His 10-Year Prodigal Journey and Search For Meaning: Randall Jensen's Story - Latter-Day Lights

This is the incredible true story of Randall Jensen, and his 10-year quest for truth and meaning as a young man growing up amidst the uncertainty and chaos of the Vietnam war.

Randall's story is a testament to the fact that God is aware of each of us, and has a purpose and a plan for our lives.

*** Please SHARE Randall's story and help us spread hope and light to others. ***

To WATCH this episode on YouTube, visit: https://youtu.be/CwH9NMoI3i4

-----

Also, if you have a faith-promoting or inspiring story, or know someone who does, please let us know by going to https://www.latterdaylights.com and reaching out to us.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

Discovery of Faith

Larry Johnson 0:00

Hey everyone , I'm Scott Brandley and I'm Larry Johnson . Every member of the Church has a story to share , one that can instill faith , invite growth and inspire others .

Scott Brandley 0:09

In this episode we're going to hear how one man's 10-year prodigal journey led him to discover the truth of the Gospel . Welcome to Latter-day Lights . Hey , everyone , welcome back to another episode of Latter-day Lights . We're so glad you're here with us today and we have two treats . One Alicia had to go do something , and so I had my brother-in-law , larry Johnson , come and fill in for her . So , larry , welcome to the show .

Scott Brandley 0:46

Glad to be here , and Larry's been on a previous episode of Latter-day Lights , so you might recognize him . And then we have our guest Randall Jensen . Randall , how are you today ?

Randall Jensen 0:59

Really good . Thank you very much . It's nice to be here .

Scott Brandley 1:02

Yeah , it's nice to have you . So , randall , where are you from ? Tell us a little bit about you .

Randall Jensen 1:08

Well , right now our family lives in Western Utah . However , we've spent our life moving around . I was born in East LA , in Monterey Park , and spent my younger years until I was about 15 living in Southern California . Our family then moved from my mom back to Utah and that's where the family homestead has kind of been since then . Since I was married , we have lived in a lot of places . My wife and I moved to Japan soon after we were married . We lived there for three years . Our first two kids were born in Japan , so I guess we say they were made in Japan .

Scott Brandley 1:56

That's funny . I remember Larry went on a business trip to Japan , didn't you ?

Larry Johnson 2:02

I did . It was an amazing place .

Scott Brandley 2:06

So I got to tell this funny story , randall . But Larry is six foot seven Eight or six foot eight , so Larry's six foot eight and he goes to Japan and he recorded this video of him . Well , you could probably tell it better than me , but it was yeah , I was .

Larry Johnson 2:27

I can say a lot there , but I remember being on the subway in Tokyo and standing up and all eyes are on me and the further down to the next station , people got piled in , piled in , piled in . And they started pushing in and I remember having so surprised because they were all pressing every and I was just so much taller than everyone . It was just and I just loved it because I didn't mind it a bit , even like even though I don't really necessarily like big crowds , but it it was an amazing place in time .

Randall Jensen 3:10

You must have bumped your head more than once .

Larry Johnson 3:13

Oh yeah , yep , the . I stayed in the hotel where the door was maybe four foot . I had to get on my hands and knees to get in . That was an authentic Japanese in up in Hakone . It was amazing . And they and they gave me a little tiny slippers to wear . That did not . They fit my big toe and , yes , they were snickering and laughing and I was just loving and immersing myself in the whole experience , but it was very comical . Yeah , yeah there is .

Scott Brandley 3:48

I know that's not part of your story , Randall , but it was hilarious when he told me that . So , but how long were you in Japan for ?

Randall Jensen 3:56

Well , I served my mission there when I was younger and my wife had actually spent some time there . So we had that in common and we figured once we got married we might as well to go to our second home , which was Japan . So we were going to just spend a year , but we ended up staying about three and then after that back to graduate school . And then we had kids born in Illinois , Arizona and Michigan . So we have eight kids and they're all married now and we have now counting 34 grandchildren , One more on the way , so we'll be an even 35 prison , so a family still growing .

Scott Brandley 4:42

That's fun . So what ? How come you moved around so much ? Was that your job , or ?

Randall Jensen 4:48

Yeah , I took jobs with . I worked at different companies and just the nature of my career meant I wanted to experience different kinds of companies . So I worked in public education , I worked in for Dow Chemical Company at their headquarters , I worked for , let's see , intel , I worked for Boeing , so , and then I concluded my career working at the Johnson Space Center for NASA . So we kind of worked all over , lived all over , and during that time I did work in Saudi Arabia , europe . I worked in Canada for about two years and we also put the Philippines . So I kind of worked all , did work all around . So it was kind of a eclectic kind of experience .

Randall Jensen 5:39

Where in Canada . It was in Toronto area .

Larry Johnson 5:45

Nice . I live near , well near , Rochester , which is just on the south side there .

Randall Jensen 5:54

Yeah , I was doing some work with the Bank of Montreal while I was working there , so had a fun career . Yeah , sounds like it Well cool .

Scott Brandley 6:09

Well , it sounds like you have a pretty interesting story too , so why don't we turn the time over to you and have you share that for us today ?

Randall Jensen 6:16

Sure , just as a sort of as a prologue or a review . In addition to living in Japan for three years I'll talk about this a little bit later , but I spent a year in Vietnam . My wife and I , just a couple of years ago , came back from a two year mission in Cambodia and in about another month we're heading out to Japan again for another mission . So we just keep moving around . So the story I'm going to tell is a story I've told a number of years ago , a number of times , and some people have come up to me over the years and said you know , you ought to write that down , and I've written it down as part of my personal history . But recently we decided to really work towards getting it in a book form , and so I'm working right now with an editor to take all that's been written and put it into a sort of a palatable book form . People will probably be called the journey home and I guess , to get things started , it's .

Randall Jensen 7:32

I was born in Southern California . My mom and dad family were very active in the church . They brought us up doing the best , very best they could to bring us up in the gospel , and I'm going to kind of start this off when I was about 13 years old . At the time we were living in a community called Thousand Oaks , california . At the time when we first moved to Thousand Oaks it was probably 1960 . And I think the population was about 12,000 . I don't even know what the population of Thousand Oaks is now , but it's probably several hundred thousand at least , and I'm not even sure if you .

Larry Johnson 8:17

Yeah , I lived in Oxnard in near Camrio . Oh , if you , yeah , and I'm sure you know it . Yeah , thousand Oaks is very very familiar .

Randall Jensen 8:27

Yeah , so it's changed dramatically . But this is kind of where the story starts , at least to where I'll start it . At the time we , when we first moved there , they didn't have a church building . So at first we went to a Masonic Lodge for our meetings , and as the things were growing pretty fast and so we had to get a bigger place , but we still didn't have a building , so we started meeting at a seventh day Adventist boarding school which was in nearby Newberry Park , and I was I was 13 . I was the president of the Deacons Quorum and we actually had a . When we went to church we had a pretty big assignment . That was a standing assignment . The boarding school said we could meet there , but at the end of our meetings everything had to be put back exactly the way it was . So one of our assignments in the Deacons Quorum was we had to move all the chairs , which meant moving chairs from one building to another . In some cases there were a lot of chairs to move and it took , took quite a bit of time , but if we all work together it could be done in about 20 minutes . So I'm going to talk a little bit about my background there . But I was . I was definitely active in the church , was very trying to do my job as best I could .

Randall Jensen 9:58

I started high school when I was 13 . I was actually a year younger than most of the other kids in my class because they I had moved up a grade a couple of years before , which was probably a bad decision , because ever since then I I just felt like a runt around all the other kids I was . I was shorter than them and they were socially much more involved in social stuff than I was . I just wanted to go out and play baseball but they were into dancing and rock and roll , music and everything . So I was just kind of out of sync with with everything . So by the time I got into my ninth , my ninth year , my ninth grade year in high school , I still felt , I was still feeling that I was just kind of smaller than everybody else . It didn't quite fit .

Randall Jensen 10:47

But when I went to the high school , it was my sixth grade class the teacher was named Mr James and Mr James was a really tall guy . He was probably a little bit shorter than you are , larry , but he was probably at least six foot four . This was my history class and it was a six period class , so it happened to be on the outer wing of the campus , so it wasn't like a Utah school where everything's inside . This was an open campus , so wherever you went out of your rooms you were outside , and it just so happened that this class was was at the hot end of things , where the afternoon sun would be through the windows , and I think I would . I was coming out of my gym class to that , so I'd usually , on a hot day , I would just be into that sweating in that hot room . And I remember one day I was sitting on the front row and Mr James stood up to start class and fans were blowing to try and cool it off .

Randall Jensen 11:50

And he said students , I've I want you to pay attention to what I'm going to say to you today . He said I don't know how much you're paying attention to what's going on around you , but right now there's something happening in in Vietnam . Our country is starting to send more and more men over there . They're starting to be some some battles . And he said I have a feeling that this is something that's going to escalate and it may impact some of you and your lives , and so I'm going to give you an assignment , and the assignment is that you're going to you're going to keep a journal and cut it . You can cut out from magazines or newspapers any articles that have to do with with Vietnam , because I just want you to get familiar with this and if you hear things on the radio , if you hear things other places , you could just write it down and jot it down . But keep yourself a journal of this and I want you to do it for the entire school year .

Randall Jensen 12:54

And I remember , as he was standing right in front of me , I I was looking behind him at the world map that was on the on the wall and I was saying where , where is Vietnam ? And I couldn't find it . I had no idea where it was and I looked around the room and I don't think people were really paying that much attention to it . He was just giving us another assignment , but at the end he said I want to say one more time I'm giving you this assignment because I have a feeling that this is going to affect some of your lives and so I'm doing this for you . And at that point I just kind of had this feeling kind of in my gut that what is he concerned about ? And there was a kind of sent a shiver down my back . Maybe that was a premonition or something , I don't know , but I think I have to say that's probably the first time I was introduced to this thing called Vietnam .

Randall Jensen 13:54

A few weeks later it was November and it was a Friday in November and the year was 1963 . We were scheduled to have a , a pep assembly out in the football field . This is something we we did when we had a home game , so we were kind of used to the how it worked and what the fire drill was . So in third period there was an announcement and it said students , please go out to the football field to our previously scheduled assembly . So the door opened , we left the class and joined hundreds of students slowly making their way out to the football field . And we got out to the football field and everybody is taking their seats in the stands and I think I was about three rows up from the running track from where the football field was .

Randall Jensen 14:53

I looked around and I could see the students in their normal groups of the surfers and the betas and the greasers and the jocks and the preppies , and then there was the rest of us that didn't belong to any of those things . And so that's where I was . I looked around and saw all the groups and then something was something kind of was bugging me and I said what's what's going on here ? And I suddenly realized where's the band and where's the cheerleaders ? There was nothing , it was just quiet and just the sound of students talking to each other . And then I noticed in the middle of the track was a single microphone with a wire going out to it and the school principal was off to the side and he was talking to a few people . And then he slowly started walking out and he was adjusting his glasses and whatever . And as he was walking out , the vice principal suddenly ran out to him with a piece of paper and they were conversing about this and about something . And I just noticed that their faces looked very concerned . There was something on their faces that I couldn't read .

JFK Assassination Announced by Principal

Randall Jensen 16:11

And our principal finally walked up to the microphone and it definitely goes on and on and on . He spoke into it . There was some feedback that was squelched . Then he waited while everybody quieted down . He said students , we're not going to have a PEP assembly today . He says , but I do have an important announcement that I want to read to you . He looked down at a piece of paper and he said today at 1230-ish whatever the time was in Dallas , texas , president John F Kennedy was riding in a motorcade with his wife , jacqueline , and the governor of the state of Texas , john Connolly . President Kennedy was shot by an unknown gunman . All of a sudden there's just silence . He turned away from the microphone for a minute . He looked down at the piece of paper that the vice principal had given him and then he took out his handkerchief and his glasses off and he dabbed in his eyes . I was thinking I've never seen our principal look , act like this . Seems like he has some emotions here that I haven't seen . He must be a real person . Anyway , he finally turned back to the microphone and he said students , we've just received a notice that confirms all efforts to help the president have failed . He says I must inform you that the president is indeed dead . It was as if everyone stopped breathing .

Randall Jensen 17:56

I remember glancing around and just seeing ashen faces and open mouths and people just disbelieving all of this . How do you put into words what we , those of us that live through ? This is something that obviously we'll never forget , but in some way that I tell this part of the story because in some way that I'm still trying to come to grips with I think , not just me , but probably my generation Something happened to us that day where it was like the anchor was picked up from our lives and all of a sudden we started drifting In some way . I think that's when my drift began . After that they let us go home and I remember walking home thinking , oh , we were let out early . And I remember going home thinking I just want to get home to be with my mom and dad and my family . I got home and the door was locked . Nobody was there and I couldn't believe it . I went in the side and turned on the television and immediately began watching coverage of what was happening , just doing that all alone . After an hour or so my parents came back . They've been out shopping with my little brother and sister . Our family joined and did what everybody else was doing that weekend and that is just watching the coverage of this thing .

Randall Jensen 19:31

But on Sunday I had to get up early , do my paper route and then go with my dad to our early morning priesthood meeting . We went to our priesthood meeting and we had to set up the chairs and then have our church meetings , and after church the quorum was supposed to help me with the chairs . But because of what had happened , I think everybody didn't want to wait around . Everybody just disappeared really quick and all of a sudden I found myself alone having to put all these chairs back , and my family had to get back home quick because my dad had to get to work . He commuted into LA and his work week started three o'clock Sunday afternoon and went till Friday afternoon . We didn't see my dad that whole time because he worked nights . So my mom always wanted us to be there for this special meal before our dad left and we wouldn't see him for the rest of the week . But I was stuck and it took me an hour to do these things and I was just thinking , oh boy , my mom's going to really be upset at me . And sure enough the bishop drove me home . We were the last ones there and he dropped me off and it was about 2.45 . And as soon as I walked in , everybody was just finishing the meal and I could just feel the ice in the air .

Randall Jensen 20:57

But that placed some tension . And the tension started because of my assignment at church . That placed tension between me and especially my mom and dad , but especially my mom . And a couple of weeks after that that tension really blew up into a real argument that my mom and I had one night and she asked me to do something and I'm now starting to act like a teenager and I'm resisting her efforts to get me to clean the kitchen or whatever Turned into a big blow up and I just said , ok , I'm leaving home . And so I got on my bicycle and took off it and it was about eight o'clock at night . I said I'm running away . Well , that lasted for a few miles until I started asking myself what on earth are you doing ? So by 11 o'clock I was back and I had to eat my humble pie . But I think my mom was it broke her heart , probably that we had that we and we had a good hug and everything .

Lessons and Transformations

Randall Jensen 22:11

But it became sort of a symbol of the things that started happening in life and it just sort of built up as I got older . But the fault within a few months of the assassination of Kennedy , my parents had decided they didn't like the way we were living and they decided my dad was going to quit his job , move back to Utah . Well , when they moved back , I was in the middle of my high school year , so I stayed with some neighbors and and so once again , here's this thing of the family , and now I'm separated from my family for the first time and I had to finish the school year for a couple of months just with this other family . By the time I got to Utah , there was just a distance forming between me and my parents and moving to Utah , instead of helping that process , I think it just exacerbated it . I'm going to jump forward into when I was about 17 .

Randall Jensen 23:24

I had been continuing to develop and move and and I was . I think I was only staying active in the church because of scouts and I had worked for the scouts the summer , in one summer when I was 16 . And my job was on the waterfront and I was . I would teach swimming , life saving , canoeing , rowing , things like that . I was a pretty good swimmer . I was a really strong swimmer . I knew a lot about the water . I knew a lot about canoeing and the following year after that , our post was going on a canoe trip down the Snake River . It's about a 90 mile trip and in those days . They did it in canoes instead of big rafts , like they'll do Most people do rivers . Now it's harder to go through a wild rapids in a canoe than it is a raft , believe me .

Scott Brandley 24:19

Yeah , I could imagine I've been on the snake in a raft and that was scary enough . I can't imagine doing it in a canoe .

Randall Jensen 24:28

Wow , they had , they had given us training and they said we want to train you so that when you're in those news , you know how to work as a team the guy in the bow and the guy in the stern so that you can work together .

Randall Jensen 24:39

You know the commands , you know how to keep it going straight and , most importantly , you know how to follow the guy and what he does , how to pack your canoe and how to wait it right .

Randall Jensen 24:50

Well , we had some some guys that that didn't pay attention and they didn't know much about the canoes , and so it was very obvious as soon as we got in the river who had paid attention and who knew what they were doing and who didn't . We had two guys that were in the canoe that went to none of the training . Soon as they got in the water , they immediately took off down the river and immediately they were going around in circles and it became kind of a joke because they spent half the trip in the river in the water submerged , because they kept flipping over , because they didn't know . But to me it became an example of why sometimes it might be important to follow the rules and to learn them and to pay attention when people are trying to tell you something which was exactly the problem that I was following into in a lot of parts of my life at that time . But since you've been down on the Snake River , do you remember a place called King Rapids ? Do they still call it that ?

Scott Brandley 25:59

I don't remember that . I remember one called the Lunch Box . I don't know if that's the same place .

Randall Jensen 26:06

Maybe they changed it , I don't know , but there was during the 90 miles on the last day . There is some terrific , incredible rapids that you go through and they're training you about it , they're preparing you for it . And just before we entered that , they took us off the river and the guide said I want you to listen . And we listened and we couldn't see the rapids , but they were around the corner , but we could hear this incredible noise and we're starting to think , OK , that sounds pretty serious . Right , but where we were , there was a place where they gave us an opportunity to just do some cliff jumping 15 foot cliff or something Because there was an eddy of the river . That was very slow and it was an easy place to jump . So we just did that . But we had to have our life jackets on and we had to jump and then watch the person in front of us until they were at this rock to push themselves off , and then the next person could jump . And so I was on my second jump and we were all going to get about two jumps . I jumped down . The guy in front of me had just reached the rock and the soft current will take you to that rock Just as I got there , the guy hadn't for some reason , he hadn't yet got up and he kind of hoisted himself and when he did , his feet kicked out and they hit me in the chest and pushed me out further into the river and I got caught in the current and where that slow water was meeting the fast water , there was a huge whirlpool and I thought that I could handle water real well . But when I hit that whirlpool there was nothing I could do . It was I was totally shocked at how powerful those forces in the water were and just sucked me under and I . My eyes were wide open and I there was nothing I can do . I couldn't move my hands , my feet , I was just swirling around in this washing machine of bubbles and water and I don't know how long I was there . But after a while I got pushed out and and I took a huge breath and I had an incredible headache from lack of oxygen . But I had no energy left whatsoever .

Randall Jensen 28:32

It just in those few moments in it , taking every ounce of energy I had , and I couldn't swim , and here I was a guy that prided myself in swimming . I couldn't move and I barely got to the edge and just just collapsed in the mud . And then I realized nobody had seen what happened . Nobody knew what happened to me . And it was another example of number one the forces that are out there that are much stronger . We think we have the ability to deal with those forces , but we don't . And number two most people are living their lives just kind of focused on what they're doing and a lot of times we don't notice what's happening to others . And nobody saw what had happened to me at all . And so I was down the river a bit just laying there and nobody ever knew what happened to me . I told them about it and nobody cared . But I realized I came within a whisker of drowning at that moment . But I tell those stories because the lessons I learned but I should have learned and there were at least being taught to me . But it was the same thing that I was experiencing in my life .

Randall Jensen 29:41

By the time I was 17 , I had already graduated and I wanted to join the Marines and my parents said no , we're not going to sign for you . If you're 17 , you can go in if your parents will sign approval . But my parents wouldn't do that . So when I turned 18 , I joined the Marines with my friend . We went on in something called the buddy program and I'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about what it was like to go through Marine Corps Boot Camp , but I can tell you that within about 20 seconds of making contact with the first Marine that we met at the airport , who is putting us in a truck that looked like a jail truck , and the way he spoke to us we knew we were done for and life completely changed in 20 seconds and people were just moaning oh , what have we done ? Anyway , it was going through Marine Corps Boot Camp is a story unto itself that I'm not going to tell the whole anything about that , other than the fact that we were immediately being humbled and transformed from civilians into something else .

Randall Jensen 31:05

At that time we didn't know what it was , but I went through training at MCRD in the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego , and the one thing I will say is that , as you're going through all of that , you get up at 4.30 in the morning , you immediately start doing exercises , clean up , runs and a lot of the running past . There are right along the wire and on one side is the Recruit Depot and on the other side is the airport runway of the San Diego Airport . So if you've ever taken a plane in or out of San Diego , if you look at , you'll see the Marine Corps Depot there . And I will say this that most of the recruits that are going through training there look at every single plane taking off and want to be on that plane . I remember being there looking at faces of people in the plane looking at us and I'm looking at them and I felt like we're in a zoo .

Randall Jensen 32:05

I want to be on that plane .

Scott Brandley 32:09

Well , I've seen a lot of movies with you know where people go through training and it doesn't look very fun .

Randall Jensen 32:16

It wasn't fun , but the funny thing is , even though I didn't enjoy being in the Marines if I had to do it over again I'd probably still do it . When I finished all my training , there was about six months of training and I was trained in artillery I was given a home leave and I had my orders to Vietnam . I actually had volunteered to go there and when I went home my parents gave me a ticket a plane ticket to Nauvoo . My grandparents were on a mission in Nauvoo at the time and they wanted me to spend some time with them . So I flew a military standby , which meant I had to wear my khaki uniform , and when my grandparents picked me up at the Burlington Airport , they drove me there and in those days there wasn't a lot going on in Nauvoo . This was in the late 60s . There was only a few missionaries there , but they drove me around , showed me places where things had been and then have now been developed , showed me where the temple used to be , which is now there is a temple . But in the evening they took me to a house and they said this is where we all eat together dinner . We had dinner there and of course a lot of people were asking me questions . I was the young guy . Everybody else was kind of the age I am now . But as we were eating dinner and kind of finished , I was sitting right across from my grandmother and she all of a sudden something came over her and I looked and she was looking straight at me in this weird way and she said there's something I want to say . And I'm going to read this because I have written it down and it's as best as I can remember what she said . But she said . She looked at me and said there's something I want to say . Randy , I know that you are going to be protected when you are in the war . The Lord will not allow you to die , for there is a special mission for you yet to fulfill on this earth . You are going to be tried and Satan will try to destroy you In terms of the Lord , and you will yet live to fulfill the mission he has sent you to perform . I know that my words are what he wants you to hear . I feel this very strongly as I speak and I was just staring right in her eyes . It was like I was transfixed and I remember hearing the words you're going to be protected , but you're going to be tried , and I had no idea what would be coming or anything like that . But those words from my grandmother are something I never , ever forgot , even to this day .

Lessons Learned in Vietnam War

Randall Jensen 35:12

So soon after that , I went to Vietnam . I was assigned to a tank battalion and I was assigned to an outpost which was about eight miles away from the main battalion headquarters . The outpost that we were on just had 12 Marines on it . It had on each side of the hill , so there was four bunkers and somebody had to be in that bunker 24 hours a day . I'm going to look at each bunker had its own special weapon and we would do three hour shifts day and night , so every 12 hours we had a three hour shift . That's where I spent the first four months or so in Vietnam and there was an experience there that that is something that I learned from and it is again . It was very similar to the lesson I learned on the Snake River and that is what happens when you don't follow the rules , when you don't obey orders , when you don't obey commandments .

Randall Jensen 36:25

There was a , there was a road that came out to the outpost and there was three outposts . One day there was a resupply coming out and a guy was just driving a truck that had resupplies for our outpost . As it came from the village into there was some open rice paddies before it went into some jungle and then started going up the hill to where the outpost was . He had a land mine and it blew the truck off the road into the rice paddy . The guy that was driving was injured , but not severely , but he was injured , but he was terrified and he wasn't even thinking . He just immediately ran until he got to the nearest outpost . They called the battalion and said what had happened the truck had hit a mine , that there was an injured marine out there . There was a corpsman who heard that who was the battalion corpsman . He was supposed to go back to the states the next day . He had already spent his year in Vietnam , was ready to rotate back to the states .

Randall Jensen 37:37

He jumped in a Jeep and drove out there , which was against all protocols , because the protocol is if you hit a mine on a road then until anything else goes over that road , it's supposed to be cleared by a minesweeping group of detail . A squad of marines went down there to secure the road to keep any traffic off of it . He drove right through them , didn't even stop , went up to the outpost to pick up the injured marine and then he came back down . By then they had realized what he was doing . They stopped him and said you cannot go through here . This has to be cleared . You know the commands , you know what the protocol is . He says I've got to get this marine back . He says I'm going right now . He literally forced his way through the cordon of marines and started driving back on the road . It was at that point he turned around and said see , I told you . Just then his left front tire hit a huge mine and that Jeep was just blown into the air , disintegrating . That guy took the full force of it and that was the end of his life .

Randall Jensen 38:58

Sometimes when you disobey laws , when you don't obey the commandments , it takes a while before the effects can be seen . These are lessons that I was learning , and I learned later a lot more . Here's a guy that learned his lesson and that was it . It took his life . I saw several instances in Vietnam where that happened , where people just disobeyed protocol orders and they lost their lives because of it . It was kind of an unforgiving atmosphere there .

Randall Jensen 39:39

I want to tell you the experience I had when I went out as a forward observer into a jungle and it was on a mountain ridge called Charlie Ridge is what it was called . I was sent there with myself and my radio operator . The two of us formed an FO team , a forward observer team . Our job was to call in artillery to support the operations that were going on at Charlie Ridge . We were with the Vietnamese Army up there and supporting them . We were with a very small advisory team of American Army Marines , and even Australian was with us . There was about 12 of us on this team supporting the Vietnamese on these operations . We had a lot of experiences there that taught me a lot of things . One of the things that happened is the other FO team had an officer who got medivac and so I was left to be the only forward observer supporting this entire battalion operation .

The Tensions and Realities of War

Randall Jensen 40:57

Soon after the lieutenant was medivac , we were woken up in the middle of the night saying we have our listening posts have detected movement . They estimate there's two companies of NVA coming up the hill towards our position . They woke me up and said Jensen , we need fire support . We were far enough away . The only guns that could reach us were eight-inch guns which fire an explosive that you're not supposed to get it closer than 1,000 meters because it's a large explosion . They call danger close to 1,000 meters .

Randall Jensen 41:45

That night we had to call high angle to get over the intervening mountains where we were . By the way , where we were was very close to the lay ocean border and it was in very thick jungle . That night we ended up calling in 29 rounds , which was very unusual for that type of artillery ordinance . Each round we were calling closer and closer to our position and by the time we ended we were within 400 meters of our position where the rounds were landing . We were up all night calling and adjusting these rounds . I just kept thinking if I screw up , if I make the slightest mistake , I'm going to kill some people . I kept asking myself I'm just 19 years old , what am I doing with this kind of responsibility ? I kept asking myself that Maybe we didn't kill anybody . But it was a very , very tense night and it was a very . I was just on edge the whole time and the next morning I was exhausted because I just felt like I'd been tensed all night .

Randall Jensen 43:03

There was another time , right after that , that we were on a company that were going down that they had found what they thought was a position where the NVA were . We went down as a company to investigate . It turns out that what we discovered was an entire base camp of an NVA . They had an entire village and it was underneath the canopy that goes over the jungle . You could fly right over it in a helicopter and never see it . It was an incredible . It was like a Robinson Caruso kind of living , just living out of the jungle . The NVA had left before we came . I think they knew we were coming , but we were ordered back up to the mountaintop after that because they said we're going to get some airstrikes in there . It rained for several days so we couldn't do anything , but when the rain cleared we run a mountaintop calling in every airstrike we could get on this NVA base camp .

Randall Jensen 44:16

That was a day that something happened to me that I don't know how to put it in words , but we're on this mountaintop watching all these jets come down , dropping napalm and high explosives . As one jet was coming down , I happened to look at the other Marines that were there . There was about four of us . One of them was calling in the airstrikes . All of a sudden I realized that I was completely caught up in this thing called war . I realized that all of us were caught up like that and we were all loving this game called war . But it wasn't a game , it was real . People were , bombs were falling on people right in front of us , and yet it was like the heavens parted and let me see into my soul and what I saw was pure darkness . It was a terrifying moment for me . It's terrifying to see what your heart can be like when it gets opened up and gets caught up in something like that . The problem was is that as soon as I had that thought , I couldn't get rid of it . It just stayed with me . It started festering like a virus . The more it was with me , the more I felt like I was spiraling down into a kind of insanity or something . I don't know what to call it , but it was making me go crazy .

Randall Jensen 46:06

Soon after that is when it was going to be my time to get extracted and my replacement was going to come in . I was going to come out on this two operations out there for over two months just in the jungle , and then finally I was going to get my replacement because I was going to be coming back to the States in about another month the LZ that we had for the helicopter , which means the landing zone for the helicopter . We had to use machetes to cut it out from the jungle so there would be enough space for a helicopter to land . And as we did that , the enemy would kept shooting mortar rounds at that so they could sight in , because they knew helicopters were going to be landing there . So they were sighting in their mortar tubes . And the day after we finished that was my turn to be extracted .

Randall Jensen 47:07

And as the helicopter was coming in with my replacement , I had gotten all my equipment ready . I had all the information that he needed his compasses , his maps . I had books of all his coordinates , his radio frequencies . As it landed , as the helicopter was lining up , we could hear the mortar rounds being launched and we knew that we had incoming rounds and what they would do is walk them up the ridge like this . And we told the pilot you've got a hot LZ , there's incoming rounds , so this is going to have to be fast . So those coming off walk towards this .

Randall Jensen 47:52

I could see my replacement . He had a very clean uniform , he had shine shoes . I thought , oh , he just barely got here . He had no idea what was going on . But the rest of us people were just literally diving head first into the helicopter .

Randall Jensen 48:10

It was already revving up and the guy I said are you the FO ? And he said yeah , he was a secondary tenant . I said here's your stuff , run . And he grabbed me and he says no , I need to talk to you . And I said no , there's no time to talk , run . And he kept holding on to me and finally I had to turn , literally kick him away , and I said run for your life . And I turned and sprinted to the helicopter . It was a Huey and I stepped on the runner and then dove head first and there was one guy behind me and the chopper was already lifting off when he hit the runner and the door gunner pulled him by the back of his pants and just yanked him in and we just had a pile of bodies and the pilot turned it like this so he could do a maximum speed takeoff , just so he could clear the trees and the vegetation , and we could hear the rounds getting closer and closer . And as we're sitting in the helicopter and I remember just being frozen , waiting for the hit . And then the helicopter rose more and more and then started banking to the right . We looked down and just where the helicopter had been , it was filled with smoke because the last rounds had impacted just where the helicopter had been . And that's when I remembered to breathe . And then I thought I think I'm going to make it back home now . I think I'm going to live through this , and that was the first time I really gave myself that permission . Well , the long insured of it is .

Coming Home and Searching for Meaning

Randall Jensen 49:55

Another month went by . I returned to the States carrying all the baggage , whatever it was , and when I went back to the States they were scaling down . So I was . When I finally made my way back to Camp Pendleton , I was released from the Marine Corps . I had signed up for two years and they released me because they were scaling down , because of what was happening .

Randall Jensen 50:25

And I found myself , within just a few days of leaving that environment , hitchhiking up the coast to go to my uncle's house and just asking myself did all that really happen ? We always fantasize when we first went over there . When you come back , there's going to be a parade and there's going to be bands playing . It'll be a big deal . I wouldn't like that at all . You just came back as an individual and you were left to yourself .

Randall Jensen 50:59

Well , because I came back like that , by the time I got back to my family , I didn't even tell them I was coming home . I just took a cab from the airport and it was very obvious that after a month or so , obviously my family was very happy to see me , but I didn't fit . I wasn't living the kind of life they lived . I wasn't active in the church . I'd been away from the church for now several years and after about a month I just left home and found my own apartment and started going back to school at the University of Utah .

Randall Jensen 51:41

But during those years it was the weirdest thing the kind of friends that I gravitated to . Were they friends ? I don't know what kind of people they were , but if I went to a party , invariably I wouldn't have to . Someone or someone would come up to me and they would say you were in numb , weren't you ? And 100% of the time we'd be right , because you could just tell we were the ones that were sitting off to the side , isolated , not talking to anybody , and just kind of staring off into space . You could get off somehow you could always tell . And I was living a life that was so far away from the church . I mean , what can you say ? It was a life of sin . I was just living away from the church and I started realizing how alone you could be .

Randall Jensen 52:47

I would often hitchhike places . I hitchhiked to the coast to go camping in Big Sur just before Christmas , my first Christmas . Back , I would frequently just hitchhike places and I started realizing what it was like to feel alone . But I also started asking people what is the purpose of life ? And I would ask it in my classes . I'd ask professors what's life all about ? What's it supposed to be ? Try to go into a philosophy class and ask a philosophy professor what's the purpose of life , and you'll get all sorts of information but you won't get an answer . But I didn't know what I was looking for . I didn't know anything other than the kind of people I was around were not the people I would normally associate with , but they didn't have my best interests as heart .

Randall Jensen 53:47

And among the circle of friends that I had , one day there was a guy that showed up . He said he was from Colorado . I'm not going to use names or anything , but this guy whenever you are around him , it just seemed like the room turned ice cold and it got very , very strange and he seemed to know everything about everyone . And his mantra , the things that he kept telling us , is you've got to break away from your family . The family is what holds you back . You've got to become an individual and let go . That's when you're going to really be free . And on the side he was also a drug dealer , so it doesn't surprise that he was . You know , that's what he was trying to get people to do , but he was just a very strange guy . But wherever he was , it's sort of like he was the one that commanded the attention of everyone . He became sort of like the Pied Piper that was getting people to join him and follow him on the trail that he was going . So one day it was leading up to this I came back from my class into my basement apartment and we'll see .

Randall Jensen 55:07

I think I have it here someplace . I want to read something my cousin had come to . I can't find it . My cousin had come to visit me and my cousin was a guy that was very much against the war and he also had grown up outside the church rebelling against it and all of a sudden he leaves me this note and it said well , here it is . I'll just read this . He said , randy , I stopped by to see you .

Randall Jensen 55:42

I finished at the home . The home was the mission home . He had been called to go on a mission . He said I'm full , I found answers , trues . I feel very enlightened , something I've always wanted . My life and others around me have taken new dimensions .

Randall Jensen 56:01

Once I got by the people and the hypocrites , I found the gospel is a really beautiful and fulfilling life . When I see a fellow brother or sister in or out of the gospel I can look in their eyes and not too many look back . But when they do , they know , and I know a communication that can't be explained . When I pray and meditate , I become so full I can hardly contain the spirit . I can cry and laugh . Now Don't get me wrong , but if you ever feel inside a yearning to be free , I know where it can be found . It is everlasting , it is eternal . I feel inspired to write these words . I know you search for truth . You are genuine , real . Open your heart and let it be filled . Love and God's blessings , pray . That's what my cousin left for me when he left that , it was like everything started to change . I don't know how the universe works . There must be some gears or something somewhere that start turning to start making other gears turn . But since he left that , it was like I became more self-aware and more thinking about what's going on around me .

Randall Jensen 57:25

For example , I used to go up to the . I used to live just off the football stadium at the University of Utah . At night I would go up and hop the fence . At those days they still had a running track around the football field . I used to go up there and run at night . It was never a problem until after that letter I started feeling , as I was running , as if somebody was behind me . I kept looking over my shoulder to see if something or someone was there . Every night it got stronger and stronger and it became really spooky . Finally , one night I was there and I was just terrified of what I don't know , but I just felt like something was behind me . I stopped running at night in the stadium after that .

Randall Jensen 58:19

Then other things started happening . For example , at the next General Conference in April , I was in a car with a bunch of people and they were my supposed friends . They were monkeying around with the radio and they happened to find somebody speaking . This was on a Sunday afternoon . Somebody said oh , that's General Conference . They left it on there so they could make fun of everything that was being said . Everybody in the car was making sarcastic comments about this . Yet for the first time I was actually hearing a conference speaker , and what they were saying I was paying attention to it . I didn't say a thing , I just felt like whoever was speaking was talking directly to me . I heard and I just wanted to get out of the car , but we were in the middle of southern Utah so I couldn't get out . I just couldn't believe that I was paying attention to that . Where did that come from ?

Randall Jensen 59:31

Well , a couple of months later , everything came to a head . The group of my friends were all in the back of a yard and sitting in a circle . Of course , our friend from Colorado was there leading the charge . I just had this feeling that the conversation I was listening to what was being said and it was as if it had no meaning . It was just people babbling . I remember distinctly thinking of this babbling . I said is this really what it means to babble on Speaking without really saying anything . What are they saying ? It seemed like underneath was an undercurrent .

Randall Jensen 1:00:20

Then the lead guy , who I'm not naming , made some comments about the LDS church . They started talking about the temple and what went on in the temple . Immediately I knew I didn't know anything about the temple . I had never been in it , never paid that much attention to it . I immediately knew that what they were saying was absolutely wrong . It was evil to be speaking that way .

Randall Jensen 1:00:54

With that thought , I suddenly realized where am I standing ? I was sitting down , but it was as if I was figuratively standing on the edge of a cliff . It's like the guy had led me there and said okay , it's time , it's time to make the leap . I'm looking down and all I can see is this yawing dark abyss right in front of me . He said it's time to become part of this . I was terrified . I didn't know where I had been led , but I knew that one more step and I was gone . Where I would go , I didn't know , but I didn't want to take any further steps . I immediately had a thought about my family and as soon as the thought came about my family I felt like I was encased in something that prevented me from moving any further . I wasn't literally standing on the edge of a cliff , but it was a spiritual abyss of something I can't even put into words . At that point I said that's it . I stood up and just walked away . I walked through the house out into the street and started walking up the street . I heard somebody calling my name . I looked back and there was the guy saying dude , you got to come back . It was as if already , and just walking there I was looking it down of a dark tunnel at a point where this guy was Already just in taking those few steps I had walked in that far away from it , I just turned around , didn't say a word and just kept walking .

Randall Jensen 1:02:36

Interestingly , I think the Lord works in mysterious ways , because later that night , just a few hours later , it was a hot night in June and some other friends and I were in the fountain outside the library at the University of Utah and we were in the fountain cooling off . All I had was a pair of cut-off jeans , no shirt , no shoes , and it was about midnight and the campus police came by and saw us and he turned on his lights . He said I want to see your ID , but we had no ID . He says what are your names ? We gave him our names . He goes into his vehicle and after a while he comes out . He says which of you are ? Randall Jensen ? I said that's me . He said come over here . He said turn around , put your hands behind your back .

Randall Jensen 1:03:26

All of a sudden I found myself being handcuffed . I said what's going on ? What's this all about ? The other guys with me said what are you doing ? He said you be quiet . They said well , we need to know . He says if you say anything more , I'm going to arrest you for interfering with arrest or something . I didn't know I was being arrested . He took me to their office and I said what is going on ? He said we did a check and there's a bench warrant out for you from the Salt Lake Police Department . I had no idea what this was about . A Salt Lake police officer eventually came , handcuffed me again , put me in his car , took me down to the jail and I was thrown into the jail .

Randall Jensen 1:04:12

All this happened just a few hours after I had walked away from the edge . Now , here I was in this tank where they throw everybody off the street . There was about 15 people in this room that I spent the rest of the night with just wet cutoffs and no shirt , and I'm just sitting in this watching seeing these people filling this jail cell that are I don't know . It's hard to explain , but one guy was passed out and he started waking up and found out he was in jail and he started screaming and yelling and other people saying shut up . And swearing at him and say if you say one more thing , I'm going to kill you . I just kind of felt like so this is what it's like to step off the edge . This is where it was like figuratively , as if the Lord was saying okay , you're getting a view of the direction you were headed . Well , 15 hours later , I finally was able to make a phone call and the only phone number I knew was my parents and I called and I said I need $80 to bail me out . I said I'll pay you back . Well , they came and bailed me out , but they said we're not taking your money .

Randall Jensen 1:05:36

And the day after that I moved out of my apartment and back with my family and immediately I had a feeling that I needed to get away again . But this time it was going to be different . I needed to get away from everything I had been around , I decided that I would take my bicycle and leave home and destination unknown . I just was going to head east . I spent a few days getting my bike ready , getting all the equipment I was going to take my backpack and a sleeping bag and some other equipment .

Randall Jensen 1:06:13

And then on the morning of July 3 , 1972 , this is almost exactly two years since I came back from Vietnam I left home on my bicycle . My parents were there saying where are you going ? And I said I don't know , but I'll let you know when I get there . I'm heading east . So I went and I bicycled through Salt Lake . I went north through what Bountiful North Salt Lake , bountiful Centerville , farmington , and then up towards Ogden . And then at Ogden I turned up Ogden Canyon towards Plainview Reservoir , and that's where I camped the first night at the base of the Monte Cristo Pass and found myself very tired . I'd covered about 80 miles .

Randall Jensen 1:07:16

Yeah , that's a long bike ride 80 miles was , and I wasn't used to it . I had read in my bike a lot , but carrying a backpack plus all the weight , I was tired . When I woke up the next morning I could barely move and so I had to just kind of exercise the stuff and , to tell you the truth , I couldn't sit on my seat . It was so sore , so I kind of had to stand up . But that day I started off just going up over Monte Cristo Pass , which takes you up to about 10,000 feet , and by the time I got up there I was exhausted .

Randall Jensen 1:08:00

But that was my first swaray into this bike ride .

Journey of Reflection and Spiritual Awakening

Randall Jensen 1:08:04

I went down , went through Woodruff , across Evanston and then started going across Southern Wyoming and after about five days I finally reached Laramie . And then from Laramie I was going to go up into Medicine Bow , which is the continental divide , it's between Cheyenne and Laramie , and as I left Laramie there was a huge thunderstorm blowing right , directly the wind against me , and even though it was flat I had to just stand up and pump . And I was so discouraged because it was so hard to get anywhere with this storm going . Plus , I kept asking myself where are you going ? Where are you headed ? I mean I had a lot of time to think going across Wyoming .

Scott Brandley 1:09:00

And yeah , there's not much out there .

Randall Jensen 1:09:02

And a lot of my thoughts took me back to my family and things that had happened when I was younger . So I finally started up the canyon and it was pretty tough pedaling so I was kind of forcing down on the pedals and then I heard a rip and then the strap on my backpack ripped and I had to stop the bike and I couldn't ride the bike with my backpack . So I just had to walk the bike up the rest of the canyon and I was surrounded by mosquitoes and I just had cutoffs on . I had a short-sleeve shirt , I was being eaten alive and I got so depressed I think it was the lowest point I'd ever been in my life . And as I'm walking up I'm just saying what are you doing , knucklehead ? I got up to the top and I saw there was a campground up there . If you ever drive over that on I-80 , you'll see there's a big bust of Abraham Lincoln , if you ever drive over the continental line . That's where I stopped and it was a Saturday and I just thought tomorrow's Sunday , I'm not going to do anything on Sunday , I'm going to rest . And as I sat and just tried to deal with this depression that I'd fallen into , I started thinking back to what had happened in Vietnam , when my heart was opened and I saw what was inside my heart and I started realizing that you got to face this , you got to deal with this , all the problems you've been having these past couple of years when you haven't been able to let it go . You're going to have to deal with this .

Randall Jensen 1:10:54

The next day , when I woke up , it was a beautiful day . I decided to take a walk . I hopped over a wooden fence and just made my way into the forest and just kept walking for a long ways and I started feeling a sense of peace and I got into a little meadow and there was a . I saw a movement and just a few feet away from me was a large elk and instead of being afraid of me , I just felt very comfortable being so close to that elk and he was grazing and he just slowly raised his head and looked directly at me . We were looking eyeball to eyeball and I remember just thinking this is the most peaceful moment I've ever felt . I feel connected to this animal and I don't know what was happening to me , but I think it was just softening me for something . And after a while and we just stared at each other for a long time and it was just the greatest sense of peace . And eventually the elk meandered away and I continued walking and I went up to some rocks and stood up basically on the top of the mountain and I saw that the storms were beginning to form again , coming up from the plains . But I was just taking in huge , just feeling the air as I breathed it and just taking huge lungfuls of air and just appreciating the beauty of the earth , which to me had been ugly and dark .

Randall Jensen 1:12:43

And as I got back to the path and was making my way back to camp , I had this thought that came and it said you need to pray . And one side of me was saying oh , come on , you're not going to pray , that's for a wuss , you're not going to pray . But the other side was saying no , you need to just get down and pray . And so there was this tug going on , these two voices , but I eventually decided I'm going to get off this path and I just walked into the forest and was obviously all alone and I found a flat spot . And then I looked around and I thought I had these memories that came from when I was a kid in primary and I remember Joseph Smith and I thought if I kneel down here , maybe there will be a miracle and I'll see a light or something . And so I eventually looked around , very embarrassed , I knelt down and started praying out loud and I had no formula for prayer . I didn't know what to say . But I found myself just calling out and said God , if you're there , if you really are there , I need you somehow . There's something I need . I don't even know what to say . I don't know where I'm going , I don't know who I am , and I'm just saying . It was probably a horrible sounding prayer . But I finished my prayer and then I stood up and I said , oh , there was no miracle here . Nothing happened .

Randall Jensen 1:14:21

And so I started walking back , found the path again , and pretty soon I got caught up in other distracting thoughts and I wasn't even thinking of saying that prayer . But all of a sudden , out of nowhere , this thought started coming to me , and at first it was just a scamper of a thought and it just said it's time to read the Book of Mormon , and I didn't pay much attention to it . And then it came back and by the time I reached my camp , all I could think of was I want to read the Book of Mormon . I had never read it , I had never paid attention to it . I mean , it was part of our religion that I grew up in , but I had never paid attention to it . And as I cooked my meal that night , all I could think about was how come I don't have a Book of Mormon ? I need to read the Book of Mormon . I wanted to read the Book of Mormon more than I wanted to eat a hot fudge Sunday , and I went to sleep that night thinking I need to read the Book of Mormon .

Randall Jensen 1:15:26

When I woke up the next morning at the crack of dawn , first thought you need to read the Book of Mormon . Now , I was making no connection to those thoughts , to anything , not to a prayer or anything . I was just dealing with this impression and this overarching feeling you need to read the Book of Mormon . So instead of having breakfast , I just packed up and got on my bike and said I got to get to Cheyenne because I'm sure there's a Book of Mormon there . And the mistake I made was I was a 30-mile bike ride and by the time I got there I was wasted . All my energy was gone . So I at least had to get a breakfast , went to a restaurant and got a breakfast and then I started going around all of downtown Cheyenne to all the different stores I could find and going in and saying do you sell Book of Mormons here ? And nobody sold Book of Mormons there .

Randall Jensen 1:16:25

And finally I was going around town and I saw a store and I said that's it . It said Christian Books , kind of written in Gothic letters . I thought for sure they have a Book of Mormon there . So I was so excited I parked my bike , locked it , went in and loudly said where can I find a Book of Mormon to buy ? And everybody in there just stopped and looked at me , looked at this one , and the guy behind the counter said we don't sell that Book here . I said why not ? This is a Christian bookstore , isn't it ? Isn't that a Christian book ? He said we don't sell that Book here and I was really discouraged . I said well , where can I get one ? And he waited a minute and he finally said you know , I guess if you need one you probably ought to go to a Mormon church . I said okay , where's one ? He said okay , just a minute . And he reached down and found a phone book and he thumbed through and he was nice enough to identify the one that was probably closest and he drew me a map and told me how to get there . And I said thank you so much . And I remember , as I was out getting back on my bike , I looked in and he was just staring at me and I just thought he's probably thinking why does that guy want a Book of Mormon so bad ? I couldn't have told you at the time where I wanted , I just wanted to read the Book of Mormon .

Randall Jensen 1:17:56

I followed his directions and took me to an LDS building . Well , it was Monday morning and of course everything was locked up . But there was a little kid there . He was about five years old , red hair , freckled face . He says where are you going ? What are you doing ? I said bicycling east . What are you here for ? I'm trying to get in . There's something I need , he said . I know a secret way in . He said follow me .

Randall Jensen 1:18:28

And so he took me around the church building to the other side and there was a frosted glass door that I guess it was off the side of the chapel . It's probably what they used for funerals or something . And he said yeah , you can get in this door . So we went to open it , but it was locked . He said , ah shucks , I thought it would be open . But then we heard a piano playing on the other side . So I start pounding on the door .

Randall Jensen 1:18:56

After a while the piano stopped and the door opened and there was a young lady who had been obviously practicing the piano and when she saw me she looked at me like this and visibly jumped back . Because one of the things I didn't tell you is that since coming back from Vietnam , I hadn't cut my hair and I hadn't shaved and I probably hadn't had a bath in a while on this trip . So I totally shocked her . She probably thought I was looking for a meal or something . I thought I was a homeless person . I guess I don't know , but I'm sure I terrified her .

Randall Jensen 1:19:32

She says just , and I said it's okay , it's okay , I'm just looking for a Book of Mormon . And then the look on her face was total shock . She was dumbfounded this guy's looking for a Book of Mormon . She said just a minute , and she shut the door and after a few minutes it opened again and there was an elderly man that was with her and he said hello , my name is Brother Wright . I understand you're looking for a Book of Mormon . I said , yeah . He says well , come on in and I'll help you . I have keys to the building so I'm sure we can find you a Book of Mormon here .

Randall Jensen 1:20:09

Well , he looked all over the building , went into every bishop office , every room he could think of , and he could not find a Book of Mormon . And by the time we finished he was really embarrassed and he said I'm sorry , I don't know why we don't have a Book of Mormon here . He says but I'm a stake missionary and I have Book of Mormon at my house . He says would you like to come out to my house ? He says but I won't be there till three o'clock . I said fine , I'm going to go through me a map . It was on the east end of Cheyenne , just as you're going outside of town towards the east . So I finally made my way there .

Randall Jensen 1:20:47

By the time I arrived , at about three o'clock , I don't know if you've ever seen storms in the plains , in the Great Plains , but the sky was as black as night Thunder and it was just building up and I thought OK , tonight I'm going to have to find some shelter . This is going to be a bad one . I knocked on the door of their house and it opened and there was a nice looking elderly woman , obviously his wife , and she was working on something with her hands and she said she says oh , we've been expecting you , please come in . The way I looked , didn't bother her . I walked in and as soon as I crossed the threshold into their home , I felt I felt like I had stepped out of the world into some sacred place . I didn't know what feelings I was feeling , but it just felt so different . And I looked at her and behind her her husband was coming towards her through the living room and I was just overwhelmed by this feeling of peace and it was like . I felt like it was a sacred place or something . And without thinking , I just looked at her and I said is the Mormon church true ? And she just kept working and she looked right at me in the eye and she says well , of course it's true , and I had never heard from professors or anyone anything that I knew they knew . And when she told me that it was the most powerful thing I had ever heard and I felt like almost like somebody just took a javelin and pinned me against the wall . I knew , she knew , and I was just overwhelmed . And she said by then her husband was there and they said we've prepared lunch for you .

Life-Altering Encounter With the Book

Randall Jensen 1:22:43

And we sat down and started having lunch and they started asking where I was going and I said I really have no destination , I'm just . I started talking about what I'd been doing and that my I had grown up in the church , but I didn't know anything about it . They said well , right . Then the wind started picking up and you can hear the thunder . And they said why don't you go , put your bike in the garage and bring your stuff in ? Why don't you just stay here tonight ? And they said and while you're here , you can take a bath . And I'm not sure if that was for me or for them , but I ended up staying with them , not just that night , but the next night and the next day they had me , they had , they had a room all set up , that they had invented a way to repair hymn books for the church , and so I spent the whole day . They taught me how to repair these things , drilling holes and stitching them and rebinding all these torn up hymn books .

Randall Jensen 1:23:45

And then that night , the second night , after we finished dinner , brother Wright said I know you're looking for something . He said I'm a sake missionary . Would you like me to teach you the first lesson ? Well , I didn't know what he was talking about . I didn't know what the first lesson was and I said sure . So he taught me that night the first lesson , which was about Joseph Smith and his experience in the with the first vision . It was about finding the Book of Mormon and translating it , the restoration of the gospel . And then , when he finished , we said a prayer and he gave me the Joseph Smith pamphlet . And he gave me a pamphlet on the word of wisdom and went on the law of chastity . And so he and his wife went to bed and I stayed up and I read all of those , those pamphlets , before I went to bed .

Randall Jensen 1:24:45

And the next morning I got up early and started packing up to keep going and it was just like waving goodbye to my family . They almost felt like my family . And before I left , brother Wright came out of the house and he had a something in his hand . He says I think this is what you were looking for and it was a copy of the Book of Mormon . And I said thank you and I put it in the toolbox so I could get easy access to it .

Randall Jensen 1:25:13

And then I said goodbye and I kept going east and I went for about 50 miles to the border of Nebraska and then there was a . It was time for lunch so I thought I would stop in this little gas station and I got some milk and an apple and some yogurt and there was a little rest stop there right at the border . I went over there and spread everything out on the grass laid down and just started having lunch and pulled out the book and just kind of said I'll just kind of flip through it a little bit . I really wasn't going to start reading it , but I read the title page and then I read the explanations and the testimony of the witnesses and then I got to page one and I started reading .

Randall Jensen 1:25:57

I , nephi , having been bored of goodly parents , and started reading , turned the page , kept reading and by the time I was ready to turn the second page I started feeling something coming all the way down my arms and down my back and down my legs , over my whole body . It was just this tingling warmth . It felt like a massive goose bump and all . I had goose bumps everywhere . I just it was the warmest feeling . And as I turned the page and kept reading , I just started to weep . And then I started to sob , just like a little kid , and it had been years since I had cried and it , and here I was just sobbing . I was overcome and I , I just kept reading and reading , and whereas I thought I was just going to go through it , I kept adjusting my position as the sun was changing and so I wanted to kind of be in the shade until finally the sun went down and there was no more light and I had already read about 80 pages of the Book of Mormon and I only stopped because it was dark and then I had to go find a place to camp .

Randall Jensen 1:27:13

So I went up down the road a little bit , I was following the freeway , and then I just pulled off into a place where there was just nothing , no lights or anything . I laid out my sleeping bag and then I just laid down . I looked up and that night there wasn't a cloud in the sky and there wasn't a light . There was no light pollution , and I just saw the heavens . I was looking at the Milky Way and I just thought there is a God up there , I know he's there .

Randall Jensen 1:27:43

Something happened today and I , just as soon as I had that thought , I just took , I got up and knelt down and started praying under this big expanse of heaven and just saying , god , I think you're there . I said I want to tell you what happened today . I started reading the Book of Mormon and it just feels right . I don't know what it is , but something happened . I said so , god , if you're there , I'm going to keep reading . And let me know if this really is true , because I've read other books that I thought were pretty important . But then the next week I was reading another book and it all changed . If this really is real , then I want to know .

Randall Jensen 1:28:29

So then I went to sleep and woke up and I found that after that my goals were not to see how many miles I could go east . My goal was can I find a tree that has some good shade that I can lean against to keep reading ? And whenever I found a tree , I would sit against it and spend a couple hours reading and then continue on . And by the time I got to Ogallala , I saw that there was a lake about 20 miles north that had a campground and I decided I'm just going to go camp there until I finish reading . So I went there and made camp and I think it took another four days or something , four or five days , I don't remember . But I just would read all day and when I get tired of reading I would just get out and stretch , walk around a little bit , go back to reading right next to the lake , and I think it was well , whatever day it was .

Randall Jensen 1:29:30

As soon as I finished reading I said I know this is true . And I decided well , there's nothing else for me to go except go back home . I need to go back home and make things right . And so I decided the next day I was going to follow this road along the Platte River up to Scott's Bluff and then I'd make my way back to Cheyenne , and that would be my , and then I would figure out how to get home from there .

Randall Jensen 1:30:01

Well , that night I made that decision , and when night came , a wind came up and it started blowing so hard off the lake . But to me it wasn't just a wind . I felt I was feeling absolute terror , because I feel like there was darkness all around me and I felt like there was a million demons just screaming at me in that wind and I had made a lean to with my poncho on the sand and I got under that and I was just holding it down so the wind wouldn't rip it and I just got on my knees and I started praying as hard as I've ever prayed . Heavenly Father , help me . I don't know what this is , but I just feel like there's wickedness all around me and it's just . I'm terrified . And the next thing I remember I woke up and I was laying on my side but my knees were still bent and I think I must have fallen asleep praying and I just fell over . But the day was calm , everything seemed to be gone and everything just seemed right and I knew the right thing to do is to go back to my family .

Randall Jensen 1:31:11

And so the first thing I did when I got on this road is I came to a little town and I had a pay phone on the edge of it and I called the collect , made a collect call to my home and know , the only one at home was my mom and she said hello . And I said Hello , this is your son , this is Randy . She says when are you ? I said I'm in Nebraska , but I don't know where I am . All I know is I'm surrounded by cornfields , as far as you can see . She says what are you doing ? I said , mom , I got to tell you something . I met some people in Cheyenne and they gave me a Book of Mormon . And I just finished reading the Book of Mormon and I found out it's true . And I'm coming home and I heard a little gasp from my mom and she couldn't speak and she just . I could hear her crying and and then I started crying and we just sat there on the phone crying for a while and then I just said I don't know when I'll be home , but pray for me that I'll be kept safe . And she said she just said , randy , I'm so grateful .

Journey Home and Temptations

Randall Jensen 1:32:33

And then my journey home began and it turns out I started seeing these markers on the road I was on and I stopped to read them and I realized they were markers marking the Mormon trail . I was on , I was on the trail of the north part of the Platte River , where the Mormon trail was . I couldn't believe it , and I was . I was learning about Mormon history already and and it took , the road eventually took me to Scott's Bluff .

Randall Jensen 1:33:04

I went past Chimney Rock , scott's Bluff , and in Scott's Bluff the first miracle happened as I was just reaching the top of the grade to go down . Just reaching the edge of Scott's Bluff , I just got to the top and all of a sudden my pedal started feeling weird and it just sheared off . The metal just broke in half and I thought , holy cow , where am I going to get a replacement for this ? And so I started gliding down and within a block it said Schwinn Bicycles and my bike was a Schwinn . Within a block or so of that happening , I don't think there was another bicycle shop like that for 100 miles or 200 , 500 . I don't know that I was . Just I went in and they said , oh , we can fix that . And they fixed it in five minutes and cost six bucks . It was , it was a miracle . I thought it was a miracle .

Randall Jensen 1:34:05

And so from there I went into Torrington , wyoming , and that's where I spent the night in an incredible storm . Every time there was a storm , something happened where there was some kind of shelter . That night it was just a picnic bench with a if I lean to over it , but it rained so hard that it was just flooding and lightning hail , and spend the night on top of that , on top of that picnic bench . And the next morning I saw that on my map it was about a 60 mile ride to Cheyenne and I thought I'm going to call up when I go back to Cheyenne I'm going to contact the rights and and see if I can , because I want to tell them I found I read the Book of Mormon . So the next day I started bicycling but it was still kind of drizzling the whole time and so the whole 60 miles was a cold , wet ride . It drizzled the whole time and I was soaking wet by the time I got to Cheyenne and I was completely spent , called up brother Wright and said I'm just heading into town .

Randall Jensen 1:35:10

I said is it okay if I stop by again ? They said sure , and I ended up staying with him for another two or three days and I I told them about what had happened and on one night I told them the story of what had happened with the wind and how terrified I was . And that's when brother Wright , he was very serious and he looked at me and he said he says , randy , he says what you need to know is that Satan doesn't want you to know what you're learning , he doesn't want you to read the Book of Mormon , he doesn't want you to go back to church . He says you're going to have to keep praying and being obedient and doing everything you can because you're going to , you're going to have opposition . And I really honored his , his suggestion .

Randall Jensen 1:36:01

Well , I was there on Sunday and he said why don't you come to church with us ? And I said obviously I have nothing to wear . I don't think I'd go in and cut offs . He says you can wear some of my clothes . So I said I'll give it a shot . And so he gave me some of his clothes , but I think my legs were longer than his because and he just had white socks . So I was wearing white socks , shoes that that were crumpling my toes , and white socks and my pants only went down to the top of my ankles , and then I had to wear suspenders . So I looked like the geezer from the end of the world wearing brother rights clothes .

Randall Jensen 1:36:46

I said okay , so I went with them and he stopped to go into sacred meeting and all of a sudden , I was just . I was mortified . I was so afraid to go in . I was . I was so afraid . And they said are you coming with us ? And I said let me just sit here for a minute . And they so they didn't make a big deal about it they said , okay , do what you need to do . So they went in and they said if you want to sit by us , we'll be sitting to the right in the back . And I sat there for a long time and I said so , so what are you going to do ? And finally I said I guess you got to get make it go of it . And I sat there for a minute and I sat up here and so I said okay . So I slowly got out of the car and walked across the street , walked up the steps and I remember putting my hand on the door , just closing my eyes , and I opened the door and I walked in and as soon as I did there was a man in a suit and tie . He had a big smile on his face and he extended his hand and shook my hand and said he says brother , welcome to church today . Can I help you find a seat ? And as soon as I touched his hand , all the feelings of being nervous it just melted away and I just felt like I was at home and I ended up sitting next to the rights and I just enjoyed it .

Randall Jensen 1:38:12

Well , to kind of end the story quickly , the next , the next day , is when I hit it began to hit my journey home and instead of coming back across Wyoming , I went down through Colorado to Fort Collins , then up through Estes Park and over Rocky Mountain National Park . And I found that each day I didn't realize this until some years later , but every day there was a temptation , just like Brother Wright had said . The first day I had called a girl I had met at some conference some some time ago and I knew she lived in Fort Collins . So I called her and I said , hey , I'm in town . I just thought it's can I just stop by and say hi ? They said , sure , come on over , we'll have lunch or dinner or whatever it was . And I stayed there . And then they she said , well , look , it's getting kind of late in the day , you can stay here if you want . Tonight you can crash here . And that had kind of been something I always did , just crash , crashing at somebody's house . I didn't think a thing of it . But then I realized , as I after , there were several girls living there and as I laid down on the couch , one of the girls came down and it's obvious that she had something in mind and I , and all of a sudden I could just feel this warning , you know warning . And I was saying to myself how did you get yourself into this mess ? And she was hanging around talking , obviously leading me on , and I finally said look , I got to get up early tomorrow morning , I'm tired , I can't talk to you anymore , I just got to get some sleep . She got really angry and I didn't care , I just just glad to get rid of her . And that was the first temptation . Law of chastity .

A Journey Home and Overcoming Temptation

Randall Jensen 1:40:11

The next day I was in Estes Park after going up the big tops of Canyon Lada uphill , and I was making a camp and while I was doing that , a big rock smashed my thumb and it started swelling and it was . The pain was incredible and I ended up having to cut through my thumbnail so that it would release all the blood . But that temptation was pain . I just it wasn't a temptation , but it was just the things that we experienced , physical pain . The next day I was bicycling up an over Rocky Mountain National Park which goes up to 12,000 feet and when I got up to the top , I mean I was exhausted . And I get to the top and a summer storm hits and turns into snow . So here I am , the only thing I have is a sweatshirt , short pants , and I'm in a snow storm with wind blowing and lightning thunder , and it's snowing at 12,000 feet , and so that was physical . The temptation there , or the challenge , was just the physical elements that you have to battle against sometimes and then coming down .

Randall Jensen 1:41:25

I'm now making my way down and join the ride down , and I stopped at a rest stop and people were there feeding the animals and a guy came up to me and was talking to me what I was doing , looked at my bike and he says , hey , I've got this thing . I can sell you it If you ever have a flat tire . I said , no , I've got tools and stuff , it's okay . And I had already been 1400 miles or 1300 miles and hadn't had a problem . Well , I eventually got back on my bike and I started riding down and hadn't gone far before I realized I had a flat tire . So I pulled off the side , took everything off , took my tire off and was using all my tools to replace and put a new tube in . And as I looked with the cause of it was , I could see that there there had been a . Something had stabbed my tire right in the middle . And I just thought of that guy and I said , oh , look like he had an ice pick or something . And just then a car drives up and stops and here's this guy . He says oh , sorry to see you have a flat tire . He says would you like , can you use this now ? And I want . Every ounce of me wanted to just scream at him and yell at him and I wanted to punch him . I was so angry that I had to just say no , something's was saying don't give into your anger . And so instead I said it's okay , and he finally drove off .

Randall Jensen 1:42:57

Later that night I needed a place to stay during a storm and I met some people and they invited me to stay in their cabin . As I say , we got to the cabin just when the storm hit again . I think the Lord just kept watching out for me . But as I get in this cabin , I just put my stuff off to the side and we had dinner , and then then they started drinking and doing drugs and they're inviting me to do all this stuff . And I said no , thank you , no , thank you . And they kept inviting me and finally I said I just need to tell you I found out some things in my life . I said maybe before I would have joined you , but not anymore . I said please stop asking me , because I'm not going to , I'm not going to take any of this stuff . And again I felt something inside that was helping me .

Randall Jensen 1:43:48

Well then the trip continued across why ? Across Colorado , going towards the Utah border , and there was discouragement the roads going up and then down , and then up and then down , and discouragement being alone . But as I got to the cabin I was just like I'm going to go to the cabin and I'm going to go to the cabin . But as I got to vernal , it was it was Saturday night and I said I'm going to obey the Sabbath . But I didn't have any way to go to church . But I said I'm not going anywhere and I'm going to read the Book of Mormon all day for my Sabbath services . And so I camped outside of town and just spent all day observing the Sabbath and then continued to Duchain , a place where the road , the old road , went into the lake and they had built a bridge because they had built a reservoir there . And during the night a car came over , not paying attention to the signs , two guys talking , and all of a sudden they screech on their brakes and smash into the lake and they went , and then they backed out furiously and finally were able to get out , and I just thought there's a good example of staying on the path . And so then I realized that I was getting close to the end of my journey . I probably would have one more night .

Randall Jensen 1:45:15

And that day , as I was riding in the middle of nowhere , kind of going up towards Strawberry Reservoir , around a corner came this odd looking car and it was coming towards me and then I recognized it . I said , oh , that's the car of the guy that had been our Pied Piper , the guy from Colorado , and I couldn't believe I was seeing that car . And something inside said this is not a coincidence , warning , this is not a coincidence . And he saw me and I saw him and he pulled over , and so I pulled across the street and he came out and he said dude , what are you doing ? I said , nice to see you . And he was saying , hey , why don't you put your bike here and we can go . It's time to go , you can get away from your family . He says , just like we always talked about .

Randall Jensen 1:46:14

And I called him by name and I said I'm not going to do that . I said I'm going back to my family . And I said by the way , I just finished reading the Book of Mormon and I found out it's true , and you ought to find out for yourself too . And he looked at me and he said that's never going to happen . I said , I said you know , I'm not going to go with you . I says , and I won't go with you because where you're going , that's not where I'm going . I'm going back home and I'm going back to church and I'm going to get my life back to where it's supposed to be . And I said I would advise you to do the same thing . He said no , it was almost like he was afraid and he couldn't look me in the eye . He finally said okay , well , I'm leaving . And as he got in his car , I just stood there and I could see him in his rear view mirror and I saw him take his glasses off and kind of wipe his eye .

Randall Jensen 1:47:24

And I think you know , I don't know his story . I don't know what caused him to go over the cliff , but I think he was at a place that I don't know if he was able to get out of it . Maybe , maybe he could . I don't think , I don't know what when you reach a point that you can't come back . But I did read something from I think it's a little Holland , and this is something that over the years has meant a lot to me where he said however late you think you are , however many chances you think you have missed , however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don't have , or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled , I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love .

Randall Jensen 1:48:19

It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ's Atonement shines . Whether you are not yet of our faith or were with us once and have not returned , there is nothing , in either case , that you have done that cannot be undone . There is no problem which you cannot overcome . There is no dream that , in the unfolding of time and eternity , cannot yet be realized , even if you feel you are the lost and last laborer of the 11th hour , the Lord of the vineyard still stands beckoning Come boldly to the throne of grace and fall at the feet of the Holy One of Israel . Come and feast without money and without price at the table of the Lord . I truly believe that .

Randall Jensen 1:49:12

I believe that , no matter where we are , maybe some that hear this will be young people that are just trying to find their way and they haven't found a testimony yet , or they don't really think they can . Or maybe there are some that are hearing this that have fallen away from the church . You may have not been on a mission , it doesn't matter , but for whatever reason , one of the reasons I want to share this story is to tell you there is a way back . God lives . He is real and so is his son , jesus Christ , and he atoned for . Whatever it is you or I may have or yet do , if we sincerely have faith and repent and then exercise faith and obey commandments , obey covenants and make them central to our life and allow ourselves to be guided by the Holy Ghost . And this is a story that I've been telling about my journey home and what I experienced in the opposition . I truly believe the Holy Ghost was helping me . It was giving me powers far beyond anything . I had to resist these temptations .

Randall Jensen 1:50:29

The last night of my trip was in a campground above Heber and it was raining , and this was the only time in my 32 days and 1600 miles . It was the only night that I didn't find shelter and I was soaking wet that night and it rained all night and when I got up the next morning I thought well , the rain will stop . But it didn't . So I got on my bike , soaking wet , packed up and just rode down . And as I rode down I got below the rain and by the time I got to Heber it was warm , so I put all my stuff . I stopped behind a gas station and put all my stuff and laid it out , and the sun was hot enough that it was just steams of water coming up from everything as it was drying out , and I finally was able to get at least dry enough that I could feel semi-comfortable .

Randall Jensen 1:51:20

Making the trip past Heber , up through Park City , back onto I-80 , and then over Parley's Canyon . And when I got to the top of Parley's Canyon , that was my last hill to climb and I got off my bike and I looked back and I saw the thunderheads of summer , building up , and I just thought to myself I've been out there and I thought of everything that I had done , but most importantly , I thought of what I had found . I had found that I have a Heavenly Father that loves me . I found that I have a Savior that gave His life for me , and I found tangible proof in the Book of Mormon that it's true . And I knew that it was true and I knew whatever I had to go through , it was going to be worth it . And so I coasted down Parley's Canyon to my home in Holiday and my family had the door open and they welcomed me home and I got to meet with my bishop and he took me on one of the most wonderful processes of repentance that one could ever hope for . It was not easy , it was hard , but it was wonderful . It was wonderful because I knew it was worth it and I knew it was the right thing to do .

The Journey of Faith and Belief

Randall Jensen 1:52:48

And my ward welcomed me back , my family welcomed me back , and I found that later on , as an aside , as I prepared to go back to school , I had a class that was just beginning at the ? U and on the first day of class the professor said I'm going to give you an assignment and I want you to come back in the next class period ready to share this . He said I want you to identify one object that is the most precious thing in your life and I want you to tell us why it's the most precious thing . And I have no idea why he gave us that assignment . I don't even remember what the class was about , but I immediately knew what I would take . And so as we came back and people were getting up and they had one girl had a mascaras kit and said this is the most precious thing to me so I can do my makeup . And people had different things . Look , came my turn and I brought my backpack up and I stood at the podium and I reached in and I pulled out a book of Mormon and I said this is the most precious thing in my life , it's the Book of Mormon .

Randall Jensen 1:54:13

And immediately two guys in the back stood up and started yelling and said this is not right . This is not what this class is about . He cannot continue . They were just saying just shut him up . And several others joined in . I stood there like this . I didn't stop . I said well , if I didn't bring this and show it to you . I wouldn't be true to the assignment , I'm just doing what was asked .

Randall Jensen 1:54:41

So there started to be a big argument , with these guys yelling at me . The professor said wait a minute , let's ask the rest of the class what they think . And there was silence for a while and then , timidly , a few started saying , well , that was the assignment . And then others said , yeah , I think he should be able to . And then others said , no , I don't think that's right . There's supposed to be separation of church and state or whatever . I said well , I would be not true to this assignment if I did anything else . So the professor said well , let's just take a vote . And so I said how many people think he should be able to , how many think he should not , and it was about four to one in favor of he should be able to . So I was able to continue and explain why .

Randall Jensen 1:55:32

It was the most precious thing in my life , and I wasn't afraid , I wasn't nervous , it didn't bother me that people were yelling , because I knew it was true . In fact , I was happy that people were against it so that I could stand , stand up for what I now believed in , and it didn't bother me . I don't care what other people think , I knew it was true , and why not share it with the world ? Why not shout it from the house tops ? Well , as the .

Randall Jensen 1:55:59

As the I turned out , I was the last one for that period class period and so , as it ended , there was a huge discussion among a lot of people . And as I I got up to leave , a young lady came up to me and she said I just wanted to say thank you . She said when they gave that assignment , that's what I wanted to do . I wanted to share the Book of Mormon . But she said I was afraid of what other people would say or think or do . She says but you did it . And she says I'm not going to be afraid anymore and I just thought it was really wonderful to hear that .

Randall Jensen 1:56:36

And so , as I conclude , like I said earlier , it's true , it's simply true , and I'm sorry that I had to go through what I did to find it , but now that I did , I'm glad that I can have a testimony where I can say in English I know without a shadow of a doubt that the Book of Mormon is true , that God lives and his son , jesus Christ , did come to this earth and took upon himself flesh and stands at the head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , which is his true church . And I can say in Japanese shi totsu no uta gaimo naku kono mormon shō tokyōkai wa makoto no kyōkai koto akashi shimasu . And that just means I know without a shadow of a doubt that it's true , and I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ , amen , amen .

Scott Brandley 1:57:42

Thank you . Wow , yeah , what an inspirational story . That's incredible .

Larry Johnson 1:57:52

I loved it . I appreciate it yeah any thoughts Larry ?

Larry Johnson 1:57:57

I appreciate every part of that journey because it teaches us , without all those struggles that you went through , and I like how that during some very difficult times , the Lord was able to pierce the darkness and show into your soul and that was like all part of the journey and I wouldn't recommend that to anyone in terms of your journey and go on this road right . But all of us have that sort of journey in our own way . Thank you for sharing . I felt the spirit . I just appreciate it . It was well worth the time .

Randall Jensen 1:58:49

Thank you .

Scott Brandley 1:58:50

Yeah , my thought is , you know , god is in the details that we don't always see . You know , even from you going to Vietnam , and you know I mean every step of the way . I'm sure you've you out of . Anyone have probably seen that and I think we can . If we all look back on our lives , kind of what you were saying , larry , we'll see God in the details of our life .

Randall Jensen 1:59:21

And can I just add one thing ?

Scott Brandley 1:59:24

Yeah , go ahead .

Randall Jensen 1:59:27

Years later , after my wife and I were married , obviously we were living in Midland Michigan and I had a friend in our ward whose name was Don and he had also been in Vietnam , and every once in a while we would talk about our experiences . But one of the things that we said is you know , one of the things that we always missed was the kind of homecoming that a soldier coming home from war deserves . And we said we never got that . We just came back as an individual alone and feeling alone and isolated . And well , don was in the reserve unit in the Army in Midland Michigan and in 1990 , in the summer , they were called up during the first Gulf War , remember , there was a lot of people that were called up and his unit was called up , and so here he was , a Vietnam vet and he was now called to go back to war with this unit from Midland and we watched as they left as a unit together and there was all sorts of people on the sidewalk holding American flags and waving them as they left . Well , and then they were gone , and they were , and as you know that the war in Latin was very short , the actual war was 100 hours or something , but nobody knew what was going to happen . Well , after several months after that , they started deactivating units and sending them home and their unit was was finally said that they would be coming home on a certain day in April . And Midland , michigan , is just a little Midwest town , it's the . It's the headquarters of Dow Chemical , so there's about 40,000 people that live there , but it's it still has a real small town feel . And then it was announced that this unit was coming home and that they would be coming on their buses and that all their equipment was going to be coming on flatbed trucks or something . But they were going to be coming as a unit in buses and they were going to be arriving at a certain time .

Randall Jensen 2:01:42

Nobody made any plans or arrangements that just spontaneously thousands of people came to down little downtown Midland to be there . There must have been 20,000 people , half the community , the ones that weren't working . Everybody showed up and they just lined up down the street and when the buses finally arrived , the soldiers thought that they would just get off and meet their families and hug them and then they go home . They didn't know that they were going to form up into into their platoons and march down the street in this spontaneous parade , with thousands of people cheering them and waving American flags . Well , they marched out and they came down and we were there with our family and all of our kids were there and my son was on my shoulders . He was about three years old , two or three years old , and we finally saw them coming down and people just cheering and we had flags and we were waving them and there in the front rank of the first platoon coming down was Don McCormick , my friend and he was . He just happened to be on the side where we were and as he came down he looked over and we made eye contact and as they marched by he looked over and he winked and he said Welcome home , soldier . And I just broke down and was just sobbing and my kids looked at me and they said Dad , what's wrong ? And I said it just feels good to be home .

Randall Jensen 2:03:28

And right about that time some words came into my mind and I wrote , kind of my , the epitaph for this whole thing and I wrote these words and it's called the day I left for war , the day I went to war , the day I left for war you see , the light was in my eye A day of blue . The water too , and sunshine filled the sky . In months of battle , colors changed from bright to shades of night Till always black . Under attack and sweat . Throughout the fight , the blood and skin and bone of friends are mixed in with the dust , while sniper fire and cannon's ire destroy us as they must . And then the time for war was done . To home , I soon returned . The bands were mute and in salute . A school was set to burn my eyes once light were dimming as the sun had set by now . But then , so weak I could not speak to God , my soul did bow . The war was gone , all memories left as prayer was answered . Still , my spirit burned . The light returned , my savior on the hill , the day I went to war .

Larry Johnson 2:05:06

Beautiful Thanks .

Scott Brandley 2:05:10

Wow , randall , what a story man . Thank you so much for sharing it with us .

Randall Jensen 2:05:16

You're welcome . I appreciate the opportunity to share that and I just hope that , like I said , if there's young people that are struggling for a testimony , if there's people that have left and are trying to find their way back or don't even know they want to find their way back , and if there's veterans out there that are not able to overcome what they've experienced , there is a way and the answer is in Christ , and I absolutely know that , without a doubt , there is an answer and all the answers are in Christ .

Scott Brandley 2:05:52

Yeah , amen , yep , cool . Any last thoughts , larry , before you wrap up .

Larry Johnson 2:06:03

Well , I appreciate that . You appreciate your faith and strength in standing for what you believe is right . I love , I love . I don't believe it was a coincidence that you met that individual on that road and you wore your faith in testimony . I don't even know , it was very young . You stood up for what you knew was right and it's like the primary song you know , but the consequences follow .

Randall Jensen 2:06:47

Yeah .

Larry Johnson 2:06:50

Thanks .

Scott Brandley 2:06:54

Well , thanks again , randall , and thanks Larry for being on . Be my Co-host , appreciate it , and thank you everyone for watching . This has been an incredible podcast and please help us get the word out . Share Randall's story . Go , hit that share button , do your five-second missionary work . Let's share some light out there . Let's share Randall's story . It's an incredible , powerful story about the Book of Mormon and we need to get that out there because it is such a powerful book , it has so many truths and it's from God , and if any of you have a story that you'd like to share , go to Latter-dayLightscom and let's hear about it . Let's get you on the show . So , once again , randall , larry , thank you so much for being here and we will see you guys all next week .

Randall Jensen 2:07:52

Thank you so much . Scott and Larry Appreciate it .

Larry Johnson 2:07:55

Thank you , larry , take care .