We had the rare privilege yesterday morning to be with Elder Holland, his wife, and two other general authority couples. (They are in Texas for mission presidents’ seminar.) We were asked to arrive at our stake center at 7:45 a.m. so we went directly there from our 6 a.m. seminary inservice. Our entire mission lined up by gender and in order of height to be staged for a group picture. After we were each assigned our place, and with some time to spare, we began to sing hymns like “Called to Serve,” The Army of Helaman,” “I Need Thee Every Hour,” Hark All Ye Nations,” “Ye Elders of Israel,” and many others. It helped maintain reverence and prepared us for the meeting soon to follow. Most of all, it invited a powerful spirit. When Elder Holland eventually entered the cultural hall, and as our president had previously requested, everyone stood and was perfectly quiet while the presiding authorities with their wives and president took their places for the picture. It was accomplished quickly and efficiently. Then we were directed to exit row by row off to the side of the cultural hall as each of us shook hands with our guests and while the Texas Forth Mission filed into their places behind us for their picture. I was so impressed with the order and the reverence that prevailed among so many.
Being a senior missionary, our place was reserved on the front rows of the chapel. Dad and I were seated directly in the middle with only 4 rows in front of us. When the meeting started, we sang the opening hymn, “Called to Serve,” and the building was filled with such a strong spirit. I’m guessing there were approximately 4 hundred missionaries in attendance with our mission filling one side of the chapel and the other mission filling the other side.
It is impossible to put into words the instruction or the feeling that prevailed. We were together until about 12:30, and we left being motivated by the importance of the work the Lord has for us to do and the power and authority we have been blessed with to accomplish it. Elder Holland was emphatic about the young elders and sisters needing to take their time on their missions seriously and do all that they can to proclaim the gospel. Missions will end after 24 or 18 months, and the opportunity to serve as they can during this time will be lost. What they make of themselves during their mission will determine the kind of individual they will become for the rest of their lives.
I reflected yesterday on the influence Elder Holland had on Dad and me in deciding to go on our first mission. In October 2011, he gave the conference address “We Are All Enlisted.” We had asked the question before general conference, “When should we plan to serve our first mission?” Remember, we had four unmarried daughters at the time. Still, as a result of this talk, we started our paperwork the next day. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes from that address.
“We need thousands of more couples serving in the missions of the Church. Every mission president pleads for them. Everywhere they serve, our couples bring a maturity to the work that no number of 19-year-olds, however good they are, can provide.”
“…they can leave the grandchildren. Those little darlings will be just fine, and I promise you will do things for them in the service of the Lord that, worlds without end, you could never do if you stayed home to hover over them. What greater gift could grandparents give their posterity than to say by deed as well as word, ‘In this family we serve missions!’
I also enjoyed Sister Holland’s message. She has always been a hero of mine. In a women’s conference many years ago, she shared the following personal experience that even now continues to strengthen me:
“Just after my release from the general presidency of the Young Women in April 1986, I had the opportunity of spending a week in Israel. It had been a very difficult and demanding two years for me. Being a good mother, with the ample amount of time needed to succeed at that task, had always been my first priority; so I had tried to be a full-time mother to a grade-schooler, a high-schooler beginning to date, and a son preparing for his mission. I had also tried to be a full-time wife to a staggeringly busy university president with all of the twenty-four-hours-a-day campus responsibility that can be required of both of us at a place like Brigham Young University. And I had tried to be as much of a full-time counselor in that general presidency as one living fifty miles from the office could be. Sister Ardeth Kapp and the others were wonderfully patient with me. But in an important period of forming principles and starting programs for the Young Women, I worried that I wasn’t doing enough - and I tried to run a little faster.
Toward the end of my two-year term, my health was going downhill. I was losing weight steadily and couldn’t seem to do anything to halt that. Furthermore, I wasn’t sleeping well. My husband and children were trying to bandage me together even as I was trying to do the same for them. We were exhausted. And yet, I kept wondering what I might have done to manage it all better. The Brethren were watching and at the end of the two-year term extended a loving release. As grateful as my family and I were for the conclusion of my term of service, I nevertheless felt a loss of association - and some loss of identity - with these women whom I had come to love so much. Who was I and where was I in this welter of demands? Should life be as hard as all this? How successful had I been in my several and competing assignments? Or had I muffed them all? The days after my release were about as difficult as the weeks before it. I didn’t have any reserve to call on. My tank was on empty, and I wasn’t sure there was a filling station anywhere in sight.
It was just a few weeks later that my husband had the assignment in Jerusalem, and the Brethren traveling on the assignment requested that I accompany him. “Come on,” he said. “You can recuperate in the Savior’s land of living water and bread of life.” As weary as I was, I packed my bags, believing - or, at the very least, hoping - that the time there would be a healing respite.
On a pristinely clear and beautifully bright day, I sat overlooking the sea of Galilee and reread Luke 10:38. But instead of the words there on the page, I thought I saw with my mind and heard with my heart these words: “Pat, Pat, thou art careful and troubled about many things.” Then the power of pure and personal revelation seized me as I read, “But one thing (only one thing) is truly needful.”
In Israel in May the sun is so bright that you feel as if you are sitting on top of the world. I had just visited the spot in Bethoron where the “sun stood still” for Joshua, and indeed on that day it seemed so for me as well. As I sat pondering my problems, I felt that same sun’s healing rays like warm liquid pouring into my heart - relaxing, calming, and comforting my troubled soul. I found myself lifted to a higher view of my life.
Spirit to spirit, our loving Father in Heaven seemed to be whispering to me, “You don’t have to worry over so many things. The one thing that is needful - the only thing that is truly needful - is to keep your eyes toward the sun - my Son.” “Learn of me,” he seemed to say, “and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me.” (D&C 19:23) Suddenly I did have peace. I knew that my life had always been in His hands - from the very beginning! And so are the lives of every woman who wants to do right and grows in capacity and tries to give all she can. The sea lying peacefully before my very eyes had been tempest tossed and dangerous many, many times. All I needed to do was to renew my faith, get a firm grasp of His hand, and together we could walk on the water.”
I am grateful for prophets and apostles of our Lord, Jesus Christ, on the earth today and for the blessing we had yesterday of spending the morning with one of them.
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