Elder Renlund: “How Long Will It Be Ere They Believe Me?”
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Through a heart-transplant patient’s complaint about cold oatmeal, Elder Dale G. Renlund teaches that we can trust God’s promises, and that there is no asterisk excluding us from them.
In the October 2026 general conference, Elder Dale G. Renlund drew on his years as a heart-transplant cardiologist to make a simple point: we can trust God's promises, and they apply to us.
The cold oatmeal
Elder Renlund told of a patient, Mr. Martin, whose first transplanted heart failed. A second, "marginal" donor heart that would not have been used for anyone else worked beautifully, and his failing organs recovered. Ten days later, the day before he was to go home, Mr. Martin was sitting on his bed, irritated, because his oatmeal wasn't hot and his milk wasn't cold.
Having just survived a miracle, he was focused on breakfast. Elder Renlund said we easily fall into the same trap: we fix on the "cold oatmeal" of today and lose sight of where we have been and what God has promised.
Israel in the wilderness
The children of Israel did the same. The Lord freed them from Egypt, saved them at the Red Sea and fed them in the wilderness, yet when they reached the promised land they wished they had died in Egypt. The Lord asked Moses, "How long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them?" (Numbers 14:11).
Hope rests on Christ, not on us
Elder Renlund taught that faith centered on Jesus Christ frees us from uncertainty because our hope rests on His righteousness, not our own. He pointed to Lehi telling Jacob that he was redeemed because of the righteousness of his Redeemer, and to Moroni's invitation to remember how merciful the Lord has been.
No asterisk
His sister Linda once felt that the blessings in the scriptures carried an invisible asterisk: for everyone except her. She later realized she was not an exception. Elder Renlund invited listeners who feel the same to "take out a big eraser and obliterate that asterisk."
Quoting Joseph Smith, he said the Savior has made "ample provision" for the redemption of the living and the dead, meaning every human circumstance is within His reach. He closed by testifying that the Lord's purposes will roll on until all His promises are fulfilled, and by quoting the hymn "Standing on the Promises."
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