MFT in Seattle Memoir

The diamond left in Seattle

In Seattle one Sunday, we shared morning service with the regular center members. Afterwards our captain announced, “Anyone who makes their goal today can witness with the members.” I was out the door in a flash. Soon I was beside the members who were using a clipboard and survey to invite people to the evening program. I stopped a young man and asked him all of the questions, but he did not answer in such a way that led to a natural discussion about God and spiritual matters. However when I was finished, he did not leave disinterested. So I continued to talk to him, trying to draw him out and find a correlative base upon which to build. The only thing I can remember now is that he liked the color yellow. My background is art; I have studied colors and their energy including personalities associated with favorite colors. People who favor yellow are usually very optimistic, they overcome problems easily and have a generally positive mindset. (Think of the sun; its rays go outward- giving, giving giving. We cannot see where they end, but we know it is ultimately for good). This fact alone encouraged me. I invited him, LW, to the center and the rest is history; he became an associate member. 
Through the years he has helped many members- he bought a new refrigerator for the center, paid for a sister to get her teeth fixed. He looked around for ways to help and then, quietly unassuming, he did. Usually full-time members are too preoccupied with the mission to attend to even important practical matters; LW has been a blessing filling that lack. Years later he took care of high-level guests with his beautiful wife, MW, housing them, touring on Lake Washington past the Gates’ Mansion.  It is lovely beyond words to know that someone I introduced to the church has helped so many people, members and guests, so unselfishly, 


Loving math through the eyes of LW
LW is a doctor of mathematics. I admire and respect math- from a great distance- a distance that feels unbreachable. I do believe that God created the world using math with the most elegant laws and principles. Galileo stated in the 1700s: “Our universe is a grand book written in the language of mathematics.” True Father said that the spiritual realm is based on math. But when I try to grasp mathematical principles it is akin to an unintelligible foreign language. I visited LW’s home a few times; he had an entire bookshelf of math books. I was surprised that such a plethora existed! He even showed me one in which mathematicians used math to prove the existence of God! 
I asked him why he liked math so much; he said because it is pure. Other subjects are open to interpretation. History is written by the victors- from their own perspective. Literature is an individual’s voice. Art...Music..Even science is influenced by the often unconscious predilections of the scientist. But math is the same whether a person is an American or a Russian, a religious person or an atheist,  rich or poor, man or woman, adult or child. Math remains the same. 
I could see that his desire for something pure and absolute led him to his field. Looking through his eyes, I have come to love and appreciate math as never before, although that chasm in my understanding remains. I am greatly heartened by True Father’s regarding our entry into the spiritual realm: “Within a week you can surpass the knowledge of any scholar...by seeing things through the light of your heart you will automatically understand the world and all its related interconnections.” 

Our spiritual children expand our hearts and minds in ways that don’t make sense mathematically until you add the love quotient which always equals eternity and trumps all other equations ..elegantly.