Greetings! This past week, we had the opportunity to have a special zone conference with Elder Ojediran, a general authority seventy from Africa, who toured our Mission. He met with half of the Missionaries on one day & the other half on the next day.
Elder Ojediran had a number of inspirational messages for us during the 2 hours that he spent teaching. He asked us: Who has invited us to serve on a Mission? Christ. Who will watch our grandchildren while we are away? Christ. We are on the Lord's errand & we should go in the power of our ordination - we should be who the Lord wants us to be, so we should let God prevail in our lives. He told us that there is no better place for us to be, than right here, right now - so we must learn to enjoy the moment and learn to love where ever we are assigned to serve.
He made some interesting parallels between his assignment as a general authority and our assignments as Missionaries:
- He doesn't decide where he is to live
- He doesn't decide what his assignment is,
- He doesn't decide who he serves with,
- He doesn't decide what language he speaks, and
- He doesn't decide whether to wear a suit on a plane!
Likewise as Missionaries:
- We don't decide where we labor,
- We don't decide what our assignments are,
- We don't decide who we serve,
- We don't decide what language we speak, and
- We don't decide whether to wear missionary attire!
The Lord is at the helm, so we get to serve where He desires! We do get to decide if we are going to trust Him and His will for us, as manifested by His prophets, seers, and revelators! We strive to bring others to Christ through covenants and ordinances - it is never about us - Jesus is the light! When we accomplish something good, it is because the Lord has been merciful to us - it is for the Glory of the God.
Elder Ojediran gave us some great things to think about!
We had our usual weekly YSA family home evening, providing a meal for the institute class, District Council with the Young Missionaries, teaching the Missionary Prep Class, & various other meetings, but we had a new opportunity to invite one of the nice pickleball couples that we have met to have lunch with us in our little apartment during the week. After lunch we had the opportunity to teach them a little about the restoration of the gospel & introduce the Book of Mormon. They are both Methodists, but they like hearing messages about other religions, so we gifted them a personalized copy of the Book of Mormon & highlighted the introduction as well as Christ's visit to ancient America. They said they would start reading it, and would enjoy coming to see what one of our worship services is like!!
I think that some of the most rewarding and fulfilling things that we do, are to help teach people about God's plan of happiness & help bring people a little closer to Jesus Christ!
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