As a boy, President Howard W. Hunter enjoyed with his father a favorite pastime of opening an atlas and taking imaginary trips to various lands. Later, he was able to visit many of these lands in connection with his church responsibilities.
Here are some of his experiences during these visits:
After one trip to Australia and the South Pacific, then-Elder Howard W. Hunter told a Church News reporter of the advice he got from a mission president there:
"I hope you have a strong neck," the president said.
"This observation was thoroughly brought home with the members in Papette (Tahiti) and the surrounding islands greeted (Elder Hunter), shaking hands and placing `shell leis' around his neck," the reporter explained. "By the time the greetings were over, some 50 pounds of shell necklaces had been draped about the necks of the visitors," the reporter wrote.
In the South Seas, he was honored many times at special ceremonies. In Fiji in 1969, the reporter wrote:
"Another elaborate ceremony occurred when he was in Samoa in 1974 to organize a stake.
"Nearly one hundred warriors sat in the line extending on each side of the prince, who sat at the kava bowl, and about sixty chiefs sat in the group behind the bowl - nearly all of the high chiefs of the south part of the island. . . . The ceremony commenced by the speeches of greeting from the talking chiefs with all the pomp and splendor of the ancient ceremony. After the preparation of the kava, it was served to the visiting dignitaries by the cupbearer. Then came the time for the giving of the gifts. A procession formed to display the twenty-five fine mats that were given as well as many other gifts of roast pigs, a cow, baskets, beads and other things. We were told by some of the people that they had never seen such an elaborate ceremony or so many gifts in all of Samoa."
After a stake conference one weekend, President Hunter revealed in his journal his feelings about another kind of danger a general authority faces.
"It's almost impossible for general authorities of the church to keep slender. Every weekend we stay at the house of a stake president, and his wife always goes to every effort to cook, bake and spread the table with an abundance of everything. I never object because I have no dislikes - there is nothing I don't enjoy. Most people like baked ham and fried chicken and so do I, but recently I have had so much that I can't look a pig or chicken squarely in the eye without a guilty feeling for the dislike I feel is commencing to creep in.
"Take this weekend, for instance. At the Utah Symphony dinner Friday evening we were served half of a large fried chicken, more than I could possibly eat. On the flight to Chicago Saturday morning we had large slices of ham for breakfast. At noon on the way to Atlanta the stewardess served us deep-fried chicken stuffed with ham. Between Atlanta and Jacksonville, we had a light lunch - chicken and ham sandwiches.
"When we got to the (stake president's) home, there was a big dinner ready for us, and sister (stake president's wife) had baked a beautiful Southern ham. This morning I got up and, sure enough, sister (stake president's wife) was preparing a huge breakfast - fried eggs, hot biscuits, grits, peach preserves and, surely you could guess, the biggest slices of fried ham I have ever seen.
"I am grateful for the wonderful people with whom we stay each weekend, and I appreciate their goodness to us, but as I passed a Dee's hamburger stand on the way home, I thought, wouldn't a hamburger and a malt make a wonderful banquet?"
As an apostle, President Hunter's travels took him to diverse places throughout the world - to Machu Pichu, the Incan archaeological site high in the Peruvian Andes; to the wind-and-sandswept deserts of Africa; to Dachau, the infamous World War II concentration camp in southern Bavaria; to the Taj Mahal in India; to the Great Wall of China and to the Berlin Wall; to Red Square in Moscow and to Tiananmen Square in Beijing; to war-torn Beirut and Belfast and to quiet villages and country byways in Scandinavia and Scotland.
Other destinations included Victoria Peak overlooking Hong Kong; Table Mountain overlooking Cape Town, South Africa; the desolate outback of Australia; and the bustling, crowded cities of Shanghai, Rio De Janeiro, Tokyo and Bombay.
He also sailed on the canals of Venice, on the Mediterranean Sea and on the Moscow, Seine, Hudson, Nile, Rhine and Danube rivers; rode in cogwheel trains, subways, interurban trains and the Orient Express, as well as in buses, carts and rickshaws; and climbed onto horses, camels and donkeys.
In Norway in September 1966, President and Sister Hunter visited the Norwegian city of Hammerfest, the world's northernmost city, far above the Arctic Circle.
A Church News article describes their adventure:
"Hammerfest is difficult to reach by normal transportation. It was originally planned that the visitors would fly to Hammerfest by seaplane. A change in the weather eliminated any possibility of using a plane, as is often the case. It was decided that they should travel by car from Alta, the closest city to Hammerfest with a commercial airport. Snow had started to cover the roads. Several times en route, Elder Hunter and President (Leo M.) Jacobsen had to push their car through the snow. When it seemed as if further progress was impossible, a truck came by and towed the car over the summit to Hammerfest."
They finally arrived at 10:30 that night for a meeting that was to have started at 7 p.m. and found that most of the members had waited. "They had come from a number of places along the north cape and from as far as Kirkenes near the Russian border," President Hunter said.
Some of President Hunter's most satisfying experiences came as he has visited in homes of the Saints. One such occasion occurred in Eastern Europe long before the Iron Curtain was parted. In September 1967, accompanied by President Rendell N. Mabey, president of the Swiss Mission, and his wife, he conducted a conference in Poland, which at that time had just one branch of the church, a group of 24 Saints in the tiny village of Zelwagi. They were guests of the family of the branch president, Erich Konietz.
President Hunter wrote:
"When we drove into the yard, his wife and four little boys came out to meet us, excited to have the mission president and a general authority come to visit them. They have a humble, crude little house. The grandparents of Sister Konietz lived in the house and now the fourth generation is living there. There are flies, dogs, cats, chickens and geese in and out of the house, but the family is happy and they are devoted church members. . . . President and Sister Mabey slept on a couch in the dining room, Claire and I stayed in the bedroom, and the family slept in the children's rooms. There are not many accommodations. Water is brought from the well in the back yard in a pail, and because there is no bathroom, (one) must find his way by moonlight."