Obedience Training

Let me tell you how one of our sons learned obedience.
When he was about deacon-age, we went to his grandfather's ranch in Wyoming.
He wanted to start breaking a horse he had been given.
It had been running wild in the hills.

It took nearly all day to get the herd to the corral and to tie his horse up with a heavy halter and a rope.

I told him that his horse must stay tied there until it settled down; he could talk to it, carefully touch it, but he must not, under an circumstance, untie it.

We finally went in for our supper.
He quickly ate and rushed back out to see his horse.
Presently I heard him cry out.
I knew what had happened.
He had untied his horse.
He was going to train it to lead.
As the horse pulled away from him he instinctively did something I had told him never, never to do.
He looped the rope around his wrist to get a better grip.

As I ran from the house, I saw the horse go by.
Our boy could not release the rope; he was being pulled with great leaping steps.
And then he went down!
If the horse had turned to the right, he would have been dragged out the gate and into the hills and would certainly have lost his life.
It turned to the left, and for a moment was hung up in a fence corner--just long enough for me to loop the rope around a post and free my son.

Then came a father-to-son chat!
"Son, if you are ever going to control that horse, you will have to use something besides your muscles.
The horse is bigger than you are, it is stronger than you are, and it always will be.
Someday you may ride your horse if you train it to be obedient, a lesson that you must learn yourself first."
He had learned a very valuable lesson.

Two summers later we went again to the ranch to look for his horse.
It had been running all winter with the wild herd.
We found them in a meadow down by the river.
I watched from a hillside as he and his sister moved carefully to the edge of the meadow.
The horses moved nervously away.
Then he whistled.
His horse hesitated, then left the herd and trotted up to them.

He had learned that there is great power in things that are not seen, such unseen things as obedience.

-Boyd K. Packer -The Aaronic Priesthood -October 1981 General Conference

Until you next see these words;
I'll be watching the leaves.
Enjoy the day!

-Sarnic Dirchi