Farewell Talk (Actual)

            Good morning brothers and sisters, family, friends, and anyone else out there who I don’t know, but I would probably be friends with! It’s such a blessing to have a solid base that I know I can rely on and look back on with happy memories! I’ve grown up in this ward since second grade, and after, what, 11 or 12 years? I’m going to be serving a mission, something that I’ve been looking forward to all that time (with varying degrees of joy and nervousness). To those of you who have helped me (and there are MANY), all I can say is “thank you”, and to my Mom and Dad, I add “I love you a lot!” Thank you for taking the time to help me become a slightly better person, and better prepare to serve our Heavenly Father. I only wish that I could have gotten even more ready in the time I’ve had, but thanks to all the people I have learned from, I feel pretty good about going to Rome to serve the Lord.

            You know, I’ve learned quite a lot since I converted to the Church. True, I have always been a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, but I still had to learn for myself that it was actually true, and I’m just glad that it happened before my mission. That could have been difficult in many ways! But I have learned a lot since then, in preparation for this journey I’m about to undertake.

One of the most recurring themes I’ve learned is that EVERY topic in the Gospel is intertwined, so thoroughly that it’s impossible to fully understand one doctrine without knowing the rest. I would absolutely love to tell you all all that I know and all that I have learned about this Gospel to have arrived at that conclusion, but that would PROBABLY take too much time. So I apologize, but I’ll have to briefly cover only a few of the most influential parts of the Gospel that have helped me get to where I can serve a mission with purpose.

            One of the first things that I had to learn was how to have faith. It’s really important to understand what faith is, since that is the first of the “first principles and ordinances of the Gospel,” according to our Articles of Faith. But often when I heard it used in the church, or from other people about other churches, it seemed to have several meanings that were possible. For instance, they could have been using it to say they believed, or absolutely knew, or sometimes it even seemed that they meant they just kind of half-heartedly believed it. I don’t know if you have heard that, but especially when I was younger, I’ve heard people say kind of off-hand “Oh yeah, I have faith that the church is true, it’s all good.” That sort of faith didn’t seem substantial to me. I had to find out, mostly for myself, what faith really is.

            In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1, the apostle Paul defines faith as “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”.

In Alma 32:21, the prophet Alma adds to that definition, clarifying that “Faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore, if ye have faith, ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true”. What really struck me about these definitions is that BOTH authors say it is hope. It took me a little while to understand the significance of this. Upon pondering the scriptures, I realized that to have faith required having hope. That’s basically what faith is.

            I learned a bit more about faith up at BYU in a Mission Prep class. The teacher told us a little story about a man who hiked to the top of a sizable mountain. While walking around admiring the view, he slipped on a rock and started to fall off a cliff. Luckily, he caught onto a tree root that was sticking out of the side of the cliff. He tried to find a way back up, as the edge of the cliff wasn’t too far away. However, the rock was too smooth to find a hand or foothold. So the man starts praying his heart out, “Heavenly Father, please oh please oh PLEASE help me get out of this mess!”, and keeps going on like that for a few minutes. After a little while, he hears a small voice say to him clearly, “Do you believe that I created this mountain?” The man replied enthusiastically “Yeah, yeah I do!”

            “Do you believe I created the elements that made you?”

            “Yes, of course!”

            “Do you believe I created the tree from whose root you now hang?”

            “Yes I do!”

            “Do you believe I could create a gust of wind powerful enough to blow you back up to where you fell from?”

            …. “Yeah, yeah”

            “Then let go.”

            That’s where I believe faith differs from hope. To truly be faith, it must have action, even though it may be impossible to see what the outcome will be. This is explained perfectly by the Savior in John 7:17, which says “If any man will DO His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.” I take this scripture to mean that once we actually try doing the Father’s will, applying that FAITH, then we can know that it’s true.

            Another key to faith that I have found is trust in the Savior. In the Bible Dictionary, it says that “To have faith is to have confidence in something or someone.” We act without a perfect knowledge, of course, but what I have found that helps me to act on faith is trusting that the Lord will work everything out.

            So let’s look back on what I’ve learned about faith: first you hope, you act on it (with full confidence in Christ), and then you know for a fact whether it’s right. I can tell you with a full knowledge that this pattern works. When I was in eighth grade, my cousin died. We had been best friends since before preschool, but I saw him rather sparingly after we moved from Glendora. Still, the news rocked me. That was when I really started to hope that there was a spirit world. I needed that assurance, so I hoped beyond hope that it was true. I began acting and thinking in a way that showed to myself that my choices in this life actually matter. And above all, I trusted in the Lord, and believed that He would somehow assure me that what I had been taught all my life was true. And I can honestly say, He has. I still haven’t seen the afterlife, or someone dead speak to me, but fully believe in the fact that there is a place we go after we die. My faith has been strengthened so much in that area, it’s pretty much knowledge.

            So that’s what I’ve learned so far about faith. But that is far from the only aspect of the Gospel that has helped me prepare for a mission. One of the most influential things in the Gospel in my life has been prayer. This is perhaps the greatest blessing I have found in this life, the ability to communicate with my Father in Heaven. The Prophet Thomas S. Monson put it in words much better than I ever could when he said, “Not a day has gone by that I have not communicated with my Father in Heaven through prayer. It is a relationship I cherish – one I would literally be lost without.”

            A necessity to meaningful prayer that I have found is to recognize who I am talking to, and to do just that: talk. Have a conversation with your Father. Alma, again, explains this, this time in Alma 37:36, while talking to his son Helaman: “Yea, and cry unto God for all thy support; yea, let all thy doings be unto the Lord, and whithersoever thou goest let it be in the Lord; yea, let all thy thoughts be directed unto the Lord; yea, let the affections of thy heart be placed upon the Lord forever.” According to Alma, we should let God know everything that’s going on in our lives, and allow Him to be with us as we progress. He knows you and loves you, and would love to talk to you while you’re away from Him on this earth. It’s kind of the same thing as calling parents when you have moved away.

Another important part of prayer is to recognize when answers come to you, and to recognize that they come from the Lord. Whether it be a thought that comes to your mind (even DURING the prayer!), an opportunity that arises to serve someone else or improve your own life, or something that someone else does for you, if you recognize it as an answer from Heavenly Father, the prayer is that much more meaningful. I have had too many experiences to count where praying has helped me significantly.

The first big experience I had with prayer, as far as I can remember, was at EFY at Redlands just before my senior year of high school. On Wednesday night, affectionately referred to as “Pizza Night,” all the boys in my group were in one of our rooms, and were just talking (after the pizza was gone, of course). After the obligatory talk of cute girls in our group, and showing funny videos on YouTube, we started talking about the Gospel (a completely normal topic among 17 year old guys). We started discussing deeper and deeper topics, and the subject matter just got more and more interesting. At one point, one of the guys, whose name was Sam, told us that he was having a hard time deciding if the Gospel was true or not, and then proceeded to tell us the questions that were on his mind. And let me tell you, they were difficult questions, especially for 17-year-old philosophers like ourselves. We ended up talking and thinking for hours, trying to make sense of some of Sam’s questions, and several others raised by other guys in the group.

            Finally, a guy named Dallin came up with the idea that “We should probably pray.” Immediately, everyone in the room felt in their hearts that that was the right thing to do. So we knelt down in a circle, and Dallin offered the prayer. I don’t remember the words said, but as he uttered them, I FELT something. There’s no perfect way to describe it, it was almost like my heart was swelling. Even these years later I can remember distinctly that feeling. Anyway, he closed the prayer, and we each looked around the room. Everyone in the room had felt SOMETHING, to varying degrees, but nobody said a word for a while. Finally someone managed to say “Wow,” and we just felt so close together. After a minute or two of talking a little bit more, we ended up going to bed.

            That in and of itself was amazing, but like I explained before, it’s the ANSWER to the prayer that makes it so much more meaningful. That came the next day. We had a lesson from the session director in the morning, and it was truly marvelous. EVERY SINGLE question we had discussed the night before was covered. If not by the teacher in his lesson, then by the people in the crowd asking the same questions and getting them answered. For a few points, he could only say “I don’t know,” but for most he had a very helpful answer.

            For the entire lesson, our group was just looking back and forth at each other going “Is this for real?” It was so incredible that an answer was able to come so quickly, and so clearly. We decided that afterwards we would tell the session director what exactly he had done for us. So as a group, when all the other kids had gone on to the next lesson, we went up to him and related our experience.

            He could only look at us with amazement, and shock. He told us that he actually hadn’t originally planned on giving that lesson. In fact, he had prepared this one THE NIGHT BEFORE.

            It couldn’t be said any plainer than that. Heavenly Father does answer prayers. That knowledge is permanently seared into my memory.

            I can tell you with absolute certainty, brothers and sisters, that prayer is real, and that we can communicate to our Father in Heaven by kneeling down and speaking with real intent. I know that faith eventually can develop into knowledge, if we actually apply the word FAITH. I know that through these experiences and many others, my Lord has prepared me for a mission to the people of Italy, and I trust that He will help me through all the difficult portions of the next two years.

            I also know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, that he translated the Book of Mormon from the Gold Plates, and that it truly is a record of the people who occupied this land before us. I know that Thomas S. Monson is the current prophet. I know that the Holy Ghost can touch our hearts, and let us know of the truthfulness of the Gospel. I also know that Jesus Christ is the Only Begotten of Heavenly Father, and that He atoned for our sins, and died for us, and through Him we can get back to our Heavenly Father.

            I say these things in the name of our Savior, Jesus the Christ, Amen.