Sequel, 1968
The rest of this story—My journal isn’t an angry document, but I was furious when I wrote the entry for November 3, 1963. Now, 46 years later, I can still see red when reviewing those events.

What a catastrophe! The other missions were grateful that their local auxiliary leaders hadn’t been invited. Ours came to Paris, many at significant personal sacrifice, anticipating that the chieftains from Salt Lake would build them up, instruct them, and encourage them. Instead, they encountered pathetic, pompous fools who displayed just how arrogant, narrow, and insensitive people from Utah can be, even people with responsible positions in Church organizations. And our visitors did a lot of damage. Our excellent Mission Relief Society President from Belgium was so disheartened that she abandoned activity in the Church. Others required a great deal of loving ministry, just to bring them back where they had been before this disaster. The recovery process was far from complete at the end of my mission, six months later.

So what are we to learn? Have I concluded (with the Belgian sister) that the Church’s claim to Divine guidance is so much priestcraft and eyewash? Not at all, but the episode has moved me to direct a lot of prayerful thought toward understanding the nature and rôle of inspiration in Church management.
As it turns out, I was present for a sequel that comes close to turning this episode into a happy story and that clarifies some painful issues. This doesn’t belong here in the chronology, although it sat here for a couple of years. Now that this record has arrived at that point in time, I’ve moved The Rest of the Story (pax Paul Harvey, and to his bones) to its proper place.
President H Duane Anderson
Bottom line: the Church did some serious growing up, organizationally, in the intervening five years, and Valerie and I were in Paris in 1968 when my Pappy, President H. Duane Anderson, hosted an analogous training meeting there. The upshot, and my musings thereon, belong to the account of my second mission.

1After the events of 1963, it was a saying among us that we would first convert the Jews, and then the antipodes, and finally the auxiliaries…
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