A car with a low battery needs a jump-start.  Aren’t we much in need of the same continual renewal? It’s easy to get mission myopia, waiting for the call to come or forgetting that people are hungering for what we have. Here’s a story to help us remember.

Dr. Specht, a German scholar with three, not one or two, but three Ph.D.s, came face-to-face with Mormon missionaries as they knocked on her door and she invited them in to her office.  In inspired fashion, they chose to address the Book of Mormon, bore witness of its truthfulness and left a copy in her hands.  The elders didn’t see her again for over two months.

The next encounter with Gertrud Specht came as she was preparing to enter the waters of baptism. Between the first and second meeting, she had drunk from the spiritual well. Before her baptism, this theology professor at the University of Munich, stood up in front of the congregation, and said:

“Before I’m baptized I’d like to tell you my feelings.  In Amos chapter 8:11 it says there will be a famine of the work of God.  I’ve been in that famine for 76 years. Why do you think I have three PhD’s? I’ve been hungering for truth and have been unable to find it. Then eight and one-half weeks ago, two boys walked into my home. I want you to know these boys are very nice and wonderful young men, but they didn’t convert me. They couldn’t; they don’t know enough.”

She then asserted simply and sincerely, “I don’t think you members know what you have After those years of studying philosophy, I picked up the Doctrine and Covenants and read a few little verses that answered some of the greatest questions of Aristotle and Socrates! When I read those verse, I wept for four hours.” Again, she restated her thought in question form, “Don’t you understand the world is in a famine? Don’t you know we are starving for what you have? I am like a starving person being led to a feast. And over these eight and one-half weeks I have been able to feast in a way I have never known possible” (Gertrud Specht).

If you’re feeling the desire to share some of the feast you’ve enjoyed as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (”Mormon” Church), please take a minute and do something to jump-start your sharing experience.

You might sign up at LDS.net and visit a forum or gospel discussion, or visit www.mormonsbelieve.org and upload a video or text testimony.

If you are interested in contributing to Mormonchurch.com, you can answer a specific gospel question, such as “How has the gospel helped me overcome a weakness?,” or “What was it like to serve as a Mormon Missionary?”…

For assistance or further information, please contact us at www.moregoodfoundation.org.

Additional Resources

The full transcript of Elder Scott Anderson’s journal account of his experience with Sister Specht can be found here.