After reading President Robb’s comments about the Fairmont Branch, I felt compelled to write about my experience with the Fairmont Branch. Having served for 14 years on the Stake High Council as the Physical Facilities Representative, I did a lot of traveling. Fairmont was on the far most western edge of the stake, about two hours on Interstate 90 from Rochester. One month I was assigned to visit the Fairmont Branch, attend their various meetings, and be the guest speaker at their sacrament meeting. I got up early to arrive for their Priesthood Executive Committee (PEC) meeting at 6:30 AM. They were having some problems with the missionary elders assigned to their branch. The missionaries apparently were having a conflict with their landlord and the landlord had brought it to the attention of the branch president. The overall tune of the PEC meeting was very negative with respect to the assigned missionaries and the comment was made several times that they would just as soon not have any missionaries assigned to their branch. One of the missionaries there was one who had served in our Rochester ward and who I felt was an excellent missionary. I did not enter into any of the discussions at the PEC meeting.
When it came time for the sacrament meeting, it was my time to speak. I put my prepared talk away and talked about doing missionary work. I told them how these missionaries had put their lives on hold for two years to serve the Lord. I told them they were young and prone to make a few mistakes but that they were trying the best that they knew how to serve the Lord in this part of His vineyard. My son James at that time was serving a mission in England. I told them that I hoped the members in England were more tolerant of the imperfections of my son James who was serving there at the time and that they were giving him the support he needed to help the Lord in their part of the Lord’s vineyard. When I finished my talk, I felt that those were not my words, but the Lord’s words that were being spoken. Interestingly, a few weeks after that President Robb made the Fairmont Branch a Missionary Branch.
One of the duties of the Physical Facilities Representative was to find good locations for new chapels. At the time, one of the past members of the Fairmont Branch had given the church a building lot in a residential neighborhood. However, the lot was too small for a three phase chapel: it was not easily accessible, it did not have good exposure, and was not near an institute of learning. After spending some time looking around Fairmont, I found a site about a block away from the high school near the Fairmont hospital. I took the branch president to the site and told him this is where the Fairmont Branch should build their new chapel. If you visit the Fairmont Branch today the chapel is near the high school and the hospital, with plenty of room for expansion.