March 9, 2015

hey guys,

don’t really have much time, so I’ll share a quick experience.

every second week of the month we have the sacrament meeting devoted to missionary work, so they have a missionary from each companionship speak as well as the ward mission leader.

last month it was my turn, i prepared a talk and the president didn’t remember my name, so he called my companion to give it, but i gave it anyways. so this week as we were walking to the church, elder v asked me, "if he calls you up instead of me, what will you talk on?" "nothing, if he calls me up, it’s still your turn" "yeah, ok" turns out that he didn’t forget that it was his turn, but the hermanas were sick, so i was called as a filler and got to talk anyways. i didn’t have anything prepared, but thanks to my awesome improv skills, it actually went pretty well.

i started out by explaining how the truths that everybody needs were brought back to the earth through the restoration, that we have it but it is for everyone, blah blah blah typical missionary work talk. but then i used an example from a lesson that we had that week that i thought was interesting.

we were meeting with a woman, went a bit long, and at the end we left her with a book of mormon and challenged her to read and pray. "well, the thing is that i don’t have time, i have work and kids and..." it’s an excuse that we get a lot, but i thought about it and said "woah wait a minute, we just talked to you for an hour in the middle of the day, we know that you have time." she thought about it and responded "yeah, when i want to, i have time."

i think that applies to a lot of things in our lives and in the church. lots of us never share the gospel for example, only because we are never given the opportunity. i think if we were honest we would see that we have ample opportunity, we just don’t want to, for whatever reason. i can tell you from experience that i had this happen many times with my friends at home. to the point that i would say "well if this happens... then ill share the gospel with them" and then it happened, and i still didn’t share it.

the first step to increasing our missionary work (and doing many other things in life) is to increase our desire to do it. one of the big things i have learned on my mission is that motivation follows action, satan doesn’t have to dissuade us from doing good if he can simply persuade us to do the good tomorrow.

so that’s what i have to share this week, sure I’m missionary minded right now, but I’m sure all of you have things that you know you should get around to doing, so as nike once said (and that one prophet that i don’t remember which one.) (Spencer W. Kimbal) just do it.

love you lots, be good

elder gandola