Being Needed

I have a fear. I’m sore afraid of becoming old and non-useful. Being needed is a basic human need, and I can see where the time might come when I’m either no longer useful or not able to contribute.
In thinking about that, I remembered our mission. I have never in my life been more needed, depended upon, or used than during our mission.

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The Power of Love

Several months after I regained my strength, we were caught in another violent storm, only this time at sea. The waves became so big they flipped our small boat over, throwing the three of us into the raging, churning ocean. When I found myself in the middle of a tumultuous sea, I was surprised, scared, and a little upset. “Why has this happened?” I thought. “I’m a missionary. Where is my protection? Missionaries aren’t supposed to swim.”

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Great Peace While Starving to Death

As a young missionary I was assigned to a small island of about 700 inhabitants in a remote area of the South Pacific. To me the heat was oppressive, the mosquitoes were terrible, the mud was everywhere, the language was impossible, and the food was—well, “different.”

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Keep Your Son on His Mission

Some years ago, long after he had returned from his mission, Bishop J. Richard Yates, of the Durham Third Ward in the Durham North Carolina Stake, was out on the family farm in Idaho, helping his father milk the cows and do some of the evening chores.

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Kayaking With Only One Arm

I have a friend who served as a priests quorum adviser. The boys and the adviser planned a kayak activity at Flaming Gorge, Utah. After some initial planning, one of the quorum members quietly approached the adviser and said: “We better not plan a kayak trip. Mike won’t be able to go because he can’t paddle.”

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Mission Dissolved Elder’s Pride

Almost a decade ago, I read a letter from a returned missionary…He had written to thank those who direct missionary work “for daring to send me where the Lord required rather than where I had deemed appropriate.” He had come, he said, “from a background of proud, competitive intellectualism.” Before his mission he was a student at a prestigious university in the eastern United States. Quote:

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Love Beats Knowledge and Pride

One reason I desired to serve a mission was that I had seen the impact that serving a mission had on my father and mother. Many times in our family home evenings Dad would mention his mission.

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Catholic Commits to Serve Mission

A year ago at Flagstaff, Arizona, a special banquet for Eagle Scouts was held. There were 1,150 Eagle Scouts. John Warnick, the director of Mormon Relationships, invited all those who would commit to go on a mission to stand. All 1,150 stood.

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Orphans Thrived on Love

Another example of the power of selfless love is the experience of my friends Thales and Charone Smith, recently returned from a humanitarian mission in Albania. He a pediatrician and she a nurse, they were the Church’s first missionaries there.

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Gift of Tongues

With Elder Walter F. Gonzalez, a new member of the Seventy from Uruguay, I attended a conference in Moroni, Utah, a town with a Book of Mormon name.

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Wilford Prays to Serve

“…While holding the office of teacher I went to Missouri in Zion’s Camp. After arriving in Missouri, having gone through many trials and tribulations, and suffering from cholera, which caused us to lay in the grave fifteen of our brethren, we stayed at Brother Lyman Wight’s.

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Unaware

(Materials needed: 3 pictures and a sling).
(Display Journey to Bethlehem by Joseph Brickey).
I would like you to study this picture.

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Arriving Home from Vanuatu

Friday 15 May 2015 was a long day. We began it by leaping out of bed before 6:00 a.m. in Luganville, Vanuatu in a scramble to get to the airport by 7:30.

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Weaning, Part Two

Jacob says, “But wo unto him that…wasteth the days of his probation…” (2 Nephi 9:27).
The world is filled with time wasters.

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Peculiarities

In the wee hours of the night I found my mind playing with a concatenation of weird and outlandish things that deserve explanations.
For instance, how weird and outlandish is it that I would sit down in general conference beside a man who had a picture of my son on the electronic device in his pocket for the reason that his eldest grandson and my youngest son were in the same MTC district in far-off Chile?

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Weaning, Part One

Every winter I end up caring for four or five cats. They’re usually young, semi-wild cats that need help getting through the tough season. When spring arrives and the snow melts I taper off the feeding program by putting food out only every other day. That causes them to get a little desperate and start to cast about for another food source. They quickly learn about mice and how to hunt. Keeping the mice and gophers in check is the reason for their presence on our place. As soon as I see that they’re not desperate for food anymore I quit feeding them altogether. They transition from being very dependent on me to becoming much happier when they’re self-sufficient and off their diet of dry cat food.

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