“Am I Good Enough?,” Liahona, March 2025.
Portraits of Faith
Am I Good Enough?
I thought I would find faith, love, and spiritual truth by living an alternative lifestyle. I didn’t. I found them in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in the temple.
Photograph by Leslie Nilsson
When I was a teenager in the 1960s, the Vietnam War was raging. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, as had Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. I rebelled against my parents and all the traditions and institutions of the day. I didn’t want to get married or bring children into a world that was so violent, dishonest, and dysfunctional.
I dropped out of high school my junior year, moved to the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco, California, USA, and lived the life of a hippie from 1969 to 1972. I stayed in communes, took whatever jobs I could find, and embraced an idealist and hedonist lifestyle, including drug abuse.
When Randy was a teenager, he thought his life had no happy future. “I rebelled against my parents and all the traditions and institutions of the day,” he says.
At the same time, I was seeking faith, love, and spiritual truth. I meditated and studied different religions, extracting from them anything that struck me as true or valuable. All my searching, however, ended in frustration. My brother, John, knowing about my search, sent me a Book of Mormon.
“You’ve got to read this,” wrote John, who had joined the Church earlier.
When I got fired for reading the Book of Mormon at my job at a gas station, I thought, “This can’t be good.” I threw the book away.
Not long afterward, John told me he was coming to the San Francisco Bay Area with a singing group from Brigham Young University.
“I’d love to see you,” he said, suggesting we meet at the California Oakland Temple.
Driving around the Bay Area at night, I would often see the temple. It appealed to me spiritually, so I read about it and wanted to go inside. John and I met early one morning on the temple grounds. After our visit, he said it was time for his group to enter the temple.
“Randy, you won’t be able to enter the temple,” John told me.
“I know, I’m a hippie,” I replied, “but I’ve studied Eastern religions, I’m a vegetarian, I live in a commune where we share everything, and I have $20. How much could admission be?”
“Far more than that,” John answered. “You’re not good enough.”
At the time, I considered myself intellectually, philosophically, and spiritually advanced. How could I not be good enough?
Filled with Hope
For several years, my parents didn’t know where I was. They were good people who tried to give me the best education possible and were understandably disappointed by my choices. When my father became ill, my mother persuaded me to return home to Washington, D.C. When I arrived, John found me a job on a crew building the Washington D.C. Temple.
I didn’t know it, but he had arranged for me to work with a crew of returned missionaries. I was stunned that John Howell, the lead foreman, would ask a crew member to pray at the start of each day’s work—something I had never seen with crews I had worked with previously.
One day at work, several of us were mounting one of the temple’s heavy front doors when it fell and smashed my finger as thin as a dime. John hurried over, looked at my finger, called for some consecrated oil, and gave me a blessing. My finger healed so quickly that I didn’t need to see a doctor.
On another occasion, I was given a razor blade and told to scrape bits of debris off the concrete floors.
“Why?” I asked one of our crew members. “Aren’t they putting carpet down?”
“Randy, you don’t know whose house this is, do you?” he responded. “We’re perfecting it for the Perfect One.”
The world was drowning in cynicism, bitterness, hatred, and fear, but the example and teachings of the young men I worked with filled me with hope. As crew members shared their beliefs with me, I knew they were being honest and authentic. They had given two years of their lives to serve others, and they were intelligently optimistic. I wanted their teachings to be true. I felt I was gaining the enlightenment I had been seeking and that the Lord was preparing me spiritually.
John Howell suggested I meet with the full-time missionaries. Instead, I opted to have my brother and one of his friends, another returned missionary, teach me. As they taught me, I wanted external, incontrovertible evidence that what I was learning was true. Without that proof, I didn’t want any further discussions.
When I asked how they knew the truth, they replied, “We have read and prayed and felt a witness from the Holy Ghost.” They told me I needed that same witness.
That night I went into a grove of trees near my neighborhood. I don’t know how long I prayed, but I did so with absolute intent. I repeatedly asked God the same four questions: “Is the Book of Mormon the word of God? Did You and Your Son appear to Joseph Smith? Is this the true Church of Jesus Christ? Am I good enough to be a member?”
The answer to each question came in a whisper to my soul—“Yes”—four times. Those whispers were accompanied by serene and sublime feelings.
With my head bowed, kneeling in prayer and drenched with tears, I exclaimed: “If this is the answer You will give to me, then I accept it and will commit my life fully to You and this gospel as You reveal it to me.” Words cannot express the thoughts, feelings, and truths that enveloped me.
The witness I received that night was incontrovertible, and it’s as strong now as it was then. Since that prayer, God has proved those answers to me in thousands of miraculous and practical ways.
“The Church is a miracle,” says Randy, pictured here a month after his baptism. “And my life in the Church has been miraculous.”
A Fire Burned Inside Me
Soon after I was baptized in 1974, I attended my first general conference in Salt Lake City with my brother, John. I was surprised when Elder Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, who had met my aunt in New York City three weeks before that conference, referred to John and me during his Sunday morning talk.
Quoting my aunt, Elder Packer said: “Two of my nephews have joined your Church. I can hardly believe the change that it’s made in their lives.”
Because of that profound change (see Alma 5:14), a fire burned inside me that I wanted to share. Soon, I found myself in Idaho as a full-time missionary. Halfway through my mission, my father, who was my greatest hero and best friend, passed away. My mother called my mission president and asked that I come home to give a eulogy. When my mission president left the decision up to me whether to leave, I told him I wanted to pray and fast for 24 hours before deciding.
That night I had a dream. My father appeared to me. In the midst of sublime and meaningful discussions with him, he told me, “Son, stay on your mission.”
I followed Dad’s counsel and stayed.
Because of the profound change that followed his conversion, “a fire burned inside” Randy that he wanted to share as a full-time missionary.
Six months after my mission, I held my mother’s hand as she took her last breath. Decades later, my wife, Lisa, found a letter from my parents in an old box. Dad had written it to me during my mission but died before sending it.
“Our hearts were and are and always will be full of love for you. I realize that things have not always been perfect, but that is life. … Christ did not say, ‘Follow me and it will be easy.’ He said, ‘Take up [your] cross, and follow me’ [Matthew 16:24]. He carried the cross, but we all have our splinters. Perhaps our place in heaven will depend upon how we handle ours. Son, we love you very much.”
What I Was Seeking
Growing up, I was rough on my parents, but I never doubted their love. Since finding the Church, I have worked hard to thank them and honor them.
On February 17, 2018, two weeks before the Washington D.C. Temple closed for renovation, I was sealed to my father and mother, 42 years after they had passed through the veil into eternity. My oldest son, Randall, acted as proxy for my father, and Lisa acted as proxy for my mother. I felt that my parents, who had been sealed to each other earlier, were both there in spirit.
In the temple we find cords that bind us forever to our loved ones. I am certain of that.
When I was young, I didn’t want to get married or have children. But today my wife, children, and grandchildren are my greatest treasures. The Church is a miracle, and my life in the Church has been miraculous. With Joseph Smith, I say, “If I had not experienced what I have, I would not have believed it myself.”
Fifty years ago, I was a construction worker on the Washington D.C. Temple. I was convinced that my life had no happy future. Today I am an ordinance worker in that same temple, having accepted the Lord’s invitation to follow Him, receive His healing, embrace His ordinances, and strive to become like Him.
Randy and his wife, Lisa, serve in the Washington D.C. Temple, which he helped build 50 years ago.
Photograph by Leslie Nilsson
The restored Church is not a theory, a philosophy, or merely a community or culture. It is the true Church of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
I thought I would find what I was looking for in San Francisco. I didn’t. I found it in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and in the house of the Lord, “the crowning jewel of the Restoration.”