By studying the processes of aeronautical engineering while attending the U.S. Air Force Academy in the 1970s, Richard Searfoss was able to become an astronaut and fly space shuttles. At the same time, he said, he studied the processes of faith outlined in Moroni 10:4-5, and found the truth of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
"Truth is truth. There are different ways to come to truth and to understand truth," he said during a Church News interview at the Clark Planetarium in Salt Lake City. He was one of several astronauts and cosmonauts in town for the Association of Space Explorers' XIX Planetary Congress Oct. 9-15.
Currently a high priests group instructor in the Bear Valley Ward, Bakersfield California East Stake, Brother Searfoss said his home growing up was the Air Force. Pressed for a hometown, he says Portsmouth, N.H., where he attended high school. He was baptized on Aug. 14, 1976, while at the Air Force Academy.
In his academic studies, he often relied on the scientific method, he said. The method Moroni outlined for discovering the truth of the Book of Mormon was a different process involving faith. This young cadet who would someday command a mission on the space shuttle Columbia saw no conflict between the two processes, each leading him to desired results.
He had some exposure to the Church growing up, he acknowledged. The Portsmouth meetinghouse was across the street from his high school, though he said he never made a connection between the name on the building — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — and the Mormons. Later, when his family lived in Omaha, Neb., they visited Winter Quarters where he learned about the Mormons' pioneering experience.
When he got to the Air Force Academy, fellow cadets talked to him about the Church. He was invited to attend the Saturday evening session of a stake conference. The second or third speaker he heard was Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve. Brother Searfoss called him "the most incredibly eloquent, yet not over-my-head speaker. It was just phenomenal." While he intended to study for finals on Sunday, he couldn't resist returning to the conference to hear Elder Maxwell again. ("I did just fine on the finals," he added.)
While fellowshipped by other members, he read and prayed about the Book of Mormon, took the discussions and asked the missionaries countless questions.
"It took a while to go through the process to get a testimony, but the process was very straightforward," he said.
"I was not actively searching for anything, but I was not particularly happy about where I was in my life," he continued. "I was maybe just a little disillusioned in general, so I would say I was ready to hear the gospel."
During the college years is a great time to approach students about the Church, he said. It is a time when they "are on a quest for knowledge and are figuring out where they fit in the universe."
After graduating first in his class at the academy, he did graduate work at Cal Tech in Pasadena, Calif., on a National Science Foundation Fellowship. While there, he met Julie McGuire, who was on her summer break from BYU. He was impressed with her, partly because she knew what a prestigious school Cal Tech was. They were engaged after two months. They are the parents of three children.
Being a member of the Church enhanced his career as an astronaut, he said.
Orbiting the earth in a space shuttle (he had three missions including as the pilot on Atlantis and Columbia) "reinforced my beliefs as a Latter-day Saint," he reflected. "It's very clear to me that this planet was not an accident. The beauty is so sublime. It is so perfectly balanced. It is so much a jewel set out in the blackness of space, set there for the human family by a loving Father in Heaven."
Now retired from the U.S. Air Force and as an astronaut, he is heavily involved in development of "space tourism." He is a test pilot in projects that he hopes will someday allow him to fly paying passengers to the edge of space. He expects that could realistically happen in the next few years. Then it will be possible for many people to see the curvature of the earth, the thin blue line that is the planet's atmosphere and experience weightlessness. Some of the same things he has found so spiritually enlightening.
E-mail to: ghill@desnews.com
