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A Personal Odyssey

Keith W. Perkins

The Odyssey Begins

This is an odyssey of a boy, a boy with his roots in the desert and pines of Arizona, and his adult life in the top of the mountains in Utah. Because this man can never forget his roots, this presentation is a tribute to his ancestors.

In our journey through the Church history sites in Arizona we traveled to Willow Springs, and there we saw the inscription of his ancestors and the quote from Ps. 107:8: "Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works."

We have been to Safford where his grandfather and grandmother Reed raised their children, he a respected judge and she a beloved neighbor and a faithful Saint.

We stopped at San Pedro and thought of the faith of the Mormon Battalion. It was here that his third great grandfather, Levi Ward Hancock, wrote a poem about the only battle of the Battalion, "The Bull Fight on the San Pedro." Levi was Chaplain and the only General Authority in the Mormon Battalion.

At Saint David, we stopped where his great grandfather and his brothers were struck with malaria. Here we also stood by Grandma Goodman's store, his great grandmother.

Now we are in the Mezona Motel in Mesa, Arizona. Here his ancestors first settled, and his second great grandfather was the first president of the group in the Salt River Valley. Here he and his beloved, Vella, courted on the dance floor of the old Mezona hall that once stood on this site; and here his parents met for the first time.

Here his grandmother Perkins' beloved Reuben built their home on dedicated ground in the shadows of the Arizona Temple. He remembers his grandmother's patriarchal blessing, which promised her in the cold of northern Arizona, that one day she would sit under her own vine and fig tree. I'm sure most took that figuratively. Grandmother never did, and if that home were still standing, you would see that she sat under her own vine and fig tree in a literal sense.

Here in Mesa, he was blessed, baptized, and confirmed, and received the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods. Here he sat in a service station, a block away from the Mesa Temple, reading completely for the first time the Book of Mormon, between customers. As he finished the reading of that sacred book, he remembers vividly closing the book and waiting for his testimony to come. A day went by, two, a week-still no testimony. A month went by, and he realized something must be wrong. He suddenly felt as he reread Moro. 10:4 there was the answer to his prayer. He knew something was wrong with him! At first he felt he had lived up to the promise contained in that verse. "And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you to ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true;…" He had done that. "…with real intent, having faith in Christ-" He stopped, and the words "with real intent" sunk deep into his soul. He realized that what that passage meant was that he had to want to know the Book of Mormon was true more than he wanted even life itself. He still remembers sitting at that desk in his dirty service station clothes as the testimony came and the spirit bore record of the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.