Inviting to everyone, appreciative of volunteers

My friend came over last night and talked about his religious experience. He was very active in a previous church he attended and asked for some time off from an assignment and was yelled at. Then this made him step back and think about his entire membership and he decided to leave that church. A bold move for someone who was so involved (i.e., more involved than many LDS members unless they have a very demanding calling). As a result, those in the church no longer speak to him.

Two lessons from this that I see:

1) Never be upset with a volunteer. If someone's volunteering, it's great that they give of their time to help. (similar to this - be nice to people)

2) Never cut someone off from communication and friendship. The Savior said the following in 3 Nephi 18 regarding partaking of the sacrament (bread and wine/water), but it applies in this instance as well:

29For whoso eateth and drinketh my flesh and ^ablood^bunworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to his soul; therefore if ye know that a man is unworthy to eat and drink of my flesh and blood ye shall forbid him.

30Nevertheless, ye shall not ^acast him out from among you, but ye shall ^bminister unto him and shall pray for him unto the Father, in my name; and if it so be that he repenteth and is baptized in my name, then shall ye receive him, and shall minister unto him of my flesh and blood.

31But if he repent not he shall not be numbered among my people, that he may not destroy my people, for behold I ^aknow^bmy sheep, and they are numbered.

32Nevertheless, ye shall not cast him out of your ^asynagogues, or your places of worship, for unto such shall ye continue to minister; for ye know not but what they will return and repent, and come unto me with full purpose of heart, and I shall ^bheal them; and ye shall be the means of bringing salvation unto them.

Have a good day.

LaDon

Why every young man should serve a mission - Last email from a missionary

My brother finishes his mission today. I'm excited to see him again, and I'm very excited to hear what he's learned. I think he's now so much more grown up than he used to be.

He wrote us his last email on Monday, and it was tremendous. What he conveys helps explain why we send young men on missions. Obviously I haven't asked him if I could post this, but here it is:

Hey Family,

This is a sad e-mail to write. Yesterday, we had two appointments that went relatively well, but once we got home I was very sad. I taught someone in their home for the last time on my mission. I tried to share my testimony with as much clarity and passion as I could over the last week. Now, an wonderful, tiring, challenging and rewarding part of my life is about to end. I am extremely grateful that I served a mission and had the opportunity to do so. Thank you so much for your prayers and letters.

I'll try to share a few thoughts I haven't before about my mission. When I received my call to serve as an English speaking mission in North Carolina, I was not happy. I thought I should've had something "better". I hope that I have completely repented of that embarrassing, prideful thought. I think part of that process is making clear to those that saw disappointment in my face when I opened my call that I love North Carolina, the missionaries and ward members I worked with, and the people I taught.

Some things LaDon shared with me about his mission experience were amazingly true during mine, even if I still took time to learn them. One is that Jesus Christ lives, is the only way we can be cleansed from sin and is involved in our lives. I said that before my mission and my testimony won't sound particularly more powerful or impressive afterward but I know it now in a different way.

The last lesson I taught as a missionary was an interesting parallel to the first time I taught with my trainer. We taught a family that I love. We taught them the Restoration and shared our testimonies and made clear what people were rejecting if they didn't at least read and pray about the Book of Mormon. And they kindly rejected the invitation. As much I wanted them to embrace modern apostles, a complete view of repentance, eternal families, etc., they used their God-given free will to reject it. It made me sad but I was very comfortable with what we shared and the effort we made. I don't have regrets about the lessons we taught this week. There was a diffferent excitment and love in our work. I was happy to feel the same way about the work last night as I did two years ago.

A few hours before that lesson I just referenced we met with a less-active young man. We talked for a while about his faith and where he was at but little progress was made. He made a lot of excuses for why he isn't keeping commandments but they all had a common thing: someone else did something they shouldn't have and that's why I'm not going to repent. Please don't use other faults a crutch or cover for your own shortcomings. I've seen it a lot over these two years and it makes me sad. These things have often been a church leader/member who committed some trangression, a family environment that wasn't ideal or something as ridiculous as a another person teaching false doctrine that you know isn't true. Who cares what it is but it doesn't help you at all. In almost all cases I've seen, people that withdraw from fellowship with Christ's church will also stop living commandments, having the same quality of prayers and certainly will feel the Spirit less in their life. And then some think: Wow, it just doesn't feel the same, this isn't what I need and turn to a world full of ways to mask our problems. Read the scriptures and identify how you can repent. Its such a simple plan. It's not always easy to do but it is laid out pretty plainly for us in scripture. All the things we need to understand and should spend our time worrying about has been laid out by God's prophets.

I loved serving. Every young man needs to serve a mission. Not the church's sake but for his own. There is nothing you can do more important or valuable at this point in your life. And accomplishing the things you think are equally or more important, will be much easier to handle after learning a bit about how to learn and lead as the Lord intends.

On a similar subject a young man from Australia is a Mormon and also a Rubgy League star. He has decided to give up $2M per year to go on a mission. He's literally giving up $3-4M. Now that I work hard and am an adult, I'm beginning to understand how much money that is. It's a true act of faith. Also, having gone on a mission, I can confidently say that he's making the right decision and the right investment. I admire him greatly.

Here's a link to an article about it:

http://sports.yahoo.com/top/news?slug=ap-hopoate-missionary

Here's an excerpt:

SYDNEY (AP)—One of the biggest stars in Australian rugby league has turned his back on million-dollar contract offers to instead go on a two-year religious mission with the Mormon church from 2012.

The 19-year-old Will Hopoate—son of prominent former player John Hopoate— is off-contract with the Manly Sea Eagles next year. He had been offered up to $2 million a year from two other National Rugby League teams.

If he comes to know Jesus lives as a result of this decision and comes to learn about how much Jesus loves all people and learns about revelation and how to pray better, it's a very good investment. Besides, God doesn't forget things like this.

How to treat other people

A couple years ago I got a notice that a bill of mine had moved to collections. I had never received the first bill, so as soon as I received this, I paid the collections company online. However, they were pretty shady. I called customer service to verify the payment had gone through because I thought I made a mistake , and he was pretty vague/unhelpful about whether or not my payment went through and whether or not they would charge me more, which I wasn't pleased about since I had never seen the bill before. At some point, I got pretty upset with him and made some pointed remarks.

At the same time I read D.C. 98. This section was received because the Saints were in the midst of great persecution, and the Lord was counseling them on how to react to that persecution. Here's a couple great verses:

23Now, I speak unto you concerning your families—if men will^asmite you, or your families, once, and ye ^bbear it patiently and^crevile not against them, neither seek ^drevenge, ye shall be^erewarded;

24But if ye bear it not patiently, it shall be accounted unto you as being ^ameted out as a just measure unto you.

It sounds like if we are persecuted and bear it patiently we'll be blessed. However, if we do not bear it and instead act out against them in a similar way to how they treated us, then we've actually been treated justly. In other words, if someone is a jerk, but we're a jerk back, then we deserve each other.

It's a great lesson for me that day. The guy was not helpful and a little mean first, but I was mean back, so we just deserved each other. I was not in any way better than him. Clearly I showed that through my actions.

I appreciated that timely lesson and hope to always remember it.

LaDon

Stake Presidents and Bishops - tremendous volunteers

We had temple recommend interviews today with the Stake President. He looks like he's around 45 and was a nice man. I'm pretty impressed with him and all Stake Presidents. He was spending another hour or two today doing temple recommend interviews. He's a Senior Vice President over the mobile division for Nvidia, a computer graphics company worth around $11B. He's certainly busy and successful, and he spends many, many hours every week with church members just because he's been asked to. I think it's so important to remember that our church leaders are just volunteers doing the best they can.

His advice for me was to serve. He said that's the best thing Melchizedek Priesthood holders can do and that it's important for children to see their fathers serve and to be involved in that service as early as possible. I appreciated the suggestion, especially as it's not easy to carve out time to serve, but it's very worthwhile. Kids will learn from our examples. President Monson has said he learned the gospel from his parents and that it was through the service they performed that he learned it. I felt that this advice was inspired for me.

I appreciate the service those men give. They're very good men in my experience and certainly they have other things they may want to be doing with their time.

Here's a link to a general conference message about stake presidents by Gordon Hinckley.

http://lds.org/general-conference/2000/04/the-stake-president?lang=eng

He mentions the first time he called a Stake President as a General Authority and how he was inspired to call the right person. Also, he mentions the confidence the Brethren have in the Stake Presidents (as well as a quick fact - temple recommends were signed by the president of the church until Pres. Woodruff's time when that duty became too much of a burden - the church continues to change as time goes on, and those changes occur in an inspired way).

Here's one paragraph I enjoyed:

I have total confidence in the men who fill this office. Their duties are numerous, their responsibilities great. They recognize their own inadequacy, and I know that they pray for guidance and help. I know they study the scriptures to find answers. I know they place this work first in their lives. Because we have such confidence in them, we urge local members that they not seek out General Authorities to counsel with and bless them. Their stake presidents have been called under the same inspiration under which the General Authorities were called.

Have a great week.

LaDon

Prophet - Rescuing the People by showing he cares

I was listening to the interview of Heidi Swinton, who wrote President Monson's biography today. It was a very good interview and got me excited to read it after I'm done reading my current book (Bill Simmons' book on basketball - a little vulgar but also extremely well researched on my favorite sport).

I was impressed by how he consistently tries to meet with people and talk to them and let them know he cares. When I think about President Monson, one clear lesson is that just by letting people know you care, you can help them. It's a reason to always do home teaching and a reason to visit people. It shows you care.

In the interview, Heidi tells the story of a church member, Henry Burkhardt, who spent a lot of time with President Monson in Germany as he was the temple president and mission president for years. President Monson made a lot of promises to the German people about having all the blessings of the gospel even while there was a full communist reign there. Those promises came true with the blessings of the temple, which is incredible considering communism was still strong at the time. When Heidi asked Henry Burkhardt what the most incredible experience he had with President Monson, he replied, "Dec 20, 1979 was the date. My wife had spent 9 weeks in the hospital and wasn't getting better. That's when word got to President Monson about her sickness. He hopped on a plane the next day and we went and gave a blessing to my wife."

I am impressed by that. He cared about people so much.

I heard a story about when President Monson visited Spokane WA for a stake conference. During the conference he went out of his way to go visit the home of a faithful stake patriarch who was sick.

I've also seen him shake hands for over an hour at the end of a regional conference. He cares about people. It's obvious.

I was also impressed by how he wrote so many things about his life and experiences in journals. If someone as busy as him makes time to write in journals, I should to. It probably enlarges the memory, crystallizes thinking and experiences, and creates a record.

I love our church leaders and in particular the prophet. I know he is who he says he is, God's representative on earth. I know Jesus Christ leads the church through his prophet.

Have a great Sunday tomorrow.

Zion – the pure in heart – is sometimes one person

When I was a freshman in high school, my dad was a substitute in seminary (early morning scripture study) on one particular occasion. We happened to be studying D.C. 97. He taught us something about D.C. 97 that I’ve never forgotten.

In the early days of the church, the concept of Zion, the gathering place of the Saints, was very important. The people wanted to move to this utopian type setting and be firmly established there. At times the Lord helped them understand that Zion wasn’t exactly as they may have expected it. At some point Zion will be a city, but it has other meanings as well. In fact, in D.C. 97, he gives a particularly interesting definition of Zion:

21Therefore, verily, thus saith the Lord, let Zion rejoice, for this is ^aZion—the pure in heart; therefore, let Zion rejoice, while all the wicked shall mourn.

Zion also exists in the pure in heart. My dad spoke about going to a high school at which he was the only member of the church. At times that meant he was alone in some ways, but it also taught him that this verse was a reality. Zion could exist even if it was just himself, and many times that’s what it had to be.

Being a young high school student who had some LDS friends, but none on my basketball teams where I spent a lot of time, this meant a lot to me. I spent a large majority of my time around people who didn’t live the way I was expected to, but I could still experience the joys of Zion if I was pure in heart myself.

I have come to know this is true. The full blessings of the gospel can exist when you are the only member of your branch or when you are in the largest ward in Utah. The qualifier is to be pure in heart. I should explain what it means to experience Zion, but that’ll have to wait for tomorrow when I have some more time.

Have a good day.

LaDon

Standing in darkness at noon day - not taking advantage of the Gospel

Joseph Smith said something very similar to, "if Saints will not live below their privileges, the angels cannot be constrained from being their companions".

This is something that Dieter Uchtdorf spoke about in Priesthood session of General Conference. Here's how he concluded that talk:

My dear brethren, may we diligently seek to learn the doctrine of the holy priesthood, may we strengthen our testimonies line upon line by receiving the revelations of the Spirit, and may we find true joy in daily priesthood service. As we do these things, we will begin to live up to our potential and privileges as priesthood holders, and we will be able to “do all things through Christ which strengtheneth [us].”

Notice that it is our privilege to serve and our privilege to bring others to Christ, and in so doing we will have joy and help from above.

The gospel provides access to great help from above. The key to having all of this help is living the gospel fully. Another verse in which the Lord talks about a similar concept is in D.C. 95:

6They who are not chosen have sinned a very grievous sin, in that they are ^awalking in ^bdarkness at noon-day.

This is a verse talking about building the temple prior to being able to "prune the vineyard" or preach the gospel. Remember from Elder Bednar's famous talk on "tender mercies" that we decide through our living if we are chosen or not.

It is important to know the Lord's stance on the temple - if we are not taking advantage of it, then we are choosing to live in greater darkness than is necessary. Certainly attending the temple is one of our privileges, and the Lord and Prophet are going to great lengths and investing much time and money into making sure that there are temples close to every people.

One other example showing how important temples are is the fact that the Prophet always opens conference by talking about the temples that have been dedicated in the last six months. Of all things he could choose to talk about, this is the one consistent item he brings up. It certainly shows its priority.

We should also make attending the temple a priority because without it we are likely standing in darkness at noon day. (I understand some may not live close and some may have difficult obstacles in getting to the temple. Just do your best. :)

Have a good day.