The Bingham Bunch: A visit to see Grandpa

So the 2nd week in May we received a phone call that my Grandfather was in the hospital. My brother Matt and I traveled down to Salt Lake City to see him. The following is a history written by Matt, he wrote it the night after we saw my grandfather and I wanted this in my own family records.

My Grandpa
by Matt

I traveled to Salt Lake City this weekend to visit my Grandpa Verd Bettilyon who is in LDS Hospital. He is there because of an infection in his leg that had gotten quite severe and he notified the doctors and family that he did not want resuscitation or dialysis for his kidneys. There was a significant build-up of potassium in his blood that was causing his kidneys to fail, so it seemed apparent that he would be passing rather quickly and I wanted to see him before he left this life. I stopped in North Powder and stayed the night with Emily and Justin and their cute daughters and then Emily and I drove to Salt Lake on Friday. We arrived at 5 PM and immediately went to LDS Hospital to visit Grandpa.

We went in and talked with him and I filled the time with conversations about my children and Emily told some stories about her little ones, as well. We were getting ready to depart and I asked him the question I had been thinking about for the last few days. I asked Grandpa to bear his testimony to us. Emotion overcame me as I asked him and once he understood what I was asking he was overcome by tears as well.

I was expecting him to use the normal vernacular that seems common in testimony meetings like, “I know that the church is true,” or “I know the Book of Mormon is a true book,” or perhaps he would venture out and share an experience about how he new the Savior to be real and efficacious in his own life. He took a different tack than I was expecting.

He talked about his love for his longtime and departed wife, my grandma, Nadine. He talked about how he wouldn’t have made it through life without her and he was incredibly grateful for her love and support.

Then he talked about Ruth, his wife of nearly eleven years, and said she was a wonderful helpmeet for him. His voice was filled with emotion and tenderness as he thought about his love for Ruth.

Then he talked about serving as a mission president for the Church in Argentina. He said that the call to serve came at a time in his career as a lawyer that his practice was starting to make significant money. Because he chose to serve he gave up significant financial gain, but he stated very clearly and lucidly that he did not regret giving up the money that he would have made for the opportunity to serve in Argentina. Then he strongly advised each of us to serve missions for the church in our life time.

I think he finally stated near the end that he knew the gospel was real and, perhaps he even used the word true, I’m not sure any more.

It has caused me to wonder about what a testimony should really be. I have been very specifically trained, as a missionary, that a testimony is very specific testifying of specific things: Jesus Christ and His Divine Sonship, the reality of Joseph Smith and his restoration of the gospel, the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, the reality of the Priesthood and that its power is real and that the living Prophet is an oracle of God. I really enjoyed my Grandpa’s version of what a testimony is. He bypassed all of the regular words and phrases that are normally thought of when the word testimony is used.

We left and picked up Holly at the airport, ate dinner, and returned to the hospital. Grandpa mentioned that he wondered how his wife, Ruth, was doing. She had back surgery recently and is in her own care facility in Bountiful. Even though he was happy to have visitors, he insisted that we travel to Bountiful to make sure his wife was happy and not lonely. We said we would go. Several minutes later he asked us again: Please go visit Ruth. We said, Grandpa, we will go see her. He continued asking us until we promised that we would visit her – and that we would do it the following day, before we visited him again, and that we would report to him about our visit. He was finally satisfied that we would spend some time with her.

Thiswas certainly a testimony builder for me

It was also fun becuase my Father and all of my siblings were able to make it. Holly from Seattle WA, Matt from Monroe WA, Andrew and Katherine from Pocatello Idaho and we stayed with Allen and Britney's family. It was a lot of fun.

On Saturday we visited Ruth, Grandma and Grandpa Sadler and then Granpa Bettilyon again

and we took a TON of posterity type photo's

The Siblings: Allen, Holly, Andrew, Emily, Matt