Homecoming talk in YSA ward

December 16, 2018

Good morning brothers and sisters, this morning I got a text from Courtney at about 11 am asking if I was ready to give my talk and I said “I’m ready to start writing it!” Well I waited till half time to write it, but I wrote it. My topic today is lessons I learned on my mission so I spent 2 years writing this talk. As Brother Royal said I served in South Korea in the Seoul area and I got back about a month ago. It was a good time.

When people ask me what I have learned the most on my mission it is very hard to give an answer because as many of you know there are a lot of things you learn on your mission and you grow a lot and it seems that there is never enough time. So I wanted to talk today about three things that I learned on my mission that I think are lessons that will affect me for the rest of my life.

The first lesson I learned is in 3 NE 13:33. It says something along the lines of “seek ye first the kingdom of God and all things shall be added unto you.” I don’t know if you guys know much about Korean culture but they are very showy on their money. They love money and they love making sure you know they have money. I see all the time Koreans that drive a million dollar car, but live in a 1 bed room apartment so that they can show to the world they have a nice car, but when they go home it’s not so nice. I have seen a lot of people that I have taught that all they cared about was money. I often heard from people “I know that God is important, BUT right now I have a work project, or I have to find a new job, or I have to work and get money.” But one of my favorite members that I met in Korea named Brother Park was a living example of putting God first and everything else adding unto him. He was actually the first member I talked to in Korea, he spoke perfect English, so I should say he was the first member I talked to and understood what he was saying. He talked to me about how when he got home from his mission he got married in about 2 months. His parents told him to wait till he had money to go to college, get married, and have a family. They told him he needed money before he made this big decision. And he said “NO” and got married anyways. He had 2 kids and still didn’t have a job and he told me that during that time all he did was trust that got would take care of him. He got a degree in Chemical engineering, but still couldn’t find a job. So he continued to serve in his church callings and read his scriptures and prayed and did the things he was supposed to do as he trusted God would take care of him. Well a couple years later he got a job as a business man and became one of the most successful business man in Korea and now because of that he retired about the age of 45 and no works full time for the church headquarters for no pay. Every time he speaks to missionaries, or gives a talk, or gives a lesson, all he talks about is putting God first, no matter what, and God will take care of you and everything will be added unto you. He is a living example of that. On my mission as I tried to put God first it was very hard at times, and another thing I learned is that when we put God first our life gets a lot harder because Satan works a lot harder on you. Though my life is much harder and often more complicated, it is a lot more meaningful. I have seen God in my life looking out for me and helping me when I put him before worldly things.

Serving in Korea I learned a lot of lessons in a frustrating way. You are lucky to get more than 2 appointments per week, so you learn a lot from getting rejected and canceled appointments and getting punked. And one of the biggest lessons I learned was from people making excuses. I learned there is always going to be an excuse on why you can’t; pray, go to church, or be a good person. But there is no room for excuses in the kingdom of God. We just have to do what we are supposed to do. There was a less active that I worked with named Brother Lee. He had been investigating for about 6 years. He joined the church on a miracle. He had been praying to know what church to join when he got a call from the missionaries after losing contact for about a year. He told us later that as soon as he got that call he knew what church he would be joining. A couple months after he joined he lost his job, and got a new job where he was really mistreated. He was struggling financially. His family and friends left him because he joined the church.  So he was very lonely and very poor. When I got transferred to the area I had the thought to call him. As I picked up the phone to call him he called me. He told me there had been an accident at his work and he needed help. He worked at a hospital and one of the patients he was watching got out of his wheelchair and fell and cracked his skull. The hospital got sued for a lot of money and he was in big trouble, and it was a really bad situation. So we met him for about an hour or two and I heard him say, if God loves me why did he do this to me. And he kept making excuses on why he couldn’t come to church right now. And it was very frustrating and I listened to him complain and make excuses for a long time and finally I interrupted him and sort of yelled at him and told him that I count understand how he could keep coming up with so many excuses on why you are not doing what you know you are supposed to be doing. And I promised him that If he didn’t come back to church he would get fired and I promised him in the name of Jesus Christ that until he came back to church he would be lonely and poor his whole life. And then we left. And I felt cool. And also felt really bad because I was sort of mean. But the next day he came to church and he had a big smile on his face and I was happy that I didn’t scare him off forever. We kept meeting every week because he didn’t have any friends, and often we would meet every Saturday and all he would ask us to do was pray for him. And for some reason when I scolded him, he realized he needs to stop making excuses and just come to church and every week we would meet with him he would say “I had a bad week at week, or I’m really struggling, but that doesn’t matter all I want to do is study the scriptures and have you guys pray for me.” And so I saw his heart change and I saw him realize that once you do what you are supposed to and stop making excuses your life gets better and got starts helping you along the way.

This is probably the lesson I learned most on my mission and I want to talk about most today. My mission was very hard for me and hard for a lot of people around me, lots of my companions and house mates struggled. And I served in wards where there was a lot of unfairness you could say. Toward the last month or so on my mission I was sitting  in sacrament and  a thought came to me on what I should talk about in my homecoming , So I wrote my whole homecoming talk the last month of my mission. I was zoned out because even though it was the last months of my mission I still couldn’t understand sacrament meeting so I usually sat thinking about random things. This thought came to my mind because a sister that bore her testimony. For some random reason I stopped zoning out and listened to her. Her name is Sister Kim and she went up and talked about going to the temple with her daughter. She told he life story and her husband did not like her joining the church and because of that he beat her. And he hit her so hard that she went deaf and then he left her. She had a daughter to raise on her own and now had a disability and for a year or two stopped going to church because she was mad at God. But she had come back to church and realized it wasn’t God that did that to her and she talked about going to the temple with her daughter and how grateful she was that she came back. As I heard that story I felt very sad for her, and I thought why would that happen to her? And I looked around at the ward I was sitting in and I was sitting next to a less active I had been working with who got hit in the eye with a baseball and went blind. Because of that his wife left him and now he only has a few years until his other eye goes blind and he is completely blind. On my right was a member that had a young family and was in a car accident and now his leg was very badly disabled. I saw a young single mother that was raising her children alone because he husband hated the church and would beat her all the time. I saw another member whose son was in a vegetative state for the last 10 years of his life and died at the age of 18 a few months prior. I saw someone sitting in the back in a wheelchair because he fell from 12 stories while working in construction and was now paralyzed. And I remembered one time he told me that he wants to die so bad because he is miserable living in his broken body. This list I have in my journal goes on for pages of all the suffering I saw through the members in Korea. The members I have come to love more than just about everything. And to top all that off, I', not sure that there are a more faithful and righteous members then Korea. They have it so hard there to be a member. Over here if your friends find out you are a member they so “oh good for you, you are a good person.” But if you are a member in Korea you are the biggest cult you are a devil worshiper you are the worst person in the world and you are fired or kicked out of school or bullied. So it is very hard to be a member in Korea and I think it takes a lot more faith to stay active in the church. So as I am sitting around all these extremely faithful people and seeing how much they suffer and how faithful they still are, I learned a little bit about the atonement. I learned that suffering is exalting.  I think of the only way we can all become exalted is through Jesus Christ’s suffering so it is only natural that we must suffer a little bit. Elder Holland came to our mission and talked to us about this. He told of a girl that he met that was a mother who was trying to have kids for about 20 years but couldn’t. She went to the temple every week, did all that she was supposed to do, yet couldn’t get her righteous desire. And she asked him why. Elder Holland said “when we suffer, we can’t think God doesn’t love us we have to think God loves us and is making us become something better. He told us when we meet Korean people that are suffering we need to promise them that God is their father and he loves them perfectly and He has a plan in their suffering.

The second part of my topic today is “how I improved my relationship with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.” The biggest thing I learned on my mission was to trust God. Hopefully everyone learns that on their mission because sometimes God is really confusing and hard to trust. But as I have learned to trust God my relationship with him has improved and I realized that he isn’t just a God in heaven but he is my father who walks with me every step of my life. And he knows me perfectly and he believes in me perfectly and he is never going to give up on me and he is never going to give me something I can’t handle and I just need to trust him.

That was a hard lesson to learn, but not as hard as how I improved my relationship with Jesus Christ. Like I said my mission was very hard. At the beginning of my mission I was very frustrated learning Korean and having to eat fish all the time and bad things were happening to my family at home, bad things were happening to my friends, my companion was Korean so I couldn’t talk to him and I was very frustrated and it was very hard. Something that was very uncharacteristic of me happened to me while I was on my mission. Before my mission I was always a happy person. It wasn’t hard for me to smile or laugh or make a joke, but on my mission, because of that and other things, I ended up having to meet with a mental health doctor once a week, sometimes daily. I was very frustrated because I had never been sad as long as I could remember and all of the sudden no matter how hard I tried or how hard I faked it I could never be happy. That was for sure the hardest trial on my mission. I had been close to people that were depressed but I never thought it would happen to me and when it did, I didn’t know what to do because I had never been sad before, maybe when the patriots lost the super bowl, but other than that, I had never been sad. So I was very “broken” and there was a lot of crying and hard times and I would often think why is God doing this to me?

I didn’t realize this until I got home, until I was talking to a friend about “why do bad things happen to good people.” As you know you get that question almost daily as a missionary, and depending on who you are talking to the answer varies, but I had always said something along the lines of “opposition in all things, or God has a plan.” But for some reason when I was talking to my friend I saw it from a different perspective. I reflected on all my experiences with suffering a bit and all my hard times and thinking “why is God doing this to me?” And I realized, and this answer may not be correct, or comforting, but I think for me at least, in order for me to build a relationship with Jesus Christ, I had to be “broken” and let him fix me. And realize that he does have the power to save and heal and comfort and redeem. I think back to that year or so when it was really hard for me and sometimes I wish it didn’t happen, but I realize that happened to me so I could build my relationship with Jesus Christ and that heavenly father “breaking me” allowed Jesus Christ to heal me and allowed me to gain a testimony of His atonement and realize how much Jesus Christ has suffered for us and how much he loves us.

Of course there is so much more that I could talk about, but these are the things I wanted to share today. But I do know that Heavenly Father is our father and that he loves us and does have a plan for us. I know Jesus Christ. I know how much he has done for us and how much he loves us and I am so grateful for that. I know that when we put God first in our life everything will be good. I know that when we don’t make excuses and we don’t complain during our trials, heavenly father will lift us higher and Jesus Christ will comfort us. I know that heavenly father and Jesus Christ love me and they love you and I am so grateful for the opportunity I had to serve in Korea. I want to go back there. And I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.