Every week, the local leaders of each congregation of
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ask a few members of the congregation to prepare a five- or ten-minute "talk" they'll share in sacrament meeting on Sunday. Last week, the first counselor to the bishop asked me. "Hello Jessica, the
sister missionaries assigned to our ward are coming to speak this Sunday," he said, "and the bishop thought you might give a talk about what you can do now to prepare to serve a mission."
I hadn't been asked to give a talk in three years, ever since I came to college. Sometimes you're just lucky like that. But then again, it had been three years; it was probably past my turn to speak again, and how often in a 'singles' ward do you get a chance to speak with sister missionaries? I said yes. My family even made a special trip to attend
my ward sacrament meeting so they could hear me speak. And as promised, here is a copy of my talk on this blog:
Sacrament Meeting Talk 3/10/13
Topic: What I can do
now to prepare to serve a mission
When Brother Whitaker asked me to speak about things you
can do now to prepare to serve a mission, I panicked a little bit. I know what
I think and what the bishop thinks is important, but since I don’t
really know what it’s like to serve a mission, I’m sort of taking a leap of
faith in assuming that reading my scriptures and the words of the prophets,
trying to be more social and looking for opportunities to share my testimony
are the best things to help
me to
prepare to serve. One of the things I love about this gospel is how personal it
is – but that’s frustrating too, because there is no perfect formula for
preparing to be a full-time missionary.
I’ve never been a very patient person. I turned in my
mission papers three Wednesdays ago, so I was really hoping my call would come
last week, but it didn’t. When I finally asked the bishop to check my status
online he said I was “ready to be assigned,” so last I’ve heard, I haven’t even
been assigned yet. As I’ve been waiting, I’ve also learned my parents aren’t
very good at waiting either. Starting Wednesday of this past week, I’ve gotten
one or two texts from my dad every day. “Has it come yet?” “Have you checked the
mail today?” And I’ve received
lots
of emails from my mom with links to articles or blogs she’s found about
missionaries or missionary work. Sometimes I wonder who’s more excited for me
to get my call, me or them. But then again, it makes sense that they’re so
excited, because they’re the ones that brought me up in the Church. They’re the
ones that taught me to be this way.
In fact, I called my dad yesterday to ask him about what he
did to prepare for his mission to Bogotá, Colombia, and the last thing he told
me after we’d talked for a little while was about the wait for my mission call.
He said, “I kind of like the idea of the twelve apostles passing your
application back and forth and asking each other, ‘Where in the
world are we going to
send this girl?’”
I know missionaries are divinely called to the place they
need to be, and I actually don’t mind waiting because of that. In a talk during
the April 2010 General Conference,
Elder Ronald A. Rasband* described how he
felt when he was a mission president in New York City about the missionaries
assigned to his mission. “As I interviewed them on their first day in the
mission, I had a profound sense of gratitude for each missionary,” he said. “I
felt that their call to our mission was divinely designed for them and for me
as their mission president.”
As strongly as I feel about the divine call of full-time
missionaries, I don’t want any of you to tune out because you don’t have or aren’t
expecting a full-time call. Maybe you’ve already served, or maybe you don’t
feel a full-time mission is right for you right now. In either case, I think (I
hope) what I have to say is as
relevant to you as it is to anyone who is currently preparing to serve a
mission.
In October 1997,
Elder Richard G. Scott said, “There are few
things in life that bring as much joy as the joy that comes from assisting
another improve his or her life. That joy is increased when those efforts help
someone understand the teachings of the Savior and that person decides to obey
them, is converted, and joins His Church. There follows great happiness as that
new convert is strengthened during the transition to a new life, is solidly
grounded in truth, and obtains all of the ordinances of the temple with the
promise of all the blessings of eternal life. President McKay showed us how to
obtain such joy with his profound clarification of our responsibility to share
the gospel: ‘Every member a missionary.’”
The
January visiting teaching message puts it this way: “
We don’t need a formal mission call to share
the gospel. Others whose lives will be blessed by the gospel surround us, and
as we prepare ourselves, the Lord will use us.”
In my research for this talk, I found lots of suggestions
for how to prepare ourselves to share the gospel. I’ll only focus on four:
First, convert yourself to the gospel. Second, look for
opportunities to share your testimony now. Third, practice listening to the
Holy Ghost. Fourth, learn to love people.
In one of the
introductory videos to the new youth program,
one of the girls being interviewed says, “If we’re going to become converted,
we can’t just listen. We have to act on what we’re learning.” I think the same
goes for teaching. If we’re going to share the gospel, we have to know and live
what we teach. As the saying goes, preach the gospel at all times, and if
necessary use words.
Be an example of what we believe. Pray and read the
scriptures consistently. It’s by remembering to do the “little things” that we
invite the Holy Ghost into our lives and start building our relationship with
the Savior.
When I moved away from home for the first time, I was a
little unprepared for how easy it was to slip out of the scripture-reading
habits I’d established at home with my family. It was hard to get myself to
read consistently when I lived at home, but when I left the shadows of my
parents and had to metaphorically stand on my own two feet, it got ten times
harder. Even attending church could be a struggle. I remember several Sundays
of my freshman year when getting up and going to church was a very conscious
choice. I forced myself go because I knew it was good for me – kind of like
what going to school feels like sometimes.
Even though it is hard, I wouldn’t trade the experience of
choosing to build my own testimony for
anything. I love the fact that in this church, we are encouraged not to follow the
doctrines blindly. We are encouraged to seek our own confirmation from God
whether it is true, and
God has promised us, “Ask, and ye shall receive.” If we
sincerely pray to know something, he
will
answer us. I think true
conversion is a process; it doesn’t happen overnight, it happens as we slowly
improve ourselves each day. As one of the young men in the “We Become”
youth video says, “I think conversion is when you change your heart.”
In addition to
studying
the gospel,
following the doctrines
Christ has taught helps build your testimony – just like taking opportunities
to
share your beliefs does. As we
learn to share with others and learn to share our feelings with the Savior
during the conversion process, our relationship with him becomes closer.
When he spoke at the prospective missionary meeting,
Elder Kopischke challenged us to open our mouths and start acting like missionaries
now. The night I turned my mission papers in, President Lewis gave me the same
challenge. I put a lot of thought into how I could act like a missionary now,
even though I wasn’t on a full-time mission, and two words came into my head:
“share or serve.” Every day, look for opportunities to share your testimony or
to serve. Stand as witnesses of God at all times, in all things, and in all
places you may be in.
It actually isn’t anything more than we were challenged to
do in my Young Women’s classes, but I needed the reminder. It helps that I want
to serve a full-time mission, and I want to be as prepared as I can before I
get there. As another girl in the “We Become”
youth video says: “As we become
converted, we realize what the gospel is doing for us, and we want to share it
with others.”
It’s not always easy to vocally share your testimony with
someone else. Sometimes it’s really scary. I have a friend who’s going through
a really difficult time right now. She’s grieving for one of
her friends who died suddenly in
February, she’s homesick, and she’s feeling alone. Last weekend, she opened up
about some of her feelings in a blog post that broke my heart. I really wanted
to say something to comfort my friend, but everything I could think to say felt
really inadequate. I don’t know what it’s like to have a close friend die. I
don’t know what it’s like
not to have
my family living twenty minutes away if I need something.
(I do know
what it’s like to feel alone, but not
to the degree which she seemed to be feeling.) I
did know the Savior knew exactly how she was feeling, and even
though I was nervous about finding the right thing to say, I decided to try to
talk to her. It was late at night when I read her blog post, so I couldn’t call
her, but I could text her a message she might read when she awoke. Even though I
wasn’t sure exactly the best thing to say, I was able to think about it
carefully and then bear a brief testimony of the Atonement, that the Savior intimately
knew the pain she felt, and that He loves her and won’t leave her to suffer alone.
I hope my testimony brought her some comfort. At least it
made
me feel better, because I know
what I said is true, and the Lord will take care of her.
My dad has a strong testimony of opening up your mouth and
sharing your beliefs.
D&C 100, verses 4-6, says, “Therefore I, the Lord,
have suffered you to come unto this place for thus it was expedient in me for
the salvation of souls. Therefore, verily I say unto you, lift up your voices
unto this people; speak the thoughts that I shall put into your hearts, and you
shall not be confounded before men; For it shall be given you in the very hour,
yea, in the very moment, what ye shall say.”
In the past, I’d always understood these verses to mean God
would remind us of things we’ve studied in our scriptures and in church. That
is definitely true, but my dad sort of takes it a step further, to a level I
hadn’t ever thought about. When I talked to him yesterday, he said, “I believe
the spirit we came to earth with has so much knowledge in it that if can use the
Holy Ghost to help us tune into our own spirit, it will help us know what we
know already… [I learned that] from feelings I’d had through the Holy Ghost
that told me Heavenly Father knew me better than I knew myself and I had to
trust the Holy Ghost to realize who I was.”
Having the Holy Ghost with you is so important. The Holy
Ghost can be such a powerful force. He may act as a comforter, a teacher, a
messenger with inspiration from God, or even just a constant source of strength
we each can draw on. It’s important to learn how the Spirit speaks to you individually
and practice listening and obeying.
Matthew 10:20 says, “For it is not ye that
speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.”
The fourth and final suggestion I found to prepare to share
the gospel is simply to learn to love people. My dad said
he learned to suspend his judgment of other people from growing up
in a big family. “I learned early on most of the assumptions you make about
others are wrong,” he said, “and you need to pause just long enough to
understand what somebody is telling you before you assume you know their story
and jump in and try to help. So I guess my capacity to love others was just by
giving them the benefit of the doubt, listening and putting myself in their
shoes. … Once you’ve listened, you’ve got to hesitate a second or half a second
before you open your mouth because those are the moments when you gain words
that aren’t your own; when the Spirit jumps in to help you help them.”
Practicing loving other people can sometimes be the hardest
suggestion to follow of all. But even when people aren’t being very lovable and
you can’t quite bring yourself to love them, remember Christ loves them
unconditionally, just like he loves you unconditionally. You can still love someone
even if you don’t love their actions, just like you can feel God’s love for
someone even if you don’t think you can love them yourself. **
(Testimony; power of missionary work, four things: 1.
convert yourself to the gospel, 2. look for opportunities to share your
testimony now, 3. practice listening to the Holy Ghost, 4. learn to love
people.)
Extras if I have
time:
*Elder Rasband told a fascinating personal experience where
President Eyring invited him to sit in with the members of the Twelve Apostles
as they assigned missionaries to their individual missions, and he bore
testimony of how they acted completely on the Lord’s direction. He said,
“First, we knelt together in prayer. I remember Elder Eyring using very sincere
words, asking the Lord to bless him to know ‘perfectly’ where the missionaries
should be assigned. The word ‘perfectly’ said much about the faith that Elder
Eyring exhibited that day.”
**There’s a book that has made a deep impression on me
called “The Hiding Place.” It’s written by Corrie Ten Boom, a woman from
Holland whose family helped hide Jews from the Nazis during World War Two. The
book is a detailed account of how her family helped the Jews, and what happened
to them when they got caught. Corrie’s father died in prison and her sister
died in a women’s concentration camp, but despite this family’s terrible
trials, their faith in God stayed strong and sustained them through the hardest
times. At the end of the book, Corrie describes how she felt when she met a man
who had been a guard at her concentration camp:
“His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had
preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my
hand at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw
the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for
more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to
smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the
slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer.
Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness. As I took his hand the
most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my
hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love
for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is
not on
our forgiveness any more than
on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on
His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the
command, the love itself.”
For us, learning to love people may not be so dramatic, but
the principle is the same. The worth of
every
soul is great in the sight of God, and as easy as it is to automatically judge
someone, it’s not up to us to judge. It’s God’s job to be the perfect judge.
