Happy Summer! (I'm going to say that as long as I still can. ;)
Today in Sacrament Meeting, we got to hear from a sweet new family, the Coverstones. They gave excellent talks. As I listened to Melissa, I felt a strong impression that I needed to see if I could get a copy of her talk to send out to the sisters. I know many of you heard it, but I felt the message was so good for us, so I've attached her talk here and I am including that as my message this week.
Reach out and fellowship those around you with love and kindness this week.
Fellowshipping/Friendshipping August 13, 2017 Lorin
Farr 4th Ward
Introduction
Good morning, brothers and sisters. My name is Melissa
Coverstone, and my family has been in the ward for roughly a month. Zach and I
have 3 children: Jeffrey is 4, Clive is 3, and Cecily is 3 months old. Zach and
I met at BYU where we both studied mathematics education. Zach will be teaching
high school math at DaVinci Academy. I taught high school math for a year and a
half, and now I am staying home with the kids.
“Gander, [is] a town of about 10,000 people (and 550 hotel
rooms) in Newfoundland, Canada.... On 11 September 2001, a total of 240 flights
were rerouted to Canada when American airspace was closed after the terrorist
attacks on New York and Washington, and 39 of those flights ended up in
Gander.” That day, 6,579 stranded passengers increased Gander's population by
two-thirds.
So what did this small town do in this crisis? They opened
their arms and doors and cared from the stranded passengers.
“Responding to radio
announcements, the residents and businesses of Gander and other towns supplied
toothbrushes, deodorant, soap, blankets and even spare underwear, along with
offers of hot showers and guest rooms. Newtel Communications, the telephone
company, set up phone banks for passengers to call home. Local television cable
companies wired schools and church halls, where passengers watched events
unfolding in New York and realized how lucky they were.”
One of those stranded passengers later wrote, “During that time when all of us were frantic...our hosts
were endlessly cheerful, giving and kind. They dropped everything to cook for
us and make us feel less isolated and abandoned during those five days of
uncertainty.”
Another passenger wrote, “Everyone was extraordinarily
thoughtful of each other. One woman must have put her life on hold and was
constantly checking on us. She even came to the airport when we finally left to
make sure we all were fine. I never saw her without a smile. The lady who ran
the cafeteria along with many neighbors made hot meals and brought in
casseroles each day. Students helped us to use e-mail, and we were able to use
the phone to call our family. No organization with financial backing was behind
this – this was a call to neighbors and friends to come and help those of us in
need.”
About the flight back from Gander to the United States, one
flight attendant wrote, “When passengers came on board, it was like they had
been on a cruise. Everyone knew each other by name....Our flight back to
Atlanta looked like a chartered party flight.... It was mind-boggling.
Passengers had totally bonded and were calling each other by their first names,
exchanging phone numbers, addresses, and email addresses.”[ii]
The people of Gander made strangers feel welcome in a time of
great need. As members of the church, we can do likewise. In the October 2013
General Conference, Bishop Gérald Caussé of the Presiding Bishopric stated, “A
promise has been made to everyone who becomes a member of the Church: 'Now
therefore ye are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellowcitizens with the
saints, and of the household of God.'”[iii]
Meeting/Ministering/Welcoming Each Other
An essential part of being “no more strangers” is that we
meet, welcome, and minister to each other.
Getting to know each other is one of the major purposes of meeting each
week and of church activities. Why have a ward swim party like we did recently,
or a ward talent show, if not to see each other in a different setting than the
3-hour-block, to talk with each other, and have a good time together? How can
we minister to each other if we don't trust each other, and how can we trust
each other if we don't get to know each other?
Another reason for our church meetings is so that we can
minister to each other. Moroni explains in Moroni 6: “An after they [new
converts] had been received unto baptism, and were wrought upon and cleansed by
the power of the Holy Ghost, they were numbered among the people of the church
of Christ; and their names were taken, that they might be remembered and
nourished by the good word of God...
“And the church did meet together oft, to fast and to pray,
and to speak one with another concerning the welfare of their souls.”[iv]
So one of the reasons we come to church each week is to talk to each other
about how we're doing. That doesn't mean that this 3-hour block is supposed to
be 3 hours of just socializing, but when we sit down and are waiting for Sunday
School or Relief Society or Priesthood to start, we can ask those sitting
around us how they're doing, and we can really listen to their answers. We can
sit next to those we don't normally sit with. We can say hello to those we see
in the hallway. Bishop Caussé said, “Whoever enters our meeting-houses should
feel at home. The responsibility to welcome everyone has growing importance....
“Fellowshipping is an important priesthood responsibility.
Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood quorums are to act in concert with the
sisters under the direction of the bishop to ensure that each person is
welcomed with love and kindness. Home teachers and visiting teachers will be
watchful to ensure that no one is forgotten or ignored.”[v]
Home and visiting teaching serve as excellent opportunities
to get to know each other and minister to each other. In last October's
conference, Elder Holland spoke to the brethren in Priesthood session about
home teaching. I believe it applies to visiting teaching as well. He said, “The
appeal I am making tonight is for you to lift your vision of home teaching.
Please, in newer, better ways see yourselves as emissaries of the Lord to His
children. That means leaving behind the tradition of a frantic, law of
Moses-like, end-of-the-month calendar in which you rush to give a scripted
message from the Church magazines that the family has already read. We would
hope, rather, that you will establish an era of genuine, gospel-oriented
concern for the members, watching over and caring for each other, addressing
spiritual and temporal needs in any way that helps....What matters is that you
love your people and are fulfilling the commandment 'to watch over the church
always.'”[vi]
Not Being Judgmental
In order to meet, welcome, and minister to each other, we
need to not be judgmental of each other, both inside and outside the church.
Bishop Causse explained, (quote)
A passage from the novel Les
misérables illustrates how priesthood holders can treat those individuals
viewed as strangers. Jean Valjean had just been released as a prisoner.
Exhausted by a long voyage and dying of hunger and thirst, he arrives in a
small town seeking a place to find food and shelter for the night. When the
news of his arrival spreads, one by one all the inhabitants close their doors
to him. Not the hotel, not the inn, not even the prison would invite him in. He
is rejected, driven away, banished. Finally, with no strength left, he
collapses at the front door of the town's bishop.
The good clergyman is entirely aware
of Valjean's background, but he invites the vagabond into his home with these
compassionate words:
“This is not by house; it is the
house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he
has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty;
you are welcome. ...What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you
told me [your name], you had one which I knew.”
“[Valjean] opened his eyes in
astonishment.
“'Really? You knew what I was
called?'
“'Yes,' replied the Bishop, 'you are
called my brother.'”
In this Church our wards and our
quorums do not belong to us. They belong to Jesus Christ. Whoever enters our
meetinghouses should feel at home.[vii]
(end quote)
We all have different struggles, seen and unseen, and should
not criticize or think less of someone because they are different from us. The
Savior is our perfect example. “Those who were excluded from society, those who
were rejected and considered to be impure by the self-righteous, were given His
compassion and respect. They received an equal part of his teachings and
ministry.
“...The Savior went against the established the customs of
His time to address the woman of Samaria, asking her for some water. He sat
down to eat with publicans and tax collectors. He didn't hesitate to approach
the leper, to touch him and heal him.”[viii]
Our Savior treated them not as strangers but as fellow citizens with the
saints.
My mother came from a part-member family. Most of the
spiritual support and teaching that my mother received was from church members
who took her under their wings. One time, my mother showed up to a youth
Halloween activity wearing an immodest flapper costume that in her words “must
have horrified” her young women leaders. However, instead of being judgmental,
her leaders continued to love and teach her. How grateful I am for the
Christ-like leaders who ministered to my mother and for the impact they had on
her testimony in a critical time of her life.
Not only should we be non-judgmental of those within our
church meetings, but we should be friendly and welcoming in our communities
also. I recently read a letter from a non-member mother titled, “A Letter to
Mormons.” In this letter, the mother explains that when the missionaries stop
at their house, they ask if there is anything they can do for this non-member
family. While the mother always pleasantly declines any help, she realized she
does have a request. She writes, (quote)
“The next time a Mormon missionary asks if there’s anything
they can do for me, I’m going to humbly and vulnerably reply as follows:
• Please teach your children to be
inclusive of my non-mormon children and please guide them to carry that
inclusion past grade school, into middle school, and throughout high school.
• Please encourage your children to sit
with mine in the lunchroom.
• Please permit your kids to invite my
kids to their slumber parties, birthday parties, and weekend get togethers even
AFTER my child has made it clear that he or she is not interested in attending
fireside, seminary, or church with your family.
• Please allow your teen to go with
mine to school dances, athletic events, and group dinners trusting that just
like you, my husband and I have done the best we know how to raise a teenager
who knows right from wrong.
• Please welcome my children into your
homes and permit your children to visit ours....
“As these hopes for my children spill out, I realize that
these are the same yearnings I had when I was too young to express them and
they remain yearnings for me now. I would like to know my Mormon neighbors. I
would like for us to share our celebrations and mourn our losses together. I
would like to enter into deep relationships with you that allow us to celebrate
our differences and lift each other up versus silently judging one another from
across the street or the backyard fence. I would like us to hug and share
dinners, and text jokes, and go to movies, and have pool parties, and discuss
politics, and cry and laugh, and live life together....
“For decades now I have felt an invisible yet palpable
partition between my family and our mormon neighbors…a silent criterion that
has said, “we can’t be that close…we can’t walk this life together too often,
we can’t be intimate friends unless we share the same faith.” I want to tear
down this barricade and abolish this silent destroyer of fellowship. I fear we
are forfeiting valuable friendships and life-changing communion with one
another as we allow religion to segregate our lives.”[ix]
(close quote)
What I believe this mother is describing is her desire to be
no more a stranger or foreigner in her own neighborhood, but a fellow citizen.
I have been privileged to know many good, Christ-like people
who are not members of the church. I grew up in San Jose, CA and was blessed to
be surrounded by adults in my ward who did a great job of reaching out in
friendship to families in our neighborhood, both member and non-member alike.
Let us make sure that our neighbors don't feel like strangers or foreigners
because they live near lots of Mormon families. Remember the great commandment
to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Savior said, “For if ye love them which
love you, what reward have ye? Do not even the publicans the same?
“And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than
others? Do not even the publicans so?
“Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in
heaven is perfect.”[x]
Part of being welcoming in our communities is seeing each other
as the Lord sees us, seeing each other as we may become instead of as we are
now. For those within our meetings and not, “we should develop the capacity to
see men not as they are but as they can become when they are members of the
Church, when they have a testimony of the gospel, and when their lives are in
harmony with its teachings.”[xi]
“In the words of
President Monson, “I pray that we will have the courage to extend the hand of
fellowship, the tenacity to try and try again, and the humility needed to seek
guidance from our Father as we fulfill our mandate to share the gospel.”[xii]
Brothers and Sisters, I feel like this talk has been
preaching to the choir. My family has felt welcomed in this ward, and we are
grateful for your friendship and are looking forward to meeting more of you. I
pray that we can, without being judgmental, meet, minister to, and welcome
those who cross our paths, both in our ward and in our community, and that we
can be no more strangers or foreigners, but fellow citizens. May we see each
other and those around us as they may become, in the name of our perfect
example, even Jesus Christ. Amen.
[i]“Take
a Gander” http://www.snopes.com/rumors/gander.asp
[ii]https://af-za.facebook.com/notes/janet-liebsch/a-911-story-about-delta-flight-15-and-gander-newfoundland/4052146054871/
[iii]Bishop
Gérald Caussé, “Ye Are No More Strangers” October 2013 General Conference
[v]Bishop
Gérald Caussé, “Ye Are No More Strangers” October 2013 General Conference
[vi]Elder
Jeffrey R. Holland, “Emissaries to the Church” October 2016 General Conference
[vii]Bishop
Gérald Caussé, “Ye Are No More Strangers” October 2013 General Conference
[viii]Bishop
Gérald Caussé, “Ye Are No More Strangers” October 2013 General Conference
[ix]“A
Letter to Mormons” https://laughslikethunder.blog/2017/08/09/a-letter-to-mormons/
[xi]President
Monson “See Others As They May Become”
[xii]President
Monson “See Others As They May Become”
