The Vandals in the Park

Every morning I take a one-mile walk through a park near my home. It gets my blood pumping and gets everything moving so I can think clearly, and most of the time that walk is where I decide what I'm going to talk about next. This morning I noticed one of the park workers, one of the men who does the mowing, wandering around like he was looking for something. Being my friendly self, I went over and asked him what he'd lost. He showed me. Sometime the night before, some kids had lifted the lids off the boxes that hold the sprinkler system, with all the pipes and valves underneath, and they filled them with rocks. Then they took the covers off the valves and tossed them. One of those covers was still missing. Apparently they didn't break anything this time, but those systems are expensive and difficult to fix.

It was just another act of vandalism. But I've been thinking about that park all morning, because what happens there is a small picture of something much bigger, and I want to walk you through it.

Thirty Years of Watching It Happen

I've walked through this park almost every day for close to thirty years. You would think a park is the one place nobody would want to damage. It's there for the children and the families, and for people like me who need a mile of fresh air before the day gets going. And yet it is sadly one of the most frequently vandalized places I know. I've watched the city have to change it, reinforce it, and repair it over and over again.

There's graffiti on the bathrooms. There are people who look at that big open grass field and decide it would be a great place to do donuts in their car, and people on motorcycles who ride anywhere they wish at an enormously high rate of speed, whether there are people on the grass or not. They've even ridden their motorcycles across the tennis courts, tearing up a court surface that cost a great deal of money to put down. It doesn't matter to them. All they see is wide open space. Why not?

But it goes much further than that, and I want you to see it the way I've seen it. They jump up and down on the picnic tables and the benches until they're cracked and bent and nobody can sit on them anymore. They've destroyed the volleyball nets, and every time I see the city put up a new one, it lasts a couple of days before it's torn down again. They've pulled down light poles. They've broken the lights that keep the paths safe after dark. They've dumped out the trash barrels and left the garbage blowing across the grass for somebody else to pick up.

And just for fun, they kick the sprinkler heads until they break and shoot water into the air like fountains, and then a park worker has to dig everything up to fix them. It may take weeks to get done.

And they've painted grotesque and pornographic images on the sidewalks, the same sidewalks little children walk on as they head to the playground. Think about that for a minute. A mother walks her four-year-old down to the swings, and that is what's painted under their feet. Who does that? What is going on inside a person who would do that? Nothing good. There's no gain in it for them. They do it because they can, and because somebody else will have to clean it up.

On top of all the damage is the regular maintenance, the leaves and seeds every spring and fall and the mowing every week all summer long. Keeping a park a park takes a tremendous amount of work, and every act of vandalism adds to it.

Easy to Tear Down, Hard to Build

Here's my point. Anything worth doing takes effort and energy. It takes planning, it takes money, and it takes time. Look at how many businesses start from nothing. Somebody has a dream or a vision, begins with a little bit, and over time it grows into a real business providing a substantial product with the hope of producing a profit. This park is the same way. It's here for the enjoyment of the community, and it's paid for by the tax dollars of the citizens.

But it's easy to destroy something. It's much harder to build something. Anybody can tear down. To build up, to maintain, and to keep moving forward requires a significant amount of work and energy and investment and planning and time.

A Chosen Land

America started off as a great experiment. It had a vision. It had the founding fathers, and it had the Constitution. We've gone through several significant changes in the evolution of the country, but it was inspired by God. The Lord Himself said so...

And for this purpose have I established the Constitution of this land, by the hands of wise men whom I raised up unto this very purpose, and redeemed the land by the shedding of blood. (Doctrine and Covenants 101:80)

This is His country. This is the chosen land. Ether taught the Jaredites that after the waters of the flood receded from off the face of this land...

...it became a choice land above all other lands, a chosen land of the Lord; wherefore the Lord would have that all men should serve him who dwell upon the face thereof (Ether 13:2)

He's given us laws and commandments to follow so that we may retain the blessings of this land. That's the condition. America is, and can be, the strongest country on earth if its people follow God and follow the right paths. But if they leave Him behind, then America doesn't have His power behind it anymore.

The Vandals of America

Sadly, in the last few years we've seen significant opposition to this country. There are those who want to destroy it. Why is that? Because it represents a threat to them. The globalist people that run the world recognized centuries ago that America represented a great threat to them, and they've been trying to tear it down ever since. But it's only within the last few decades that we've seen their insidious plot to destroy whatever was built, so they could retain control and not lose it because of the strength of America. And so one of the first things they did was what Balaam did. They introduced all kinds of immoral things so the people would lose the Spirit...

But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication. (Revelation 2:14)

It started in the sixties with free love and the removal of every restraint regarding sexuality. Then they changed the banking system. In 1971 the country was taken off the gold standard, and inflation has skyrocketed ever since.

They removed the plans to have America be self-sufficient and started outsourcing all of our manufacturing, with just-in-time thinking, maybe planning that it would be beneficial. It wasn't beneficial to Americans. All those jobs went overseas. The production went overseas, and all it did was help them. So the price of everything went up. We have more oil than anyone, and yet they made sure we couldn't produce our own fuel. They removed refineries. They made it nearly impossible for companies to drill, so that we had to depend on foreign sources. This beautiful country has been damaged by many kinds of people, just like the vandals in the park, and they have done everything they can to make sure we cannot succeed and cannot thrive.

They've caused racial division. They've pushed ridiculous things like reparations for slavery that happened to no one living in the country today. They allowed millions of illegal aliens to pour across our borders, and that drove housing prices up for every American family trying to buy a home, and it held down the wages of working people, especially those at the bottom who could least afford it. And there has been fraud on a scale most people can't even imagine, billions upon billions of dollars paid out to people who were never entitled to it, with kickbacks to the people who arranged it. That money is a big part of why our deficit is so high. And the people who benefited from it are the ones fighting the hardest to keep the fraud from being exposed.

They've removed the importance of the family, and they've done everything they can to destroy its power, because the family is God's system. It's the central key to His whole plan. So now people are confused about families. They're confused about gender. They're confused about everything. And now we have the lowest birth rate in our history. In fact, it's happening all over the world, and it's causing a tremendous problem, because an aging population cannot be supported by a younger one that was never born, and eventually the whole society, the whole culture, dies.

None of this was an accident. The vandals in the park did it on purpose.

The Cyrus of Our Day

Fortunately, we have someone who has come forth under the direct hand of God to help change all of this and bring it back toward what it was originally planned to be. I believe that man is Donald Trump, and that he is the Cyrus prophesied by Isaiah. Isaiah named Cyrus about a hundred and fifty years before that king was ever born...

That saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built; and to the temple, Thy foundation shall be laid. (Isaiah 44:28)

Cyrus is prophesied in several places in the book of Isaiah. But if you look carefully, very few of the things Isaiah said about him were fulfilled in his own day. Some of them definitely were. He did bring the Jews back to Jerusalem, and he did see to the building of the temple. But there is much more involved, and it all points to the Cyrus of our day.

And he is the one the Lord calls a ravenous bird from the east...

Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it. (Isaiah 46:11)

I don't think that description really fits the ancient Cyrus. A ravenous bird is a bird of prey, like a hawk or an eagle or an osprey. It dives incredibly fast and swoops in and catches its prey before it even has a chance to know what hit it. That's how Trump acts. He goes in quickly. And because it's called ravenous, it doesn't do it once. It does it over and over and over again. Look at how many things he has done in less than two years of this term!

Rebuilding the Park

Remember that whole list of what the vandals tore down? I walked you through it for a reason. You can't see what's being rebuilt until you see what was torn down. Donald Trump is trying to restore all of it, everything from spirituality to closing our borders to a sound dollar to producing our own everything.

And you can already see it happening. In his first full month back in office, illegal crossings at the southern border fell 94% from the year before, which the White House called the lowest level ever recorded. Think back to what I said about oil, that we have more of it than anyone and they made sure we couldn't produce our own fuel? In 2025 this country produced a record 13.6 million barrels of crude oil a day. Production had already been climbing before he came back, but it kept climbing, and it set another record under him.

The money is harder. I'm not an expert on the gold standard, and it's a complicated subject. But I know he's trying to make the American dollar more secure, and they are working with digital money systems that can hopefully find a way to get us out of $40 trillion in debt. He's trying to figure out a way to fix what was broken back in 1971.

And he's done something no other president has done, something hardly anybody is talking about. He has brought back the Monroe Doctrine in a more dramatic way than anyone before him. He even gave it a name. In December 2025 he declared, "Reinvigorated by my Trump Corollary, the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well." Look at what has followed. In January 2026, American forces captured Nicolás Maduro, the dictator of Venezuela, and brought him to justice in the United States. The United States now has control over a large share of Venezuela's oil. China has lost its hold on the ports at both ends of the Panama Canal. Greenland has signed a permanent security agreement that puts new American bases on that island. And hopefully soon, Cuba.

Every one of those is part of the same work. It's all part of building America back up, the same way a city crew comes in after the vandals and puts up another volleyball net, rehangs the lights, and makes the benches fit to sit on again. But he isn't stopping at repairs.

He's going to make it better. Much better.

No One More Opposed

And yet we see tremendous opposition to the Cyrus of our day. Other than the Savior Himself, I don't believe any man in world history has faced more opposition than Donald Trump. I'm not talking about the last twenty years or the last hundred. I mean all of history. No one has been more marred, more disfigured, and more opposed. And yet we also know how this ends. We know he will overcome. We know he will not only survive this, but he will be healed. The Savior Himself said so when He spoke of the servant in the latter days...

But behold, the life of my servant shall be in my hand; therefore they shall not hurt him, although he shall be marred because of them. Yet I will heal him, for I will show unto them that my wisdom is greater than the cunning of the devil. (3 Nephi 21:10)

He will thrive. He will bring all these things forward and bring justice to the world again, including justice for those who have sought to vandalize the park, to destroy the country, to demean it and diminish it and ruin it.

Whether they did it for fun or not, it's all evil.

The Vandals Haven't Quit

Rebuilding takes a long time, and the vandals don't stop just because somebody is repairing what they broke. That park worker will put the valve cover back, and sooner or later somebody will be out there at night lifting the lids again. The same is true of America. The harder Trump works to rebuild it, the harder the vandals fight him. And there's a reason they fight so hard, a reason far bigger than politics, and it has everything to do with what this land was set apart for in the first place. In Part Two, Why the Vandals Fight So Hard, I'll show you that reason, and just how much better this land is going to become.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

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