Elder Hales of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles related the following
story:
I had a dear friend, an all-American football player. His
team earned the opportunity to play in a New Year’s Day bowl game. Before
100,000 spectators and a large TV audience, his team lost by a huge score. It
turned out that he and the other members of his team had not kept the training
rules that their coach had tried to teach them. They paid a dear price. They
had to live with the consequences of knowing they were not prepared to play the
big game; they had to live with the final, very embarrassing score.
Years passed. Two members of this same football team were in
my flight-training unit. One was an exemplary, well-disciplined student—a model
pilot who had learned his lesson well from the failure in the bowl game.
However, the other friend had not learned to listen to those
with more knowledge and more experience. When it came time for him to go to the
trainer to learn emergency procedures and to precondition his mental and
physical responses so that they would be automatic, even instantaneous, this
all-American would put his arm around the instructor and say, “Check me off for
three hours of emergency procedure.” Then, instead of training, he would go to
the swimming pool, pistol range, or to the golf course. Later in the training
the instructor said to him, “What are you going to do when there is an
emergency and you are not prepared?” His answer, “I am never going to bail out;
I am never going to have an emergency.” He never learned the emergency
procedures which he should have mastered in preparatory training.
A few months later, on an evening mission, fire erupted in
the quiet sky over Texas. The fire-warning light lit up. When the plane dropped
to 5,000 feet in flames, the young pilot who was with him said, “Let’s get out
of here.” And, with centrifugal force pulling against him, the young man who
took his training seriously struggled to get out of the airplane and bailed
out. His parachute opened at once. And he slammed to the ground. He received
serious injuries but survived.
My friend who had not felt the need to train stayed with the
airplane and died in the crash. He paid the price for not having learned the
lessons that could have saved his life. (Elder Robert D. Hales, “The Aaronic
Priesthood: Return with Honor”, April 2009 General Conference)
