The Callahans: The Complete Series

by Gordon Ryan

  “There are never enough babies for loving grandmothers, Elder McKay,” Katrina said.

  “If there is another addition to the family heritage, the wee thing would be fortunate to have such a wise grandmother,” McKay added.

  “President Callahan, may I have a word with you?” McKay said, drawing Tom a few paces away from the group. “President, I presume that at this moment your feelings are varied and perhaps even mixed.”

  Tom smiled and nodded at the gentle man who stood before him. Over the years they had been acquainted, Tom had watched his friend with growing admiration as the Lord had placed ever greater responsibilities on David O. McKay. Even Archbishop Scanlan, before his death over a decade earlier, had said on more than one occasion that Elder McKay seemed equal to every task laid upon him by the leaders of the Mormon church.

  “Even before joining the church, I never doubted that the Lord knew what He was doing when He called you to be an apostle, Elder McKay,” Tom said. “But your insight continues to amaze me. I am confused, even frightened to tell the truth.”

  Now it was McKay’s turn to nod.

  “President Callahan, everyone the Lord calls to serve Him retains his agency—to accept or reject the call, or to do it well or even to do just enough to get by. But if you do indeed believe the Lord made the right calling when He called me, then know this—He made the right choice when He told me to call you to preside in South America. You will do a great work there, President Callahan. The results of that work may not immediately be evident and may not be quantifiable in terms of membership and converts, but the Lord will inspire you to add to His kingdom in ways that neither of us now comprehend. Of this I am certain.”

  “Thank you, Elder McKay. Your confidence in me means a lot.” Tom paused for a moment, then added, “I’ll do my best to ‘act well my part.’” Tom continued to smile for a moment and then reached out to hug his old friend, Apostle David O. McKay.

  Three days later, as the train rolled along the west coast of the Florida peninsula, north of Tampa, Katrina sat by the window peering through the dense foliage, trying to catch an occasional glimpse of the Gulf of Mexico. During a brief stop in the small coastal village of Tarpon Springs, Tom and Katrina could see the harbor and the fleet of sponge-fishing boats, said to be manned by Greek immigrants.

  Underway once again, Tom studied his wife’s reflection in the train window. She sat without speaking, watching the landscape roll by, unaware of her husband’s gaze.

  “What great thoughts are running through that lovely head this morning?” Tom asked, reaching to gently stroke her hair.

  “Hmmm?”

  “That far away are you?” Tom laughed, taking his wife’s hand.

  Katrina smiled at him and laid her head on his shoulder.

  “I guess I was a bit distant, Thomas. I was thinking of Anders and the time he spent here in Tampa convalescing from his Cuban wound. It seems so long ago.”

  “I’ve been to Miami but never Tampa,” Tom replied. “It looks and feels much like the rest of Florida does in August—hot and humid.”

  “I miss Anders,” Katrina said softly, laying her head on Tom’s shoulder. “Do you think he knows?”

  “About our mission?” Tom said, remembering the terrible night in 1925 when they had received the phone call from Utah’s outgoing Governor Charles Mabey, advising them of a car accident in Virginia, in which both Anders and his wife, Sarah, were instantly killed. Although Katrina’s two sisters were still living and their growing families had often visited Valhalla, Katrina had deeply missed her only brother. It was Tom’s feeling that she had never fully recovered from the shock of losing Anders at such a relatively young age.

  “Ummm.”

  “I don’t know,” Tom said, clucking his tongue, “but he’s been up there four years with your parents and if no one else has told Lars yet, Anders won’t likely be the one to break the news to the old goat.”

  “Thomas Callahan!” Katrina exclaimed, jerking her head upright and giving Tom a stern look. “President Callahan, I mean. That was not a kind, Christian remark.”

  “But true.”

  “Perhaps,” she grinned. “Poppa and Anders didn’t often see eye-to-eye, did they?” After a moment she added, “But I’m certain that both of them have a different view of things now.”

  “Do you think so, Katie?” Tom said, suddenly serious. “Would their, uh, perspective be different, do you think?”

  “Well, I would think so, don’t you?”

  “I just don’t know, Katie. Yet I’m supposed to have all the answers for these missionaries ­we’re going to supervise. It’s all just too much.”

  “Elder McKay told you in your blessing—don’t try to be all things to all people. Just do as the Lord inspires you to do.”

  When Tom didn’t respond, Katrina resumed looking out the window. They would soon be in Tampa where they were scheduled to remain for several days, and where they would meet with local church leaders before boarding the boat for South America.

  In Tampa, Tom was astonished that the local church leaders viewed him as a visiting authority. Though they knew he wasn’t a General Authority, his status as a mission president required that he be the principal speaker at every meeting he attended. Katrina also found, to her dismay, that the mission president’s wife was expected to preside over all auxiliary meetings and sit on the dais with her husband, speaking each time they were presented to the congregation.

  By the time they boarded the steamship Simon Bolivar, bound for Buenos Aires, with stops scheduled in Caracas and Rio de Janeiro, Tom and Katrina had begun to realize that their service as a mission president and wife would entail considerably more than they had bargained for. If their experiences in Florida were any indication, it seemed likely that the newer members they would find in leadership positions in the remote areas of the church would look to them for guidance.

  “It’s certainly not going to be just a matter of managing young, homesick missionaries, is it, Katie?” Tom joked one evening as the two of them completed their evening stroll around the deck of the ship.

  She laughed and held tighter to his arm.

  “Maybe when Elder McKay said, ‘Don’t try to be all things to all people,’ he meant ‘Try to be all things to most people,’ or ‘Try to be most things to all people,’ or some other variation.”

  Katrina’s twisting of the words got them laughing, but when they saw a passing ship, headed north, in the direction they had just come, they stopped to watch. The other ship was brightly lit, and they could see passengers strolling her deck, some looking back at them. Leaning on the railing, wondering where the other people were going, Tom got a bit more serious.

  “Katie, I feel less qualified now than I did back in ’98, when I first approached Robert about opening the bank. I don’t have the first inkling of what the Lord expects of me, much less what the people will expect.”

  “Thomas, what do you expect of you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I mean what do you think we should accomplish on this mission?”

  He didn’t immediately answer, staring instead at the dark sea for several long moments, watching the passing ship fade into the distance. Looking up at the night sky, he said, “There’s the Southern Cross again, Katie. Remember when the ship’s captain on the Pacific Princess showed that to us when we sailed to New Zealand?”

  “I do, but you still have to answer my question, President Callahan.”

  “Sometimes I feel the Lord has had you on a private mission for the past thirty-five years, Katie, just to keep me focused and headed in the right direction.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because every time I’ve felt confused or misdirected, you always seem to bring me back on track. This mission is really a question of what I want, ­isn’t it? It’s like D.O. said. Agency. Some accept the call and succeed, and others don’t. Some do the best they can and some do just enough to get by. And it all depen
ds on what they want for themselves. It’s not what the people in South America want or even need from us, it’s what we are willing to offer the Lord. He will never expect more than He knows we can give, will He? All we can do is keep in touch with Him and do our best, right?”

  “I’d say ­you’re already growing in this new missionary calling, Thomas. Now if the Lord will only give you ... oh, say, another twenty or thirty years, just think what you can become,” she said, the teasing, tongue-in-cheek look that Tom knew so well written all over her face.

  “In another twenty or thirty years, my darling, you will be ... how old?”

  “Thomas,” she said with a straight face, “you still don’t understand the rules. Making rude, insensitive comments, designed to induce humility in the other party, is a female prerogative. Males are not allowed to play, dear, only to function as the target.”

  Tom laughed at his wife’s good-natured impudence. “Oh, Katie,” he said, holding her close. “How I would hate to try this alone. What would I do without you?”

  Chapter 11

  The broad expanse of the Rio de la Plata didn’t look as though it was the mouth of a river, yet Tom had been advised by the ship’s officers that, indeed, the 200-mile-wide estuary provided access upstream to the cities of Montevideo, Uruguay, on the north bank and Buenos Aires, Argentina, on the southern bank, where the river began to narrow.

  Arriving in Buenos Aires, Tom and Katrina were met at the dock by two of the local presiding elders. The missionaries helped gather their luggage, and President and Sister Callahan were transported to their temporary residence. Elder Melvin J. Ballard had informed them that one of their first assignments would be to purchase a new mission headquarters, which would also serve as home to the mission president and several of the missionaries. It was time, Elder Ballard had said, to begin to establish a permanency to the church in South America.

  The local leaders had arranged a small conference, and all the missionaries in the country had traveled to Buenos Aires to meet with President Callahan. Thirty-two young elders, plus four couples called from local branches, arrived at the temporary mission headquarters to participate in two days of meetings with the new president. The first morning of the conference, Tom’s third day in Argentina, he opened the conference and addressed the gathering, which had grown by a few dozen members who, while not specifically invited to what was to have been a missionary gathering, came along to see the new president and his wife.

  “Brothers and sisters, my name is Thomas Callahan and this is my wife, Sister Katrina Callahan. I come originally from Ireland, and Sister Callahan was born in Norway. I know that many of you come from Utah, and that’s where we’ve made our home since 1896. That’s a long time ago,” he laughed.

  “Each of us has been sent here by the Lord to tell the people of Argentina that The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is no longer a Utah church. It is the Lord’s church—a worldwide church—and the Lord does not recognize political boundaries among His people. He will reach out and find the pure in heart wherever they are located. Missionary efforts and local branches are springing up in many countries of the world. As we speak, elders are preaching the gospel in Europe, the British Isles, even Ireland and Norway, where they sorely need it, I can tell you,” he laughed again. “We send missionaries among the islands of the Pacific and throughout the United States as well. And now, here we are in this great continent of South America.

  “Almost four years ago, Apostle Melvin J. Ballard stood in this very city and dedicated the land of South America for the preaching of the gospel. We are about that work now, brothers and sisters, and together we shall strive to do the will of the Lord.”

  The day was filled with missionary testimonies, talks from local church leaders, and even a very personal talk from Katrina about facing adversity and building faith in the crucible of life. The second evening, after all the missionaries had returned to their areas, Tom and Katrina were preparing for bed.

  “­You’re awfully quiet this evening, Thomas,” Katrina said as she performed her nightly ritual of brushing out her hair. “Thinking about what Brother Juarez had to say?”

  “That, and other things.”

  “He seems a wonderful man, doesn’t he. And so new in the church to be a branch president. But it was clear from listening to him speak that the Lord just reached out and touched him on the shoulder. The Spirit was so strong while he was speaking.”

  “He seems a remarkably spiritual man, Katie. But, speaking of new members, if you noticed,” Tom said as he removed his shoes and placed them underneath the bed, “there’s no one who’s been in the church very long, except the Utah missionaries.”

  “I suppose not. Including the mission president,” she smiled, slipping beneath the sheets, pulling the covers up to her neck, and turning out her table lamp. “Don’t they seem like wonderful boys, the missionaries I mean?”

  “Ummm.”

  “­We’re really here, Thomas. I still find it hard to believe. It’s only been, what, just over two years since we stood on that mountainside in Hawaii and you told me you wanted to retire?”

  “I didn’t think it was going to happen. This calling, I mean.”

  “The Lord knows what He’s doing, and when to do it. You know how patient Elder McKay is, right?”

  “Elder McKay’s not Irish,” Tom replied and then lay still for several moments, staring at the ceiling. “You know, Katie, as I talked individually to each of those young men, I felt ... I don’t know, but I felt kind of like their father, like I was talking to PJ or Tommy.”

  Katrina rolled over and snuggled close to her husband, laying her head on his shoulder in a manner that had become so practiced and comfortable over the past thirty-two years of their marriage.

  “Down here, ­you’re the closest thing to a father they have, President Callahan. That’s why the Lord sent you here—to watch over and protect these missionaries.”

  Managing those missionaries and supervising their labors became Tom’s first priority. Returning a few weeks later to the mission home from a five-day tour of mission locations south of Buenos Aires, President Callahan went directly to his study where he pawed through the mail that had accumulated. That was where Katrina found him.

  “Thomas, I thought I heard someone come in. How did it go?” she asked.

  He turned from the desk and took his wife in his arms. While holding her, he said, “If you want the truth, I’m exhausted. The elders are great young men, but they wear me out. By the time I got there, Barnes and Laycock were ready to kill each other—all over some scriptural dispute, if you can believe it.”

  “I can believe it. Elder Brummer’s called every day since you’ve been gone.”

  “Still wanting to go home?” Tom asked.

  “Not just wanting. Now he’s demanding to be released.”

  Tom heaved a sigh. “I thought that assigning him in the city and keeping him close to the mission home would help, but perhaps not. I guess I’ll have to bring him in and see if I can talk him out of it. What’s today, Tuesday? I’ll do it tomorrow.”

  Katrina winced. “Actually, Thomas, he and his companion will be here tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Well, when I talked to him this afternoon, he was so upset I ­couldn’t stand it. Knowing you’d be back today, I invited Elder Brummer and his companion to come for dinner.”

  Tom started to say something, then sighed and chuckled. “Do you know what I’d give to be back keeping banker’s hours?”

  “I hope ­you’re not upset with me,” Katrina said.

  “Upset? How could I be upset with you, Sister Callahan?” Tom laughed. “It’s Elder Brummer who’s the problem. Just give me time to get a bath before he comes and I have to take him on.”

  Following dinner, Tom instructed Elder Farnsworth to make himself comfortable in the living room, then took Elder Brummer with him to his study. Motioning for the tall, gangly elder to sit down, Tom c
losed the door and sat in his chair across the desk from the missionary.

  After a moment of silence, President Callahan said, “Well, Elder Brummer, you’ve been in Argentina how long now, nearly a month?”

  Elder Brummer sat with his head down, nervously holding his hands in his lap. When he looked up, his chin was trembling.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “It will be a month tomorrow.”

  “I believe ­you’re from Cache Valley in northern Utah, is that right?”

  The elder nodded his head. “Yes, sir. My dad runs a dairy farm there.”

  “Are you getting along well with Elder Farnsworth?” Tom asked.

  “He’s all right.”

  “How do you find the weather?” the president asked.

  “Okay.”

  “Are you healthy?” Tom pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “But ­you’re not happy, is that right?”

  Elder Brummer pinched his nostrils between the finger and thumb on his right hand, then looked for something to wipe the moisture on. Tom handed him his own hand­kerchief and waited for a reply.

  Wiping his nose and eyes with the handkerchief, Elder Brummer mumbled something.

  “Excuse me,” President Callahan said, leaning forward, “I ­couldn’t hear what you said.”

  “I said, I want to go home,” Brummer said quietly.

  Tom considered the remark before saying, “Yes, well, you’ve said that before. What is it, Elder? What is it that is really bothering you? Do you have a testimony?”

  Elder Brummer nodded his head. “I know the church is true,” he said.

  “Well, what is it then? Do you have anything you should have confessed before you accepted the call?”