A COINCIDENCE…I DON’T THINK SO…THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES

You need to read the book entitled, To the Rescue, The Biography of Thomas S. Monson, by Heidi S. Swinton. Here’s a sample from page 165:

“One October the three members of the Temple View stake presidency were attending general priesthood meeting in the Tabernacle. They arrived two hours early, hoping to find good seats and were among the first to sit down. While they waited, President Percy K. Fetzer related an experience from his missionary days in Germany.

He told his counselors that one rainy night, when he and his companion were presenting a gospel message to a group assembled in a school house, a number of protestors showed up, threatening violence. At a critical moment, an elderly widow stepped between the elders and the angry crowd and said, ‘These young men are my guests and are coming to my home now. Please make way for us to leave.’

The challengers stepped back and the missionaries with their benefactress walked unharmed to her modest home. She prepared a meal and then the elders taught her the gospel. Her young son refused to join them, skulking behind the kitchen stove where it was warm.

‘While I don’t know if that woman ever joined the Church,’ said President Fetzer. ‘I’ll be forever grateful for her kindness that rain-drenched night thirty-three years ago.’
The Tabernacle benches had been filling as he had talked. Two brethren sitting directly in front of them were chatting like old friends, though they had just met.

‘Tell me how you came to be a member of the Church.’ Tom (Monson) overheard one ask the other. The brother responded and the three on the bench behind him heard his story:

‘One rainy night in Germany, my mother brought to our house two drenched missionaries whom she had rescued from a mob. Mother fed the elders and they presented to her a message concerning the work of the Lord. They invited me to join the discussion, but I was shy and fearful, so I remained secure in my seat behind the stove.

Later, when I once more heard about the Church, I remembered the courage and faith, as well as the message, of those two humble missionaries and this led to my conversion. I suppose I’ll never meet those two missionaries here in mortality, but I’ll be forever grateful to them. I know not where they were from. I think one was named Fetzer.’

At this point, the two counselors turned to look at President Fetzer. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. President Monson remembers that President Fetzer tapped the man on the shoulder and said, ‘I’m Bruder Fetzer. I was one of the two missionaries whom your mother befriended that night. I’m grateful to meet the boy who sat behind the stove - the lad who listened and who learned.”