Letters to Liam #1

NOTE: Our oldest started a two-year service mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He'll work with local service organizations and church entities to help people with food storage, family history, temple laundry, and other locations. I promised him I'd write him a letter every week, if he'd write to us or keep a journal. This is the first installment.

Dear Liam,

So you’ve started your mission. Maybe part of you is disappointed that you’re not starting it at the Missionary Training Center, there for three weeks or three months, depending on whether you were going to learn a language. Serving a local mission may not feel like it’s got the glamor of serving elsewhere. Particularly since you come home every night.

But I’ve felt this in my heart since we started you on the mission process: Heavenly Father will send you where He needs you to be.

I don’t doubt that the people you help on your mission here need the help of a representative of the Lord just as much as people anywhere else on Earth.

One of the people I admire the most from the scriptures is Peter, the apostle of Jesus Christ. Peter had great faith – he was the only apostle to walk on water, as he saw Jesus doing – and yet he suffered from the same self-doubt and fear that all humans do, as we saw when he noticed the waves and the tempest about him and sank into the Sea of Galilee when only moments before he had been walking on that tempestuous surface. I think I admire Peter the most because he is like us: He is willing, yet he is human. He strove so much to be faithful and loyal to Christ, yet as Christ foretold, on the night He was betrayed, Peter denied three times that he even knew Christ. But Peter went on to serve:

So when they had dined, Jesus saith to Simon Peter, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me more than these? Ye saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He said unto him, Feed my lambs.

He saith to him again the second time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? He saith unto him, Yea, Lord; thou knowest that I love thee. He saith unto him, Feed my sheep.

He saith unto him the third time, Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved because he said unto him the third time, Lovest thou me? And he said unto him, Lord, thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee. Jesus saith unto him, Feed my sheep. (John 21:15-17)

God asks us constantly, as Jesus did with Peter: Do we love him? And like Peter, we try to show our love to God through feeding his sheep. God’s sheep here at the family history center, the temple, and in other places you will encounter them, need feeding – though we may appear to be well-fed already.

As you serve your mission, you will see opportunities where your family might serve as well. Please look for these opportunities and bring them home to us, so we can get out of the busy rut that we’re in and do more to serve the God who gives us life. As I look at our lives, I see the epitome of what Elder Dallin H. Oaks describes in his talk “Good, Better, Best,” wherein he commends many of us for making good choices but admonishes us to strive to make better choices in how we spend our time.

As we’ve discussed as a family, we need to make better choices in how we spend our time. Your missionary service can help us make those choices.

Not to put all the pressure on you. Just show us options.

And as I said in the stake president’s office, please record your thoughts and experiences as you serve. Take pictures with the people you work with. You may find, over time, that you develop strong friendships with some of the people you serve with regularly. You’ll come to cherish these memories, and the more you have recorded outside your own head, the more you’ll actually remember. When I look at my mission pictures and read my journals, I’m often surprised at what I remember.

We’re proud of you, son. Do your best.

Love,

Dad