https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2026/07?lang=eng
Folks, I was pleased in recent days to have some of you alert me to my work being featured in the LDS Church Liahona Magazine. Not featuring me, of course, because the writer was somewhat clueless. But back in the 1990s, I had seen so much suffering as I fought global poverty globally among Muslims and Catholics who struggled in the dozen or so nations I was working in, mobilizing rich friends to give of their time and substance. I think we had 5-6 Nonprofit organizations operating, mostly in the Philippines and West Africa. But I also felt deeply the pain among young LDS returned missionaries of what was called the Third World because I’d seen them through the years go serve the Lord, return home, and suffer miserable lives. They’d share stories of being unable to go to college. Therefore, they couldn’t get a decent job. So, the young women wouldn’t marry them. They were left in bitterness, loneliness, as well as lost credibility, hunger, etc.
I prayed about this tragedy for months, and finally God answered me. Directly. Clearly. He didn’t say stop my other work to simply focus on LDS RMs. But to stir up interests and convince top church officials to launch my humble little idea. I took it to a few LDS bureaucrats, and most of them laughed at the idea. I called it the creation of an LDS “Perpetual Education Fund” drawing from the early pioneer program known as the Perpetual Emigration Fund that funded my pioneer ancestors to be able to leave the UK, Sweden, Norway and take ship to America where they could cross the plains and Rockies and get to Utah. Here they built Zion and saved the dreams of the Prophet Joseph and later, Brother Brigham.
But church bureaucrats just chuckled. So, I worked my way into a sneaky one-on-one session with Gordon B. Hinckley, telling him he’s a renegade with more innovations to still implement. Years earlier he had accepted my idea of an LDS humanitarian NGO. It's now LDS Charities and is run by friends and former students in doing much good.
One time while doubting my proposal, he enquired if my ancestors had reimbursed the old pioneer Perpetual Immigration Fund after they began to succeed economically. I admitted they probably hadn’t. Then I teased him about his own ancestors. We both chuckled and I said, “Even they were too poor back then, and I’m sure yours didn’t offer paybacks because hardly anyone could.” But, I argued, "the church’s financing brought them to Zion and they saved the church. And you know it, President.” He laughed and got tears in his eyes as he often did, and then muttered under his breath, “You’re right about both our families.”
However, after a year of lobbying and more sad stories, he was still resistant. I’d argued, told dozens of cases or young elders serving in Zambia or Peru, and for 2 years enjoying a nice apartment, air conditioning, a bike or car, 3 good meals daily, and all the prestige a young elder gets with his fancy suit, standing at the pulpit preaching God’s will to hundreds of people, all in addition to helping convert, baptize, and change people’s lives. Then, they are released, go home to a hovel or shack, sleep on the floor with 4-5 siblings crawling around. No AC. Only one meal per day. No car. Not even a bike. Jobless. Potential girlfriends are disinterested because such elders lack schooling and therefore can’t get a decent job. A temple marriage? Nope.
But the Prophet seemed unmoved. So, I convinced one of my best NGOs to agree that we could try our own PEF with a stake President friend in Curitiba, Brazil to run our humble PEF experiment. We funded it from our Mentors International NGO coffers. The results seemed good. So, we then launched another experiment with RMs in Chile. But there, we put $100,000 in a Bank of America account in Santiago and let them disburse and later collect the monies. By then our results were convincing. Such that an old Mexican friend in Mexico who was a mission president there agreed to try it as well. After his mission, he stayed there living among the people and helping RMs.
Meanwhile, I got some BYU students of mine to spend a summer in Peru collecting the data I needed to argue more for the PEF. My team found a couple hundred RMs to interview. They collected the data. The cases had all the negative features above. But even worse: 82 percent had gone inactive. So, I took that data to Pres. Hinckley, but he still seemed unfazed. Yet I knew my crazy, inspired idea had legs, and it needed to go forward.
Shortly after the latest meeting we had, while church bureaucrats continued asserting my proposal was too radical, while I argued they needed to pray harder and become radical themselves, there was a bit of movement. On a Friday afternoon, the Prophet’s secretary called my home. She said he wanted me to be sure and attend the upcoming Saturday evening priesthood session. I asked, “Are you going to tell me what I should expect?” She said she wasn’t and she couldn’t. That’s when I knew! The next day, Saturday, March 31, 2001, it was announced. My phone started ringing off the hook all night as newspaper columnists, friends, students, and some church leaders began calling me and their congratulations, saying we needed to celebrate what they told me would never happen. But now it was in the pipeline.
From all this, I learned that when I worked hard on major LDS Church problems, if I don’t get discouraged or quit, but stay at it long enough and be as inspired and creative as I can, social change can happen. I’m burned out typing this up tonight but could say a lot more about the PEF rollout, its early management problems, how quickly it ballooned into a $1 billion program, and how it’s evolved over the decades since. I’m grateful my band of renegade students helped me get data so I could convince Pres. Hinckley first to create Latter-day Saint Charities back in the 1980s and then the 90’s, which just reported spending over $1.5 billion last year alone in assisting the global poor. PEF has been another huge blessing as thousands of returning elders and sisters have had much success in moving toward economic self-reliance. So, folks, take a look at the July 2026 Liahona for inspiring stories of transformation!
