Thoughts on the Importance of the Individual:  If one person joins the Church, or falls away, marries and has five children who follow in his or her footsteps, in the second generation there are six who are either in or out of the Kingdom.  In the third generation there are 31.  In the eleventh generation there would be 2,832,031.  These numbers are arbitrarily applied, and all the possibilities for variants are ignored, but it is an exercise which helps one understand the importance which the Lord places on the individual; and why we must do the same.  

         The same principle can apply to a single act of charity or obedience.  When I was in high school, back when we had Priesthood Meetings and Sunday School in the mornings and Sacrament Meeting on Sunday evenings, I was assigned during my Priests Quorum meeting to visit an inactive member of the quorum whose family was totally inactive and invite him to attend Sacrament Meeting with me that evening.  

         More than 40 years later, at a high school class reunion, Dar Dudding called me aside to thank me for that visit.  From that time he had begun to attend all of this meetings and keeping the commandments.  He was married in the temple and had raised a righteous family.  He attributed it all to that one simple invitation that I had not even remembered I had given him.