Elder Cosby's Mother's Note: We were in Nebraska at Elder Cosby's brother's home on Mother's Day. Mission protocol in his mission is for parents to initiate a call on the designated day. It was 5:30 am in Tahiti. 11:30 in Nebraska. Elder Cosby's companion sleepily passed the phone to Elder Cosby. I asked him if he wanted us to call him when we got home at 11:30 that night to talk or if he wanted to talk now while we were at Jon's house so he could say hi to him. He very sleepily said, "I wanna talk to my brother too, just let me wake up."
We put the phone on speakerphone on the living room floor in Jon's house and asked our missionary questions and listened to his stories. What a beautiful spirit filled the room as he spoke of the people he loved and the beautiful island culture he was experiencing. He bore his testimony of the gospel and spoke of his love for the Savior and the work he was doing. I asked him to sing to me in Tahitian. He said, "What?" and I said just a line or two, just start something out, don't you sing in Tahitian in church? You don't have to sing a whole hymn, just a line or two. So, he said, ok, just one line, and started, probably rather reluctantly (who likes to sing impromptu solos to an audience on the phone?) to sing in the beautiful language of the French Polynesian islands . . . and then he sang another line, and then he became more confident and sang strongly, all the way through the song to the end. We all recognized it immediately from the tune. One of the most memorable and special mothers' day gifts I will ever have I am sure was hearing my son, whose voice I had so longed to hear during twinges of anxiousness and uncertainty during the previous weeks of tsunami storms and weeks with no communication arriving from him . . . to hear him sing so movingly in a language of many vowels and gentle grace a beloved song, one of the first songs our children learn to sing, full of gospel truth.
He sang, "I Am a Child of God"
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