God’s Love

At the end of MLC, President Gill shared his witness of our Heavenly Parents. He explained that our Heavenly Father sits upon a real, tangible throne and converses and counsels with our Heavenly Mother. Their love for each and every one of us is so vast, deep, and immeasurable that they had to put a veil of darkness over the earth. Otherwise, we couldn’t be tested, we would always choose to follow them. He also shared his witness that Joseph Smith is a real man, who continues the work of God through the Heavenly Priesthood.

Divine Orchestration

After MLC, we drove back from Richmond and dropped everything off at the apartment. As we were about to begin preparing dinner we realized that we were scheduled to be on temple watch at this time. So we quickly hurried over to the temple. Which isn’t exactly ideal, as we were trying to set the example considering that we organized the temple watch system on being timely to your watches. Upon giving the temple workers our shift card and proceeding out of the temple, I was talking to Elder Ellis, and suddenly I turned and behind me was Brother Walburger. He’s an incredible member from Nanaimo, and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to learn from him. He brought up that he’s been meaning to attend the temple every weekend. But since setting this new goal, each weekend just keeps getting busier and busier, things just keep getting in the way of getting to the temple. This was his very first weekend he was able to make it. And just before he entered the House of the Lord, we happened to meet. It was a really neat experience seeing him again. I could see God’s hand orchestrating this interaction.

Dispelling Myth

This week we’ve seen a major influx of referrals. Being in a YSA, referrals are never sent directly to us, however a recent ads have been targeted towards young people looking for a young adult Christian group near them. When home ward missionaries have been receiving these referrals, they reassign them back to us. We’ve received around 11 referrals this week alone in the past couple of days. Responses have been varied. Due to the nature of the ads, it’s not clear which church is producing them. It was discussed at MLC, but as soon as we call, they’ve realized after signing up that they aren’t interested in the “Mormon” church. I completely agree with what Sister Gill said at MLC, we have the responsibility to dispel myth. One of the friends we called told us, “sorry guys, I’m not interested in your church.” We then asked, “why not?” To which he replied, “I’m born again, and am not interested in the Book of Mormon.” We asked him what his beliefs are being born again. He started to share them with us, and we affirmed to him that we believe that too. He was quite surprised, we talked a bit more about his beliefs, and he began to ask us about ours. Over the course of only a 5 minute call, it completely shifted, he’s gone from being completely closed off to asking us many questions trying to better understand the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. He definitely was very intrigued by the end and I believe he was touched by the Spirit. We invited him to give the Book of Mormon a chance, read some of it, test the waters, and see if it’s something that he feels has come from God. He accepted the invitation and we sent him the link to read the introduction. I’m grateful that we had the opportunity to dispel myth and help him feel of the Spirit.

The Veil of Mental Health

We’ve been having recurring lessons with a returning member, and he’s awesome. He’s a really good guy, served a mission, served faithfully in major callings in the branch, and knows everything he needs to do, but he has some anger kindled towards God. Without diving too much into it, he has some mental health challenges. And he took the statement, “give everything to God” very literally. He truly tried to give everything, but he found his mental health and his overall wellbeing declining in the process. He knew that God was always there, but he certainly didn’t feel it. So he stopped. He stopped going to church, stopped reading the scriptures, stopped his daily prayers. Despite all of this, he knows without a doubt that all of it is true; but it wasn’t helping with his mental health. After taking time to recover, he’s at a better place than where he was. At this point he knew that it was time to come back towards God. He had a dream of two missionaries, and knew that meeting with them was the first step. That was when he first texted us out of the blue asking if we could share a message with him. Upon our first meeting, he knew of a certainty that we were the missionaries in his dream.

Over the course of the next few visits we’ve been slowly beginning to come to grips with his perspective more and more. It seems that his mental health has distorted his views on doctrine. He feels that God’s grace is conditional, that he has to do everything and keep countless numbers of commandments in order to qualify for it. As he reads the scriptures and hears general conference talks, he gets overwhelmed by the amount of commandments that he needs to observe and apply. It reminds me a lot of Brad Wilcox’s BYU speech titled “His Grace Is Sufficient.” In this talk he challenges this understanding of grace and offers a new more complete perspective.

This reminds me of a survey conducted at BYU about grace. “The religious scholars—who conducted the study at BYU—found that religious young adults experience better or poorer mental health as it connects to their belief in grace or in legalism. They surveyed 566 young adults at BYU (most of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ) and found that when these young adults believe more in grace and less in legalism, they experience less anxiety, depression, shame, religious guilt, and perfectionism. They also found the opposite: When young adults have a more legalistic view of God, they experience poorer mental health “because it interrupts [their] ability to experience grace.” It may be detrimental to young adults’ mental health if their belief in grace is more founded upon individual good works (or legalism) than on grace they receive from God.”

He recognizes that he feels the Spirit, and feels at peace, but he doesn’t feel God’s love. He even shared that maybe he’s being prideful and isn’t recognizing it because he isn’t receiving it the way he wants. At the end of our visit I shared with him President Gill’s witness of God’s love from the MLC meeting. He paused, and responded that he felt the Spirit in those words. He then said, it may not be what I want, but I know it’s true.