"I am pleased to put into writing an account of a very choice experience I had several years ago relating to the value of the Sigma Gamma Chi experience.
"At the time, I was serving as a member of the Sunday School General Board and was on assignment to Southeast Asia. We were holding meetings in Djakarta, Indonesia. The missionaries had gathered for special missionary meetings and to attend some of the meetings we were conducting. In the course of my mingling with and greeting the missionaries, I noticed that a young missionary was wearing his Sigma Gamma Chi pin. I introduced myself and we talked about the experiences that he was having as a missionary. I asked him about the fraternity pin and chided him in a good-natured way about his continuing to wear that pin while he was serving his mission. He took my comments in good spirit until I pressed him a little too far. [Finally] he bristled just a little bit . . . and said, Don't make fun of that pin. That's the reason I'm on this mission.'"He then described in detail how he had arrived at Idaho State University as a freshman student, inactive in the Church and with no desire to change his status. He said it was the men of Sigma Gamma Chi and the idea of a fraternity experience which first began to awaken his interest in the gospel. He said, . . . I was not threatened by the invitation from Sigma Gamma Chi. As I sensed their interest in me as a person, as I began to sense that Sigma Gamma Chi was based on the scriptures and gospel principles, and as I began to see that activity in Sigma Gamma Chi carried with it the expectation of activity in the Church, I found myself putting my life in order and returning to activity. It was just a matter of time until the returned missionaries in Sigma Gamma Chi convinced me that I should serve a mission. And here I am.'
". . . I am convinced by many years of involvement in colleges and universities that there are many young men in the Church who need just such an invitation to return to activity. So long as Sigma Gamma Chi is directed by priesthood authority, remains in a supporting role to regular Church activities and responsibilities, and is given official and visible endorsement by the Church, it will continue to change lives for good, as it did in the case of the young man who I met in far off Djakarta."
