Do you have your own, personal Three Nephites experience?

We Mormons have our own personal religious lore; one that tops the list is the Three Nephites. A healthy percentage of members who make it to church more often than not either have their own personal Three Nephites tale or can relate at least one that has been passed onto them.

The Three Nephites are mentioned in The Book of Mormon as disciples of Jesus Christ who ask to remain on earth until Jesus Christ returns and convert souls for him. Christ says yes, which is the same answer he gives to John the Beloved in the New Testament.

(I digress here to wonder how often the Three Nephites and John the Beloved have met the past 1,977 years or so. Do they ever get tired of each other? Do they ever squabble? I couldn’t imagine being on my best behavior waiting for a guest who won’t tell us when he’ll ever return.)

Despite my occasional skepticism, I’m one of those who can boast of his own “Three Nephites experience.” But first, some more about the LDS folklore of the Three Nephites. Besides John the Beloved, the Three Nephites have parallels to The Wandering Jew, Catholic saints and even the Prophet Elijah. Although reports of Three Nephites activity are not — for good reason — official Mormon doctrine, their calling is mentioned in Mormonism’s most unique scripture. One who claims a literal belief in the Book of Mormon must agree that the three are still hanging around somewhere. The same goes for the Bible and John the Beloved.

The first Three Nephites tale I recall hearing is about an army officer on the front in World War II who gives a lift in his jeep to three wandering civilians. When he drops them off, one of the men asks what he can do to repay the officer. The officer flippantly replies, “Tell me when this war will end?” The man gives him a date. The officer thinks nothing of the answer until the war ends, and you guessed it, on the exact date the man told him!

There’s a million of these tales. In 1949, author Hector Lee published “The Three Nephites: The Substance and Significance of the Legend in Folklore,” Albuquerque, The University of New Mexico Press. Here are a couple of accounts that Lee collected:

• The Hitchhiking “ghost” Nephite, where an old hitchhiker was picked up by couple traveling to Grand Junction, Colo. It was 1944. The old hitchhiker was a whiz on current events. At the most desolate part of their journey, the hitchhiker insisted on being let out. Naturally the couple protested. The hitchhiker told them they would soon be hauling a dead body to Grand Junction. He then told them the exact date that World War II would end. Sure enough, the couple came upon a car wreck with a fatality and hauled the dead driver to Grand Junction. The war ended on the same date as well.

I mention this tale because it’s similar to the one I heard as a child. The setting had changed and there was no dead body and there were three hitchhikers instead of one. I imagine that as “Three Nephites sightings” are passed along over and over, the tale can change significantly.

• Here’s another Three Nephites tale Lee compiled with a lot of the supernatural included. Mrs. Aylda Abbott Squires of Wa Wa Springs, in Utah, recounts an 1874 experience when she was all alone on the homestead and a lone man came by and asked for food. Mrs. Squires was frightened but provided him a meal. The man blessed her and promised her that a pain she was feeling in her liver would go away and that she would never want for basic necessities. As he turned a corner leaving she followed to see where he had gone but the man had disappeared. She returned to her table and discovered the lunch she had seen him eat and drink was untouched. Later, her mother reminded her that her Patriarchal blessing had mentioned she would see one of the Three Nephites.

I just love these tales. They’re part of what makes Mormonism so interesting and unique.

So here’s my “Three Nephites” tale. It’s got more holes in it than that once-sacred garment with the tokens cut off that grandma uses for cleaning, but here it is:

• It was 1983, in Chiclayo, Peru. My senior companion and I were in a massive slum, thousands of people living in homes without electricity or water. We were searching for the home of a referral. The potential investigator’s name was Marcos. After traipsing through the dusty dirt streets for the better part of a day, we stopped to stare at a very peculiar sight. A pig was hog-tied, presumably moments away from the slaughter. You’ve never heard screaming until you’ve heard a hog-tied pig scream. A crowd had gathered to stare at the pig. For some reason a man standing a few feet away caught our attention. One of us, I can’t recall which, asked — for the 100th time — “Do you know where Marcos lives?”

The man casually made a fist, thumb out, and glanced and pointed over his back toward an alley with a few house inward. “He lives back there,” he said.

To sum up a long story, we met Marcos, baptized him and later were baptized about 10 or 11 of his family members. Soon after we left Peru, Marcos went on his own mission. I’m glad Marcos and his family helped me to meet one of the Three Nephites.

A footnote

That same day, during our first visit with Marcos, the pig stopped screaming. When we returned to the site, there was only a dark, dank-smelling wet stain where the pig once screamed.

It took me about 10 years to realize that it would have been an impressive encore if the wandering Nephite had taken a moment to save the pig.

-- Originally published in 2010 at StandardNET.