The first Sunday of the year 2010— January 3, our Relief Society presidency challenged all the sisters in the ward to read the Book of Mormon every day, even if only for five minutes. The presidency promised that we our lives would each be blessed and that our testimonies of and love for the Savior would be strengthened. They also gave us advance notice that on the first Saturday of December they would host a breakfast as the culmination of our year’s reading.
On the morning of December 4, the presidency served us sisters a delicious breakfast. We all felt a strong bond of friendship as we visited and enjoyed the meal. Two sisters shared their experiences of fulfilling the challenge this year of “feasting upon the words of Christ” (2 Nephi 32:3). They both expressed how they had been blessed spiritually, their testimonies had been strengthened, and their love for Jesus Christ had increased.
This kind of challenge to read the Book of Mormon was certainly not new nor unique. Most of us have been challenged many times to study the scriptures, either by a teacher, leader, family member, or even by our own selves. In August 2005, President Gordon B. Hinckley asked members of the Church worldwide to read the Book of Mormon by the end of the year. He promised that those who read during this time, regardless of how many times they had previously read the Book of Mormon, would gain a greater abundance of the Spirit, a greater desire to be obedient, and a stronger testimony of the Savior.[1] What an uplifting and unifying experience that was as we sought to follow the prophet!
A question I often heard asked was, “Where are you in the Book of Mormon?” I saw people reading the Book of Mormon on the bus, waiting in lines, and at the gym. A friend who travels frequently said that on nearly every flight he took he saw some passengers reading their scriptures. On New Year’s Day 2006, I asked one of our sons, who lives in another state with his family, how they had spent New Year’s Eve. He said that they finished reading the Book of Mormon.
Some twenty years prior to President Hinckley’s challenge, a young man in our stake, Clay Ure, decided to read the Book of Mormon that year. President Ezra Taft Benson had repeatedly asked Church members to read the Book of Mormon and Clay wanted to follow his counsel. That shouldn’t have been too much of a problem for Clay, who was in his mid-twenties—except he had Down Syndrome and he had never been able to read at all. Because he was susceptible to infection and sick most of his childhood, his attendance at school was sporadic. No special education programs for the handicapped existed in his school at the time. Though his mother, Betty, also tried many times to teach him, Clay just couldn’t learn to read. Nevertheless, she felt that she had to find a way to help him.
Clay’s father, Harold, had given him a blessing a year earlier in which Clay was promised he would be able to read. During that year, Betty used flash cards and early readers and felt they were making slow progress. Then on January 1, 1986, she received the impression to use the Book of Mormon to teach Clay to read. Not exactly an easy reader, the Book of Mormon, Betty nevertheless felt, would benefit her son more than any other book could.
Thus mother and son began 1 Nephi 1:1. Before each reading session, Betty prayed for guidance. Her goal at first was to read one verse a day word by word, but Clay began to need less help as they progressed through First and Second Nephi, Jacob, and Enos. Betty was astonished at how her son was actually reading the Book of Mormon. On December 20, not quite a year after Clay began “I Nephi, having been born of goodly parents . . .,” he completed “And now I bid unto all, farewell. I soon go to rest in the paradise of God, until my spirit and body shall again reunite, and I am brought forth triumphant through the air, to meet you before the pleasing bar of the great Jehovah, the Eternal Judge of both quick and dead. Amen.”
At our stake conference a month later, President O. Brent Black introduced Clay and asked him to read his favorite passage. Clay chose Moroni 10:4–5. President Black then said, “If Clay can read the Book of Mormon cover to cover, so can the rest of us.”[2]
President Joseph Fielding Smith once said, “No member of this Church can stand approved in the presence of God who has not seriously and carefully read the Book of Mormon.”[3]
