The following is an excerpt from Missionary Possible: Preparation Tips from New Testament Heroes by Eric Rigby.

Have you ever taught a lesson that was powerful—where you could tell the class was feeling the Spirit, and as you walked away, you knew good was done?

Years ago I brought a friend with me to a Relief Society activity at church, and when she asked me why we had a painting of Mary and Martha hanging in the room, I really didn’t know how to answer. Of all the possible depictions of scripture stories of women that the Church might choose from, why that one? Although the scene was painted by old masters like Vermeer and Velazquez, it has never been especially popular among other Christian groups. Yet, it is a subject painted by many artists in the Church and these images are common in meetinghouses and lesson manuals.

If any one of many variables had gone differently, Katie Fitt never would have met Change Lee on a muggy summer night on the streets of Flushing Queens, New York. For starters, Change was originally from South Korea, lived in Canada, but was in New York on business. And Fitt almost didn’t serve a mission. But there she was wearing a black nametag on Northern Blvd when she and her companions approached Change. She doesn’t remember having any sort of special prompting to talk to Change in particular but she simply felt they should talk to one more person before they called it a night. But what happened next might be considered a miracle 55 years in the making.

The first time I stood before a judge was in my elementary school’s science fair. I spent hours cutting out tiny paper socks and used gallons of Elmer’s glue to present my fascinating findings on the most effective laundry soap.

If I were teaching this lesson, I might begin by pouring water into several different shaped containers and asking class members to comment on what we can learn from that activity about the qualities of water. Someone will probably say that water takes the shape of its environment. If you then ask for words that describe water, you might get words like these: flimsy, unsound, mercurial, capricious, changeable, wobbly, fickle, erratic, unreliable, undependable, vacillating, untrustworthy, variable, mutable, impermanent, unsteady, uncertain, transitory, ephemeral, inconsistent, precarious, and unstable. I am amazed at how many words the English language has to describe this rather undesirable characteristic. But this lesson will require us to think about them because we are going to talk about three people who were much like water (one was even compared to water), and one young man who was as unlike water as it is possible to be.

In many ways, Kiconco Bassler seems like a typical seventh grader. She likes art, particularly chalk pastels, enjoys running the 100 meters and hurdles in track, and is a nimble gymnast. But Chi Chi, as her friends call her, is anything but typical. Last year she raised $3,000 to build a home for a family in Uganda.

Editor's note: Our bi-weekly Friday column, “Found in the footnotes,” explores some of the footnotes from remarks given by General Authorities and General Officers of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.