The Plower and the Sower – Poem and Video

While speaking at the Provo Missionary Training Center in Dec 2025, Sister Amy A. Wright (who served as 1st Counselor in the Primary General Presidency) shared this video based on a poem written by her son, Elder Briton McConkie Wright, called “The Plower and the Sower.” He wrote the poem while serving as a full-time missionary in the Italy Milan Mission (2014-2016). Posted here you will find the text of the poem as well as a video enactment of the poem produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

There he stood. The time was now.
The moment of deciding
to know his fate for two good years.
Excitement. He was fighting.

He’d read the stories and heard the songs
of wheat that overflowed.
The blessed souls who worked so hard
to harvest all that grown

to come back home a weary man,
but blessings all abounding.
There in his hands a bushel of wheat,
the jubilation sounding.

He was waiting for the sickle,
the good master to him would give
to go and harvest as he could
and live as he would live.

But when the moment came around
quite different from his needs,
he found instead of a shiny scythe,
a humble bag of seeds.

“This can’t be right,” he muttered
as he looked around.
“My job’s to harvest, not to sow
and put these in the ground.

There couldn’t be a job here
considered to be lower
than to do the dirty work of that
a humble, lowly sower.”

Before he knew it, there he was,
pushed right outside the door
to start the planting in the field
to do his given chore.

He spread his new seeds all around
and found that to his shock,
the ground on which he planted
was nothing more than rock.

The seed stayed shallow in the soil,
no deeper rooting there.
The unapologetic rock
just simply didn’t care.

Angry, sad, and disappointed,
he continued with his work,
tossing all the seeds around,
trying hard to never shirk.

Dreams of autumn harvest gone,
his hope, it seemed, was done.
He’d never see the wheat full grown.
He wouldn’t be the one.

In final desperation,
as he did his chore,
a seed he dropped went deeper
than the others had before.

A small patch of land was soft enough
to let the seed inside,
but knowing it takes time to grow,
silently he cried.

“Why do you cry?” said the still voice.
Behind him, someone knew.
“I worked two years to make that spot
ready just for you.

It was hard as rock, so I took a pick
and started with the hacking
until it hurt, until I cried.
But still I kept on whacking.

I wish for something different,
a special kind of deed.
I would have even been content
with planting tiny seeds.

But as I broke the stubborn rock,
hour after hour,
I realized I was not to sow.
I was to be the plower.

Harvest, sowing, and other things
were not my job to do—
just to break that stiff old rock,
then leave the rest to you.

I count myself very blessed.
In fact, now I can sleep
to know that my small patch of land
let something go down deep.

So when you feel discouraged
and think you can’t go on,
remember it’s because of you
they’ll harvest later on.”

The stranger smiled and turned away
and walked off towards the sun,
content to know that he was pleased
with that which he had done.

Our dear, dear planter sat in thought,
his heart within him glowing,
perfectly content now
to take part in humble sowing.