You Always Have Five Minutes

“Do you have five minutes?” The question struck a responsive chord. And although I didn’t have time to talk to those missionaries, I remembered that a friend once said that “if you have any time for your fellowmen, you must have time to listen to those who tell others of their beliefs. You always have five minutes.” So I invited them in.

Their message was interesting, and after their second visit a feeling began to grow inside me that maybe their words were true. However, my husband would have none of it. After I had visited with them four or five times, my husband became so angry that he threatened to leave me and the children if I didn’t put an end to their visits.

We vacationed in Austria that summer, and I tried to forget about religion, but I had such mixed feelings that after we came home to Denmark I told my husband that I must earnestly pray to know whether or not the message of the missionaries was true. He replied, “That’s a good idea, and when you have done that, we won’t talk about it any more.”

For three days I kept the Word of Wisdom and sought the Lord in prayer, but my prayers seemed empty words to me. Still, I persisted, and finally I found myself offering a sincere prayer with faith in Christ. I knew when I arose from my knees that if I didn’t get an answer, I wouldn’t pray any more. An hour later the doorbell rang. It was the missionaries.

When they walked into our living room, a strange feeling came over me. It started in my head and went completely through me, and I knew that my prayers had been answered. I went into the bedroom to thank the Lord and I laughed and cried and prayed, all at the same time.

When I returned to the living room, the elders told me they had been teaching a lady that day when they suddenly had nothing more to say to her. This had never happened to them before, but they made another appointment with her and left. On their way to the next appointment, they found themselves outside our apartment building, and our little boy ran up to them and asked if they were going to visit his mother. Since they had been rejected there before, they debated the matter, but one of them said the Spirit strongly impressed him to call. Ten days later, I was baptized.

There is a lovely conclusion to my story. At this time one of the General Authorities of the Church was visiting in Denmark and the missionaries took me to see him. He told me that if I would follow the counsel of Church leaders, it wouldn’t be long before my husband was baptized. Surely he has made a mistake, I thought. My husband will never join the Church. That same evening my branch president asked me what I thought of the Church and I answered, “I have found so much love here.” Then he said to me, “That same love you feel here you must take home to your husband.”

I was a little angry. I loved my husband and thought such counsel unnecessary. But on the long drive home, I realized that I must speak kindly to my husband about the Church. My change of attitude made him curious, and when the children came home from church with sparkling eyes, he really began to investigate. Three months later my husband and our eight-year-old boy were baptized. It was truly one of the happiest days of my life. (Eika Olsen, in Remarkable Stories from the Lives of Latter-day Saint Women, comp. Leon R. Hartshorn [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1973], 2:194–195)