On Saturday nights in 1925, Sister Dorothy Cox, a missionary in Phoenix, Ariz., sometimes would look up to the sky and hope for rain. If it rained, the weekly street meeting held by missionaries would be canceled.
"It [a street meeting] was the thing that made me feel so inadequate," she recalled.At her first street meeting, a rowdy young man had tried to hassle her as she was speaking. The experience unnerved her. The elders had escorted the man away, but it wasn't a good start for Sister Cox and her companion, Jane Garfield.
The missionaries prepared for the street meetings with much fasting and praying. They would sing hymns, preach and give out tracts.
"Our singing gospel songs often drew a small crowd, and we were grateful for an opportunity to deliver our message of the restoration," she noted. "After the meetings, as we walked to our apartment, we often wondered if we had touched the hearts of any of those who had stopped to listen."
At the end of 27 months, she was released from her mission and returned to Salt Lake City, Utah. Several years later at general conference, she met J.R. Price, a former bishop of the Phoenix Ward.
For many years, the bishop said, he had been hoping to see her again. He recalled how two weeks after she had returned home, a family had asked about her. The bishop had never seen the family at Church before. As the family was leaving sacrament meeting, the father asked the bishop about Sister Cox.
"We are sorry to have missed her," the man said. "I talked to her several times at street meetings. My family and I read the tracts and the Book of Mormon she gave me, and we are ready to be baptized."
The family was baptized a short time later. Four of the sons in the family served missions, bringing many people into the Church, the bishop added.
"I wanted you to know about this family," the bishop said, "because it took a lot of faith for you to step out on a busy street corner and preach."
Now 82 and a member of the Millcreek 8th Ward in Murray, Utah, Dorothy Cox Bushnell, is just glad it didn't rain when her testimony touched someone who did listen.