My Testimonies: Example 3

Poor Wayfaring Man

I have had experiences with testimony. Lots of them. Here is Example 3:

When I had been proselyting as a missionary for just about three months, my Mission President (the volunteer LDS clergy supervising the activities of the entire mission) assigned me to work in a new city with a partner (i.e., a “companion”) who was in the final month of his two-year term of missionary service. The Mission President met with me to tell me I was chosen for the assignment because this missionary needed a faithful, enthusiastic companion to try a new method of proselyting that had the potential to usher in a surge of baptisms in the mission. It was called “Covenanting with the Lord”.

The idea behind Covenanting with the Lord was the fact that Heavenly Father has a system in place for helping people achieve their righteous goals. Jesus Christ touched on it in Luke 11:9-13 when he said “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” But for Mormons, the concept has another dimension–the Lord explicitly promises that if a person has faith in him, that person shall have power to do whatever “is expedient” for the Lord. And the Lord is obligated to make good on his promises when people hold up their end of the bargain. We had answered Jesus Christ’s call to be missionaries, so clearly our desire to be the best (i.e., “most successful”) missionaries we could be was expedient for him. All we had to do was properly ask for Heavenly Father’s help and demonstrate our unwavering faith in him. We would pray, asking Heavenly Father to send the Holy Ghost to tell us what we needed to do in order to strengthen and demonstrate our faith and invoke the Lord’s obligation to make us successful (i.e., “baptizing”) missionaries. Once the Holy Ghost told us what we needed to do, we just had to take up the challenge and covenant to do it, and the Lord would have to give us people to baptize.

I learned that the Mission President had taught the whole mission to follow this Covenanting with the Lord program just a couple of weeks before I had arrived in the mission, and my new companion had been one of his shining examples of success in following the program and finding people to baptize. Now the Mission President and my new comp were looking at me to get in gear and continue the process.

The day I arrived in my new apartment, my companion told me how the program worked, and how I needed to join him in covenanting with the Lord for baptisms. I needed to sit down with him and prayerfully determine (through the guidance of the Holy Ghost) how many Book of Mormons we needed to distribute, and how many missionary lessons (i.e., “discussions”) we needed to teach people each week in order to demonstrate the level of faith necessary to bind the Lord in granting us success.

I was honored that the Mission President had chosen me, of all the new missionaries, to take up the challenge. I was also taken aback by the audacity and ambition inherent in developing a formula for calling down the power of God to serve our desires as missionaries. It made sense to me, though–we were on the Lord’s errand, so he’s got to support us; this could be how.

My companion and I fasted for 24 hours, prayed, and wrote up a plan laying out, in addition to a commitment to be perfectly obedient to all mission rules, all of our performance goals for the next four weeks. Each week, we figured, our faith would need to increase, and that increased faith would show forth in increased statistics–more Book of Mormons given out, and more discussions taught. The first week contained pretty ambitious numbers, and each week those numbers increased, until, by the last week, the numbers were ridiculously high–equal to a month’s worth of work for most missionary companionships. This was my companion’s last month as a missionary, and he was going to go all out.

We prayed together for the Holy Ghost’s confirmation of our plan, and my companion received that confirmation. I, on the other hand, did not feel anything I considered communication from the Holy Ghost. My comp was absolutely convinced that our plan was right, and as the senior companion, he could have just told me to go along with it, but he was also convinced that the plan wouldn’t work if I wasn’t fully on board. We went back to our apartment and he waited in the front room while I retreated, plan in hand, to the study, where I was to pray until I got my answer.

After about 15 minutes of continuous pleading with the Lord for an answer, I started to feel a light, almost tingling sensation in my spine that grew into a wave that passed through my whole body. I took that as confirmation from the Holy Ghost that our plan was approved of the Lord, and his promise of success would have to be fulfilled as we completed our plan.

The details of the plan and how we went about completing it are the subject of another post, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll just say that we worked like crazy each week, meeting our goals–miraculously, it seemed, as the goals got bigger. The third week, we achieved our goal with five minutes to go before the end of the week. The Lord seemed to be helping us meet our goals–rewarding our faith and tenacious desire to do his will. The fourth week, we were worn down from weeks of non-stop working, but kept at it through the end. After giving our all, we were both very disappointed to find we had come up just barely short of our final week’s goals.

After covenanting with the Lord, we put up what were easily the biggest numbers of any companionship in the mission, but in the end, we baptized nobody during that month (not even close), had no additional serious investigators, and to my knowledge, nobody we met with during that month was baptized at some later date either. We had absolutely zero success, despite our testimony that our plan was a divinely approved path to baptisms. The Mission President never talked to me, or the rest of the mission, about Covenanting with the Lord again. It was abandoned as if it never existed.

-PWM


One Response to “My Testimonies: Example 3”

  • Deep Throat in the Deep South Says:

    It is always interesting when ambitious men (maybe your mission president, maybe your companion) decide to take upon themselves the “power of the prophet himself,” proclaiming they know the Lords will in ALL things.

    The idea that “And the Lord is obligated to make good on his promises when people hold up their end of the bargain” means that you, and your whole mission accepted your mission president’s “vision” as usurping the direction of the first president and prophet that called you on a mission. It sound like YOU and your companion (and or your mission president) decided what the Lords end of the bargain was, instead of letting HIM write it it, i.e., “lord, we will knock and doors 60 hours and YOU WILL….” (or whatever it was).

    In a covenant, people don’t tell the Lord what he will do. He tells us. Being his covenant people means we accept the covenant’s he has revealed. We live the principles he gives us what HE tells us. We don’t’ write his side of the bargain….ever.

    I’d love to see some numbers. How many missionaries (from your mission and this era) became inactive after returning home from their missions. What an atrocity.

    Not that you really love me, or my name (yes it’s based on the Watergate guy…who was mormon, don’t you know)….but on I go….

    You write, “Each week, WE FIGURED, our faith would need to increase, and that increased faith would show forth in increased statistics–more Book of Mormons given out, and more discussions taught. The first week contained pretty ambitious numbers, and each week those numbers increased, until, by the last week, the numbers were ridiculously high–equal to a month’s worth of work for most missionary companionships. This was my companion’s last month as a missionary, and he was going to go all out.

    We prayed together for the Holy Ghost’s confirmation of our plan, and my companion received that confirmation. I, on the other hand, did not feel anything I considered communication from the Holy Ghost. “

    1. God sent all his children to earth with free agency. Did [you and your companion] some think that your faith could change another’s free agency? It cannot.

    2. Missionaries offer the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the earth. The opportunity to do this fulfills prophecy. Every day you (or I) knocked on doors and offered the gospel, or talked to people at bus stops, or “contacted” on street corners, we were offering our brothers and sisters a choice, a choice they had not been offered before.

    How shallow is it to say that Jesus Christ failed because everyone was not converted who met HIM? You say, “We had absolutely zero success, despite our testimony that our plan was a divinely approved path to baptisms.” It is truly sad that your understanding of the gospel is so shallow that success to you doesn’t equate to the loving your brothers and sisters and offering them the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

    3. You note that “The Mission President never talked to me, or the rest of the mission, about Covenanting with the Lord again. It was abandoned as if it never existed.” Yes, well he probably got called on the carpet from his regional leaders or the GA (as in general authorizes). I watched once as our stake president dissolved the scouting program, the young men’s and young woman’s program, for a “new program” that had been revealed to him.

    At that time, in our ward alone we had 33 boy scouts. 12 of them were non-members. In dissolved these programs, we lost all contact with these 12 non-member boys. Now, after about 7 months of attempting to “run his new program,” he was called on the carpet and, his “new program” disappeared…never to be spoken of again. MANY of us were shocked that he wasn’t released as a Stake President, or even excommunicated for this atrocity. He was not, and continued to be stake president for two more year. Some people became inactive when he wasn’t released.

    Do you think that my past stake president or your mission president are the only two leaders in a church of 11 million to do such things? I think not.

    Shall I assume that you are naive enough to believe that everyone called into a position of authority suddenly looses all their pride, ambition, and does not start or continue down any path of sin? Ha ha ha. Only people like you would be the kind of leader we would want. Hmmm, and I assume that you are still camping outside and not coming in to run the church like it was designed?

    I don’t need to hand you a concordance to list all the scriptures that warn of pride. You can borrow your wife’s triple-com and look them up. These scriptures are for the leaders as well as those of us who are lay-people working in the trenches.

    Now…lets look at the real issue. When you companion got a “yes, this is the plan” answer, and you did not, your senior companion did not say (as he should have), “Hmmmm….if I feel good about it and you don’t, then there is something wrong with our plan, let’s make some changes and start again.” This is what EVERY husband and wife, mission companionship, bishopric and every stake presidency should do. But do they? No. Many are just like your companion was. Full of pride. Full of themselves. So, you went and pleaded with the Lord for something he had already told you NO for.

    Hmmm…do we see any precedence for that in the scriptures? How about Joseph Smith praying to let Martin Harris take the translation to the Book of Lehi to his wife. (D&C 3…the WHOLE thing is good).

    Meanwhile, God say’s “I already told you NO, but if you insist on a yes, then fine, maybe you will learn to listen to me the first time.”

    Did you learn?

    I know it is hard for a junior companion to take on a senior companion and say “no” when you are fresh out of the MTC, and they have been out for a while. But, sadly, you had free agency too, and you did not say. “I got a no, and I think we need to change the plan.”

    And in reality, I wouldn’t have the strength at the beginning of my mission either. I wouldn’t have and couldn’t have said NO to my senior companion. There was a strange plan in place when I got into the mission field, but I didn’t speak the language very well yet, so I just followed my senior companion.

    It would be nice if all people called to positions of leadership actually knew where they were going and we didn’t have to decide for ourselves….hmmmmm, why didn’t’ someone just propose that in the pre-existence? A plan by which none of us would fail? A plan where leaders COULDN’T lead us astray. Geee…why didn’t someone think of that? And if they did, why didn’t you choose that side (which you didn’t…or are you now?).

    I believe that there is only one leader in the church for whom the Lord says, that he will remove him out of his place before he allows people to be lead astray. Only one. Even the 12 don’t have that promise. Check the records for how many of the 12 have ended up excommunicated over the years.

    You mission president made a mistake with his plan. Although he “turned” or “changed” or the common Christian word for that is “repented” he did not ask your forgiveness…which he should have. Most people full of pride can’t do that. Sad. This bothered you, and, well it should have. I wonder what would have happened if you had, face-to-face asked him and shared with him how this challenged your faith. Boaters should always be responsible for their wake. Do you think your mission president knew how his “covenant plan” effected your life? Perhaps you should send him an email and link to your blog.

    I propose that you did your part and the Lord did his part. Not what you wanted him to do, but what he had truly covenanted to do. I.E., what your baptism covenants, temple covenants, and the words of the scripture say he would do. What your blessing said when you were set apart for your mission. What you patriotical blessing outlined.

    The things you and your companion listed on your little piece of paper did not usurp the scriptures. Sorry Charlie. That’s not how God works.

    So, instead of realizing that the Lord has always kept up his end of the bargain (or God would cease to be God), you decided what his end of the bargain was then…well, went camping.

    In a covenant, people don’t tell the Lord what he will do. He tells us. Being his covenant people means we accept the covenant’s HE has revealed. We live the principles he gives us what HE tells us he will. We don’t’ write his side of the bargain…not now, not ever.

Leave a Reply