Mission blog    April 22, 2012

Last night Elder Storrer and I were searching for the vision of L. Tom Perry.  Though we never found reference to it we found two wonderful talks from him about showing love.  It was on my mind as I knelt in my evening prayer.  I asked my Father in Heaven to help us touch the hearts and soften the member’s hearts toward missionary work.  It is disturbing to me when I see even members of our stake presidency tell us that the JAE only have two goals.  They are to serve missions and get married in temples.  They are to build the kingdom of God from within.  They have stressed over and over again that the missionaries are responsible to do all the finding.  Now I know that we only have a few missionaries to search throughout all of Germany and the millions of people.  They could work day and night and could never begin to touch very many lives.  It is demographically impossible.  It takes every member having the missionary spirit, “When we have been warned we are to warn our neighbor.”  (See D & C  1:4, 38:41, 63:58,and  88:81}

We have been talking a lot about how we can get our members to have the spirit of missionary work.  Our Ward Mission meetings have become spiritually intense, as we have been struggling to try to accomplish this with this ward.    They resist with the idea that they are Austrians and not Americans.  Just because it works in America don’t expect it to work in Austria and Germany.

Elder Storrer had a dream the day we were asked to serve a mission.  It was not my dream.  Only as we get more deeply involved in the missionary work and the problems in this mission, the meaning of that dream has deeper significance.

The key is Love.  The greatest commandment Christ gave us is in Matthew 22:25-27.  He tells us that the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart.  The second is like unto it.  We are to love our neighbor as ourselves.  Then he adds.  On these two principles hang all the laws of the prophets.  This tells me that this is the pure love of God.  This is the pure love of Christ that he was talking about.  If we can keep this commandment to its fullness, we will abide by every other commandment.  It can only be done through constant prayer.

I awakened this morning with the desire to write out my testimony to this knowledge.  About 4:30 am I got out of bed and turned on my computer to put it into word.  I typed it out and then went back to bed.  But sleep still did not come.

The following were my thoughts.

Elder Storrer always says, “Satan has an arsenal of tools, but the one tool he lacks is love.”  It is the most powerful tool on earth.  Satan will use all of his tools he has to to stop it.  He is clever and knows exactly what he wants to accomplish.  His whole goal is to stop our Father in Heaven’s children from progressing.

When the young boy Joseph Smith went into the woods to pray Satan knew exactly why.  He was desperate to stop him.  The greatest tool he had was to bind Joseph’s tongue. 

The only way that Joseph Smith could defeat him was to continue praying silently.

I realized that the greatest tool Satan has to keep the saints from sharing the gospel is to bind our tongues.

And just like Joseph Smith, the only way we can defeat him and open our mouths is through constant prayer and communication with our Father in Heaven.

I am sure this message has been shared by Prophets in the past, but to me it was a testimony of their words.

We can only share the gospel if we love one another, serve one another and loosen our tongues.  None of this can happen unless we pray “unceasingly” for the desire and ability to love our neighbor and the desire to share the gospel.  As all good things it takes work on our part to show our Father in Heaven that we believe him and have faith in him.    Faith always precedes the miracle.

When we refuse to go to the Lord in prayer, he calls us “stiff necked.”  It is with humility that we bow our heads and sincerely entreat our Father in Heaven’s help in the name of his son Jesus Christ.

April 30, 2012

Elder Storrer was asked to speak in church.  He worked hard to prepare that talk.  It was more so than any other talk he has ever prepared.  Our mission district goal, (and he is the District Leader, a unique position for a senior missionary to be in) is to help the wards with 5 goals.  But to help them from being frightened from it we will spoon feed them.  (Don’t know what I am talking about.  I struggle to just tell them that I should not eat sugar. I can pray and I can bear testimony in German, and I can smile.)  So it pretty much falls on his shoulders.  I can usually understand the gist, if I know what they are talking about.  After he had it pretty much in his mind, he let the spirit dictate what he was to say, in German.  He felt like he was searching for words.  It was cute, At one point several members in the congregation helped him.  They are so very good that way.  He used as his example the love they have shown us.  And they really are a loving people, as they get to know you.  Anyway, so the five points are:

1.      Pray, unceasingly to love our neighbor

2.     Pray to find an opportunity to help them.

3.     Pray that we will recognize the opportunity.

4.     Pray that it will touch their hearts and they will ask us, why we are the way we are.

5.     Pray that our tongues will be loosened and we will tell them what the Lord wants us to tell them

So he presented the first three in his talk.  He asked Elder Rosenvall to come and tell of their recent experience using those tools, and how it has born fruit.  There are people being prepared all the time and we stumble on to them as we ride the city buses.  We know that on the days we are more prayerful and full of the spirit, we love those people, and they do often question us.  We even had a Catholic Sister, from Ireland sit down by me.  When the seat across became available, Elder Storrer joined us.  She had never heard of the church before and gave me one sentence, in English to tell who we are.  Yes, the spirit gave me those words to tell her that we are the same church that Christ organized upon the earth, but we are the Saints of the Latter-days.  She was quite intrigued by it.  She rode as far as we were going, into the old city.  She was a delightful traveling companion and after Elder Storrer had his turn was more enlightened.  We also have been helping our neighbor Rosie collect clothing, bedding,  ect., to take to Serbia.  We finally got the Restoration in Serbian that her neighbor is suppose to pick up, along with a Serbian Book of Mormon, that she wants to share with her neighbors.  We found a gold mine of clothing in the Elder’s apartment.  Clothing that was left by Elder’s as they were transferred.  It included two winter jackets, two wearable suits.  About a dozen white shirts.  Dozen’s of winter scarves, hats, gloves, some blankets and sheets, and etc.  We ended up with three big bags.

Saturday we ran to Lidals, a local grocery store for a few items.  Suddenly this woman from Serbia stopped Elder Storrer and expressed, “You are good people.”  During his conversation he asked if she knew Rosie.  She did not.  She is a refugee from Serbia, who lives with a group of people.  So Elder Storrer, gave her a pass along card with our phone number and invited her to visit with us in our home.  Because we have the miles we took the Sister’s last week to St Micheal in Pongau, about 1 ½ hours away to visit with a couple who were ready for baptism when they moved there.  The Mission President gave them permission to visit with them one last time.  They are so far away from the church.  We will be visiting with them once a month, to help strengthen their testimonies.  They also are from Serbia.  It seems that the ones interested in the gospel are from other countries including Africa.  The people in this ward desire that they just teach the Austrians.  The gospel is for all.  And the foreigners tend to be a bit more humble.

If we continue to pray to love this people and the five points, it lets them know who we are.