A few years ago, a friend related a dramatic personal experience illustrating how close young children can be to the Spirit. Our friend was watching over his four-year-old son one day while his wife was away from home. At one point, the father became aware that his son had been gone from his presence for some time. Concerned, the father conducted a search of the home, looking in every nook and cranny where the boy might have gone. Finding no trace, he searched the yard. There was still no sign of the boy. Now genuinely alarmed, the father searched the house and yard again and again. When the boy could still not be found, the father went to the neighbors on all sides, only to learn that they had not seen the boy. Presently the entire neighborhood took up the search, going through the home again and again and looking everywhere in the community. Everyone was enlisted in the increasingly frantic quest to find the missing boy. The father called the police. They came and searched as well. No trace. The boy had vanished. Hearts were anxious. Minds were confused.
Then a little girl from a neighboring house took action concerning her little lost friend. She went back into her own home and prayed to the Lord for help. Immediately she crossed back over into the boy’s home and went directly to the master bedroom and walked up to a storage bench equipped with a hinged lid. She opened the lid, and there was the boy, sound asleep. No one had thought to look in that precise place—not the father, not the neighbors, not the police. But the girl looked there because that is how the Lord directed her. She knew. Everyone was relieved and grateful. Lessons were learned. A family was reunited. And, once more, the truth of Alma’s statement about little children was confirmed: “little children do have words given unto them many times, which confound the wise and the learned” (Alma 32:23).
Our friend had learned firsthand, as do we all from time to time, that little children can be very close to the Spirit. Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14). When the Savior was with the ancient American Saints following His Resurrection, He blessed the little children “one by one” (3 Nephi 17:21) and prayed for them. Angels from heaven descended and administered to the little children (see 3 Nephi 17:23–24). It is true that the angels do minister to little children more often than we understand or realize. (Richard J. Allen)