From Bruce C. Hafen:
A few years ago, a university student related to his elder’s quorum an event that he had experienced just after being ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood. He lived on a farm and his father had promised him that an expected new calf would be his very own to raise. One summer morning when his parents were away, he was working in the barn when the pregnant cow began to calf prematurely. He watched in amazement as the little calf was born, and then, without warning, the mother cow suddenly rolled over the calf. She was trying to kill it. In his heart he cried out to the Lord for help. Not thinking about how much more the cow weighed than he did, he pushed on her with all his strength and somehow moved her away.
He picked up the lifeless calf in his arms and, heartbroken, looked at it, the tears running down his cheeks. Then he remembered that he now held the priesthood, and he felt he had every right to pray for additional help. So he prayed from the depths of his boyish, believing heart. Before long the little animal began breathing again. The young deacon knew that his prayer had been heard.
After he finished telling this story, the tears welled up in his eyes and he said, “Brethren, I shared that experienced because I don’t think I would do now, what I did then. Now that I am older, less naive, and more experienced, I ‘know better’ than to expect help in that kind of situation. I am not sure I would believe now, even if I relived that experience, that calf’s survival was anything more than a coincidence. I don’t understand what has happened to me since that time, but I wonder if something is missing now.” ~Bruce C. Hafen, A Year of Powerful Prayer (salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2013) 212-213
