Post-Mother’s Day 2012

Maybe it just took a couple times of talking to you guys sparsely throughout these past 13 months, but Elder Swensen and I both noticed that we’re REALLY feeling the trunkiness after talking to our families. I’ve never felt so inclined to want to be with my family before… weird huh? I had a really enjoyable time talking with everyone and I can’t wait to be with you guys again. :)

Love is an interesting thing that happens occasionally in our lives. Snow Patrol said it best when they sang, “those three words are said too much, but not enough.” The Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission certainly has transformed since I was first born into it. It’s almost always followed by some slogan like, “The Mission of Love.” It’s basically mission culture to say “I love you” to every missionary you see and at the end of every phone call. In hindsight, it’s kinda weird. But I would argue that just the word “love” in the English language can mean so many more things than those 4 letters imply with its Webster definition.

Real love – true love – the kind that one originally thinks of when speaking of this vast principle is exemplified perfectly with us and our Father in Heaven. Serving in Pennsylvania and coming across many people who already believe in God, the people usually understand the first principle of the first lesson pretty well already – God is our loving Heavenly Father. So it caught me offguard when someone said to me this week, “do you really believe that? Do you really think that God knows you individually, personally and intimately so much that he loves you unconditionally?” It took me a while to respond, but my reply was affirmative.

The next tier of love, maybe just a step below perfect, emulates that relationship we have with our Heavenly Father. God has placed us in our families to show that bond and ultimately testify of His love for us. It is this love that I felt yesterday when talking to you on the phone. So it’s kind of interesting that the Lord’s love is even stronger than that, for “can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands.”

As much as I enjoy feeling the “love” with my fellow missionaries, the love we express seems to be kind of superficial. A part-member family we’re currently working with expressed to us that all the missionaries that have stopped by and tried to dunk her husband have expressed this kind of love. They suggest that this “love” comes with being a missionary, that they truly want to help people while they’re on their mission but if they were thrown into the same situation in a different time when they weren’t missionaries, most of them (they felt) wouldn’t give them the time of day. This troubled me a bit in the way that I show people that I love them. Am I sincerely genuine about the service I want to extend to the people of Pennsylvania? Or am I just another clone sent out and saying “I love you” because of the culture? It takes me back to a fortune I received in a cookie near the beginning of my mission that I’ve kept in my wallet since, “You will be sharing great news with all the people you love.” As uninspired as those cookies may or may not be I’ve taken that to heart and seen the true effects of someone feeling the Spirit of our message when the missionaries were sincere and when they were not.

Such an experience came as I was on an exchange with my District Leader Elder Curl in Harborcreek. We were street contacting in downtown Erie when we came across a business-dressed vagabond from Texas. We never even got the gentleman’s name but he was traveling around for some time, looking for something. He referred to himself as a “seeker” but never finding what he felt could satisfy what he needed to do in life. He was constantly aware of his short time in life and was really questioning how we knew our message was true. None of the things which I recited eloquently seemed to take any effect, but when Elder Curl testified of how he was converted to the Gospel, the man could truly sense how genuine he was. We left him with a Book of Mormon and for the first time in that conversation I felt like I was guided by the Spirit and in a manner of love said, “Sir, I can promise you that what you are seeking is in that book.”

Elder Low