Gentle exposure to the gospel at Cherry Hill Campground

As a zone leader in the Illinois Chicago Mission in 1978, Elder Keith Lloyd from Kaysville, Utah, was interviewing baptismal candidates. He asked the husband and wife how they first heard about the LDS Church.

While traveling in Utah, they replied, they had stopped at a little campground near Salt Lake City where the owners, Grant and Mary Lou Lloyd, had talked to them about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Elder Lloyd was amazed that they were talking about his parents and their Cherry Hill Campground in Kaysville.

That gospel contact in the campground was not happenstance. Grant Lloyd, a stake seventy when he opened the campground in 1967, and his wife were purposely missionary-minded in their business. They made it a point, with the help of stake seventies, to take advantage of the opportunity to expose campers to the gospel. It began in 1968 with the showing of church movies such as "Man's Search for Happiness."

"The plan was simple," wrote former stake mission president Jerry L. King in memories of the campground missionary project. "The seventies would arrive at the campground before dusk and visit each campsite, answering basic tourist questions and extending a friendly invitation to the campers to join us that night to view a movie. A series of long electrical extension cords were strung several hundred feet from the registration office to a camp table to power the 16mm projector."

Crowds increased, leading to the establishment of a small outdoor movie theater just off Kaysville's Main Street. Church pamphlets were available to those who wanted them. Campers were told about nearby Temple Square and often formed a Sunday morning caravan from the camp to Salt Lake City for the weekly Mormon Tabernacle Choir broadcast of "Music and the Spoken Word."

The full impact of consecrating a part of their private business to missionary work was hard to measure, but the Lloyds knew of several people who joined the church after their first exposure at the campground. Some returned to stay at the campground the following year when they went to the Salt Lake Temple to be endowed.

The campground has evolved, now dominated by a resort with water park, miniature golf course and batting cages. The theater is gone, but not the missionary spirit.

Keith Lloyd, one of the campground/resorts' co-owners, shared his feelings about his parent's inspired missionary work at the park during a Church News interview on a grassy area inside the Grant's Gulch water park where gospel-themed musical concerts are being staged throughout the summer. The Farmington Utah Oakridge Stake, which includes the park in its boundaries, supports the latest efforts to share the gospel.