In the Lord's Hands

When I was in high school, I had a goal to be student body president.  I thought I had a great chance.  I was in a lot of school organizations and knew a lot of people (track, cross country, student clubs, choir, etc.) and I had experience as a student body officer (Director of Communications, Treasurer). There were not very many LDS kids at our high school, and I thought this would be a great thing to have an LDS student body president.  I worked hard to make posters and get the word out and prayed that the Lord would bless me in my efforts.

El Camino Real High School Emblem

There were several candidates running and I figured there would probably have to be a run-off election since it was unlikely anyone would be able to get a majority of the votes on the first ballot.  I was wrong.  One of the candidates got enough votes to actually win on the first ballot! I was sad and a little confused.  Why hadn't the Lord answered a prayer which seemed like a righteous desire to me?

I found out the answer the very next morning. A representative of the seminary association met me after seminary the next morning and asked me to chair the regional seminary council.  This involved planning an upcoming seminary conference in put me in contact with leaders from other stake seminaries in the region.  I don't think I would have had time to be involved in this project if I had been student body president.

The calling turned out to be really important to me personally. I had some friends in school who took academics really seriously, but they weren't LDS.  I had some good friends at church who took the gospel seriously, but weren't very serious about academic things. I had been wondering if there were other people like me who were interested in excelling in both academic and spiritual pursuits. I found a whole committee of people like this in the regional seminary council. It strengthened at an important time in my life to be with like-minded young people. I'm sure it helped me stay focussed on these things that have turned out to be very important for the rest of my life.

By the way, the school did get an LDS student body president the next year: my sister Pam.  She did a better job than I ever would have done!