Change

I think that I’ve mentioned before that as beings born from a timeless world we are not used to change. I think of different periods in my life like when I was young and just going to college or when my children were little and how I thought that they would always be the same, but I got older and so did my children and it all happened way faster than I expected.

Change happens many times faster here in the mission but there is still that illusion that things will not change. When we arrived here in Mexico nearly fifteen months ago we thought for example that we would always have President Sister Crickmore with us. They leave in four days. What is even more scary is the end of our mission coming like the ground as if we´d jumped out a plane without a parachute. When we arrived here we thought we had all the time in the world.

Clearly part of the reason that our Heavenly Father fashioned this test that we call mortal life like he did was so that we could learn to understand and appreciate time. Living with Him in our premortal lives we probably had little or no concept of it. Change there must have been nearly imperceptible. We could expect the people we loved to be there today, tomorrow, and nearly forever. But that was an illusion too.

   

I’ve learned a little from these experiences. When I was with my young grandchildren I treasured every day, knowing that they would not last forever. On this mission, having learned from my last, I have kept a careful diary of what has happened to us here, treasuring our experiences for the future when I will not feel the Spirit so powerfully on a daily basis. Out of it all, I feel gratitude for the life my Heavenly Father has blessed me with and the knowledge that one day I will return to the timeless world and there the associations that have seemed far too fleeting in this life will be renewed and much more appreciated for the eternities to come. 

Life's Mission

Through much of my life I've had some misconceptions as to what my life’s mission was. Most of those misconceptions centered around my employment. Early in my life I thought I was supposed to be successful entrepreneur or possibly a great leader of the Church. I made changes in my career and locations where we lived with those ideas in mind. Later on, I decided I was supposed to be a writer. In the latter I did find a great deal of personal satisfaction and still do. It is a wonderful outlet, but I don’t know that is a life mission or purpose.

Two years ago my wife and I decided to go on a mission for the Church. As “matrimonios” we were allowed to choose where we would go and what we would do, but we decided to leave it in the Lord’s hands. He sent us to Mexico and to the Chalco Mission.

Last night we had a baptism for a very special woman named Magdalena. She is the matriarch of a family and a woman filled with goodness. Members of her family had been baptized, but she had resisted for more than five years.  She listened to us. While I watched her being baptized by her son, my heart burned within me. My heart burned throughout the baptism meeting, and I felt the Lord’s approbation. I knew I had accomplished part of what I had been sent here to Mexico to accomplish. A couple of weeks before her baptism, I told President Crickmore about her. He said that Magdalena was someone we had been sent here to find and to teach.

Maybe there are other things that I have to accomplish in my life, but I know by leaving it in the Lord’s hands, he has helped me to accomplish part of what I was sent here to do. I have helped Him bring his children unto Christ here in the Chalco Mission, just as I did in the Veracruz Mission forty-four years ago.

Securing Our Exaltation

As I’ve said in previous blogs, missionaries have a lot of spiritual experiences as we see our Father-in-Heaven working with his children. Because of these experiences our faith and knowledge, commonly known as testimony, grow too. The use of this new found testimony is important. The natural tendency is to think that it is you, and, wow, what a spiritual person I am. Look how many people I’ve baptized or taught. Of course, that would be a big mistake, and a quick way to lose our access to the Spirit.

Because of the daily experiences we have feeling the Spirit and seeing it work in others, it would also be easy to think that the Lord is really happy with us and we are the direct path to the Celestial Kingdom. While we do have to be living pretty righteous lives to be instruments in His hands, it does not mean that we have our callings and elections made sure or that we are becoming spiritual titans that cannot fail. I think I felt the latter forty years ago when I was a young missionary, finishing my first mission here in Mexico. But the forty intervening years have shown me that I am anything but an invulnerable titan. There were times in those years that I grasped on to the memory of those missionary experiences to keep me going as I struggled to stay on the path that had seemed so easy and sure. In normal life with so many non-spiritual tasks to perform and so many distractions, it is much harder to keep the Spirit that we become so accustom to here in the mission.

This mission has given me a very strong sense of the reality of the things that are to come. I know that there is life after death and that it will not be the same for everyone. I know too that it is by the grace of God through his Son, Jesus Christ, that I have any hope at all of obtaining the Celestial Kingdom and that I must be living worthily to receive that grace. In that sense, my works here in the mission matter little except as they reflect the state of my spirit and heart. My mission is an act of consecration, submitting my will to the will of my Lord through the consecration of my time and resources. If I can keep this course upon leaving, I will have hope of arriving in the Celestial Kingdom. It is this state of heart and spirit that matter more that the experiences we see or feel. That is why when the Lord did away with sacrifices of blood he asked instead for the sacrifice of a contrite spirit and a broken heart. 

An Answer to the Problems of the World

Last Monday we had a mission sports day. This was our third and last one. On one field were missionaries from a dozen different companies, all young, competitive, and full of energy. The competition and drive to win the prize for their zone should have been fierce. I´ve seen it before. I will have to admit that I was a little bit worried when some of the elders showed up wearing war paint on their faces, though it was, as I have said, half way expected for such a diverse group of young people who have spent weeks, months and years living under rigorous rules and regulations, looking for a way to let it all out. There were lots of young and beautiful sister missionaries, too, which means there should have been a lot of testosterone on display.

Instead of fierce competition, it was a truly wonderful day. Everywhere I sensed love and comradery no matter the zone. The young men were gentlemen and kind. There was no exaltation or thumping of chests at winning and a genuine desire to treat those without the athletic skills kindly. To be sure there were some arguments with refs about calls or lack of them but those were few. In fact, as a ref in the basketball games, I had many missionaries help me to make calls even though they hurt their team. A long-time athlete myself, I will have to say that I have never experienced anything like it, except maybe at the other two sports days.

What made this day so incredible? Everyone on that field was united by a common love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No matter the nationality or zone we were all truly brothers and sisters under Him. He blinded us to our differences and helped us through love to overcome that pride which is the root of evil and which leads to a desire for personal glory at the expense of others. Our bound under Him changed the situation.

The scripture below mirrors the feeling I felt on the field last Monday:

4 Nephi

15 And it came to pass that there was no contention in the land, because of the love of God which did dwell in the hearts of the people.

 16 And there were no envyings, nor strifes, nor tumults, nor whoredoms, nor lyings, nor murders, nor any manner of lasciviousness; and surely there could not be a happier people among all the people who had been created by the hand of God.

 17 There were no robbers, nor murderers, neither were there Lamanites, nor any manner of -ites; but they were one, the children of Christ, and heirs to the kingdom of God.

I believe with all my heart that the Gospel of Jesus Christ holds the answers to problems of our world.