I met a stake missionary in my second area I served in during my mission who would end up being a great example to me of perseverance. This brother had been afflicted with a disease which led to the loss of motor skills, coordination and strength; he was confined to a wheel chair and had difficulty speaking. Even worse, his wife had divorced him because she couldn’t handle his situation, and he lived in a shack behind his daughter’s home. Yet this brother was the most positive person I have ever met.
One night I went on team-ups with the ward mission leader and we went to visit with member family. While we were chatting, the ward mission leader mentioned this stake missionary I mentioned above and how he should be an example to us, with how active he was with his condition. “He has been hit with this disease, and his wife divorced him and yet he is fighting it with all he has got to keep going strong. Here he is, a stake missionary, single adult representative, he works in the clerk’s office each Sunday putting the tithing records on the computer, he takes his son to school each morning (his son had recently moved in with him) and then is there to watch football practice and pick him up. Here is a man who could easily give up, but he refuses to do so. With all his fighting he has slowed the affects of his disease some. This brother is an example to those of us who do not have such a handicap. But then, we all have a handicap of some sort.”
A few days later this stake missionary invited my companion and I over for lunch, and he fixed us salami sandwiches. He asked me to bless the food and as I prayed I felt inspired to ask for a special blessing on this good brother. I said that we were grateful for him and his hospitality and then I asked that a blessing of peace and happiness would follow him wherever he went. After I closed the prayer I looked up to see tears in this man’s eyes. He said how much he appreciated us and what a blessing it was for him to be associated with us and to be a stake missionary. Then he said that he loved us and we told him how much we loved him. As I ate the sandwich, such simple fare, it was like manna to my taste.
That night I lay in bed amidst a jumble of thoughts. I thought about love and what it means to love and serve others. I felt the spirit strongly and was taught by it about love. One of the most important lessons a missionary can learn is how to love and serve others. I believe this was one of the great lessons of my mission. Everything we did was out of love and with sincerity. We worked hard because we loved God and the people in the area we served. We taught them the gospel because we loved them.
"There are many attributes which are manifestations of love, such as kindness, patience, selflessness, understanding, and forgiveness," taught President Thomas S. Monson during the April 2014 General Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. "In all our associations, these and other such attributes will help make evident the love in our hearts. Usually our love will be shown in our day-to-day interactions one with another. All important will be our ability to recognize someone’s need and then to respond."
One year later, at a the inaugural John A. Widtsoe Symposium at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf taught that "[There is] one virtue -- one quality [that can] solve all the world’s ills, cure all the hatred, and mend every wound: If we only learned to love God as our Father in Heaven, this would give us purpose in life. If we only learned to love our fellowman as our brothers and sisters, this would give us compassion.
"After all, these are God’s great commandments -- to love God and to love our fellowman. If we distill religion down to its essence, we nearly always recognize that love is not merely the goal of religion, it is also the path of true discipleship. It is both the journey and the destination.
"If we love as Christ loved, if we truly follow the path He practiced and preached, there is a chance for us to avoid the echoing tragedies of history and the seemingly unavoidable fatal flaws of man.
"Will compassion for others bring light into the darkness? Will it allow us to part the clouds and see clearly? Yes. For though we are all born blind, through the Light of Christ we can see past darkness and illusion and understand things as they really are."
"The secret is to love everyone you meet," Joanna Lumley has said. "From the moment you meet them. Give everyone the benefit of the doubt. Start from the position that they are good. Most people will respond and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and you can then achieve the most wonderful things. But get rid of any of the [jerks] that let you down."
One thing I have learned is that there are different degrees of love, ranging from the love of mankind, your community, or people you give service to, all the way up to the love you have for your one and only, the person you are in a committed relationship with, and many different degrees in between. The same can be said for friendship, and friends can move from one degree to another at different times.
Love means putting someone else's happiness before your own, the degree to which you do that, of course, depends on where that person falls on the spectrum noted above. For love of community we may sacrifice some of our self-interest for the good of the whole (this has been called 'Civic Virtue"). The greater the degree of love we have for someone, the greater the importance of their happiness should be to us. If we truly love someone it should lead us to modify our behavior toward them, we would try harder not to cause them pain.
Many months after our lunch with that stake missionary I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting in a different area. I spoke on love and service and told the story of that lunch experience with that stake missionary. “I have had many other good experiences since. As I have reflected on them I have been impressed by how much the gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of service.
"By modern revelation we know that God’s work and glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man. God’s greatest glory comes from serving us and what was the greatest act of service ever performed? It was the Atonement of Christ. He gave his life for us so that we can overcome the affects of sin and death.
“We are commanded to love God with all of our heart, might, mind and strength, and also to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are commanded to serve God and our fellowman. We do this in three ways:
- By perfecting the saints. By fellowshipping and strengthening each other in keeping the commandments.
- By proclaiming the gospel. By sharing the knowledge we have and the joy we have found with our friends and others. This is one of the reasons I am on a mission, to share the joy that I have found with others.
- By redeeming the dead. By extending the blessings of the gospel to those beyond the veil.”
I read the words to the hymn A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief noting the blessings the narrator enjoyed when he served others. Then I expressed my love and desire to serve them and concluded by bearing my testimony.
President Monson also taught in April 2014 that "We cannot truly love God if we do not love our fellow travelers on this mortal journey. Likewise, we cannot fully love our fellowmen if we do not love God, the Father of us all. The Apostle John tells us, 'This commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.' We are all spirit children of our Heavenly Father and, as such, are brothers and sisters. As we keep this truth in mind, loving all of God’s children will become easier.
"Actually, love is the very essence of the gospel, and Jesus Christ is our Exemplar. His life was a legacy of love. The sick He healed; the downtrodden He lifted; the sinner He saved. At the end the angry mob took His life. And yet there rings from Golgotha’s hill the words: 'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do'—a crowning expression in mortality of compassion and love."
