Bishop opened the meeting by saying:
"I was thinking about Jayden a few years ago when he
was preparing for his mission. I asked
him what your biggest fear was about serving a mission, and he said being able
to complete a 24-month mission. I had
not heard that from any young man before.
I told him to take that to the Lord and the Lord would bless him. Jayden has not had an easy mission and had to
fight through struggles. Maybe it would
have been easy for him to come home early, but I know it was important for him
to server the Lord the entire time he was called. When I say we say we are proud of him those
are not hollow words. We are pleased
with his service and his faith."
Jayden's talk:
Good morning, almost afternoon. As bishop said I served in the Arizona Mesa mission,
which was an amazing experience. It was
a little warm. There are a lot of people
that come from colder places to Arizona; places like Michigan, Canada, and Minnesota. I once saw this cartoon of an old couple
coming down an elevator. The door opened,
and it was Hell. Satan was there. They asked, “Is this Arizona?”, and he said,
“Nope. It’s one floor down.” It’s pretty
warm in Arizona; 115 degrees is not uncommon.
I loved Arizona. I loved serving the people there and I loved all the
things I was able to learn as a missionary there.
I have decided to speak on the doctrine of Christ, which
is what missionary service is centered around.
The Missionary purpose says, “my purpose is to help others come unto
Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus
Christ and his atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy
Ghost, and enduring to the end”.
There is a scripture in Alma chapter 32 where Alma
teaches us. “And now as I said
concerning faith. Faith is not to have a
perfect knowledge of things, therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things
which are not seen, which are true.” So
faith is not necessarily having a knowledge of something. Having faith is something you don’t have to
have a physical tangible evidence of necessarily, but it is something that we
have hope for and it’s important that we have faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is a principal of action. James teaches us faith without works is dead.
So we need to exercise our faith. We need to increase our faith. To do that it’s
just like exercising a muscle. My dad has
been coming to the gym with me recently, and yesterday I do not know how many
time he said, “I am so sore!” He has
been lifting weights and when you lift weights it does get sore sometimes. When we build our faith we need
resistance. When we have resistance and
we work against that resistance it exercises us. Sometimes it is kind of sore and painful but
it’s how we get stronger faith. Having
faith in Jesus Christ and his atonement his something that is so essential. As missionaries we taught people to have
faith in the atonement. It is necessary,
as Paul teaches us, all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is a quote in Brad Wilcox’s book “The
Continuous Atonement” that I really liked. It stood out to me. It says the word atonement is often broken up
so it reads ‘at one ment’ but there is another word found amongst the letters
that also could and must be emphasized. ‘ME’. Not only did Christ do it all for me but he
also anxiously waits for me to accept it, to internalize it, and to make it
count. I really enjoyed that quote. Linguistically I do not think ‘me’ really has
anything to do with the word but it is something to be noticed and emphasized
in that quotation. There is a
scripture. Probably one of my most
favorite scriptures of all time is in Alma.
Alma prophesied of the Christ and of the atonement. “And he shall go forth, suffering pains and
afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be
fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and sicknesses of his
people. And he will take upon him death,
that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take
upon him their infirmities, that His bowels may be filled with mercy, according
to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people
according to their infirmities. Now the
spirit knoweth all things; nevertheless the Son of God suffereth according to
the flesh that me may take upon him the sins of his people, that he might blot
out their transgressions according to the power of his deliverance; and now
behold, this is the testimony which is in me.”
This scripture describes the atonement so perfectly to
me. It describes how we can rely on the atonement
for everything. It redeems us from sin. It strengthens us. It heals us.
There is a man that I taught on my mission. I will call him John. John had a wonderful, wonderful experience
and conversion. He really needed to rely
on his faith and the atonement to overcome some things. Me and my companion were in Apache Junction
and we received a referral for a man named John so we decided to go over and
knock on his door and find out a little bit more about him and see if he is actually
interested. So we went over and we
knocked on his door. When we knocked on
the door John answered it and said “Oh Elders, I have been expecting you. Come on in.”
Oh okay… so we went in and he told us he had referred himself on
Mormon.org because his Catholic grandmother said that she really liked the
Mormons and thought that he should join the Mormon church right before she
passed away. As we began to teach John
there were a lot of issues that came up with him not being able to be worthy to
be baptized at the time. He struggled
with homosexual tendencies, with several addictions, especially with
pornography and as we taught John it became evident that we needed to help him
increase his faith in the atonement. As
he did that he would be able to overcome these things. As John continued to study the scriptures and
everything it was kind of incredible because we gave him a Book of Mormon. When we came back he had a notebook all
filled out with all kinds of cross references, scriptures and notes, on
everything that he had read. He had read
a significant amount of the Book of Mormon.
He was just kind of focusing on how he could change. As he continued to progress he started
meeting with the bishop and going to counseling and the 12 step addition
recovery program that the church puts on.
Eventually John was able to overcome all of his struggles and all of
those past transgressions, and he was baptized.
So having faith in Jesus Christ was something so important for him.
That
brings me to my next point which is repentance, the second part of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. There is a scripture
that says, “behold I God have suffered these things for all that they might not
suffer if they would repent”, and so as we repent we are able to let go of that
suffering that we experience as we sin.
The atonement not only redeems us from sin but strengthens us to
overcome those sins and helps us to be healed from those sins the scarring
effects those sins have on us. There’s
another scripture I enjoy also in Alma that reads, “yea I remembered all my
sins and iniquities for which I was tormented with the pains of hell; yea I saw
that I had rebelled against my God, that I had not kept his holy commandments. And it came to pass that as I was thus racked with torment,
while I was harrowed up by the memory of my many sins, behold, I remembered
also to have heard my father prophesy unto the people concerning the coming of
one Jesus Christ, a Son of God, to atone for the sins of the world. Now,
as my mind caught hold upon this thought, I cried within my heart: O Jesus,
thou Son of God, have mercy on me, who am in the gall of bitterness, and am
encircled about by the everlasting chains of death. And now, behold, when I thought this, I could
remember my pains no more; yea, I was harrowed up by the memory of my sins no
more. And oh, what joy, and what
marvelous light I did behold; yea, my soul was filled with joy as exceeding as
was my pain!” In these verses Alma was able to feel that
healing effect that the atonement had on him as he was forgiven of those sins which
he had committed. That’s something that
is so incredible to me that we are able to pray and to repent and when we do it
with sincerity we are able to be forgiven.
We are able to be healed and that’s the greatest gift of all. Lehi taught, “Wherefore all mankind are in a
lost and a fallen state, and ever would be except they should rely on this
their redeemer.” We rely on our
redeemer Jesus Christ and when repent we are able to be forgiven and we are
able to return and live with God. We are
able to be clean. There is an amazing
promise in Moroni that says, “but as oft as they repented and sought
forgiveness with real intent they were forgiven”. It does not really matter how long we are
falling short or how often we fall short.
We all are imperfect beings, and as we continue to seek forgiveness, have
real intent and truly seek to become better we are able to be forgiven. As we repent it leads us to action. The biggest action we as missionaries usually
saw people take was to be baptized. There
was a man named Jimmy that I taught. His
wife was an inactive member and he had two sons that were non-members. We went over and taught Jimmy. Jimmy had been meeting with missionaries for
15 or 16 years by the time I got there.
He told us right off the bat when we got there, he said, “Elders if you
ask me to be baptized I will kick you out of my house. I will not welcome you back and I will stop
going to church till the next set of missionaries come.” And so we were like, okay we will not ask you
to be baptized then. We began teaching Jimmy
and we really focused on his boys Zane and Talon. He gave them permission to be baptized if they
felt they were ready for it. As we
taught Zane and Talon Jimmy sat in as well as his wife. We would teach them discussions and different
topics. They became totally active. They came to church every single week I was
there. In March they were looking for
people to drive the youth to general conference in Salt Lake City. Jimmy had recently been called as the
assistant scout master. He volunteered
to drive some of the youth to conference.
So when they got there the young women had prepared all these notebooks
for everyone with a tab with each of the apostle’s name on so they could take
notes. There were additional pages in
the back for other general authorities.
They told them to ask three questions of the soul; questions that truly
mattered to them. Jimmy’s first question
was, “Is the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints God’s kingdom on the
earth today?” That’s a pretty good question
for him to be asking. He went to general
conference with that question in mind.
When he got back to Arizona he had to catch up with work so we could not
follow up with him. Then the next week
he had to keep catching up on work so we could not follow up with him, but that
next Sunday he was asked to speak on his conference experience. It was kind of odd to have a non-member
giving a talk in sacrament meeting but it was amazing because as Jimmy got up
there I remember watching general conference and Elder Perry was giving a
talk. Me and my companion were saying, ”This
is what Jimmy needs! This is his concern!
He had never expressed his concern to us, but this is exactly what he
needs to hear.” When Jimmy got up to give
his talk he said, “Well in General conference I asked the question whether the church
is true or not, and in Elder Perry’s talk (me and my companion were like yes!
this is exactly what he needed!) he told us about what he had learned in Elder Perry’s
talk and he proceeded to say, “I will be
baptized on May 9th”. So me and my companion we were just blown
away. We had no idea he had made that decision. It was something that was incredible. Jimmy along with his two boys were baptized
by Jimmy’s father-in-law on May 9th.
It was the most incredible experience I think I had as far as baptisms
go on my mission. It was incredible to
see that change of heart Jimmy had and that testimony that he had gained. Then the next day they were confirmed members
of the church. In 2nd Nephi
it says, “behold, again I say unto you receive the Holy Ghost, it will show
unto you all things which ye should do”.
That leads me to another story about an amazing young woman who was
baptized named Francine. Elder Karlinsey
taught her too. He is in the back
there. Elder Karlinsey and I got to go
to her baptism. I taught Francine in my
very first area early on in my mission.
Her parents would not let her be baptized. They would let her come to church every week.
They would let her come to mutual. They
would let her hang out with members of the church and everything. They just would not let her get
baptized. Francine loved the gospel. She
had so much faith, and even though she could not be baptized she kept coming to
church every single week. Eventually she
and her family moved away to Phoenix. Well
if we fast forward almost 2 years…Elder Karlinsey and I got a message from her
that she was going to be baptized, but she lived in Phoenix which was two
missions over. So we called our mission
president, well Elder Karlinsey called our mission president and asked if we
could go to this baptism. Our mission
president said, “yes if a member drives you, and if a member won’t drive you, I
will”. So we got permission to leave
two missions over to go to this baptism.
Seeing Francine as she and progressed, as she continued to attend church,
and continued to meet with the missionaries, seeing how much her testimony had
flourished was an amazing experience. It
was something that was so faith building for me. Elder Carlinsy had the opportunity to baptize
her and I had the opportunity to confirm her and give her the Holy Ghost. I feel like Francine followed the spirit so
well even before she received the gift, and she was only under the influence of
the power of the Holy Ghost. She knew
that the gospel was true. She knew that the book of Mormon was true and it was
the word of God. Seeing her experience
as she reached conversion was indescribable joy… is what I felt. The last point of the gospel of Jesus Christ--I
am running out of time so I will rush through this-- There is a scripture
that’s actually this year’s youth theme, I believe. If it is not this year’s, it was last year’s. Its 2nd Nephi Chapter 31 Verse 20
and it talks about enduring to the end. “Wherefore,
ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect
brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall
press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold,
thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.”
As a missionary I saw some converts get baptized and almost
immediately fall away, and I saw others truly endure and continue to endure to
the end. There was a lady I baptized in
my second area named Carol. Carol seemed
really solid. She passed per baptismal
interview, and she was ready to be baptized.
We baptized her and she showed up to her confirmation, and then she came
about one a month, and eventually stopped coming altogether. To see that happen really was something that
took a toll on me. It was something
really frustrating and discouraging to see such a solid convert immediately
fall away. Seeing her example of not
enduring to the end and just giving up was really, really heart breaking for
me. However, there was another convert I
know. I did not get to baptize him but
he had been baptized for about two years when I got to the area. His name was Sunny Lorenz. Sunny was very solid in the gospel. He had a very strong testimony. He knew his scriptures like crazy. He had been Baptist before and very into his
bible. He was able to be endowed while I
was in the area. Seeing his conversion
was very inspiring to see that people can endure to the end, and that as people
endure to the end they are happy and they can receive eternal life. I know that as I served my mission I was able
to help many people come unto Christ and that Jesus Christ truly is the Savior
and Redeemer of the world. I know that
he loves each of us, that our heavenly father loves each of us, and that
because of Christ’s atonement we can all be perfected, and we can all receive
forgiveness of our sins. I am thankful
for the opportunity I had to serve a full time mission and complete the two
years. I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment