Today, Christmas Day, my heart is filled with love and
gratitude. My wife and I live with other senior couples in duplexes just a few
hundred yards from where the Smiths lived. We can see the Sacred Grove from our
windows. The Smiths celebrated about twelve Christmases here. This is our
second. I miss my family, my children, grandchildren, brothers, and friends very
much, and I should be lonely, being so far away from them, but I’m not. Why?
Because I’m serving my Father in Heaven and his Son, Jesus Christ at one of the
most sacred places on earth, and their love fills this place. From here, 204 years ago this spring, that love began to pour out upon the whole earth. My wife and
I feel so blessed to be here.
How did we get here? Being called on a mission as a senior
couple in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is a little different
than when the young men or women are called on a mission. We are given the
opportunity to list the places where we would like to go, and though it’s not
certain that we will serve there, it is likely.
In the spring of 2021, Covid had finally lost some of its
grip on the world and my wife and I decided to serve another mission. We began
filling out the papers online. We were given the opportunity to list a maximum
of 8 places where we would like to serve. This place, Palmyra, New York, was
number one in both our hearts, but we felt selfish choosing the place we really
wanted to go to. So, we placed it down the list and put areas with critical needs
and where we had skills high on the list. Three weeks later, we got our call by
email from President Nelson and the Missionary Department of the Church.
Imagine our surprise and joy when we saw that we were called to serve here, at
the New York and Pennsylvania Historic Sites. We were so amazed.
Now, nearly eighteen months after leaving on our mission, I’m
a changed man. Though contention, anger, and polarization still fill the
headlines of the online news, I feel none of it. My heart is drawn out with love
to all of Heavenly Father’s children, my brothers and sisters. It does not
matter if they are of my religion or even religious, I love them. Contention
and anger are gone from my heart as well as fear and distrust. “How did that
happen?” you might ask. There are many reasons, I’ve been praying for just these
feelings, but more than anything else it comes from this place. We’re living
just a stone throw from where God the Father and His Son appeared to a fourteen-year-old
boy. There is still an incredible Spirit there. In the last eighteen months, I’ve
had the opportunity to talk about these places with people from Brazil, Mexico,
Peru, Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, Honduras, England, China, Taiwan, Japan,
Ukraine, Croatia, Germany, Australia, Tahiti, New Zealand, Tanzania, South
Afrika, not to mention just about every state in the United States and every
province in Canada, and the list goes on.
With every single person that I’ve talked to, I’ve felt
Heavenly Father’s love for them welling in my own heart. Is it any wonder that
I’m a changed man?
On this Christmas Day, the world seems like a much smaller
and warmer place to me. I’m not blind to the problems, but I know that
everything is going to work out. What a wonderful place this world is going to
be someday, when all of us feel the same, incredible love that now fills my
heart.
