WEEK 76: Sacrifice
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA
COMPANION: ELDER CORDON
ASSISTANTS
Sometimes we sacrifice who we are for what we are. Sometimes I think we have to. We'll circle back though. Can't forget the stories or there'll be complaints!
THIS week! Alright alright, I know I say this every week, but THIS week was something. So it was transfer week. Which means I was away from my companion (I'm just going to stop reporting that. We're apart a minimum of two days a week. This week we'll be apart for 96 hours straight.) but got to work with the departing missionaries. I picked my favorite, Elder Cutler, who was my zone leader and who I replaced in St. Augustine. We had a BLAST! We had FIVE lessons scheduled with investigators and members set up to come with us, and they all fell through so we knocked the socks off Jacksonville and finished his night teaching and testifying in doorways until after 9:00 PM. Champions.
We also brought in the new missionaries. All they talked about on the way home from the airport was what to do on PDay and what it was going to be like when they go home. Hehehee. Did I ever talk like that? They were so quiet. I got a little over-enthusiastic with them and their eyes got all wide. I was just happy to see them. We need more missionaries. We need ten times as many. Come. Come and be as happy as we are. Come and see where the Master dwelleth.
But of course, this week's highlight was JORGE'S BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jorge is phenomenal. He is from Peru and is the father of a recent convert. He has known the Church was true for a long time, he just needed a little push. A little push! Some people say I'm pushy. Maybe I am! I definitely am. Oh well. Today for lunch I had goat cheese and spinach on a biscuit with sweet potato fries and honey on the side.
Always a good time.
Jorge's service was phenomenal. He probably had 10 family members there. Peruvian families are the best. What a beautiful people and language and culture. And now he's a MORMON Peruvian! Woooooooo! His baptism was perfect. The water was freezing because apparently the hot water heater is tiny, and then yesterday he and Donna both got confirmed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, it was a pretty good weekend.
What else happened? We have a fantastic investigator named Ashley. We had a pretty great lesson with her on Saturday. Quick backstory on Ashley. She's in her late 20's, has a beautiful 2 year old girl, lives with a less-active member who is as awesome as she is, and has already read through second Nephi. On Saturday she invited us and FIVE other members there for a dinner/lesson. Best lesson ever. Plan of Salvation. Highlight for me was sharing the three parts of the Atonement. 1) Resurrection (last verse in Moroni 10) 2) Redemption from sin (Alma 36:18-21) 3) Redemption from weakness. (2 Nephi 4:17-19) I had never thought of those verses in that sequence before. Honestly, I didn't even know what the last verse in Moroni even said! But e spirit said to use them! So I did! And it was AWESOME! The spirit was stronger than... Something really strong!
I'm in a car wash listening to the mormon tabernacle choir really, really loud. It's epic. Give it a try.
Being a missionary is tough. It is. People go home. More than you'd think. People forget what we taught Ashley on Saturday; the purpose of life is not to be entertained or to feel pleasure or avoid pain. The purpose of life is to have JOY! Joy requires growth. Joy requires a furnace. Joy needs work. Real work. People look at things that bring them pleasure or entertainment as good, and things that make them work or cause pain as bad. That is wrong. Everything that happens that gives us an opportunity to really grow is good. And everything is an opportunity to grow. Everything is good.
That's a little bold... Let me tell you what I mean. When I think of tough things, I think of the Martin and Willie Handcart companies. When I think of my heritage and my religion, I think of those pioneers and their rescuers. When I consider the Kingdom, that is the image that leaps to mind.
Do you know the story? Mostly you do I bet. 1200 saints trapped on the Wyoming plains in the coldest, stormiest winter you can think of with handcarts. You ever see a handcart? These people were dying. Not one of two. Hundreds were dying in the most horrific ways. Men, women, and children (CHILDREN.) freezing and starving and collapsing from exhaustion. 17 Miracles and Ephraim's rescue are awesome movies on it.
But they died. Little girls and grown men and mothers and boys and the aged and the newlywed and the firm and infirm alike. Brigham Young received word of the tragedy, and the absolute extinction that threatened the group. President Young, the Lion of the Lord, stood in general conference and said this:
“I will tell you all,” said he, “that your faith, religion, and profession of religion, will never save one soul of you in the celestial kingdom of our God, unless you carry out just such principles as I am now teaching you. Go and bring in those people now on the plains, and attend strictly to those things which we call temporal, or temporal duties, otherwise your faith will be in vain; the preaching you have heard will be in vain to you, and you will sink to hell, unless you attend to the things we tell you” (Deseret News, Oct. 15, 1856, 252).
Those present at the conference that day, only recently having passed through the terrible hardship of crossing the plains themselves, heeded the call from a prophet. They knew what religion is. They knew what it meant to sacrifice. They dug the companies out of the snow, gave them the nourishment they needed to survive, and began to bring them off the plains to the Salt Lake Valley. But there was more to come.
“The handcarts moved on November 3 and reached the river, filled with floating ice. To cross would require more courage and fortitude, it seemed, than human nature could muster. Women shrank back and men wept. Some pushed through, but others were unequal to the ordeal.
“‘Three eighteen-year-old boys belonging to the relief party came to the rescue; and to the astonishment of all who saw, carried nearly every member of that ill-fated handcart company across the snow-bound stream. The strain was so terrible, the exposure so great, that in later years all the boys died from the effects of it. When President Brigham Young heard of this heroic act, he wept like a child, and later declared publicly, “That act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.”’” (LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, Handcarts to Zion, Glendale, Calif.: The Arthur H. Clark Co., 1960, pp. 132–33.)
Do you think anyone called those boys pushy?
There are 18 year old boys now, who are going to bring in their brothers and sisters off the plains. Spiritual starvation, and spiritual death, have claimed enough. There are men and women of the relief party, making the sacrifice to rescue. And there are those who are unwilling. There are those who define themselves as something incompatible with the work of salvation. For whatever reason, who they are just doesn't line up with the call of a prophet to work, to repent, to sacrifice, to love. Their lifestyle, their personality, their interests, their circumstances, their past, their plans. simply are not compatible with the message of the restoration. But WHAT they are is. What we are is children of God. We are debtors and saints. We are a human family. What we are is fulfilled and magnified in every way by the call of prophets ancient and modern. Who the rescuers were will not matter to those they saved. But to be a rescuer will follow you into eternity.
And so we act. And so we leave our identities and even our names behind and are known only as missionaries. And so we never once lose sight in our lives of our purpose, and of our brethren perishing in the cold. And no matter the outcome, we try our best, and we remain loyal to the prophet and the Church.
Decades after over a thousand saints were rescued from the plain that terrible winter, a congregation in Utah began criticizing the western exodus and the burden placed upon the handcart companies in particular.
“One old man in the corner sat silent and listened as long as he could stand it. Then he arose and said things that no person who heard will ever forget. His face was white with emotion, yet he spoke calmly, deliberately, but with great earnestness and sincerity.
“He said in substance, ‘I ask you to stop this criticism. You are discussing a matter you know nothing about. Cold historic facts mean nothing here for they give no proper interpretation of the questions involved. A mistake to send the handcart company out so late in the season? Yes. But I was in that company and my wife was in it and Sister Nellie Unthank whom you have cited was there too. We suffered beyond anything you can imagine and many died of exposure and starvation, but did you ever hear a survivor of that company utter a word of criticism? Not one of that company ever apostatized or left the Church because every one of us came through with the absolute knowledge that God lives for we became acquainted with him in our extremities.’”
I do not offer any commentary on the lives or experiences of others. I do not know what anyone else has been through. But I do know that the only thing "bad" to ever happen in my life was sin. I can say with absolute, certain clarity that every experience of my existence has furthered my growth and my joy and led me to glory in my God. And I say that the price of comfort, company, habit, lifestyle, personality, pleasure, or life itself would be cheap to purchase what that old man had over a century ago.
I love you. I love this gospel so much more. I have seen with my own eyes my precious brothers and sisters become acquainted with Him. And I have an absolute knowledge that God lives. It has cost a pittance. It has given me everything. Have a happy week. Have some joy.
~Elder Jorgensen
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