In Saint John, twenty one, verse three,
not many days past Calvary,
said Peter, then in Galilee,
“I go a fishing.”

This verse, in all of holy writ,
perhaps my Grandpa’s favorite,
expresses, with a touch of wit,
his love for fishing.

No one enjoys it more than he.
Those who know him well agree
my Grandpa always yearns to be
somewhere a fishing.

He’s worked and labored all his life
and longed for when he, with his wife,
could leave behind all toil, all strife,
and go a fishing.

And long before age sixty-five,
they prayed that they would be alive
and nothing would of them deprive
their time for fishing.

They fished a lot, when ere they could,
but dreamed of days when nothing would
stand in the way of all the good
they’d do while fishing.

So as the day was drawing nigh,
and people asked their reasons why,
they simply gave this brief reply,
“We go a fishing.”

Now, like the men of Galilee
whom Christ the Savior called to be
fishers of men, both he and she
are going fishing.

They’ll search the shallows and the deep.
They’ll cast their nets and hope to reap,
for their Master, a catch to keep,
while they are fishing.

The family’s come to shed a tear.
We will not see them for a year,
but we are proud they do not fear
to go a fishing.

I admire and honor the senior missionaries who give up the relative ease of retired life to serve and bless the lives of others. I'm hoping my wife and I will likewise be able to serve. We’ll of course go wherever assigned, but I confess that I have a list of places I'd like to go. I remember several years ago when I was in Spain for the summer and I attended the Villalba branch near Madrid. One Sunday I asked the branch president if there had ever been senior missionaries assigned to his branch. He said that unfortunately there were never enough of them for the mission president to assign them to every branch who could use them, and because his branch had more priesthood brethren than most of the others, they had yet to have that blessing. So Villalba is on my list, as is also a branch I attended in Valparaiso, Chile. I have often wondered what was going through the minds of the fishermen Peter, James, and John when the Savior told them that he would make them fishers of men. They must have felt overwhelmed. Notwithstanding their inadequacies, they responded with faith, and He made them equal to the task. And He continues to prepare and sustain his servants who today demonstrate that same kind of faith as they “go a fishing”.