Homecoming Talk
As you guys know I just returned from my mission last week. My experiences on my mission have been amazing. It’s hard to describe and difficult to express just how unique, how wonderful a mission is. And it’s hard, you can’t express it in 20 minutes, you can’t express it in an hour. But today I wanted to talk about having faith to move mountains. Having faith in Jesus Christ to move the mountains in our lives.
When I had just arrived in Iceland, the first month of being in Iceland there was a rededication of the land, or not a rededication of the land, a rededication of ourselves, of the members and the missionaries to the work, to sharing the gospel, to fulfilling our covenants and lifting each other up. And to do so, Elder Kapishke, who was a former member of the area presidency, there came. Elder Kapishke is amazing. He’s given a few General Conference talks. If you have a chance I’d definitely recommend looking them up. He’s wonderful.
In a devotional we had, he was talking about faith and having the faith to move mountains. And something that he said stuck with me my entire mission and I hope that it sticks with me a lot longer. He said, "If you want to have faith to move a mountain, if you want to move a mountain, you need to grab your shovel, grab your pickaxe and start working." And that kind of surprised me, you know. You think the faith to move mountains..as I’ve pondered that, as I’ve lived that principle the last two years, I’ve learned that that’s not always the case. God won’t just flatten all the mountains and give us a nice Texas landscape. He wants us to work. He wants us to exercise our faith and put it into action in order to move those mountains. To explain this principle a little more I want to share a few experiences from my mission, from Iceland.
But first, let me give you some context. In Iceland there are 4 branches, three Icelandic and one Spanish branch in the Reykjavik area. There are 11 missionaries right now. When I got there there were 9, there were between 7-11. Hopefully it will go up soon. But because of that we came to be super close. There’s also 3 amazing senior missionary couples there and all of them are amazing. All of them are fantastic. I was blessed to serve with the best missionaries in the world, as well as the best mission leaders.
The landscape is beautiful. The language is very cool, I love Icelandic. And it’s very diverse, especially in Reykjavik, there are people from all across the world. In our branch alone, the Reykjavik 1st branch, there were people from nearly every continent. People from Asia, people from Africa, South America..South America had their own branch later, but people from North America, people from Europe. It was amazing to see. Some other things about Iceland, because there are a low number of missionaries, if you aren’t getting along with your companion, it’s a little harder because there’s nowhere to escape.
The weather is pretty terrible most of the time. The wind is strong and cold. In the winter there is lots of darkness, snow and ice. In fact, during the peak of winter, the winter solstice, there’s only 3, 3.5 hours of sunlight in the south, a little less in the north. But that can be hard. It’s like a catalyst for all the rest of the problems people face. Depression is high there. You’ve heard of seasonal depression, it’s a hundred times worse in Iceland because you’re not getting any sun. The culture there is unfortunately moving away from religion as a whole, but there are people working to try to fix that.
So as I mentioned, Elder Kapishke came and he taught us this principle of having faith to move a mountain. And I saw that several times, I saw people move mountains in their lives through faith in Jesus Christ. And the first person I’d like to talk about is Jonina.
Jonina is a core part of my mission. I could not say that I served my mission without her. She is fantastic. She was actually found knocking which is statistically improbable in Iceland, to find someone while knocking, but we found her knocking and she’s 77 years old and we gave her The Book of Mormon. And then the next day we were like can we come back tomorrow to meet with you to discuss more about it? She said sure and we went back. She tried to give the book back to us. We stood on her doorstep and she brought the book and she was like, I don’t want this. I can’t read it, it’s too big, too many pages. And we stood there with our hands clutched to our sides, we’re not taking that book back. As she was extending the book to us, we taught pretty much the entire plan of salvation on her doorstep telling her she could keep the book and ignoring her attempt to give it back and it worked.
A few days later we got to meet with her and she invited us in this time. We were able to sit down and read from the Book of Mormon with her where we read Alma chapter 32 about having faith like a seed, or planting the word in our hearts with faith. And from there we started teaching her. She started reading the Book of Mormon. She was wary at first. She complained a little bit about it being long, about the words being weird. But, she kept reading, she kept praying and kept keeping her commitments. She began to attend church and her testimony was growing. And so eventually invited her to be baptized. At first she said, no, she couldn’t. She was scared. She was afraid that her family wouldn’t like it. So we kept meeting with her, we kept teaching her. We taught about tithing, which actually became, I’d say, a core part of her testimony later on. But, when we first talked about tithing, she didn’t see how she could follow it. She is retired. She lives on a fixed income, she can’t exactly make more money or change her..but we kept talking with her.
Her family kept complaining about us. She kept feeling the Spirit, knowing the church was true, but not having the ability to act, but she wanted to. She had faith like a mustard seed and she had a pickaxe, she had a shovel, and she had a few mountains. So she started working. Everyday she would read from the Book of Mormon, everyday she would pray. Another scoop with the shovel, another swing with the pickaxe and everyday she would come closer and closer to being able to receive the blessings of the gospel she knew was true. She acted in faith and introduced us to her family. That’s a scary thing. I don’t know if many of you are converts, but a lot of people are scared to introduce their family to the missionaries because it’s weird, it’s a change, it’s something different especially if you were raised up in a religious family. It’s even scarier. But, she had the faith to introduce us to her family. You know, they aren’t being taught by the missionaries. But after meeting us they began to relax a little. They began to realize okay, these aren’t crazy people brainwashing my mom, my grandma. They’re just young men sharing something that they love. So they might be weird, but they’re sharing something they love so that’s fine.
But that still left the problem of being able to pay tithing and still afford the things she needed. And there wasn't much we could do about it as missionaries. But she had faith, she had patience in the Lord and she put everything on Him. She put her trust in Him. Her efforts she consecrated to Him. And as she did that, a miracle happened. She was contacted by the bank about the loan on her house and they offered her a change in her contract that enabled her to pay tithing and to be baptized. And then as soon as Jonina was baptized, she began to pay her tithing faithfully. And it was remarkable to see how her patience, her consistency, her faith moved those mountains. She started working. She had done a lot to move the mountains, the first mountain, her family, she had worked shovel after shovel, pickaxe after pickaxe to help them. And the Lord strengthened her to do so. The Lord gave her the strength to move an entire mountain. He didn’t take it away from her, but he increased her capacity to activate, to serve, to do and that enabled her to come closer to the Savior. The second mountain was tithing. How could she pay tithing? She needed an apartment, she needed a lot of things. How could she afford to do so? So she started swinging her pickaxe, she started shoveling. She started praying and reading the scriptures. She budgeted, she did all these things. And as the mountain started to get smaller from her efforts, the Lord stepped in and provided a miracle. He moved the rest of it for her so that the way before her was straight and she could receive the joy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Thus one example, Jonina, the amazing Jonina, I will remember her forever.
The second story I’d like to share is about the many Venezuelan refugees that come to Iceland. As many of you know, Venezuela is not a good place at the moment. There’s a lot of political corruption, a lot of mass inflation that is uncontrollable. There’s little security, little safety in many parts of the country. And because of that, there are refugees that are going all over. There are many places here in Texas that I've seen Venezuelans. I’ve heard many people who have family here in Texas from Iceland and tell me about them, they say, “You should go to Katy and meet them.” But the move from Venezuela to Iceland seeking a better life is a mountain in and of itself. Iceland and Venezuela are not close to each other. The climates are not similar. The languages are not similar at all. The social activities are completely different. Icelanders have different pastimes, different foods, different things that just wouldn’t be compatible with Venezuelan culture and visa versa.
Most of these Venezuelan refugees, most of these faithful saints that decided to migrate to Iceland did not speak English, they did not speak Icelandic. They would come to a country with no ability to communicate with these people. Very few people in Iceland speak Spanish unless they immigrated. So they acted in faith. Faith of finding a better life. The mountain of challenges was finding a life, finding a stable place to raise their kids. That’s one of the things I love about the Venezuelans so much about the members there, is that all of them just love their family so much they’re willing to sacrifice everything to give their families the best opportunities they can give, even if it meant leaving everything behind and coming to Iceland and going through all the challenges of meeting with lawyers to obtain immigration status, meeting with people to obtain a work permit, to find jobs, to learn the language, all of these challenges that they faced. They did so willingly because they had faith that Jesus Christ could help them even when their own efforts failed. The Icelandic immigration center was not sure what to do. There were many more people coming than they expected and they weren’t sure if they were able to receive that many. So a lot of indecision, a lot of patience needed by these refugees. They couldn’t do much, but they fasted, they prayed, they attended church, they fulfilled their callings faithfully.
In January of 2023, the Reykjavik second branch was created. The largest branch in Iceland that would mostly consist of people from Chile, from Guatemala as well. But, then a year later, in February of 2024 Iceland was getting a district created and during the interviews with the stake president, or during the interview to find who should be the district president, the area seventy, Elder Boom, who lives in Denmark was talking and he said the Reykjavik second branch was the most active branch in all of northern Europe area. The Reykjavik second branch, a group of saints that had traveled halfway across the world to find peace and rest and were still looking for it, was the most active branch in the entire area. These saints had sacrificed everything. They had carried their crosses. They had shoveled their mountains for years trying to get them to move and because of that, their faith in Christ was strong. Their hope was strong. Their desires to do good were abounding. Their love for each other was remarkable. They had patience enough to trust the Lord, to keep digging even though after the first 10 shovels the mountain was still there. They kept after it and they were made stronger because of it. And now at this time things were happening. People were getting accepted for the programs, for their social security license, their work permit. Some people were forced to go back, but those people had faith in Jesus Christ. The last verse of Ether is one of my favorite verses in The Book of Mormon. Ether is saying his last words, he’s saying whether it be that I suffer the will of the Lord here in the flesh or that he takes me up into Heaven, it mattereth not, so long as I’m saved in the kingdom. That is the faith that these saints were able to develop. They were strengthened to overcome the mountains, even though the mountains did not move, they had the strength to climb them, to work, to build. I’m very blessed to have been able to serve with them. I tried to speak Spanish, but my Spanish is not as good as my Icelandic, but I know that the Lord is with them because of their desire to follow Him, to put their faith into action, no matter how small the shovel may seem.
The last thing I’d like to share is about myself. I am not a very social person. As a missionary you need to be a social person. You’ve got to go out and talk to people, to help them, to get to know them, to initiate conversation, to teach them, to guide them to Christ. And that was scary for me. At stake dances before my mission I would sit in the corner and if there was a board game room I’d go play UNO with my friends. But there was no corner, or no game of UNO in Iceland. So I was encouraged, I was strengthened by the Lord to go out. I had the desire to serve Him. I would not say I was qualified, I wouldn’t say I was qualified now to be in charge of helping people come to Christ. God puts so much trust in us as members and as missionaries to help each other come to Christ, to help our neighbors come to Christ. We’re all part of this work and He increased my capability to talk to people, to have confidence in myself and in the Lord to say the things that needed to be said. He also helped me learn the language. I tried to learn a language in middle school, it didn’t work. I tried again a few years later and it worked because I was doing it with the Lord.
I think the most important thing that I learned on my mission is the grace of Jesus Christ. The ability that we have to accept that grace. A lot of my mission I struggled to feel like my efforts were enough. But I was doing my best and therefore received grace. I’ve heard people say, “don’t come home with regrets because you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.” And that scared me. I knew I had messed up. I had regressed from day one. What was I supposed to do about it? I was talking with one of the APs about it and he told me to email him and he told me that he never liked when people said to come home with no regrets, because if you came home with no regrets that meant you never made any mistakes, you never fell short and if you didn’t do that then there was no room for Jesus Christ in your mission. If you did not need the Savior, you do not have the will to become stronger. Ether 12:27 teaches us that we have weaknesses so that the Lord can strengthen us. On my mission I saw my weaknesses and I saw the Lord’s hand as He helped me to overcome them. Each of my little mountains He helped to remove, to give me the strength to overcome, to fight through to dig through. Because of Jesus Christ, God can look at us as unprofitable servants and say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into thy rest.” Whether that’s a missionary, a mother, a teacher, in your profession, as a brother, a sister– God can look to us and say, “Well done thou good and faithful servant, enter into thy rest.” We’re not here to be perfect, Christ can make us perfect and that won’t come until after we are resurrected.
I am eternally grateful to Heavenly Father and to Jesus Christ for the ability and the opportunity to serve my mission, to stumble and to get back up, to scrape my knees and become stronger for it. I feel like They love me and I know that They love each of us individually. They pour Their love out on individuals who wanted nothing to do with Them, who spit on God’s name, but He still loves them. He still blesses them. He still encourages them to keep moving forward. I know that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world. That the restoration of the gospel is true, that it is the place where you can see the fullness of God’s love. I know that as we act in faith Jesus Christ can help us move our mountains, whether that’s giving us strength to do so, moving us away from the mountain or removing the mountain itself. I know that as we act in faith on Him we can enter into the rest of the Lord, into His joy and peace and I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
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