This talk was given to the O’Fallon Ward in Missouri on Sunday, July 22, 2018 as a departing message before Mandy left to report to the Provo MTC that following Wednesday.
Well, as mentioned this is my farewell talk. So, for those of you that don’t know what that means exactly, it’s pretty much just like a departing goodbye before I leave on my mission. I was called to serve in the Canada Calgary mission, which I’m super stoked for. And I’ll be leaving this Wednesday–well, I report to the Missionary Training Center (MTC) this Wednesday.
As a kid I always wanted to serve a mission since the second I knew they existed. I remember in primary they would sing the song of how “I hope they call me on a mission” and I pictured myself going out to the world, marching in the streets, ready to preach the gospel.
And I was so excited for it.
It’s similar to a story given in general conference–I refer to it as the band aid story. This kid scraped himself up. The mother patched him up with a band aid and said it would be okay. He would heal. Excited about this, he took the band aids and immediately started giving them to all of his friends, wanting them to experience the same joy he had.
That is how I feel about the mission.
I love the gospel. It brings so much joy to my life, so I just want to go out and give it to as many people as I can.
Growing up, I felt like I was the only girl who wanted to serve a mission. Every once and a while people would ask who planned to serve one, and their might be one other girl who would raise their hand, but it was usually just me.
Now, recently, almost all my girl LDS friends chose to serve and received callings, many already out in the field.
I have this one friend serving in Denmark. We have emailed and in December, during my freshman year of college, I was having a really hard time.
A lot of complications in my life had come up and so I turned to this friend, asking him, when do you separate the gospel and the church, or do you ever separate them? I know the gospel’s perfect because Christ directly gave it, but I also know the church is not perfect.
We’re human and we make mistakes, so do you ever separate them? How do you handle that?
He gave me probably the most God-inspired, best advice I have ever received my whole life.
He came to me in the email and told me it’s interesting because he had thought about similar things as of late. But he came to discover this thing: the Book of Mormon, the keystone of our religion, is an imperfect book. The prophets writing them even talk about it. They say how imperfect they are in their writing and how weak they are with their words.
He tells me a lot of the people God calls not only tend to be imperfect and weak, but they are not even generally special. The Lord does this though, because he takes these people, these weak, generally not even special people to show His strength.
That He can make weak things become strong. And through that we can know the truth, that He is guiding us.
Ether 12:27 says, “And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.”
I think a lot of us may have experienced this humbling time, but it was especially humbling for me.
At about five or six, I would ride my bike without training wheels for the first time. I felt thrilled.
My friends talked about when they first rode their bike without training wheels, how their parents let go and they fell. I bounced with joy because I would not fall.
I was determined.
I would ride it the first time, I would not fall, and I would be some miracle child that could naturally ride a bike.
My parents and I went to the backyard. We had a piece of square pavement to ride on. My dad held me on the bike, balanced and steadied it for me.
I started pedaling and he held the back, guiding me, keeping me balanced and steady.
So, I kept pedaling. He let go and I kept pedaling and I had done it.
I had not fallen, I did it on my own.
I felt excited and then bam.
I felt the sidewalk against my body and pain. Even more so, I felt upset because I was doing it perfectly fine. But, for a split second, I realized that my dad was not there holding on and I thought, Wait a second. I can’t do this on my own. There’s no way.
And I fell, and I knew better. I knew I could do it.
Immediately I saddled back up. My dad helped me.
He rebalanced me, helped me steady, guided me a little more as I pedaled away from his hand, and I rode my bike without falling down.
In life, it is the same.
We have our bikes that we get on to help us go down the pathway.
God helps balance us.
He steadies us as we begin out.
He helps guide us.
But there will come a time when we do not always feel Him right there, keeping us balanced, or steadied, or guided. Because He has given us the way to go, He may step aside and watch as we make our own decisions.
And when we realize He’s not exactly right there, we may fall.
In fact, I will guarantee we will fall at least once. If you haven’t already.
But as we hit the ground–in pain, upset, or something else–we can call out, and He will come back. He will rebalance us, help steady us, and guide us as we begin to pedal again.
This bike that helps us go throughout life is faith.
We can choose to walk without this bike. We can try to go throughout life without faith, but the journey will take much longer, and it will be much harder. When we use our faith, we can more readily go on the strait and narrow path God has provided.
That path though, it may have hills.
We may have to go up and down. And that’s why, like most, our bike has gears.
To help us get into the right gear and prepare ourselves, we have the prophet. If we listen to the prophet and his guidance, we will always be in the perfect gear for life. Whether we are going up the hill or down the hill or just on a flat landscape.
I know that to be true.
Speaking of my little-kid-self, I remember a lot of times I would walk home and wonder if my future-self would someday appear to me. If society would invent time machines and future me would come check up on little Mandy.
I wondered what that would be like.
Well, I’ve grown up now and I don’t think my future-self will come to me.
Sometimes, instead, I wonder what would it be like if I could talk to my past-self? If I could talk to myself before I came to this earth. What affect would that have on me?
What affect could that have on us?
I think for most of us, or at least for me, my past-self would come up to me and say, “Just keep going. You’re here for a reason.”
We came here for a reason.
We all chose to do something hard. We all expected it, before we came here, to be difficult. But we did it because we knew it was worth it.
A lot of times, even if with faith, we are going to question things.
We may wonder, “Why am I even going to church? Why do I have church?”
I could just stay home and read my scriptures. Sometimes I feel that will get me more than coming to church. So, why do I go? Why do we watch general conference? Why bother if this church isn’t perfect–if we’re all imperfect–when I could just pray to the perfect one.
Well, I will say this.
We do not have the church because it is a perfect church. We do not have it because it has perfect teachers, or perfect apostles, or even perfect prophets. We have it because it has two perfect leaders: God and our Savior Jesus Christ. And with the Holy Ghost, giving His guidance, this may not be the perfect church. But, it is the true church.
It’s the best way to get to where we want to go.
If we can come together. If we can do our best to step aside from ourselves. To take in what others have to say, to what the prophet has to give to us. Not just believing without questioning, praying to believe. If we can do this, we can make it to where we want to go.
We can do our pre-mortal selves, our before-this-earth-selves justice and we can fulfill the plan that we took on in the first place.
I know this to be true. And I know that God, because He loves us, will always make sure there is a way for us to get there.
I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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