Elder Don R. Clarke was serving as mission president of the Bolivia Santa Cruz Mission in 2003 when he sat down at his desk to review the paperwork of new missionaries soon to arrive.

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Mary Anne Jackson and Don R. Clarke met in a Sunday School class he taught after returning from his mission; they married in 1970.

Thumbing through the stack, he was surprised to come across the name Chad Godfrey, a high school friend of his son Nathan.

The young man had visited the Clarke home and was taught two missionary lessons a little more than a year earlier.

Elder Clarke lost track of the young man after embarking on his mission assignment.

Now, before him on the desk, were the young man's mission papers.

"We never really know the consequences of the little things we do," Elder Clarke said. "We can never foretell the consequences of this work."

Elder Clarke, sustained to the Second Quorum of the Seventy during April general conference, can string together a list of personal experiences verifying what President Gordon B. Hinckley once said, that, "to accomplish (what) the Lord expects of us, we must walk by faith."

Boldly proclaiming the gospel has long been a trait of Elder Clarke's.

He and his wife, Mary Anne, exchange glances of fond memories as he recounts such an experience in graduate school.

It was 1970. The couple had recently married and were in the state of Washington where he was earning a master's degree in business administration.

Returning home from a stake priesthood leadership meeting during which the brethren had been challenged to share the gospel with someone new, Elder Clarke was mentally reviewing his classmates. His attention was drawn to a red-headed acquaintance named Gary Borders.

They invited him to their home where they ate stuffed green peppers and spoke of the Restoration. This simple seed found fertile soil. The day before the Clarkes left school to begin his first job in Michigan for Ford Motor Co., Gary was baptized.

Time and distance broke their contact over the years until, one day, Elder Clarke received a phone call from a Bishop Gary Borders. "We were in St. Louis at the time where I was serving as bishop," Elder Clarke said. "Gary was perusing the Church directory and wondered if I was the same Don Clarke as the one who introduced him to the gospel.

"He now serves as stake president," continued Elder Clarke. "We speak periodically. If I ever think that little things don't matter, I pull out my picture of Gary and I'm reminded of the great things that come from small things."

As mission president, Elder Clarke taught his missionaries to be fearless in declaring the gospel. "About 90 percent of the missionaries have stood in the front of a full bus and shared the gospel," he said.

"Satan tells us that it is not important to do missionary work," he said. "He tells us that simple things don't matter, that nothing will come of the effort, that it's a waste of time.

"But it does matter. Eternal are the consequences of the one," Elder Clarke said.

Elder Clarke received his training in values and principles growing up in Rexburg, Idaho, where opportunities to develop were as expansive as the great outdoors.

Confidence in himself was increased when Hal Barton at the local high school urged him to run for student body office. "Someone believed in me," Elder Clarke said of an experience that, in time, shaped how he viewed his prospects for the future.

Following his mission to the Argentina South Mission in 1965-67, where he said half his baptisms resulted from conversations struck with strangers on the street while lost, Elder Clarke returned to BYU where he taught Sunday School in a student ward.

Mary Anne Jackson, a member of the class, was attracted to this effervescent returned missionary with the engaging smile. She detected in him a sense of determination and leadership that she wanted for her family.

A week after each graduated from BYU, they were married in the Idaho Falls Temple.

"I always told my missionaries that they should become as good as they possibly could, because they probably wouldn't marry someone better than themselves. But I'm the exception to that rule."

They raised six children while moving from state to state with his career. Christmas was a community affair, where family was mixed with dozens of missionaries and those from other cultures.

Through it all, Elder Clarke maintains the energy level of man half his 60 years of age. A week prior to general conference he was playing basketball with the young men from his mission.

"What's important," he said, "is that we know this work is divine. God leads this work and He cares deeply. He lets us get involved. We love life, and the problems associated with living make us greater people."

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