President Spencer W. Kimball's Vision of His Father

"I have had few dreams which had meaning. Of the thousands through the years, most have passed out of mind with the dawn, but this was different. I stood in the room with other people around me, then I saw him. Father was a handsome person, tall, with dark piercing eyes and a commanding appearance. And there he was, not as a vague apparition, but so real and so like himself. I called out "Oh! Father, Father, it is so good to see you." 

He had a radiant smile such as he had had in life. It warmed me. I was pulsating with gladness. I could not understand why others could not see him, he was so clear and distinct and pleasing. "Oh, my beloved father!" Then he seemed to be moving away. He had been only an arm's length from me. He faded out of the picture and was gone. I awakened and lay reliving the dream or vision again and again. I did not want it to pass from my memory. I went to my desk and wrote it in my journal and went back to bed, lying quietly in the darkness musing, reliving the hallowed experience. 

"So vivid it was that I felt sure it had some meaning. I am not sure for what purpose it was given to me. Many times in years gone by I have wondered if either my father or mother would some day come to me; I knew they must be proud of the position given me and the honor which had come to them. And, so, I have been grateful through the year [since the dream] for that sweet moment. If it did nothing more for me than to more completely connect mortality with the life beyond, it served a good purpose.

"As I have contemplated these months the exquisite joy which came to me in a reunion with my earthly father, I came to anticipate with infinitely greater happiness the possible meeting of my Lord and Savior and our Eternal Father. And there began to bear in upon me the feeling expressed in the song I have sung so many times, "O grave, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?" Somehow after this, the future, whatever it was, did not look so bleak and nebulous. There settled down over me a comfort and a peace which, except in a few weak moments, has never left me."

 (57-04)  (Spencer W. Kimball, The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, edited by Edward L. Kimball [Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1982], 43.)