The power of prayer

Gwen and I are ready to be baptized.. The kids are really cute.

The Stake Center is really coming along.

Inside looking toward the stage.

Looking toward the Chapel side of the building.

The entrance to the parking lot is to the left. Just out of the picture to the left would have been the old fire station engine room.

My wife and I were baptized into the Mormon Church in March of 1978. El Dorado County members were part of a Stake in Sacramento County. President Sellers was our Stake President and Earl Bair was my Elders' Quorum President. Being new to the Church, I went along with programs that I was asked to attend. We attended our church services at Mormon Center in Rancho Cordova. We also went back and forth for each meeting back then. I would go to Priesthood and come home to pick up my family and go back for Sacrament meeting and so forth. It made for a long day.

I was attending a Priesthood session for Stake Conference and sort of listening to what was being talked about. I thought I heard something about the Church buying property in Cameron Park with the hopes of building a Stake Center. I then heard that because of a building moratorium, the County would not issue a building permit because they were not allowing new water meters because of a drought that had been plaguing the State. I asked President Bair about what I thought I had just heard and he confirmed what I thought I had heard.

Now let me back up a few years: I moved up to El Dorado County in March of 1969 to go to work for Cameron Park as the first fireman. The Fire Chief that called me and offered me the job was Herb Owen. He and I worked together in Alameda as firemen from 1967 until he moved early 1969. He at one time was the Fire Chief in Marin County. Together we set up a brand new fire department. A man named Richard Smith was a local land developer and owned some acreage off of Hacienda Road and Cameron Park Drive. He let us put up a mobile home and a 2 bay, wooden engine room for the 2 fire engines we would be buying. Well, a fire station needs water, so we contacted El Dorado Irrigation District and we put in a water meter. I had to hand dig the water lines myself. We camped out this way for about 2 years while we passed a bond measure and build the new fire station on Country Club Drive.

Now we are back in the late 1970's at the Stake Priesthood meeting.

After the meeting, I went up to President Sellers with Earl Bair at my side and told him" The property on Hacienda has a water meter in place." President Sellers looked at me and asked how I would know about it? I gave him the reader's digest version and he said "If you can locate it, we can start building a Stake Center." Earl Bair looked at me and asked when could I go look for it? I said I'll find it the next morning.

On Monday morning, I loaded some shovels and such in my truck and headed over to Hacienda Rd. "It's amazing how this County gets overgrown in just a few years. I looked around for awhile and decided what I needed to do was dig a trench across where I remembered laying that water line some eight or ten years ago and when I find it I could follow it up to the meter. At about one or two in the afternoon, Earl drove by to see how I was doing. I had a nice looking trench in progress by then, Earl asked if I needed any help. By then, the temperature was somewhere in the low hundreds and I was a little sweaty and a little covered in dirt. I said "you bet." About a half hour later, Earl's brother-in-law shows up. Casey Campbell had just returned from his mission and was a whole lot better in tune with Heavenly Father than I was.

Especially after a few hours of digging my trench.

The first thing Casey asked when he saw me knee deep in a very long trench was" Have you kneeled in prayer and asked Father to help us?" You shouldn't ask someone who is hot, sweaty and dirty if he has prayed about it! Like I said before, we hadn't been members very long. So I climbed out of my little trench and asked Casey if he would offer the prayer. As we kneeled down, Casey offered a heartfelt prayer. As Casey was getting up, he placed his hands on the ground and felt something. As he brushed away the leaves, he asked, whats' this? I looked at him and said "that would be the lid to the water meter we have been looking for! Casey looked at me and asked "Do you need anything else?"

The building would have been built without my knowing about the water meter, we just moved it along a little sooner. With Caseys' help of course.

That young returned missionary taught me a huge lesson about how any project should be started, especially when your on a project that Heavenly Father just might have sent you on. His work will go on, its just nice to be involved.