Message—25 Jul 2011
Dear Family & Friends,
Even though we have said this before, we have an absolute and certain witness that the hand of the Lord is at the root and the heart of the proceedings and the affairs of his church and kingdom and especially the missionary work. We see His hand daily as we go about trying to be of service to bring the gospel to our brothers and sisters who live in this mission. Many people who attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant provided referrals to have the missionaries visit them and provide more information about the church. The two missionaries in our Brockport area have received over 14 referrals. One was a request to receive a Book of Mormon in the Arabic language. Hopefully some of the people will listen with their hearts and receive a witness of the truth of the gospel and accept the invitation to be baptized and live worthy to receive all of the eternal blessings available to them through priesthood and temple ordinances.
In the Preach My Gospel manual there is a very well worded and succinct statement about missionary work and what our role is to help accomplish it. The statement is; “My purpose as a missionary is to invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel through faith in Jesus Christ and His atonement, repentance, baptism, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end.” As you read and ponder this statement you will learn that our role is to “invite” and “help”; all the other parts are the responsibility of the person we talk with, they are to use their agency to accept the invitations. It is not difficult to invite and help others, that is all that is required of us. As we open our mouths to invite and help the power of the Holy Ghost will put the right words in our mouth and He will also witness to others of the truths He gives us to speak. Because the Lord is in the details of His work He will provide all the help we need through the Holy Ghost. When some choose with their agency to not accept our invitation or help, we have to respect their choice because Heavenly Father and the Savior respect their choices, that is an eternal law. We can still love those who do not accept our invitation and help, and continue being their brother and sister, and there may well come a time later when we will be inspired to invite and help again. At a later time the person may accept the invitation and help to come unto Christ. Someone has come up with a statistic that on average, it takes seven exposures to the church and its message before people will accept the message we have to share; so never give up on anyone. Follow the promptings of the Holy Ghost and we can help in the Lord’s work wherever we are.
After having a long and wet spring with much rain here; the last few weeks have been very dry, hardly any rain at all. The grass around people’s homes and yards, which is normally very green, is now very brown. Most people do not use lawn sprinklers, they depend on the rain; it is easy to see which yards have sprinklers, because the grass is green. Last week in going to check on an apartment near Niagara Falls; we drove along a rural road with many farms on both sides of the road. The crops which were planted a month late due to wet soil, are now starting to wilt and die from lack of water. It will take some good rain in the coming week to save these crops from being a total loss. Many vegetable farms are going to have severe losses. The trees are still green and doing all right, but some of the shrubs are also starting to wilt. It is very interesting that a month ago there was plenty of water; and now there is not enough. Water really is the life blood of the plant world; and it is also essential for animal and human life. It remains to be seen how things will turn out. We can see how the cycle of years of plenty and years of drought can have a significant impact on the lives of people. We read about these cycles in many places in the scriptures, as well as in the history of mankind in non-scripture sources. In many instances the drought years led people to become humble and recognize the source of their blessings are from the Lord, and not self-made.
Yesterday in our sacrament meeting the first counselor in the Bishopric, Brother Petranek, gave a short talk relating to our faithful pioneer ancestors and the sacrifices they made to sustain the call of the Lord’s prophet and move to Utah to establish the gospel in the tops of the mountains. This was a fulfillment of prophecies by Isaiah. We, who live today, have been blessed in countless ways as a result of the faith and obedience and sacrifices of our pioneer ancestors. Brother Petranek made a statement which we believe to be true. He said while we honor our pioneer ancestors, they also honor us, for continuing on in helping the Lord’s work to move forward. As we continue with the work here, we will help to bring blessings upon them and their families and their ancestors. We are very grateful for our ancestors; we hope to live worthy of personally thanking them for their great influence for good in our lives through our parents and other family. We recognize Grandma and Grandpa Swasey’s 80th wedding anniversary on July 29th. They are great people in our eyes and we honor them for all they have done to help us in our lives. After my father died when I was 21, Grandpa Swasey became my substitute father for the next 23 years. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from him and his example
We hope all of our children and their families, who possible can, will attend our family reunion on August 6th at our home in Provo. We know you will be blessed for your participation and taking the time to maintain and strengthen family relations. We will be thinking of you to a greater degree on that day.
We express our love to each of you. We are grateful for each of you and appreciate our associations with you and we pray for you every time we pray.
We know the Lord is blessing and helping you in many ways, and He will continue to do so. We testify Heavenly Father and the Savior live and love us; we have living prophets and apostles guiding us, the Book of Mormon is true, living the gospel will bless our lives in countless ways and help us become who we should be.
Love,
Mom & Dad, Grandma & Grandpa, Richard & Maxine
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