To the Missionaries of the Great Texas Houston Mission:
This month our family has taken the challenge to focus on a Christ-like virtue and the one we have chosen is faith. After spending time reminding ourselves of what faith is and perhaps as importantly what it isn't, I have been thinking about the process of building faith. This has reminded me about my first experience going to the gym after my mission. I quickly realized how much strength I had lost and began the process of building strength back up. For muscle to grow, two things have have to happen:
1. Muscles need to experience stress/tension
2. This stress needs to damage the muscle so that it can be built back up or repaired
If you want this process to happen faster, you have to lift more weight. There is one critical requirement that has to be present to protect you from injury if you are going to lift heavier weight: you need to have a "Spotter". A spotter is a person who is there only to help you be successful. They don't necessarily touch the weight if they don't need to, but they are there to make sure you succeed. A good spotter will push you beyond what you think you can do because they know what your objective is and they want to help you achieve it. He will hold you accountable
The process of building muscle is very similar to the process of building faith. In Ether we read that "you receive no witness until after the trial ("stress") of your faith." (Ether 12:6). Similarly we read Lehi's council to Jacob who suffered some "stresses" of his faith when Lehi says of Jacob's afflictions that God will, "consecrate thine afflictions for thy gain." (2 Ne 2:3)
None of us come into the mission field with faith that is sufficient to do God's work. Consequently, He sees the need to stress our faith in hopes of helping it grow. The first step of this is to "damage" the faith that we have which is usually faith in ourselves so He can build our faith back up; a faith that is in Him rather than in us. This sometimes a painful process. Sometimes the natural man in each of us resents the process. Mercifully the Lord has given us "spotters" in the mission field to help us succeed. These spotters are trainers, district leaders, STLs, ZLs and Sister Mortensen and I. The Savior Himself is the ultimate spotter. All of these missionaries are here to help you build faith; the kind of faith necessary that Joseph Smith taught was necessary unto life and salvation. To build it however, requires the sacrifice of all things. (Lectures on Faith 6:5).
If we understand that the Lord wants us to build the kind of faith that endures, are we going to resent the process? Will we resent the spotters who are in place to help us succeed? In Paul's words, "God forbid". We ought to embrace the process, embrace the accountability and give all that we have so our faith can endure well beyond the mission field.
We love you and are proud to be associated with you in this great work!
President and Sister Mortensen
We passed out the iPads at out last Mission Leadership Council. We are excited to progress the work of the Lord with these great tools.
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| Our Mission Leadership Council--such great leaders! |
The next several pictures were taken at the 8 week follow-up training for all the missionaries who arrived in April. They are doing great and are effective teachers. We love to see how far they have come!
