Good
morning, Brothers and Sisters. The bishop has asked me to speak upon the
blessings of work, as well as share experiences from my mission that apply to
this topic. As I thought about specific experiences or stories that had portrayed
to me the blessings of hard work in the mission field, I had one quickly come
to mind. I served my mission in the Atacama desert, which spans about the
northern third of Chile. My second and third sectors were in Calama: the
mission’s driest city. It is about 3 hours from the ocean, which means it lacks
the moderating effects of the sea breeze during the day, and the warm humidity
at night, found in the coastal cities. In my third sector, my companion and I
lived at a member’s house. Though the family lived in our sector, in was a
little far from the rest of our sector where we usually worked. So, we got into
the habit of heading back to the house about ten minutes early each night, to
get there on time. As we walked back each night, I usually didn’t contact
anyone else in the street, as to get home as soon as possible and avoid being
late. However, one night, as we were walking back to the house and about a
block away, I was surprised to see my companion quickly begin talking to a
woman that was moving a dresser out of her house, and asking if she needed any
help. She told us that she did not, but despite having never talked to the
missionaries, was very strong in her faith in God, and has always wanted to
talk to us, but had never seemed to have the opportunity. We were very
surprised at her comment, but happily made an appointment to meet her and her
family where they worked at a local supermarket, as they were in the process of
moving, and were not sure what their new address would be. We returned to the
house happily, and I began to reflect on what had just happened. Because my
companion had decided to open his mouth in those last few minutes of our day,
we had found a very interested and sincere new investigator. It made me realize
that even the last ten minutes of our day were a golden opportunity to find the
people that were prepared to receive the gospel. Over the next few weeks, we
got to know Elena better, along with her husband Juan, and their four children.
They all quickly accepted the gospel, and Elena and Juan were baptized with
their two youngest children, Rodrigo and Carolina. But before the two oldest
children, Luis and Nayeli had the opportunity to get baptized, the family had
to move back to their native Bolivia for a time, and I hoped and prayed that
they would continue strong and active within the church. Several months later,
I left Calama to go to a new sector, still not having heard from Elena or Juan.
However, four and a half months later, I got sent back to Calama, to a
different part of the city. Not long after returning, I received a phone call
from the bishop of the ward where I had previously been. He began asking me
about Elena and Juan’s children, and which ones had been baptized and which
ones had not. I told him that Luis and Nayeli had not yet had the opportunity,
and he explained that their bishop in Bolivia had called him to make sure, and
so that the other two could be baptized. This news filled me with joy and
excitement, and several months later, as I was ready to leave Calama for the
second time, the bishop informed me that Elena and Juan had returned to my
previous ward, and were once again attending there. All of these experiences
with this family filled me with such joy to see their progression and strength
within the church, but it always made me think as well. If we had not talked to
Elena that night that we were rushing to get home, if we had passed her without
saying anything, justifying it with the fact that we were tired, or hurried, or
felt that we had finished our day’s fill of work, none of these blessings, or
the fulfillment of having helped a family in such a personal way ever would
have happened. Though God would have given Elena another opportunity to learn
of the Restored Gospel and be baptized in the restored church, we may not have
had the opportunity to celebrate with her. By doing something so simple to
better magnify our callings as missionaries, we were able to receive so many
more blessings, and be part of so many other people’s conversions.
When it comes to the importance of
hard work in the mission field, Ezra Taft Benson often said, “…
one of the greatest secrets of missionary work is work! If a missionary works,
he will get the Spirit; if he gets the Spirit, he will teach by the Spirit; and
if he teaches by the Spirit, he will touch the hearts of the people and he will
be happy. There will be no homesickness, no worrying about families, for all
time and talents and interests are centered on the work of the ministry. Work,
work, work—there is no satisfactory substitute, especially in missionary work.”
J. Richard Clarke also spoke of the
importance of hard work and also clarified its sacred nature. He said, “We
are co-creators with God. He gave us the capacity to do the work he left
undone, to harness the energy, mine the ore, transform the treasures of the
earth for our good. But most important, the Lord knew that from the crucible of
work emerges the hard core of character.”
Our Heavenly Father expects and
enables us to work for ourselves, so that by our own experience we grow and
progress to be stronger, more intelligent, and more able: progress that only
comes through practice…and life’s practice being hard work. While working for a
certain purpose brings good consequences including feelings of accomplishment,
or the desired outcome, work is a blessing in and of itself. Only by work can
we gain experience and improve, for this was Adam and Eve’s great dilemma in
the Garden of Eden: that in the Garden, where no work was required, and
everything was freely given to them, they could not learn nor be better than
they currently were. For that to be possible, they needed opposition and
difficulty… they needed to work for themselves.
As the Lord states in Doctrine and
Covenants section 58, verses 26 to 28: “For behold, it is not meet that I should
command in all things; for he that is compelled in all things, the same is a
slothful and not a wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward. 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.”
As this scripture says, if we work
hard and try to fulfill our potential, we will not lose the reward that God
promises us. However, we often demand from Him a specific reward, while in reality He will be giving us what we need
to improve, and not necessarily what we want in that given moment.
On another occasion during my
mission my companion and I had a family that had prepared for a long time to be
baptized, and while all of them that were not yet members wished to have that
blessing, the parents, Justina and Javier, needed to do extensive paperwork to
be able to get married first. However, their nine year old daughter Antonia,
had an enormous desire to get baptized and receive her blessings as soon as
possible, and her parents, knowing that their paperwork could take a very long
time to process, wanted her to get baptized as soon as possible, even if they
could not be baptized with her. So we began planning Antonia’s baptism. We
began calling members so that they could prepare talks, and finally the day of
the baptism arrived. We filled the font, and as we waited another young man
showed up that was to be baptized the same day. However, we continued waiting,
and we still had not seen Antonia or her family. We suddenly received a phone
call from her mom, informing us that Antonia’s sister had gotten really sick
and needed to be hospitalized, and that Antonia would not be able to be
baptized that day. We went forward with the young man’s baptism that we also
had planned, but afterwards, I felt angry and confused. We had worked hard to
help Antonia and her family, and yet she was hindered in her desire to receive
blessings. I could not understand why God would allow this to happen, when it
was the best thing she could do at that moment. A few days later we passed by
to talk to Justina and Javier, to see how their daughter was doing. They
informed us that she was doing better and that she would recover well, but they
quickly told us that they had some important news. They told us that the
paperwork for their marriage had taken much less time than they had thought,
and that they were going to be able to get married in the government office
that week, and they wanted to see if they could possibly be baptized that
Saturday with Antonia. As they told us this, my heart was full of gratitude,
and I realized that that had always been Heavenly Father’s plan for them: to
get baptized together. We had worked hard and He did bless us for our efforts,
but not right when I wanted it. But His plan was certainly better, and my heart
was filled with even more joy to see Justina and Javier in white along with
their young daughter.
As I spent my mission trying to
improve and work hard each day, I was repeatedly impressed by a talk by Elder
Lawrence E. Corbridge titled, ‘The Fourth Missionary’. In this talk Elder
Corbridge speaks of 4 types of missionaries, the first and second being
distinct levels of disobedient, but both the third and fourth missionaries that
he describes are obedient missionaries. However, there is a distinction between
them, being the desires of each one. While the third missionary does the things
he should, he does them for that sole purpose: that he SHOULD. His heart and
mind are still focused on his personal affairs, when he simply goes through the
motions of his day-to-day missionary routine. The fourth missionary on the
other hand has given his will over to the Lord, and unlike the third missionary
has not just offered the Lord his might and strength, but also his heart and
mind. In the same way the third
missionary differs from the fourth, our hard work will have little value when
we do it to simply complete a task: working hard to do something because we
SHOULD, rather than because we view its importance and working hard because we
WANT to.
As we truly work hard in our
personal affairs as well as spiritual affairs with the Lord’s will as our own,
we will be blessed with improvement, success, and satisfaction. The Lord will
help us to grow, and the work in and of itself will be a great blessing for our
eternal experience.
TESTIMONY
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TESTIMONY
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