Shane

One of the greatest things that happened to our family was the induction of Shane as our 11th. He, Sam and Katherine were friends in high school and he shared a lot of our values. He and Sam were teammates on the wrestling and football teams. One day after practice they were talking and Shane asked something about why Sam was the way he was. Sam explained to him and Shane said, “OK, I am going to do that.” So he hung around with our family for a year after that, living the gospel without being a member of the church. We would cheer for him like we did for all of our kids, but somehow it didn’t occur to us to invite him to church.

One day, we were in the Kitchen and Karen just said, “Why don’t you come to church with us?” Shane got this bewildered look on his face and said, “Well, I will think about it.” Everyone got on Karen for asking afterwards, because we were sure that we had made Shane uncomfortable and we would never see him again. But Sunday came, and Shane showed up at our house dressed and ready for church. Later, he explained that he was just surprised that we would want him to come to church with us. Of course from our perspective, nothing could please us more. He was fully active in the church from then on . A few months after he went off to college, we came back to Bothell and his best friend, Sam, baptised him and we all rejoiced with him. His family came and I am sure that even they were so proud of him. I spoke to his dad at a father and sons’ outing and Bob told me that he was amazed that college was so cheap because he didn’t have to send over alcohol money. He said, “Boy, if I was going off to college, the LDS Institute isn’t the first place I would go looking for.” But it was for Shane. Sam used to tell me, “Shane is stronger than me in the Gospel.” It makes me so happy to have Shane as an adopted member of our family. I am very proud of him.