I HAVE ELDER
WALLENTINE WITH ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!He is in my district and
we see each other every day because we work in the same area, and do a lot
together. We get swoll every morning or I should say we burn off all the
tortillas that we eat each day together. So every day we have been getting up
at 5:15 and heading to the gym! So it’s amazing that we are together.
The weather is
heating up so much.. it is brutal, but that’s all good. Only one more time
through the brutal heat. So what else do I have for you?
So our zone this past
week was combined with another zone. This
past month our zone won “zone of the month”, we had the most baptism out of any
other zone in the mission! And so President made some changes that are in the
missions benefit and now combined a few different zones and changed some
districts around. Right now our zone is the biggest zone in the entire mission
and we have not had a zone this big since I have been on the mission. We have
13 companionships in our zone, so that makes 26 missionaries. We are huge,
working hard and getting after it! It’s a lot of fun!
This morning we had a
breakfast together and have been playing today to get to know each other and
what not, we should have a good time. This month we have a goal as a mission to
have 319 baptisms, so we are working hard to geter’ done!
What else is going
on? So this week we found this familia, actually
a few weeks ago we found the husband on the street and he told us where he
lived but we could never find it. We also tried to contact him but his phone
was lost and so the number we had is a goner so we have really be trying to
figure out what we can do to find him. Well, we found him again and we finally met
with him this week. We actually were on splits that day. I was with Porter aka
Wallentine and we taught him and the familia is AMAZING. They are literally SO
ready for this gospel, the Lord has prepared the way for them and they are so
ready for the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are getting them married and they are
going to be baptized soon. As far as now they are such an amazing familia.
Their name is familia Varela Casares. I am so proud of them.
The first lesson we
taught them about how the Church of Jesus Christ should be organized; all from
The Bible and they LOVED it. The second time we taught them we went ham, we
taught them about so much. We taught them about temples, eternal
marriage, baptism and The Proclamation to the Familia. We put it all out there
for them and THEY LOVED it. So we are so happy that the Lord has guided us to
another familia that is READY. We are super excited for them and they at the
moment are super ready to make things happen!
What else is new? Tomorrow
we have a meeting with President and all the zone leaders and district leaders
to talk about how we are going to get the 319 baptisms done. So that will be
good. My time with President Fortuna is always the highlight of the week, or
lets say month. I am so happy to be here, minus the weather ! It is just SO
DANG HOT to say the least but it is all good though. We are enjoying every day
more and more and now that I am with Wallentine, time is going by so fast,
crazy!
So let me share with
you something that I read this week that I loved. Read it and take what you can
from it, loves!
By President Eyring;
First Counselor in the First Presidency
Human judgment and
logical thinking will not be enough to get answers to the questions that matter
most in life. We need revelation from God.
My hope for us today is that we may all feel
love and light from God. There are many listening today who feel a pressing
need for that blessing of personal revelation from our loving Heavenly Father.
For mission presidents, it may be a pleading prayer to know how
to encourage a struggling missionary. For a father or a mother in a war-ravaged
place in the world, it will be a desperate need to know whether to move
their family to safety or whether to stay where
they are. Hundreds of stake presidents and bishops are praying today to know
how to help the Lord rescue a lost sheep. And for a prophet, it will be to know
what the Lord would have him speak to the Church and to a world in turmoil.
We all know that human judgment and logical
thinking will not be enough to get answers to the questions that matter most in
life. We need revelation from God. And we will need not just one revelation in
a time of stress, but we need a constantly renewed stream. We need not just one
flash of light and comfort, but we need the continuing blessing of
communication with God.
The very existence of the Church stems from a young boy knowing
that was true. Young Joseph Smith knew that he could not of
himself know which church to join. So he asked of God, as the book of James
told him he could. God the Father and His Beloved Son
appeared in a grove of trees. They answered the question that was beyond
Joseph’s power to resolve.
Not only was he then called of God to establish the true Church
of Jesus Christ, but with it was restored the
power to invoke the Holy
Ghost so that revelation from God could be continuous.
President Boyd K. Packer described that identifying mark of
the true Church this way: “Revelation continues in the Church: the prophet
receiving it for the Church; the president for his stake, his mission, or his
quorum; the bishop for his ward; the father for his family; the individual for
himself.”1
That wonderful process of revelation begins,
ends, and continues as we receive personal revelation. Let’s take the great
Nephi, son of Lehi, as our example. His father had a dream. Others in Nephi’s
family viewed Lehi’s dream as evidence of mental confusion. The dream included
a command from God for Lehi’s sons to run the terrible risk of returning to
Jerusalem for the plates which contained the word of God so that they could
take them on their journey to the promised land.
We often quote Nephi’s brave declaration when his father asked
them to go back to Jerusalem. You know the words: “I will go and do the things
which the Lord hath commanded.”2
When Lehi heard Nephi speak those words, the scripture says that
“he was exceedingly glad.”3 He was glad because he knew that Nephi had been blessed
with confirming revelation that his father’s dream was a true communication
from God. Nephi did not say, “I will go and do what my father told me to do.”
Rather he said, “I will go and do the things which the Lord hath commanded.”
From your experience in your own families, you
also know why Lehi was “exceedingly glad.” His joy came from knowing that Nephi
had received confirming revelation.
Many parents have set family rules for when a
teenage child is to return home at night. But think of the joy when the parent
learns, as one did just a few weeks ago, that a child who had recently left
home not only set a curfew for herself but also kept the Sabbath just as she
had been taught at home. The revelation of a parent has its lasting effect in
the personal revelation that continues in the child.
My mother must have understood that principle
of revelation. As a young man, I would close the back door very quietly when I
came home late in the evening. I had to pass my mother’s bedroom on the way to
mine. However quietly I tiptoed, just as I got to her half-opened door, I would
hear my name, ever so quietly, “Hal, come in for a moment.”
I would go in and sit on the edge of her bed.
The room would be dark. If you had listened, you would have thought it was only
friendly talk about life. But to this day, what she said comes back to my mind
with the same power I feel when I read the transcript of my patriarchal
blessing.
I don’t know what she was asking for in prayer
as she waited for me those nights. I suppose it would have been in part for my
safety. But I am sure that she prayed as a patriarch does before he gives a
blessing. He prays that his words will come to the recipient as the words of
God, not his. My mother’s prayers for that blessing were answered on my head.
She is in the spirit world and has been for more than 40 years. I am sure she
has been exceedingly glad that I was blessed, as she asked, to hear in her
counsel the commands of God. And I have tried to go and do as she hoped I
would.
I have seen that same miracle of continuing
revelation in stake presidents and bishops in the Church. And, as is true in
the revelation to family leaders, the value of the revelation depends on those
who are being led receiving confirming revelation.
I saw that miracle of revelation in the
aftermath of the breaking of the Teton Dam in Idaho in 1976. Many of you know
the story of what happened. But the example of continuing revelation that was
passed through a stake president could bless all of us in the days ahead.
Thousands of people were evacuated as their
homes were destroyed. Directing the relief efforts fell to a local stake
president, a farmer. I was in a classroom at Ricks College just a few days
after the disaster. A leader from the federal disaster agency had arrived. He
and his chief assistants came to the large room where the stake president had
assembled bishops and even some ministers of other local religions. I was there
because many of the survivors were being cared for and housed on the campus of
the college where I was the president.
As the meeting began, the representative from
the federal disaster agency stood and began to say with the voice of authority
what needed to be done. After he listed each of the five or six tasks he said
were essential, the stake president responded quietly, “We’ve already done
that.”
After a few minutes, the man from the federal
disaster agency said, “I think that I will just sit down and watch for a
while.” He and his deputies then listened as bishops and elders quorum
presidents reported what they had done. They described what direction they had
received and followed from their leaders. They talked as well about what they
had been inspired to do as they carried out the instructions to find families
and to help them. It was late that day. They were all too tired to show much
emotion except their love of the people.
The stake president gave a few final
directions to the bishops, and then he announced a time for the next report
meeting, early the following morning.
The next morning the leader of the federal
team arrived 20 minutes before the report and assignment meeting was scheduled
to begin. I stood nearby. I heard him say quietly to the stake president,
“President, what would you like me and the members of my team to do?”
What that man saw I have seen in times of
distress and testing all over the world. President Packer was right. Continuing
revelation comes to stake presidents to lift them above their own wisdom and
capacities. And, beyond that, the Lord gives to those whom the president leads
a confirming witness that his commands come from God through the Holy Ghost to
an imperfect human being.
I have been blessed to be called to follow
inspired leaders much of my life. As a very young man I was called to be
counselor to an elders quorum president. I have in turn been counselor to two
district presidents and to a Presiding Bishop of the Church, a member of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and a counselor to two Presidents of the Church.
I have seen the revelation given to them and then confirmed to their followers.
That personal revelation of acceptance, for
which we all long, does not come easily, nor does it come simply for the
asking. The Lord gave this standard for the capacity to receive such witnesses
from God. It is a guide for anyone seeking personal revelation, as we all must.
“Let thy bowels also be full of charity
towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy
thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of
God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews
from heaven.
“The Holy Ghost shall be thy constant companion.”4
From that I draw counsel for us all. Don’t
take lightly the feeling you get of love for the prophet of God. Wherever I go
in the Church, whoever the prophet is at the time, members will ask, “When you
get back to Church headquarters, will you please tell the prophet how much we
love him?”
That is far more than hero worship or the
feelings we sometimes have of admiring heroic figures. It is a gift from God.
With it you will receive more easily the gift of confirming revelation when he
speaks in his office as the Lord’s prophet. The love you feel is the love the
Lord has for whoever is His spokesman.
That is not easy to feel continually because
the Lord often asks His prophets to give counsel that is hard for people to
accept. The enemy of our souls will try to lead us to take offense and to doubt
the prophet’s calling from God.
I have seen how the Holy Ghost can touch a
softened heart to protect a humble disciple of Jesus Christ with confirming
revelation.
The prophet sent me to confer the sacred
sealing power on a man in a small city far away. Only the prophet of God has
the keys to decide who is to receive the sacred power which was given by the
Lord to Peter, the senior Apostle. I had received that same sealing power, but
only by direction of the President of the Church could I confer it on another.
So, in a room in a chapel far from Salt Lake,
I laid my hands on the head of a man chosen by the prophet to receive the
sealing power. His hands showed the signs of a lifetime of tilling the soil for
a meager living. His tiny wife sat near him. She also showed signs of years of
hard labor alongside her husband.
I spoke the words given by the prophet: “Under
delegation of authority and responsibility from,” and then the name of the prophet,
“who holds all the keys of the priesthood on earth at this time, I confer the
sealing power on,” and I gave the name of the man and then the name of the
temple where he would serve as a sealer.
Tears flowed down his cheeks. I saw that his
wife was also weeping. I waited for them to compose themselves. She stood up
and stepped toward me. She looked up and then said timidly that she was happy
but also sad. She said that she had so loved going to the temple with her
husband but that now she felt that she should not go with him because God had
chosen him for so glorious and sacred a trust. Then she said that her feeling
of being inadequate to be his temple companion came because she could neither
read nor write.
I assured her that her husband would be honored
by her company in the temple because of her great spiritual power. As well as I
could with my small grasp of her language, I told her that God had revealed
things to her beyond all earthly education.
She knew by the gift of the Spirit that God
had given, through His prophet, a supernal trust to the husband she loved. She
knew for herself that the keys to give that sealing power were held by a man
she had never seen and yet knew for herself was the living prophet of God. She
knew, without having to be told by any living witness, that the prophet had
prayed over the name of her husband. She knew for herself that God had made the
call.
She also knew that the ordinances her husband would perform would
bind people for eternity in the celestial kingdom. She had confirmed to her
mind and heart that the promise the Lord made to Peter still continued in the
Church: “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.”5 She knew that for herself, by revelation, from God.
Let us go back to our starting point. “Revelation continues in
the Church: the prophet receiving it for the Church; the president for his stake,
his mission, or his quorum; the bishop for his ward; the father for his family;
the individual for himself.”6
I bear you my witness that is true. Heavenly
Father hears your prayers. He loves you. He knows your name. Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and our Redeemer. He loves you beyond your ability to
comprehend.
God pours out revelation, through the Holy
Ghost, on His children. He speaks to His prophet on the earth, who today is
Thomas S. Monson. I witness that he holds and exercises all the keys of
the priesthood on earth.
As you listen in this conference to the words
of those God has called to speak for Him, I pray that you will receive the
confirming revelation you need to find your way on the journey home again, to
dwell with Him in a sealed family forever. In the sacred name of Jesus Christ,
amen.
LOVE YOU GUYS! Make it a great week, do big things! Gi get
after it in all that you do and can’t wait to see you Gi Gi. I miss you tons
man. Your looking big in the pictures. I can’t wait to see you in 80 days! Love
you stud!
Con Mucho Amor,
Elder Long!
