“They say that if a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian rain forest, it can change the weather half a world away. Chaos theory. What it means is that everything that happens in this moment is an accumulation of everything that’s come before it. Every breath. Every thought. There is no innocent action. Some actions end up having the force of a tempest. Their impact cannot be missed. Others are the blink of an eye, passing by unnoticed. Perhaps only God knows which is which. All I know today is that you can think that what you’ve done is only the flap of a butterfly wing, when it’s really a thunderclap. And both can result in a hurricane.”  -Catherine McKenzie

     Can the mere flapping of a butterfly’s wings in the Amazon really influence the weather or other events in some other distant part of the world? That thought came to mind as I considered an experience Sister Collins and I had earlier in our mission at an historic site in Mendon, New York. We joined some of our missionary friends and spent an evening traveling back in time, visiting a home that was once called the Tomlinson Inn, a site that played a significant role in our Church’s history. The Inn was a stagecoach stop and dance hall in the 1800s, and it was here that a man named Samuel Smith distributed two copies of the Book of Mormon - simple acts that had a profound impact on history.  

     Samuel Smith was a younger brother of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and two months after the Church of Jesus Christ was organized in 1830, Samuel was called to serve as the Church’s first missionary. He was assigned to preach the gospel and distribute newly printed copies of the Book of Mormon in the outlying areas around Palmyra, New York. Traveling alone and with no training, he walked the countryside for several days but met with little success. He eventually placed one copy of the book at the home of John and Rhoda Young Greene, a couple who llived down the road from the Tomlinson Inn. John, a local methodist minister, agreed to take the book but with one stipulation: He wouldn't read it, but he would offer to sell it to anyone he met on an upcoming preaching tour he planned on making.

     Dejected, Samuel began making his way back to his home in Palmyra and stopped at the Tomlinson Inn. As he walked through the door, he noticed a man on the opposite side of the room and felt impressed to approach him. That man’s name was Phineas Young, a brother of Rhoda Young Greene, and a traveling preacher in the area. He and Samuel had the following exchange:

Samuel: There is a book, sir, I wish you to read.

Phineas: Pray, sir, what book have you?

Samuel: The Book of Mormon, or, as it is called by some, the Golden Bible. If you will read this book with a prayerful heart, and ask God to give you a witness, you will know of the truth of this work. 

     Phineas accepted the book and then went home and told his wife about the interaction he had at the inn. He said, “I have got a book here, called the Book of Mormon, and it is said to be a revelation, and I wish to read it and make myself acquainted with its errors, so that I can expose them to the world.”

     Over the next several weeks, Phineas read the book twice but instead of finding fault with it, he received a witness of its truthfulness. At this same time, Phineas’s sister, Rhoda Young Greene, read the copy of the Book of Mormon that Samuel Smith had left at her home, and she also received a witness of its truth. When her husband returned home from his preaching tour, she shared her feelings about the book with him, and he agreed to read it. They soon were baptized, and, along with Phineas, they shared their copies of the book, and their powerful testimonies of it, with family and friends in the area.

     The two copies of the Book of Mormon that Samuel Smith placed with John Greene and Phineas Young were passed from household to household with astonishing results. Phineas’s father and step-mother, as well as his seven brothers and sisters, including Brigham Young, who later became the second prophet and president of the Church, were baptized. Others in the area, including Heber C. Kimball who would become an apostle in the church and a councilor to Brigham Young, and his wife, Vilate, were also baptized as was Nathan Tomlinson and his wife. A branch of the Church was soon formed in Mendon, and it’s 30 plus members held their Sunday worship services upstairs in the Tomlinson Inn.

     Samuel Smith eventually served six missions for the Church and baptized many people during his lifetime. But on his first mission in 1830, he didn’t baptize a single soul and felt that his missionary efforts had mostly been a failure. Ironically, by placing two copies of the Book of Mormon with two very skeptical men, he began a process that, much like the flapping of butterfly wings in the Amazon, ended up having an impact far beyond what anyone could have imagined. Hurricane indeed! Today, there are over 17 million members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and over a 195 million copies of the Book of Mormon have been printed. 

     The Old Testament prophet, Isaiah, once wrote, “For precept must be upon precept . . . line upon line . . . here a little, and there a little.” Indeed, the work of God often proceeds in mysterious ways that at the moment may not be recognized or seem of little consequence. But, in reality, they are part of a grand, eternal plan that each of us is part of; one day we will look back and discover that our efforts, however minor or inconsequential they might have seemed, had a far greater impact than we ever imagined.