro and then look for him in the micro, our, our testimonies would grow astronomically. I've served in many positions in the church and, and I've told many people, I, I, I've made statements like, God knows you and he loves you. I, I guess I would say today that I know that more than I've ever known it before.

So cool. Well, I appreciate the two of you so much being willing to share this with me and with those listening, my last question for you is, what does it mean to you to be all in the gospel of Jesus Christ? I knew you would ask that question, and when I think about that, I go back to my childhood. When I was really young and my grandma's favorite song was, I'll Go Where You Want me to Go, and she'd have us sing it.

And when I was a child, I think, why is Grandma's song so long? And then I got a little older and had experiences and I started to appreciate that, yeah, I'll go where the Lord wants me to go. But since serving this mission. And with that question, what does it mean to be all in? It's, I know that I will go where the Lord wants me to go because I did and I, I want to, again, the first thing I did when we got home was started searching for new missions because I felt so weird being home and we planned to go on another one, but I know that I.

We'll go where called. Um, a couple of days ago I was reading, uh, Moroni I seven, where Mormon was given a sermon, uh, really about faith, hope, and charity. And he just pleaded with us. He pleaded with us to, to, to seek to have charity in our lives. And we talked about that a little bit, what that means. And, and I, and I think of the love.

That we have for the people that we served with, the missionaries, the Haitians, others, uh, leaders in the church there, and that idea of, of just pure love, love of the Lord. We think of the two great commandments. Love the Lord and love your neighbor. And I just feel like that if we can get to that point to where we're motivated, out of love for God and love for those around us, that that's really kind of all in for me.

Certainly there's the covenants we make in the temple, the, the law of consecration that we we're striving to give the Lord everything that we have in our efforts and, and we're not perfect at that, but. But we're striving every day, I would say, to get just a little bit closer to, to that pure love and that willingness to go to be, to say, even if it's right here where we live, I mean, whatever, doesn't matter where we are, we'll go do, say what the Lord wants us to do, go do and say.

I love that. Go do and say. Well, thank you both so, so, so much. Thank you. Thank you, Morgan. It's great seeing you again. Following our interview, Dwight and Susan remembered one more miracle they wanted to share. Speaking of miracles, we were constantly amazed, uh, anytime that we had a need or the Haitian.

Members or others had needs. It just seemed like that within a day or two it was fulfilled, that it would just show up or the answer was given, or you know, every time the Lord blessed us with what the need was. Early on, we had called one of our new Haitian members to be a Sunday school teacher. And in that first lesson, uh, Susan said it sounded like they were arguing.

Well, the young missionaries were still so new they couldn't hear, uh, the language and when they were speaking to each other and Haitian Creole, I couldn't pick out the gist of what was going on. And so I can continually would stop. And say, okay, explain to me in French what's going on. They would, and everything was fine, but at the end of church that day, we just felt a little overwhelmed that we didn't have.

Anybody that really could understand the language, that could speak English and help translate that was mature into gospel to help us keep the, the doctrine pure, so to speak. And when we got home from church that day, we got a call from the, the missionaries in, um, a nearby ward. And they said that, uh, a new Haitian couple had attended church that day that they had just moved in.

So we got their number and gave them a call, and we were amazed to learn that. Um, yes, their Haitian, they speak Haitian Creole, but he also speaks English and Spanish perfectly. Uh, they're in their mid thirties with one child. They're both return missionaries and it just, we, we, we just couldn't believe that the Lord would answer that prayer, that need so quickly and provide someone that could come in and just, and just help from that perspective.

And just as a side note, just a few weeks ago, uh, that brother was called as the. First Branch president of the new Haitian branch.

What an incredible story. We are so grateful to Dwight and Susan Potter for joining us on this week's episode. Big thanks as always to Derek Campbell of Mix at six studios for his help with this episode, and thank you for listening. We'll look forward to being with you again next week.