Only A Thimbleful

 "A young man who was stationed in Teheran, the capital of Iran, ... was a member of our Church. While he was there he decided to make the best use of his time and learn the Farsi language. He thought the best way of doing this would be to work with little children and have them teach him Farsi as he taught them English. ... So he found a very intelligent young pair of children, a young boy and a young girl, and through an interpreter ... he said he would teach them English on the condition that they would teach him Farsi. They were overjoyed at this opportunity and so it started. ... It was only a very short time until they were able to communicate with one another. He didn't have any teaching materials, but he did have his Service-man's Principles of the Gospel with him and his Book of Mormon, so he began to read with them out of these English books. In the course of his teaching, he taught them about the Word of Wisdom and about a whole host of things that we do and believe in our Church. One day they invited him to come and meet their uncle. ... He took the little girl on his shoulders and boy by the hand and went over to the uncle's home laughing and chatting all the way. When they got there, the uncle received him with outstretched arms. He was very, very hospitable to him and they had a wonderful time. Then finally the man got up and went over to his bookcase, opened the door, and reached in, and there was a beautiful silver tray, a silver decanter, and some very tiny cups made of silver. He brought the tray and set it down before them on that beautiful bronze table, and then he very carefully removed the cork from the decanter, and poured beautiful cherry-red wine into those little silver cups. ... [The young man] thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I don't believe in this thing, but after all, he has been so hospitable to me, and he has explained that this is a custom in his country. I don't want to offend him in any way, so I will do it.' And that is exactly what he did. As the tray reached him, he took this tiny silver cup no bigger than a thimble and toasted the man's health and drank it down. The conversation dragged immediately. A silence spread throughout the room. He became uncertain and he quickly broke off the conversation, took the little girl on his shoulders and the little boy by the hand and went outside on their way home. On their way, the little girl started to cry. He said, 'Honey, why are you crying?' She could not answer a word through her sobs, but the little boy said, 'Joe, why did you do it? Why did you do it?' And he said, 'Why did I do what?' And he said, 'Why did you take that drink?' 'Well,' he said, 'It was just a little thimble-ful.' 'Well,' the boy said, 'That doesn't make any difference. Uncle said you would do it. We told him all about the Word of Wisdom, and he said, "Those Americans talk about a lot of things, but they don't believe them." We told him that you really did, but you didn't.' Well, the [young man] said as soon as that happened, he would have given his right arm if he could only recall the action that he had done, because he knew what damage he had done to the lives of those little children. They never came back. He had lost his valuable contact and perhaps an opportunity to spread the gospel among influential people in that land" (Theodore M. Burton, Tickling the Tiger, Brigham Young University Speeches of the Year [Provo, 17 Jan. 1961], pp. 7-9).