Richard Robb served as Bishop, Stake President, and Patriarch in the Rochester Minnesota Stake
Dear President Foote:
In response to your request to write down our testimony building experiences and to share them with our families, appropriate others and with you, I submit this response, with apology for length. It could be longer of course, including special experiences with you and your family (Tony’s Patriarchal Blessing, Kally’s constant example of serenity, our shared discipleship and spiritual guidance during those awful days of disciplinary councils for apostasy in the Stake, and of course many others), but I will limit the list to two of my most compelling personal experiences.
My Testimony. There have been many experiences and events in my life that have contributed to my testimony, the aggregate of these being too many and some too personal with which to burden any reader. These generously many experiences, some large, some small, all have played significant roles. I marvel that it is probably the sum of the many small quiet engagements with the Spirit that add up to my testimony full. But I select two distinct experiences that I feel have especially contributed in a significant way to my testimony, two events and their associated impact which not only increased my testimony, but welded its component parts into a cohesive witness of and believer in the truth of the Gospel, of the Church, and of things eternal. These two “big” experiences have undeniably influenced the intensity and staying power of my testimony.
First – My mother’s baptism and her unwavering testimony in the face of years of ostracism from her beloved family. Mom was born into a strong Catholic family that had emigrated from Austria in the early part of the 20th century. She was exposed to the LDS church by my reactivated father after a dozen years of marriage. She was taught the gospel by our ward teachers in a small coal mining community. Her conversion was simple and complete. Due to Dad’s inactivity and her non-membership, I was not baptized at the regular age of 8. I was baptized at 10 years of age, the same time that my mother was baptized. This event caused her father great anguish and anger, and he cut her off, calling her “dead” to him and to the rest of the family, whom she so loved. I remember that this edict extended to me and my brother and sister – we were also “dead” to them – no longer allowed to visit them on the farm where they lived and where we had so much loved to go. I did then and still do rejoice in the special baptism with my mother, but following her ostracism it was her humble, sweet and always tearful testimony of the truth, often shared at church and at home, that influenced my life forever. What she said rang beautifully true to me, never any doubt nor apology, and that as much as she loved her family and sorely missed being with them, she said she could never recant her decision nor give up the gospel which she had come to hold so dear and precious.That burning conversion, won at great personal cost to her, imbedded itself into my own conversion to truth. Fortunately, 7 years after her baptism her parents softened and invited her (and us) back to her family. She accepted that with great joy, but also with quiet forgiveness.
Second – My call to become the Bishop of the Rochester Ward. One Sabbath morning in February 1979, President Lee Johnson and his two counselors, Darrell Rose and Lowell Harris, came to the Rochester Ward to release the current Bishopric and to sustain a new Bishopric. I want to share with you something that happened a few days before that morning of change, something that transformed forever the life of a certain member of the Rochester Ward. It is something of the past that I do not openly share, at least not the part that I am about to describe, which perhaps I should share.
In reflecting on that long ago Sabbath morning, I often succumb to reminiscing, and the years dissolve away in my mind such that I clearly see myself a few days before that Sabbath morning, sitting in the Bishop’s office in the recently constructed new Rochester Ward building. The memory is so sharp and exact that I literally re-live the moment. Sitting with me in the office were the members of the Stake Presidency; we were all attending a Stake dance in the Stake Center. They had quietly invited Shanna and me into the bishop’s office “just for a few moments to discuss a matter of Stake business”. President Johnson then called me to be the Bishop of the Rochester Ward. Up to that moment, I now believe, I was probably one of those “casual Mormons” of which Elder Neal Maxwell sometimes spoke. I was too “comfortable.” Sure, I was a pretty good fellow, I guess. No real bad habits. I was attending Church regularly, was trying to keep the commandments (the outward ones anyway), even qualifying for a temple recommend. I had served in an Elder’s Quorum Presidency, a Branch Presidency, and on the Stake High Council. In this latter capacity, I figured that there had to be someone to run the athletic programs of the Stake! In fact, I supposed that an upcoming basketball tournament was what the Stake Presidency wanted to talk to me about as I followed them into the Bishop’s office. I should have known better with my dear wife invited in also!
So, I was doing just fine, thank you. But I was not really fine. I had more personal conversion to accomplish. Much more. I had not had a deep, meaningful spiritual experience for a long time. As one measure of this, I could not remember that last time I had wept, if ever. Not at my mother’s funeral. Not at my grandparent’s funerals. Sadness, but no weeping. Never moved to tears by taking the Sacrament or hearing a heartfelt testimony or sitting in the quiet of the temple. That was something men did not do, or at least not a man like me. After all, I was an athlete, a scholar, in charge, in control. How pompous and pious. How jaded to believe I was a true disciple. My heart may have never before been really broken and contrite. But the Lord knew something I did not. When the words of that call came to me, I was stunned, momentarily rendered deaf and dumb, so unexpected, so unlikely the call did fall on my comfortable, casual life. I could not hear. I could not speak. I could not understand. After what seemed to me an eternity of silence, of waiting, and waiting, I heard the soft words of the call come once again from the Stake President. Then it was as if the very hand of the Lord reached into my breast and turned on the flow of spiritual feeling from a rusted faucet so long dry. I began to cry, and cry, and cry. Embarrassed. Unable to stop. Then, gradually, an overwhelming feeling came, a feeling of unsurpassed gratitude and understanding. The Savior loved me! He really loved me! In spite of who I was on the inside, He knew I could change, could become better. When I finally spoke I could only say, “I love the Savior, I love the Savior.” President Johnson took that as a brokenhearted acceptance of the calling.
Never would I have imagined in my life before that moment that I could literally love every single person in a ward, every individual in an entire stake. But I have felt that kind of love, and it started when I knew the Savior loved me, that the Stake Presidency loved me, and that maybe the members of the Rochester ward could learn to love me if I loved them first. My life has been very different since that moment. I changed both on the inside and on the outside. The flood of tears has abated very little since. I almost always weep now in the presence of the Spirit. And although I am far from perfect and continue to suffer weak moments against mortality’s challenges, I know I can weep tears of true repentance and be forgiven. I know I have share in the Savior’s Atonement. His hand which seemed to reach into my breast on that day of calling is imprinted with scars that I helped create. His infinite suffering included ransom for my sins of omission as well as commission. So I can gratefully claim part in that ransom to become better and better until that bright day when He will literally embrace me again. I can now weep tears caused by joyous jubilees, gospel gladness, temple tidings, priesthood power, patriarchal promises, and yes, even by funeral farewells and often by testimonies tried. Why? Because I know Jesus loves me and that supernal wonder moves me to quiet tears of true testimony.