NEWS - MIRACLES SAVED MORMON MISSIONARY MAULED BY LIONS, FATHER SAYS

Miracles saved Mormon missionary mauled by lions, father says

July 12, 2011

By Jared Page, Deseret News
GUATEMALA CITY, Guatemala — Alan Oakey said he believes in miracles.
Now more than ever.

Oakey’s 20-year-old son, Paul, is recovering in a Guatemalan hospital after being mauled by two lions Monday at a zoo.

Elder Paul Richard Oakey, of St. George, has been serving the past 19 months as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Guatemala City South Mission.

On his preparation day Monday, Elder Oakey climbed up a tall concrete wall to have his picture taken in front of the zoo’s lion exhibit, the missionary’s father said.

When Elder Oakey turned his back to the lions, they crept up on him, Alan Oakey said. One lion reached through the cage and grabbed the missionary’s right leg, causing him to fall back against the cage. A second lion then grabbed Elder Oakey’s left arm with its mouth.

One of the lions bit a chunk out of Elder Oakey’s right calf. The other lion clamped down on the missionary’s left bicep, and during the attack had most of the man’s left arm in its mouth.

Other missionaries who were at the zoo with Elder Oakey had trouble scaling the wall, Alan Oakey said. The missionary battled the lions for about two minutes before he was able to free himself and escape the cage.
“He was punching one of the lions with his right arm,” Alan Oakey said. “If he would have given up, the two-minute battle would have ended up very differently. I wouldn’t have my son right now.”

He also credits a higher power for saving his son’s life.

Two sister missionaries with the group at the zoo said a quick prayer, Alan Oakey said.

“As soon as they said, ‘amen,’ the lion’s mouth opened, and (Elder Oakey) fell back down in a safe area,” he said.

Elder Oakey’s companion eventually made it into the fray and used a bar to help pry open the mouth of the lion whose jaws were locked on the missionary’s biceps.

The missionary lost about three pints of blood during the battle, Alan Oakey said. Fortunately, other missionaries at the zoo that day shared Elder Oakey’s O-positive blood type, providing him with the transfusions he needed.

Elder Oakey was rushed to a nearby hospital in Esquipulas, where a vascular surgeon happened to be working that day. Typically, that hospital doesn’t have a vascular surgeon on duty, Alan Oakey said.
“We were very fortunate to have (the surgeon) there,” he said. “Otherwise, Paul probably wouldn’t have an arm right now.”

The surgeon worked to repair Elder Oakey’s arm for about two hours and then operated on his leg for three hours. The missionary then was transported by ambulance to a larger hospital six hours away in Guatemala City, where doctors are working to determine if he will regain full use of his fingers.

LDS Church officials issued a statement Tuesday, saying “our thoughts and prayers are with Elder Oakey and his family as he goes through this difficult time.”

And prayers, Alan Oakey said, are exactly what his son needs.

“That’s what’s been working,” he said.

Contributing: Marc Giauque

NEWS - ANTI MORMON MOCKERY CAN ACTUALLY LEAD TO TEACHING MOMENTS.

Anti-Mormon mockery can actually lead to teaching moments

Author: Dan Peterson : Defending the Faith
20 January 2011 

Two plays about Mormonism are scheduled to premiere shortly in the northeastern United States.
According to advance publicity, one of them "chronicles the days leading up to Christmas, 1825, when Joseph Smith Jr. and his father, on the run from the law as confidence men and scammers, return in disgrace to the family farm in upstate New York to save their house from being repossessed. In the process of escaping the clutches of both their creditors and the investors they'd recently fleeced, they lay the foundations of Mormonism." It purports to be "based on historical accounts of Mormonism's early years."

The other play, a musical, will likely be somewhat less reverent.

It's easy to be upset at such things. But indignation is the wrong response and, anyhow, entirely useless. We should see these and similar public attacks — homes in one southwestern American town where a temple is under construction have just been systematically blanketed with anti-Mormon propaganda — as rich teaching opportunities. Mormons are pretty rare in the Northeast; these plays are fabulous (and free) local publicity.

In the mid-1850s, a young German schoolteacher read a new book about an industrious and even heroic people with absurdly stupid beliefs. Unable, however, to believe that such good fruits could come from so bad a tree, he determined to investigate the Mormons for himself. In October 1855, Dr. Karl G. Maeser was baptized in the Elbe River, near Dresden. He later became a pivotal early leader of the church's educational system in Utah and, effectively, the founder of Brigham Young University.

Many years ago, I paid a visit to Temple Square. Entering by the south gate, I had to pass through a cordon of extremely unpleasant placard-wielding protesters. Once inside, I asked an elderly missionary what impact such demonstrations had on visitors. "Oh," he said, "I don't like to have them there, but, truthfully, our visitors tend to be much more receptive when the protesters are outside. Normally, people on our tours are a bit on their guard. But these protests are so offensive to them that they're on our side. The difference is very noticeable."

Some people will always react like that. Unfair attacks and mockery will not close their minds but, rather, pique their curiosity. Much like Maeser, they will doubt that the good fruits they see in the lives of their Latter-day Saint neighbors, friends and colleagues proceed merely from lies and absurdities.

Thus, we need to be ready to answer their questions and dispel their misconceptions. Indeed, because most potential converts have no Mormon friends or neighbors, we need to work actively to provide accurate information about the church and its teachings on the Internet and in every other public way that we can.

And we should not wait for a formal call or for the institutional church to do this on our behalf. Every member truly should be a missionary.

"For behold," said the Lord in 1831, "it is not meet that I should command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; for the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves" (Doctrine and Covenants 58:26-28).

Scriptural prophecies seem to indicate that, while the restored gospel will spread throughout the earth, church members will always be a minority. (See, for example, 1 Nephi 14:12; Matthew 24:37-41; Luke 17:31-36.) Which is to say that the majority of humankind will continue to be either ignorant of or indifferent toward its claims or, as depicted in Lehi's vision (1 Nephi 8:26-28; 11:35-36), will sneer at them and find them (and us) ridiculous. We should not be dismayed when we encounter such reactions. They were predicted many centuries ago.

I believe, though, that it's far preferable for the church to be attacked than to be ignored, to be considered weird than to be of no interest at all.

So long as the claims of the gospel are being discussed, even negatively, there are openings for teaching. When people are apathetic, there are no openings at all.

Daniel C. Peterson is a native of southern California and received a bachelor’s degree in Greek and philosophy from BYU. He earned a Ph.D in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA after several years of study in Jerusalem and Cairo. He is a professor of Islamic Studies and Arabic at BYU and is the editor of the twice-annual FARMS Review, the author of several books and numerous articles on Islamic and Latter-day Saint topics. Peterson is also director of outreach for BYU's Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship. He spent eight years on the LDS Church's Gospel Doctrine writing committee and is the founder and manager of MormonScholarsTestify.org.