Heavenly Father’s Divine Design

By Davis M. Smith, President, Brazil Recife North Mission

I was grateful for the donated shoes, but would they fit any of our missionaries?

As a mission leader in Brazil, I spent a week near the end of 2023 interviewing 60 of our 160 missionaries. One of them, a zone leader, asked to speak to me privately. When we met, he handed me a shoebox and told me his parents had bought an extra pair of shoes for someone in the mission who might need them.

Touched, I thanked him for his parents’ generosity and thoughtfulness. I silently wished, however, that the small shoes, size 8.5, had been a larger, common size worn by most of our missionaries. I was grateful nonetheless and put the shoes in my car.

Two days later, I was interviewing more missionaries, when I invited a smiling missionary into my office. He had arrived just four weeks earlier from Guatemala. When I asked him how he was doing, his smile turned into sobs.

He tearfully spoke of his embarrassment when another missionary had innocently teased him for not buttoning the top button of his shirt. He was a recent convert and had grown up in a single-parent home. His mother barely made enough money to support him and his two siblings. His donated shirts were too small, so he used the knot of his well-worn tie to hide the unbuttoned top button.

I gave him some money a Church member had donated for missionaries who needed clothing and told him to buy new shirts. Then I noticed that his shoes were falling apart. Suddenly, I remembered the shoes in my car! I asked him what size shoe he wore, realizing he had small feet.

“I wear a size 8.5,” he replied.

Tears filled my eyes as I explained that another missionary’s parents had just donated a pair of shoes in his size. We took a picture together and sent it to the zone leader. His father, who coincidentally was also Guatemalan, felt touched that he had helped a missionary from his native country.

In our mission, these types of blessings happen daily. Some might say they are simply coincidences, but I agree with Elder Neal A. Maxwell (1926–2004), who attributed them to the “divine design” of a loving Heavenly Father.