Homecoming Talk!

Here is my homecoming talk! I reported on October 19, 2014. I tried to type what I actually said (my mom recorded it). So sorry for the bad grammar and how I say "but" and "and" at the beginning of every sentence. And that it's so long.

Bom dia!
So English is hard so I hope you can understand me. Today I’m going to be talking a little about a talk from the recent conference called “Rescue in Unity”. It was the one given by Elder Wong in Mandarin.

This talk explains the story of the man stricken with palsy, but with an added perspective of his friends. To me, it also explains something that I learned a lot about on the mission, which is, how to be a good member of the Church.

I think that is one of the most important things we can master, because I feel like we should not be selfish about the gospel. We aren’t just members to bless our own lives, but we have the opportunity to help others as well. And we have it because Heavenly Father trusts enough to help others.

I know that the best way to do that, and rescue other people, is together, in unison. As President Monson said in a conference, “Now is the time for members and missionaries to come together, to work together, to labor in the Lord’s vineyard to bring souls unto Him. He has prepared the means for us to share the gospel in a multitude of ways, and He will assist us in our labors if we will act in faith to fulfill His work.”

I know for sure that Heavenly Father really will help us do His work because I have seen it! In Portugal, they do this thing a couple of times a year called “mês de convite” which means, month of invitation. In one of my areas, I was serving in a really large ward. There more than 100 people in sacrament meeting every single week. But even though they had all these members, they were still having struggles to see real growth and to see new members come in and stay firm in the Church. So, the bishop came up with a plan during this month of invitation. First, all the auxiliary presidencies chose one or two people from their auxiliary to focus on, to ”rescue”. Then we had an “afternoon of rescue”. What happened was, all the ward leaders, as well as the young men, young women, and all the missionaries, we met in the church and then we divided into little groups of 2 or 3 to go visit these less active members that they were focusing on. So we went and some of them weren’t home, some of them didn’t want to talk to us, but others did talk to us for a little while. And I think the most important thing is that those members who went out gained confidence in sharing the gospel. They gained confidence in how to share the gospel with less active members as well as their non-member friends. And that week in sacrament meeting, we had a huge miracle. There were more than 200 people present in sacrament meeting, including more than 10 less active members and about 20 investigators. It was a huge miracle and I know it happened because of that moment of unity that the ward had. And they were able to help those who couldn’t help themselves. There are those who, as Elder Wong says in the talk, there are those who cannot move on their own, but can only sit at home waiting for rescue.

I met a man like this in Portugal. His name was Jorge. My companion and I were knocking in an apartment building one day. We were looking for a name we found in the area book. We were just looking but that man had ended up moving but we met Jorge instead. He seemed really tired and sickly and not very interested, and so we just left him a pamphlet and we didn’t even mark a return visit or anything. But about a month later we were planning for the next day and we thought about him so we decided to pass by and see how he was doing, see if he had read. And so we went over and he came out with the pamphlet in his hand and he said, I’ve been waiting for you to come back. He pointed to the picture of the book of Mormon on the back of the pamphlet and he said, “I want to read this book. I want to start coming to this church. How can I learn more?” we just stood there kind of shocked and kind of kicking ourselves that we hadn’t gone back earlier. So we gave him a book of Mormon and we started teaching him and he started coming to church. He started walking to church on his own and he was soon baptized. And that may not seem so incredible but there is one thing about Jorge. He has severe diabetes and kidney failure and so as a result, one of his legs and all the toes of his other foot were amputated. He hadn’t left his home by himself in months besides in an ambulance to go do kidney dialysis. He was literally helpless to find the gospel. He was just sitting at home waiting for someone to rescue him. And after he was baptized he realized he had been waiting for this help without even realizing it.

Another example of this principle is a story from a different area with a different companion, where we met Marta. I love Marta. The same as Jorge, we were looking for someone else in her apartment building when we knocked on her door. This lady answered and we said, “Ummm are you Orlando? And… does he live here?” and she looked really confused and said “No… Do you want to come in?” and so we quickly nodded and ran inside before she could change her mind. We taught her for several months. Though she was physically capable of leaving her home, she was stuck spiritually. She had just moved recently from Brazil running away from a failed marriage, from the death of her child, and basically a dead-end life. She was living with and caring for her niece and was having a really hard time because her niece was kind of rebellious. They were just not very happy. She was lonely and friendless and helpless and she felt abandoned by all her friends and also by God. And so, Heavenly Father sent us to her.

We were able to watch as her faith grew and her trust in God grew and her testimony grew. We watched as the ward just embraced her as their daughter and their sister. And we watched as her sadness transformed into joy. It was incredible actually before she was baptized we would walk to church with her and she would always walk really slowly, kind of laden down, but after she was baptized, she had a new spring in her step. She was just so much lighter. She found what she didn’t know she needed.

And that’s our calling as members. Bring the truths of the gospel to those whose souls are seeking them even if they don’t consciously realize it. And we can be assigned these opportunities, like if we’re called as ward mission leader or sent as a visiting teacher to a less active member, or like in that afternoon of rescue that that ward had. But also we can do it on our own. I on the mission I really developed a love for the Doctrine and Covenants. I’m going to read a verse that everyone knows. 

"Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much righteousness; For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward."

In the first part it says we need to be anxiously engaged in a good cause. I think we all know that means we have to do things before we’re asked and actively seek to do righteous actions but I like in the next verse where it says the power is in them. The power is in us! Sometimes we think we literally cannot do anymore. We already have 3 jobs 4 kids 6 callings and a dog how are we supposed to do more?

I actually experienced this a lot on the mission. Obviously not the same way because when you’re on a mission all you’re doing is being a missionary, but sometimes I would think: I cannot do anything else to help these people, or, I cannot handle talking to one more person on the street today, or, sometimes, a lot of the time it would be just, I cannot take another step without collapsing and falling on the ground. But then I would learn time and time again that I can! Because Heavenly Father will help us. Heavenly Father would give us ideas to help our investigators, He would give us the courage and the desire to talk to one more person, and He would give us the strength to keep going. I have felt Him literally carry me up those steep hills when it’s the end of the day at the end of the week and you’re just so exhausted… and He can carry us through those days when everything seems to be going wrong as well. I know that He will do that for each of us, as long as we never give up.

In this talk, elder Wong talks about the four friends who carry the man with palsy to Christ. He mentions all the obstacles they faced—how the room was too crowded to enter the door, how they couldn’t reach Christ, how they had to climb the roof, but they didn’t give up. I really believe that before the biggest miracles come the biggest trials. For example, about a week before I came home, it was a Saturday. In fact it was The Saturday. My companion sister Anderson and I could just feel it. We could feel that something huge was about to happen. And so we were just ready to go out and just work. Saturdays were normally really great days where we would teach 5 or 6 lessons and we’d find a lot of new people to teach, but this particular Saturday… I will tell you about it. I have my planner so I can remember everything.

Okay so in the morning we did our studies as usual and then we left. We had had an appointment with a family that our ward mission leader knew. But he cancelled, and then we went to the family, and they were not interested and the daughter was really rude to us. So then we tried some other people in the area but none of them were home. So we rode the bus home and had lunch and then after lunch we were supposed to have an appointment with the mom of a recent convert who we had taught a few times and she was really progressing but she called and cancelled and cancelled to come to church. So we decided to try a less active member who had stopped us on the street and told us she wanted to start coming back to church. She couldn’t and… no one else could. We had about 21 families that we were going to pass by that day in a specific area and NO one was at home. We rode the bus up the mountain and we were up in this one neighborhood for about 4 hours just trying every single door giving away all our cards and nothing was happening. Every single person was just being really rude and rejecting us and they were slamming their doors in our faces and we were just really... angry.

It was a little before 8 o clock and we finally decided to give up because we had an appointment at 8 o clock down the mountain at the church. So we climbed down out of this little neighborhood to go to the road and we realized that we missed the last bus. So then we had to walk down the mountain. It was a few miles but luckily it was all downhill, we made it, and luckily all the roads there lead to the main spot so we didn’t get lost. But eventually we got to the church about 45 minutes late for our appointment. The member that we were going to have with us had had to leave, so we just sat outside with this investigator Joaquim. He had already received an answer about the Book of Mormon but still believed that there was more than one true church of Christ on the earth. Nothing we said or testified really helped him understand that if the book of Mormon is true this church is true. So we left to go home, just completely exhausted, completely frustrated. Nothing had happened. We hadn’t found anyone, we hadn’t taught anyone. And we were on the way home, we were on the bus, when Joaquim called. He was on his way home and had received an answer to his prayers to know if the Church was true. And it was one of the most miraculous answers that I have ever heard of. He told us that God had spoken to him to tell him that this church is true, that He did not put His missionaries in his path by chance, and that he needed to start coming to this church and to be baptized. And actually he ended up getting baptized yesterday I got news about it so that was really great. And so now I kind of take comfort in the bad days because it means something really miraculous is about to happen.

Elder Wong says in the talk that the work to assist Jesus Christ in saving souls is not an easy one. But I know that it is the most rewarding. And if we just keep on and don’t give up we are going to see huge miracles in our lives and in the lives of others. We just have to act and do, even if our plan isn’t a very easy one.

In the story of the man with palsy, his friends have to break through the roof to lower him down to Christ. When I read that part I thought it was really interesting because sometimes in our lives or in our wards or in our missions we run into a glass ceiling. We’re not trying to break down but we want to break up and keep going and get to that next level—that next level of dedication, of consecration, of success or whatever and we can’t seem to quite make it to that next level. So we always wonder how can you break through that?

When I had been in Portugal for about a year, our mission president, president Fluckiger, wrote us a letter about this very topic. He felt that as a mission we were doing really well but that we could progress even more. So his idea was to turn it over to the Lord completely and with full purpose of heart, by giving the sacrifice that the Lord always wants of us, which is giving away our sins. And so we did this through a 40-day fast. Before you start thinking that’s why I lost so much weight let me explain. President Fluckiger shared a story with us of a missionary who wanted to break through his own glass ceiling. He asked a visiting general authority how he could do this. And the man responded first by asking some uncomfortable questions. He started asking him, “When you see young women, what do you think about? DO you ever speak sarcastically to your companion? Do you get up on time every morning? Do you keep every mission rule?” and he just kept asking more and more questions and then finally he said to the missionary, “these are things that keep the Holy Ghost from being your companion. If you want the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, then you must purify yourself. I will tell you how to do it. Go home and fast for a day. In the attitude of fasting and prayer, make a list of every behavior that pokes at your spirit. Once you have made your list, then go to the Lord. Covenant with the Lord that you will fast from the things on your list for 40 days. In other words, for 40 days you will do nothing that appears on that list. You cannot just stop the old behaviors and start the new ones. You need the help of the Lord. So each morning, go to the Lord and specifically promise Him that you will avoid or start each item on the list. Ask for His help so you can have extra strength, and then at night go over your list with the Lord again. If you have failed on some items, figure out why. Tell the Lord. Ask for more strength the next day. Go through the process for 40 days. If you do, you will find that your most basic desires will change, your spirit will flourish, and the Holy Ghost will become your constant companion. You will become an effective tool in the hands of the Lord.”

So as a mission we did that. We fasted for a day and throughout the day we wrote down things we noticed that drove away the Spirit. At the end of the fast we evaluated our lists. At first I was really discouraged because I had about 67 things on my list. So I reviewed each one to decide if it was really keeping the Spirit away or if it was just a good idea or a skill I wanted to improve or if maybe it was something less bad that I could work on later because it was too much. So in the end I ended up with 9 things on my list to focus on. They were things to help me live the mission rules even better, like… doing exercises every day… and also things to help me be more Christlike, such as avoiding saying anything negative about anyone else. And so then we promised the Lord to do or to not do those things. And for 40 days, which is almost exactly a transfer, we fasted from these things. And it was really, really, really, really hard. Really hard. Because we weren’t just trying to change our behaviors, we were trying to let the Lord change our characters. And it was really painful. But we figured it out. I got a hula-hoop for exercises and got pretty good at that. And I noticed as the time went on that the things that I used to not do, I began to do automatically. And then some of the other things that I had done without even thinking, I would notice and I would start noticing beforehand to be able to correct them before they even happened. And I noticed that the mission itself began to change as well. Slowly but surely there was a bit more success here and a bit more success there and just like the friends in the story we were doing this to better be able to care for our brothers and our sisters. And so the Lord let us, and as a bonus, He changed our hearts as well.

These four friends in the story did this for the man with palsy. I like this part in the talk that Elder Wong adds to the story about how they got onto the roof. He says, “Assuming there was no outside staircase for them to climb, it would have taken them quite some time to get everyone on to the roof. I think it might have happened this way: the young man from his ward climbed up to the roof first. His home teaching companion from the elders quorum and the strong tall full-time missionary would have pushed really hard from below.” I like the part that it says that it would have taken them quite some time to get to the roof. Because one of the things that scares a lot of us about missionary work is that we think we don’t have time for it. Because it does take time! But we have covenanted with the Lord to use our time to help His kingdom grow. And also He manages to give us more time when we try to do His work. And I’ve seen that, especially on my mission. A lot of you probably know that you have to follow a very strict schedule as missionaries. In the evenings you have to return home from working at 9h30. You then plan for the next day for about 30 minutes and you have to write in the area book about the lessons you taught or the potential investigators you found. You have to report to your district leader about the day. You should tidy your apartment. You want to write in your journal. You need to get ready for bed. And honestly a lot of days you want to just go to bed early. But for all of that you only have 90 minutes. There were some days when I would think, “I am so tired. Writing in the area book is sooo boring. I’ll just, just do it in the morning... during exercises.” So I wouldn’t do it that night but for some reason I wouldn’t be able to do everything else that I wanted to do. I wouldn’t be able to finish writing in my journal or get to bed early. But on the nights when we took time to write in the area book we would be able to do everything we wanted to AND get to bed a few minutes early too. So I know that God can do that with our lives. He can help us arrange our days more effectively, or help us do things more quickly, or just slow down the clock a little. He is a God of miracles after all.

Another part that I liked about the story is that the young man is the first to climb up in the rescue effort. I feel like in the work of salvation the youth need to take the lead. Of course we all need to participate but the youth of the Church have a special advantage. They know how to use social media; they are surrounded by friends and classmates every day who don’t know about the gospel. They’re constantly texting and tweeting and instagramming and all that and those posts can reach thousands of people. Imagine the good that one righteous youth can do!

In my second to last area, I knew this girl named Jessica. She was a convert of a few years and was about 14 when I was in the area. I want to be like her when I grow up because she would call us or text us a few times a week for a little bit of help to find a specific scripture or for a little bit of advice about a certain topic. And it turns out that each time, she was helping a friend of hers. If someone was having a hard time, she would text a verse of scripture to them and then bear her testimony. She invited several of her friends to meet with the missionaries and brought many to church with her on Sundays. She would visit recent converts just to be their friend. To me, she exemplifies what it means to be a missionary and rescue others. She was busy with everything like we’re all busy with—she had school projects, she had family responsibilities, she had babysitting jobs, but she took just a few moments each day to bring someone a little closer to the Saviour.

Like in the story of the man with palsy, our contributions may be varied but all will make a difference. And all the different parts are really needed as well. I had 7 different companions on my mission and all of them were very different. Often the ones who were the most different from me were the ones that I did the best missionary work with, because our differences would compliment each other. And that’s one thing we need to remember because sometimes we can reject differences. I had one companion who was a little more difficult than the rest. I’m not even sure why but sometimes there would just be weird tension and it was just hard sometimes. We would still have fun but there would be days when I would just go sit in the bathroom and cry because I just didn’t like it. But now I realize that I learned a lot of things with her that I couldn’t have learned from anyone else because of her differences from me. And now we’re good friends. Now that we don’t have to be together 24/7. If we appreciate our differences and work in harmony we can work in unity with the Lord and we can bring ourselves and others unto Him.

In the next part of the story, Jesus approaches the man with palsy and immediately blesses him saying “thy sins be forgiven thee”. That is one of the greatest gifts that Christ offers to His followers. As we help bring others unto Him, we draw closer to Him as well and we can receive this personal sanctification. I think the biggest miracle of my mission was the changes I saw in my own heart. I look back to who I was 18 months ago, and I wont say I don’t recognize myself because I do but I’m not me anymore if that makes sense. My actions have changed, my thoughts have changed, and my desires have changed.

That is the promise found in the scriptures. In Matthew, Christ says, “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it”.  As we give ourselves to rescue others, we are purified and sanctified and we become more like our Saviour, and we are able to receive and follow promptings to help others.

These may come in small and simple ways. One day in my third area, my companion and I felt to just pass by and visit a certain member, Catia. We just passed by right before lunch just to say hi and see how she was doing. We ended up talking for 10 or 15 minutes, nothing really in particular and nothing super special, but later she told us that that day she was really struggling and had just needed to feel loved. She was praying so desperately and then the sisters showed up. So that to me was a testament that the feelings we get when you realize you’ve been an instrument in the hands of the Lord is nothing like nothing that can be described. And you can feel like that every single day. Because our small acts and our huge faith will rescue our brothers and sisters. And no it won’t be easy. All the MTC teachers tell you right before you head to the field that if you’re doing your mission right every night you’ll be so exhausted that you want to die, and so happy that you’ll want to do it all again. And actually it’s true. And I think our lives can and should be like that as well. I want my life to be like that—to just kind of collapse at the end of every single day but knowing that I gave my all to serve God and to serve my Saviour and to bring Heavenly Father’s children home.

As Elder Wong says, we can do this in our prayers in our service as a spouse parent child missionary in a calling or by just being a friend. I know that no effort that we make to rescue others is useless or wasted. I know that Heavenly Father answers every single prayer, even the stupid desperate ones that we can catch a bus so that we don’t have to climb one more hill. I saw that a lot on my mission and that our small, simple prayers are really answered in sometimes miraculous ways. It just goes to show that Heavenly Father really cares about us and really cares about the small things in our lives that are going to make us happy and that are going to help us. I know that God is a God of miracles. I saw at least one miracle every single day of my mission. I know that because I wrote them down on a little calendar! Sometimes they were things like “Our umbrellas survived more than 4 hours today” or “someone threw a bowl of noodles at us but it missed”. But other times it could be things like “our recent convert Paulo just baptized two of his friends” or it would be “our lives were saved tonight” or “we know there are angels around us”.

In the service of the Lord there are moments of such sublimity that they just can’t be described no matter how you try. And I know that these experiences are awaiting each and every one of us and each of you. As we rescue others our testimonies will grow. We will become anchored to the gospel and the Lord will heal us and save us. His mission is to save us. And as our mission becomes His mission, we will become like Him. We will grow to become someone we never imagined possible, and we will be protected by Him forever. I know this is true and I hope we can all rescue others.

I am really grateful for the chance that I had to serve as a missionary. Portugal is so wonderful. It smells really bad but I love it a lot. The people there are incredible. They just love you so much and even though sometimes they won’t stop talking they don’t stop loving either. I really know that Heavenly Father just wants us all to be happy. He wants every single person in this world to be the happiest that they can be. And that is why we have missionaries. That is why we have the Church, why we have the gospel, that’s why we have cookies, and everything. Because He wants us to be happy. I really, really loved the opportunity that I had to help others to be happy. Because it made me even more joyful than I thought possible.

If you’re thinking about going on a mission then you should go. It’s hard and you’re really tired and sometimes you just want to jump out the window but it’s also wonderful and I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.

I’m just going to end by bearing my testimony. And I’ve had some requests to bear it in Portuguese so I hope you don’t mind.

Eu sei que esta igreja, a Igreja de Jesus Cristo dos Santos dos Últimos Dias, é a igreja de Deus na terra. Eu sei que Joseph Smith foi um profeta de Deus que ele realmente viu Deus e Jesus Cristo e que ele é o profeta da restauração. Eu sei que Jesus Cristo é nosso Salvador. Eu sei que Cristo ama cada um de vocês. Eu sei que ele sofreu por nos, que ele ama-nos. Eu sei que Deus é nosso Pai, e que ele tem um plano para ajudar nossas famílias. Eu sei que Thomas S Monsen é um profeta e que ele fala com Deus para ajudar-nos. Eu sei que nossos líderes são inspirados. E que nossas famílias podem ser eternas no plano de Deus. Eu amo meu Salvador, e eu amo cada um de vocês. Deixo este discurso e testemunho em nome de Jesus Cristo, amém.