(These are the notes for the talk I gave in sacrament yesterday.)<\/p>\n
Amanda<\/i><\/p>\n
When I returned from my mission in Japan, I was fired up about sharing the gospel. I wanted to be an effective member missionary. Back then, us missionaries had these big blue sheets of paper that we would use to plan our weeks. One side had a weekly schedule — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… The other side had spaces for keeping track of the people you were teaching. On that side of the blue planner, you would keep a record of your progress in teaching each person — which lessons you had taught, whether they had attended church, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
I mention these blue planners, because, like I said, when I got home from my mission I wanted to continue sharing the gospel, and I decided it would be a good idea to keep using these blue planners. So each Sunday night I would get together with my brother and sister (who were 10 and 12 years old at the time) and we\u2019d hold these little mission meetings, where we\u2019d talk about people we\u2019d met that week and how we could share the gospel with them. Then we\u2019d keep track of their names on the blue planners, set goals, and head off to share the gospel.<\/p>\n
At this time I had a friend at UC Davis. We enjoyed attending cultural events at the university together. One weekend there was an African music-and-dance concert that sounded fun, so we went, enjoyed the music, and danced. While I was there, I met a girl named Amanda (remember, I said this story would be about her). She and I talked, and discovered that we had several common interests, including religion.<\/p>\n
The next Sunday night, when I had my little weekly mission meeting with my brother and sister, I added Amanda\u2019s name to my list, and I set a goal to invite her to church. Over the next few weeks, I\u2019d call up Amanda and we\u2019d go places together. Always in the front of my mind was the goal I\u2019d set to get her to come to church, so every time we met I\u2019d make sure to work that into the conversation. It was awkward, and after several invitations, she finally said something along the lines of, \u201cLook Dane, I\u2019m just not interested.\u201d So, at my next weekly mission meeting, I crossed her name off the list and moved on. That\u2019s the story of Amanda.<\/p>\n
Jeremy<\/i><\/p>\n
Now let me contrast that story with another story. This one\u2019s a happier story. It\u2019s about a guy named Jeremy. Jeremy and I have been best friends for nearly twenty years ago. We met just down the street from my house, back in seventh grade, when I was heading out to go hiking in the hills around Cameron Park. The two of us spent many hours together hiking in the hills, building Legos, and playing Street Fighter and Final Fantasy on the Nintendo.<\/p>\n
At this point in my life, I wasn\u2019t especially conscious of missionary work. I invited Jeremy to church and to youth activities, not out of a sense of obligation, but just because it seemed like a fun thing to do. He would occasionally ask me questions about the gospel, and I would give him the answers that I had. I hadn\u2019t studied the missionary discussions, and I couldn\u2019t present my answers in any sort of sophisticated, well-ordered format. I just answered sincerely, explaining the doctrines that I loved in the way that I understood them.<\/p>\n
Jeremy\u2019s family moved to Santa Cruz, but we kept in touch and visited often throughout high school. Then, in our senior year of high school, Jeremy told me that he had decided that he wanted to be baptized. I was surprised. He told me that he had been impressed by the examples set by the church members he knew, and that he appreciated the love and friendship he felt from them. Shortly after that, I got to drive down to Santa Cruz and baptize him. Now that we both live here in the Roseville area again, we occasionally even get to attend the temple together. That\u2019s the story of Jeremy, and it\u2019s a story that still continues.<\/p>\n
Why were my experiences with Amanda and Jeremy so different? Was the problem with Amanda that I invited her to church? No, of course not. The problem is that I wasn\u2019t treating her like a human being. I was treating her like an obstacle, a rock that had to be moved. I had determined that she would come to church and I was sure that I could get her there. In other words, I was sharing the gospel selfishly, not to address any of her needs, not to serve her, but rather to make myself feel better about myself.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m sure that many of you are familiar with the phrase \u201cbait and switch\u201d. In a \u201cbait and switch\u201d, someone offers you something you want — the bait — but then turns around and gives you something you don\u2019t want — the switch. In Amanda\u2019s case, I offered her what looked like friendship, but it turned out to be merely manipulation to get her to come to church. It was inappropriate, ineffective, and I\u2019m sure it left her with a bad taste in her mouth. On the other hand, the friendship I shared with Jeremy was sincere, and his impressions of the church grew naturally out of that. No bait, no switch, just friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(These are the notes for the talk I gave in sacrament yesterday.) Amanda When I returned from my mission in Japan, I was fired up about sharing the gospel. I wanted to be an effective member missionary. Back then, us missionaries had these big blue sheets of paper that we would use to plan our weeks. One side had a weekly schedule — Sunday, Monday, Tuesday… The other side had spaces for keeping track of the people you were teaching. On that side of the blue planner, you would keep a record of your progress in teaching each person — which lessons you had taught, whether they had attended church, that sort of thing. I mention these blue planners, because, like I said, when I got home from my mission I wanted to continue sharing the gospel, and I decided it would be a good idea to keep using these blue planners. So each Sunday night I would get together with my brother and sister (who were 10 and 12 years old at the time) and we\u2019d hold these little mission meetings, where we\u2019d talk about people we\u2019d met that week and how we could share the gospel with them. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14808"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14809,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14808\/revisions\/14809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}