Within a period of about 10 days in September and October 2024, two hurricanes made landfall back-to-back in the southeastern United States. Since then, more than 20,000 volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have donated their time to provide relief to thousands of impacted families in the area.
In the process, they have seen miracles, witnessed the power of prayer and experienced joy because of this Christ-centered service.
In this episode of the Church News podcast, reporter Mary Richards interviews Elder Quinn S. Millington, an Area Seventy in the Church’s North America Southeast Area, who serves as head of the Area Disaster Response Committee.
Listen to this episode of the Church News podcast on Apple Podcasts, Amazon, Spotify, bookshelf PLUS, YouTube or wherever you get podcasts.
Transcript:
Elder Quinn S. Millington: I don’t know that I have ever been as grateful as I am today for what I have witnessed and how we can administer relief so quickly and so thoroughly. And to see this structure come together in such a way that thousands are administering relief to a person or maybe a family. And when you look at it, you say to yourself, “This is truly the gospel in action.” This has to be the Lord’s work and the ministering that occurs. My faith in Jesus Christ is fortified. My hope in humanity is lifted. And I can see what it looks like to “let God prevail,” to “think celestial,” to have a change of heart continually. And I’m reminded once again that we are led today by prophets, seers and revelators.
1:03
Jon Ryan Jensen: This is Jon Ryan Jensen, editor of the Church News. Welcome to the Church News podcast. Today, we are taking you on a journey of connection as we discuss news and events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
1:19
Mary Richards: Within about a 10-day period in September and October 2024, two hurricanes made landfall back to back in the southeast United States. Ever since, more than 20,000 volunteers from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have donated their time to provide relief at thousands of impacted homes in the area. In the process, they have seen miracles, witnessed the power of prayer and, yes, even experienced joy because of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
This is Mary Richards, a Church News reporter. I’m guest hosting today, and I’m grateful to welcome Elder Quinn S. Millington, an Area Seventy in the Church’s North America Southeast Area, who serves as head of the Area Disaster Response Committee.
Elder Millington, thank you for your time.
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Good morning. It’s good to be with you.
2:08
Mary Richards: As the head of the Area Disaster Response Committee, what does that entail? What exactly is your role?
Elder Quinn S. Millington: You know, I’ve been asked that question before, and as I’ve thought about it, it occurs to me that the thing that I’m trying to do is connect the resources of the Church, through ecclesiastical lines, and bring those resources in correspondence with keys in such a way that we administer to relief to those who have been impacted by a storm. So, if I was to elaborate on that, it would be working closely with our welfare and self-reliance managers and with our director of temporal affairs, and through the other Area Seventies, through this beautiful line that the Lord has already established. We work with these Area Seventies, who in turn work with their stake presidents, who in turn work with their leadership to organize members in such a way that they go to the right place to serve. And my work is to make sure that we’ve got both sides of this coming together in such a way that we have a meaningful response and that the children of the Lord are served through that effort.
3:19
Mary Richards: I’ve heard you say that you’re accustomed to storms in the south. You’re in Alabama, but tell me about the southeast area and the U.S. states it covers. And some of that, it feels unfortunate to say, but accustomed to storms in that area.
Elder Quinn S. Millington: We are accustomed to storms. We’ve got the Atlantic. We’ve got the Gulf Coast. Most of the storms come through the Gulf Coast. We have several states that border the Gulf Coast, including Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, all in the Gulf Coast area. And of course, we’ve got many states that go north: South Carolina, North Carolina, a little bit of Virginia, a little bit of Indiana, goes across Kentucky and Tennessee, and includes a little bit of Missouri and Arkansas. And I think I’ve just about included all of them with that swath right there that are included in the North America Southeast.
And at one point or another, almost every part of this area is affected with the storm. It’s not media worthy, really, but we did have a storm earlier this week, some strong winds in Arkansas, and they were handling that as a local stake; it’s already been taken care of. So there’s a lot of things happening that nobody ever hears about or knows about. We just jump in, do the work. Then there are the big ones that everybody hears about. And of course, we had two of them this year, almost within 10 days of each other.
4:44
Mary Richards: Those two storms, those hurricanes, Helene and Milton, coming pretty much back to back. What was that like?
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Well, we knew that Helene was coming. We were prepared for that, and we’ve got a well-oiled machine. I say that there’s always room for improvement. So, somebody listening is going to be well aware of our shortcomings. And so I want to hasten to add that despite the good that we do, and as well as it works, we’re acutely aware of some of the things that we need to do better.
But the systems that we do have in place work well. And let me just give you a little bit of an idea what this looks like. We know the storm is coming. We can follow the track. We have experts on our team that are skilled with weather, and they go beyond what you can get from the National Hurricane service. They’re looking at data, and they’re coaching us. Of course, they always have to say, “Well, there’s a reasonable degree of probability in this,” and so we have to kind of take some of that with a grain of salt. But we pretty much know where it’s going to go. And so well before that storm ever comes in, we’re thinking about, “Where are the missionaries going?”
So, we’ve got Elder John D. Amos, who is also an Area Seventy and works with me on this. He’s a former mission president. I’ve never been a mission president, so I said, “Elder Amos, I don’t speak mission president language. You do. I want you to visit with these mission presidents.” He was a mission president in Louisiana. He went through four hurricanes as a mission president. He knows how to respond to this. He’s got it down. So, he calls and works with the mission president to make sure that we’ve got missionaries well out of harm’s way. We move them wherever we need to to make sure that they’re safe. We want mission presidents to feel absolutely comfortable that everything’s been done. And we especially want the moms and dads of missionaries to never worry. If we do this right, moms and dads are like, “That’s all good. We know where they are. Everything’s fine.”
And so that happens about 48 to 72 hours ahead of landfall. At the same time, we’re also looking at, “Where are we going to launch an immediate response?” If we know that it’s along a coastline, we expect that the first few days are going to be difficult to access. We’re going to be a storm surge. Sometimes these are 12- and 15-feet high. So if you’d imagine, 15 feet of water moving into and across a community that is along the edge of the Gulf Coast, and it just kind of drowns everything. It floods everything. And we know we can’t get in there right away, but we also know that further inland, we’re going to have a lot of tree damage. And so we watch this carefully, and we begin saying, “All right, where do we initiate a response so we can have an impact?”
7:36
We’ve worked hard with stake presidents and Area Seventies so that their welfare and self-reliance managers are just unbelievable. I cannot say enough good about them, because they are so talented when it comes to assessing what’s happened. And between local leadership and our welfare and self-reliance managers, we get a really good picture of what’s happening very, very fast. And so we know the communities that we can go into. We know the communities where we’re going to have to wait because the flooding is too extreme. They’re still waiting for the utilities and for the civil works to get things cleaned up to a point where we can safely enter.
And so they’re monitoring that very carefully. But in the meantime, we’ve already had trucks staged and ready to go in that have got the supplies that we’re going to need to be able to respond to a storm. And we may not be right on that Gulf Coast week one because of flooding and just the inability to get in there, but we’ll be working somewhere along there week one. We’ll be doing some cleaning out of houses — we call that a muck out because they’re full of muck, and we’re getting the muck out — drywall, insulation, carpet. Unfortunately, it’s many of their belongings are just taken out and thrown on the side of the street.
So, we’ll start some of that on what we call week zero. By week one, really, I guess we should call it, we know more about what’s happened. We’ve got a good picture, and at that point we really know, “Where do we need to be? Where do we need to launch a concerted effort?” So week zero, it’s a little bit limited, because we know that the area that was impacted, we’re still trying to assess, and we’ll bring in a few stakes, maybe just a handful in the area that we know can help and are very talented at going into these difficult situations immediately and responding. And so the space between week zero and week one, that’s when we really begin to marshal the resources of the Church. And when I say resources, we’re talking about things that come from the bishops’ storehouse, as well as working through the keys to organize the members to come together to respond.
The problem with those back-to-back hurricanes is that we didn’t really hardly even get a response launched, and we got hit again. So there was a lot of words to get to the answer, to answer the question that you asked. But what was it like? It was hard, and everybody was working, and then all of a sudden, the realization is, “We’re going to have another storm.”
10:18
Now, I’ll tell you, I was visiting with Daniel Amato, Elder Amato — who’s another Area Seventy, and he’s responsible for the Fort Lauderdale and Orlando coordinating councils. And I called him, and we were kind of working through some of the mechanics of “How do we get people to respond?” And we realized that this other storm was coming, and we were in the middle of a cleanup, and so we’re sending people home. “Go home. Storm’s going to be there on Tuesday. Go home now and get ready for the storm.” So they got there on Saturday, it became clear where the storm was going to go, so Sunday we canceled the work, sent everybody back home. “Go put your houses in order, and get ready for another storm.”
And I’m on the phone with Elder Amato, and he said, “I’m going to ask the members to fast and pray.” And it was a Category 5, and that storm is picking up a lot of energy. And as it approached, it dropped to a Category 3 and then came on land. And as we got talking with our weather experts after, one weather expert said, “Yeah, we saw something that we don’t see very often happened.” And he had all these technical terms, but basically, in my mind, I was picturing this cold air that kind of came in and somehow interrupted all of this hot air and moisture and created some kind of sheer effect. And the outer wall began to collapse, and the energy in the storm dissipated.
Mary Richards: Wow.
11:44
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Now, how about that for a miracle? You’ve got an Area Seventy that just says, “I think I’m going to ask everybody to fast and pray,” and he sends this message out through the stake presidents, and as the storm approaches landfall, it goes from a Category 5 to a Category 3. Now, a lot of people may say, “Well, it was kind of looking like it might diminish a little bit anyway,” but it was looking like a strong Category 4 hitting landfall, then all of a sudden, it, poof, becomes a Category 3. And what could have been a 12- to 15-foot storm surge drops to a 6- or 8-foot storm surge. And so I looked at that, and those of us who were aware of what was happening looked at that, and said, “I know that prayer works. No doubt. Absolutely, prayer works.”
So, that was a little snippet of back-to-back experience. These poor mission presidents, you call them up, and you move all the missionaries around, and then 10 days later you call the same mission president, and you say, “President, we’ve got to do it again.” And he’s like, “Are we ever going to go back and start teaching the gospel?” We’ve had the missionaries, by the time this is over, displaced for a month, and it was a little frustrating for them. But there were definitely some miracles that came from this. So, back to back was difficult.
12:53
Mary Richards: You know, one of the first questions we always get in at Church News after storms is, “How are the missionaries?” And then the second question we usually get is, “What can I do to help?”
So, tell me; let’s walk through that, because sometimes people may want to be helpful who aren’t living in the area, those who live far away, but what are the things that are more helpful than others?
13:15
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Well, we had a lot of people — I was in Asheville, North Carolina, last weekend, and we had a group of individuals from Arizona that came. We had some folks from New York that just showed up. They looked like a mother with her son, and they said, “We just had some time. We thought we’d come down and help.” So we put them with another team of people. I mean, they just kind of came wearing jeans and boots and “Put us to work wherever you can.” And so it’s best if we put them with people that know what the procedures are and how to be safe and where to go. And so we embedded them. The same thing, the folks from Arizona brought heavy equipment, so we gave them a specific assignment.
But it’s better if — we love having people come and help, but it’s difficult to get them embedded with a team where we know that they’re going to be safe and understand what the procedures are that need to be followed. The better thing to do, and as much as people desperately want to donate something, it’s not always the best solution. One of the secondary disasters that happened in Asheville was they had truckload after truckload after truckload of things that were being delivered and no place to put it.
Now, fortunately, there was a guy up there that had a massive warehouse — he had just built it; it looks like one of those big Amazon warehouses — and he worked with the county commission. I don’t know his name. I wish I did; I’d love to call it out. But he worked with county commissioners, and he said, “I’ll let you have this place for three months to sort all of this out. And so I walked in, and it was completely full, end to end, with pallets of goods that had been donated. The problem is you look at a pallet, and you’ve got toothbrushes and toothpaste, dog food and cat food and diapers of every kind, and it had to be pulled apart, inventoried and put with its likeness, so you’ve got all the diapers in one place. Otherwise it’s just all in there, and it’s difficult to manage.
And so kind of on a secondary situation is this other little emergency that came over. “What do we do with all these truckloads of things that are showing up and they’re backed up down the road?” That’s not always the best solution. What I always tell everybody is: If you want to participate, if you want to help, pay more fast offerings, make a humanitarian donation, maybe earmark it for storm cleanup and storm relief efforts, because those are easier to manage, and the Church has already got these wonderful relationships with all of these NGOs and can help move that money in a very constructive and meaningful way so that these organizations that are already positioned to deliver the relief can effectively deliver the relief. That’s the very best way to do it.
15:54
Mary Richards: Yeah. The Church works so well on the ground, on the local level, with trusted community organizations having had already built those relationships too, right? Yes.
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Yes. They’re already there.
Mary Richards: And what’s the role of JustServe as well? I understand that JustServe.org, the website and platform where organizations can put their volunteer needs, and volunteers can find something around them. Tell me about that in this storm relief and response.
16:21
Elder Quinn S. Millington: During the storm, it’s not as useful, because the organization of the relief effort, the work effort itself, is coordinated through ecclesiastical lines. But there are these peripheral activities that are occurring. For example, pulling apart all of these pallet loads of goods that are delivered into a warehouse, that becomes a JustServe opportunity right there. So it’s not the actual cleanup itself, it’s, “We’ve got all of this food that has been delivered to a food bank, but we don’t have enough workers in the food bank to be able to hand the food out.” That’s a JustServe opportunity.
And I’m telling you, I wish you could see the communications directors for the stakes and for the coordinating councils as they come together. It is amazing to see what they do. You walk through these command centers, and they’re talking to each other about all the stuff that they’ve run into, and they’re creating these wonderful opportunities. And a lot of them are just like that, a JustServe moment, where an organization, they stumbled across an organization that is struggling to get the support and help that it needs. And they said, “Well, maybe we can help. What if we were to put this on our platform and make it available to the entire community?” And they love it. They’re excited about it. And those efforts live well beyond the work that we’re doing in the actual cleanup.
17:36
Mary Richards: I want to go back to this topic of prayer again. I’ve been thinking about that, about the power of prayer. And did that continue, then? I believe I have heard stories about those who have been dispatched out to then go respond to the community and help families muck out their homes, like you said, and things like that.
Prayer is a part of that process as well, after?
17:58
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Well, prayer is a process before, during and after. Let me elaborate on something, if I can. And I’m going to get emotional. As of last week, we’ve had over 20,000 — 20,509 volunteers. You think about that many people, they’re not skilled in this. They’re coming from every walk of life. And we’ve had a few accidents. But when you have that many people working in that many different harsh environments, and to have so little happen to them, you have to say to yourself, “There’s only one explanation for this, and that is the hand of the Lord.” I am absolutely convinced.
I think that the angels in heaven must say to themselves, “Great, another storm. We’re going to be so busy keeping all of these mortals out of harm’s way.” And then they look around, and they say, “Oh, we’ve got all these people that are coming to help. How do we keep them safe?” That’s partly in jest, but there’s probably some truth to it too. And the reality is that we’re praying. The people that need the help are praying. We’re praying to find the people that need the help. And you can see very quickly why in 2 Nephi 32, we’re taught that the adversary “teacheth not a man to pray.” He doesn’t want us uniting in Christ for a common good. And yet, that’s the very thing that begins to happen in these storms.
We come together in Christ, in faith, offering up our hearts to God in the name of Jesus Christ, asking for guidance to find the people that need to be helped, and for those people that have been affected to be able to withstand and endure this challenge and this trial, for us to be able to be put in the right place at the right time. And again and again and again, we see incredible miracles. I can share one with you, if you’d like. I could go on for hours on the miracles, because they’re a lot of fun. You want me to share one with you?
Mary Richards: Please.
20:06
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Well, last weekend — and this came from one of the workers, was in Asheville working, so last weekend — I get a phone call. I’m with the stake president, President [Kyle S.] Gillett is the stake president in Asheville, North Carolina. What a caring and compassionate man. And he’s a medical trauma therapist. Just think about that for just a minute. When he got called, Elder Ahmad S. Corbitt was there when he was called, and Elder Corbitt was there two weeks ago, helping with the cleanup, that effort. But here we’ve got the stake president. He’s got 11 months of experience under his belt. Think about that. I’ve thought about where I was at 11 months as a stake president, and I’m thinking, “I don’t think I would have been ready for this.” But he shouldered this so beautifully.
We’re out ministering, and we get a phone call, and one of his bishops is in ICU. What in the world happened? Well, he had a heart attack. But here’s the story. This bishop, he’s on his way to do a project, and the work order is an hour and a half outside of town. And as he’s driving down the road, he sees a road sign, and he says, “Hey, I’ve got one of my work orders is down this road. Let’s go check it out.” Well, he gets there, he works for 20 or 30 minutes, and he’s not feeling good. He’s said, “Well, I gave blood a couple days ago. Maybe I’m just not recovered” and puts the saw down.
Well, they go to the next work order, and he just sits in the truck, he says, “I don’t feel good.” And the whole time he has this impression, “Go to the urgent care.” So he looks it up on his phone, there’s one 3 miles away, drives to the urgent care. Lo and behold, they’ve got an EKG machine to hook him up, and they said, “We don’t like this.” Next thing you know, he’s in an ambulance on his way to the major hospital. Well, the major hospital has just recruited, as I’m told, the story goes that it had just recruited one of the foremost interventional cardiologists. And guess who did the surgery?
And so the conclusion was: If he had been home, he probably would have been further away from a hospital that had this kind of quality care, that the outcome could have been much different. And he listened to a prompting. He was on a service project, and the Lord took care of him from there. He said, “Turn, go down this road. Check this property out.” That put him just a couple of miles away from an urgent care that happened to have an EKG, got into a hospital that had this renowned cardiologist, and within two hours of the event starting, he was lying in ICU watching football.
Mary Richards: Wow. And recovering.
22:40
Elder Quinn S. Millington: And recovering. And so we went and visited with him. And we all kind of cracked a few jokes about it, but the reality is when you look at that, you say to yourself, “There’s no other explanation for this other than the hand of the Lord was involved.” And when you go on these assignments and you drive around town, I am always stunned.
I’ll see these houses, and yes we have some houses where trees fall on them, but given the magnitude of the destruction, the number of trees that fall in houses that actually result in injury is incredibly small. And you look at the direction the wind is blowing, and you say to yourself, “Well, how come some of these trees didn’t fall like all the other trees fell?” The only explanation that I can come up with is the hand of the Lord was involved.
And so that’s why I kind of chuckle and say to myself, “The angels in heaven probably look at each other and say, ‘Well, we’ve got another storm, everybody. No breaks here for the next month. We’re going to be really busy when we take care of these mortals.”
23:41
Mary Richards: I think about President Russell M. Nelson’s teachings to seek and expect miracles. And it might be hard for those listening to think, “Where’s the miracle with two storms back to back, death and destruction? But when you look for those miracles, you are seeing them.
23:57
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Well, maybe the biggest miracle is how a community comes together. Maybe the biggest miracle is when a mayor shows up at one of our command centers and is so awestruck by 1,300 people coming through there to go out and serve in his community that He has to grab his phone and he records the whole thing and throws it on Facebook and then shows up in sacrament meeting the next morning, where the stake president invites him to come on up and say a few words, and he can’t even begin to thank everybody for what they have done in his community. That’s a miracle.
And so the stake president is standing there thinking, “We never would have touched this many people. There’s no way we could have gotten this kind of exposure in years and years and years were it not for this.” And so there’s a gratitude that sort of emerges from this. At the same time that you see this destruction and heartache, there’s also this joy that we can experience because of the wonderful things that are coming out of it. It’s beautiful. And the people, they learned how to “let God prevail.” They learned how to “think celestial.” We can capture all these sound bites from President Nelson and put them in there.
And people that maybe haven’t been in sacrament meeting for a long time, you call them up, and you say, “We’re going to go clean up. Do you want to come?” And they say, “Yeah, I’ll go with you.” And they get down there, and by the end of the weekend, they’re like, “I’ve got to come back to Church.” So now you’ve got repentance worked into it as well. As people change their hearts, they go out there, they serve, they work, and their hearts are changed because of what they do and what they see. The Spirit works on them.
You go up to a home, and there’s no hope, and they say to themselves, “We had no idea how we would even begin to respond to this.” And then you showed up, and you cleaned our yard, and we have hope. Can we pray together?” And so you see these pictures of all of these people that are just dirty and messy, holding hands with a little homeowner, praying. I think that God is happy when He sees that. And I think we exemplify Jesus Christ when we do that.
26:17
Mary Richards: This is truly the Savior’s relief, isn’t it?
Elder Quinn S. Millington: It is. It is.
Mary Richards: It makes me think of our Relief Society General President Camille N. Johnson and her beautiful teachings that as we bring the Savior’s relief to others, we seek to help our neighbors in need, lift the hand which hangs down. As we bring that relief to others, we then find our own relief in Him as well.
Elder Quinn S. Millington: I would second that and say, “Amen.” We do that in the south; we say amen. And that would definitely be an amen. I think that we would agree with that, and I think all of our religious friends in our communities would absolutely agree with that and say, “Amen.”
27:02
Mary Richards: What are some more of the stories that will stay with you after the response to these two storms back to back?
Elder Quinn S. Millington: I think that some of the things that stick with me the most is the miracle of faith that I see exemplified by the willingness of so many to give up and just give up a weekend and go serve. That is an absolute miracle, and I see so much faith in their willingness to just go.
This is a story that was from several years ago, but I feel like I need to share this as a way of showing how this works. And I’ll try and make it really quick. In 2016, there were some significant floods in Louisiana, and a team in South Carolina was on their way back. They had been delayed — they just did one more project, they were delayed, they’re coming back to South Carolina. And I live in Montgomery, Alabama, and they asked if they could just stop over for the night, and we invited them into our home.
The funny part of this is that on Saturday, my wife had gone to the farmers market, and I’m absolutely convinced that she alone, I think, keeps the farmers market alive, based on what I see come home every week. But she came home, and she had these two big trays of barbecue, huge, potato salad and beans. And I said, “What is that for?” It was Labor Day weekend, and I thought she had something planned. She goes, “I don’t know. I just thought I needed it.” And I just scratched my head and thought, “All right, we’ve kept the farmers market propped up again.”
And Sunday afternoon, we get this phone call, and here’s a team from Greenville headed back. And they stop, and they get to our house about 11 o’clock at night. We invite them in. Everybody gets a shower, we put them down, we feed them. Early the next morning, they’re on their way. What they didn’t know is that in our house at that time was a family that was relocating from San Antonio to Montgomery, a family that had not yet embraced the gospel of Jesus Christ, a family that was reading the scriptures with us every night because they were in our home, but a family that just hadn’t quite got there yet.
29:10
And so as everybody goes to bed, this young brother is standing there in the foyer, and he looks at me, and he goes, “What is wrong with you people? These folks come in, you’ve never seen them, and you invite them into your house, you feed them, you put them down. They’re all bruised up, they’re sunburned, they’re hurt, their arms are aching, and they’re happy. What is wrong with you people?”
And that impact that those guys in South Carolina had on him was enough to make him pause and say, “I’ve got to figure this out better.” And it was one of the things that helped lead him toward conversion. And now, when we get a storm, he’s the first one to call me and says, “My chainsaw is ready. Are we going? Are we going? Are we going?” So he’s ready to go. He’s now become one of the crazies. That was in 2016. So, for eight years, I have thought, “I wish I could tell these good folks in Greenville what they did.”
Well, three weeks ago, I was able to go back to Greenville. And in sacrament meeting on early Sunday morning — so we had a 7:30 sacrament meeting — and I stood up, and I shared this little story, and I said, “I just wonder if anybody here happens to remember that.” And there were a few hands that went up, including the stake president. I look behind me, and there’s the stake president with his hand up, and I said, “We need to talk.” And I shared with them the other part of the story.
It was beautiful to be able to see this thing come full circle. Now, again, that was kind of a long story, but the reality is that’s just one instance of many instances just like this, where somebody says to a friend, “Come with us,” and by the end of the weekend, they’re like, “I think I need to know more about what you’re doing and who you are.”
30:55
Mary Richards: So, because he wanted to find more, and now he does volunteer, was he baptized?
Elder Quinn S. Millington: Yeah, he was. So, the story continues, and it’s just a beautiful story. We read the scriptures, we were in the Book of Mormon at the time, and he wouldn’t read. His wife started reading with us. He would just sit there on the couch. I thought he was asleep, because he would always sit there with his eyes closed. And then one night, not long after this experience with the guys from Greenville, I get a phone call. It’s about 11 or 11:30 at night, and I look at the phone, and he’s calling me from the other end of the house. And he says, “We need to talk.” I said, “OK.”
So I met him out in the family room, and he sat there staring at me for a long time, and he finally goes, “Why do I feel better in your house than I do in my house? What’s the difference? Is it this book that we’re reading? Is it this Christ that you speak of? Why is it different?” And he was ready to learn. And we begin to have these beautiful conversations. We got the missionaries involved.
And kind of a funny side note, he was going back and forth between Montgomery and San Antonio, and he happened to be in San Antonio on a weekend, and a couple of sister missionaries walked by, and he just watched them walk by, and they got down the street. And then he ran down and got them, and he said, “I have a question. Why did you walk by me and not stop to talk?” Now how about that for a sobering question for a couple of missionaries? Well, then they begin to understand that he was actually studying the gospel in our home. And it was a long process, but beautiful to be able to baptize that family and, a year later, be in the temple with them as they were sealed together and their two little girls sealed to them.
And we still, we’re very close. We don’t live in the same city anymore, but he’s in Alabama still, and so when there’s a storm, he’ll call me up, and he’ll say, “Are we going? Are we going? I’ve got a skid steer, and I’ve got a chainsaw. I’m ready to go.” And he’s ready to go get after it.
32:59
Mary Richards: He witnessed others keeping their covenants, and it led him to make covenants with the Lord as well.
33:05
Elder Quinn S. Millington: It did. And the thing was, I think the real thing that happened is he felt something different. And as he began to feel something different, these stirrings in his soul, he realized, “I need to change.” And then when he went and actually did the work, he realized, “There’s a lot more to this.” I can feel that same beautiful feeling when I’m down here working, and it’s joyful. It brings me joy to go do this. And now he understands why individuals come back, they’re dirty and they’re bruised and they’re sunburned and happy; it’s because they were on the Lord’s errand.
Not only have they seen us get our faith dirty by going out and working — and by the way, “getting your faith dirty,” I just borrowed that from a Baptist minister friend of mine. That’s his words, not mine. As a Baptist minister friend of mine who says, “We’ve got to get our faith dirty.” And so they go out and get their faith dirty, and then they come back, and they’re curious. They need to know more. They want to know more. They felt something. And when we’re in the service of our fellow man, we’re in the service of our God. And when we do that, the Spirit is poured out in abundance upon us in some remarkable and wonderful ways.
And so, again, we see this good. And the other day, I was reading through an article that was getting ready to go to, actually, to the Church News. And so we were walking through it, reading through it, just to make sure that the statistics lined up. We wanted to make sure we’ve got it right. And I was reading through there. And attached to that were several pictures, and this will take me back to where I started just a minute ago. I was looking at those pictures, and so many people were working and dirty and covered in sweat and dirt and mud and sawdust and happy. And I just thought, “This is incredible to see how individuals exercising even a “particle of faith” say, ‘I’m going to give up this weekend, and I’m going to go serve somebody else.’”
And in many instances, we’ve got stakes that have sent people two and three times to go do this. Which I had a total of 96 stakes that have been called on to come and help. So, those 20,000 volunteers I mentioned a minute ago — and that doesn’t include what’s going to happen this weekend — come from 96 different stakes. And it’s just amazing. I looked at those pictures, and I just sobbed because I sat there, and I looked at it, and I said, “This is the miracle. I’m looking at it.” All of these people going out and serving and doing something that’s so far outside of themselves, many of them at great personal sacrifice, to go do this. And they come back changed. You can’t go do this and come back and not be changed. You’re changed.
And you sit with people who have been impacted by these storms, and they say things like, “Well, it could have been so much worse. We’re so grateful.” And you say to yourself, “I’m looking at your house. It’s been ripped to pieces. We’ve tore everything out of here. All your belongings are out there on the curb.” And they say, “We’re so grateful.” Isn’t that amazing? And many of them, though not members of our Church, actually do have that long view and that long hope in Christ. And we can have these beautiful conversations about our Savior and Redeemer together, standing in a yard, covered in dirt. It’s just beautiful to be able to do that.
36:41
Mary Richards: Wow, that is so beautiful. That, I think, leads perfectly into the last question. At the Church News podcast, we do let our guests have the last word, and we like to ask them, “What do you know now?” Elder Millington, what do you know now?
36:57
Elder Quinn S. Millington: I know that God loves His children. I know that He knows me. I know that He knows you. I know that He knows all of us. And if we’re sensitive to those promptings and we get out and start doing something, He puts us, those who need and those who can give, He puts us in the right place at the right time together in such a way that both are edified and both are lifted. It is a beautiful thing.
I think the one thing that’s probably more evident to me now more than before is how wonderful and beautiful the Lord’s structure or organization is. I started off by saying that my job is to bring the resources of the Church together with ecclesiastical keys. Let’s bring those together to administer relief. And I was absolutely amazed at how quickly some of these things came together.
And when you reach out to another Area Seventy and say, “Hey, we need these stakes to step up,” and they call back and they say, “You forgot one. We’ve got one stake president, you didn’t include, and he’s offended.” And you say, “Well, can we bring him next week? We’ve kind of got enough for this week.” He said, “No, they want to come this week.” “All right, we’ll figure it out. We’ll make it work.” And they’re eager to go, and they’re eager to lead, and they’re eager to organize. And so from this position, it’s just been absolutely gratifying, and sometimes overwhelming, as I see these incredible stake presidents exercising keys to bring their people together in a constructive and meaningful and spiritual fashion to administer relief.
38:39
And on the other side, we’ve got the resources showing up at the same time and in the same place to offer assistance. And I’ve never been in a position to see how beautifully the Lord’s structure comes together to administer this relief. And these leaders are just absolutely amazing, absolutely amazing to see.
So, as I’ve watched this, I mentioned a minute ago that I have had my faith fortified and strengthened yet again. I’ve known for a long time that this is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But I don’t know that I have ever been as grateful as I am today for what I have witnessed and how we can administer relief so quickly and so thoroughly. And to see this structure come together in such a way that thousands are administering relief to ones and twos and threes, sometimes fours, but this beautiful one-on-one relationship, as they go to a home and administer relief to a person or maybe a family, this beautiful one-to-one interaction. And when you look at it, you say to yourself, “This is truly the gospel in action.”
And my faith has been fortified as I have watched this. I have been humbled as I have gone about my responsibilities. And there’s a moment where you say to yourself, “OK, here we go. Is anything going to happen?” And then when you put the work in action, and you send out those first assignments, and you’re praying in your heart, “Heavenly Father, please help this to work out right,” and then thousands show up because a few of us came together and organized it and said, “This is how it needs to go,” and then thousands responded. And you say to yourself, “This has to be the Lord’s work.” I haven’t got any other explanation for what we see come together and how we see it happen, and the ministering that occurs.
My faith in Jesus Christ is fortified. My hope in humanity is lifted. And I can see what it looks like to “let God prevail,” to “think celestial,” to have a change of heart continually. And I’m reminded once again that we are led today by prophets, seers and revelators. This is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Of that, I bear my witness in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
41:20
Jon Ryan Jensen: Thank you for listening to the Church News podcast. I’m your host, Church News editor Jon Ryan Jensen. I hope you learned something today about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and had your faith in the Savior increase by looking through the Church News window as a living record of the Restoration. Please subscribe, rate and review this podcast so it can be accessible to more people. And if you enjoyed the messages we shared today, please share the podcast with others. Thanks to our guests; to my producer, KellieAnn Halvorsen; and to others who make this podcast possible. Join us every week for a new episode. Find us on your favorite podcasting channels or with other news and updates about the Church on TheChurchNews.com or on the Church News app.
