My tribute to the prophet

I would have posted this yesterday but I fell asleep at 7:30pm.  I'm always super exhausted when I start a new semester.

Religion isn't something often talked about around the lunch table at my work, in my lunch group we have a southern baptist, a methodist (she's a preacher's wife), a catholic, and a jew. However, yesterday, I was trying to find a way to pay tribute to President Hinckley and the enormous impact he has had on my life.  So, I decided that while I was at school I would find a way to bare my testimony of him as a prophet of God.  It wouldn't be appropriate to do that to the students so I decided I would do it at lunch to some of the teachers I regularly eat with.

I felt a little nervous as I sat down and took out my lunch. What would I say?  Could I express my feelings clearly without seeming "preachy?"  For a moment I almost chickened out, but then I saw a picture in my mind of President Hinckley, smiling softly, holding his cane up in the air as if to encourage me on.  I thought of the sacrifices he made his entire life to always share what he knew to be true and I knew that I couldn't let him down.  So I sat down and said "did you hear that the Prophet of my church died last night?"  Most of them had not, and one of them asked what his name was.  "Gordon B Hinckley," I said.  

One teacher expressed surprise that I called him our prophet.  The news he had heard had said that the President of the LDS church had died.  "He was our President," I said, "but he was our prophet too.  Actually, he wasn't just our prophet, he was the prophet to the whole world.  He was an amazing man, he was humble and wise and good."  And that was it.  The conversation went on to different things, but my heart felt soothed for the first time since I had heard that the prophet had died.  It was because at that moment, I knew that while his life has ended, his contributions to the world will go on through the faithful members he has spent his life teaching and preparing.  I truly hope that this will not be the last time that my words and deeds pay tribute to him.