Brennan's talk on Winning

 

Hello, my name is Brennan. I am a senior in Muskego high school and something interesting about me is I really love to play board games. I love to play Axis and Allies with my dad, I love Settlers of Catan, Stratego, chess, you name it. I love all sorts of games...And I especially love winning. I love the competition and the fun and the battle of the minds. I like to strategize and prepare different ways that I am going to beat my dad or my brothers between games. I just really love to win.

            Competition is a great thing in a lot of ways, but the thing about winning and losing is that it is completely based on our perception. Over the years I’ve learned that if I define winning or success as beating my opponent then that’s one way to look at it, but if I define winning as having fun with my family when we play board games then I really can’t lose.

            When the bishopric asked me to speak today, they asked me to speak about preparing for my mission and I really started to think about this idea about what it meant to be a successful missionary. The whole point of preparing for something is so you can be successful. But how we define winning or success changes everything.

My dad told me a story from when he was on his mission where he was at the same mission zone for over 6 months. In those six months, he had 2 baptisms and he was really frustrated about not feeling like he was making a big enough impact. He wrote a letter home to his dad asking if he was a bad missionary? if he wasn’t spiritual enough? if he wasn’t good enough? My grandfather sent a letter back that simply told him to “read your mission call”. So my dad read the mission call and as he read and re-read it he realized that nowhere on the mission call does it say that he was called to baptize. But it did say “you are called to serve”. From that point on, my dad changed his outlook. Instead of trying to focus on investigators and baptisms, he started looking at how he could serve and help people around him.

At this same time, he had just gotten a mission companion who he was having trouble with. The companion was hard to get out of bed. He had long morning routines that made morning appointments impossible to keep. He wouldn’t study the scriptures and instead was always writing home. He did not want to get out and work and was resistant to interact with investigators or members. My dad again got really frustrated with how things were turning out so he started praying about how he could fix the problem. As he prayed, the answer came back to him to “serve”. He got the distinct feeling he should tell his companion that he loved him, so he did. When my dad told his companion that he loved him, the companion broke down to tears and later told my dad that he was the first one to ever tell him that. As long as my dad was focused on the idea of being a successful missionary was all about baptisms, he was missing the mark. But when he changed his definition of success to service and love, that was when he felt like he was “winning”. As I prepare for a mission, I want to prepare my mind to think about the true meaning of service and love.

One of the greatest missionaries in the Book of Mormon was Ammon. By all accounts he was definitely a successful missionary. Before he went on his mission Ammon had a lot of preparing to do. Ammon was one of the four sons of Mosiah with Alma who had been actively trying to tear down the church and pull members away. (He was the opposite of a missionary. The anti-missionary!) Ammon wasn’t exactly on track to being a great spiritual superhero. But then something happened. The short version is that Ammon became converted. While most of us don’t have a conversion story like Ammon’s where an angel appears to us and threatens to smite us if we do not change, conversion is always the first step to preparing to serve the Lord. But even though Alma and the sons of Mosiah saw an angel, that was only the catalyst to their conversion story. Most of us would say that if we got to see an angel that would give us an absolute testimony of the gospel. But in Alma 5, while talking to the people Alma the younger teaches them about Christ and Heavenly Father and then says,

“45 And this is not all. Do ye not suppose that I know of these things myself? Behold, I testify unto you that I do know that these things whereof I have spoken are true. And how do ye suppose that I know of their surety?

You’d think he is about to say that he knows these things because he had seen an angel. But listen to what he says next:

“46 Behold, I say unto you they are made known unto me by the Holy Spirit of God. Behold, I have fasted and prayed many days that I might know these things of myself. And now I do know of myself that they are true; for the Lord God hath made them manifest unto me by his Holy Spirit; and this is the spirit of revelation which is in me.”

Conversion always comes through the spirit. Even those who saw angels still receive a real testimony through the Holy Ghost. “Conversion is a process, not an event. Conversion comes as a result of righteous efforts to follow the Savior. These efforts include exercising faith in Jesus Christ, repenting of sin, being baptized, receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost, and enduring to the end in faith.”

I am still on the journey of conversion and figuring things out for myself. I don’t know a lot but I do know that God is with us. I know that there is a divine entity that knows each of us intimately and he loves us all absolutely. Ammon was also on a journey of conversion.

So, what was Ammon’s next step in being a successful missionary? In Alma 17:6 it says, “Having taken leave of their father, Mosiah, in the first year of the judges; having refused the kingdom which their father was desirous to confer upon them, and this was also the minds of the people;”

In this verse what I learned was that to be a successful missionary, Ammon and his brothers had to be willing to sacrifice. They had to give things up. Ammon and his brothers gave up being kings. They gave up an entire kingdom, power, and wealth. The very things that the world defines as the pinnacle of success. This makes me take a deeper look into their hearts and who they became, how they had changed their perspective of what it meant to “win”. Not only did they walk away from their birthright as princes to the throne, but they also initially disappointed their father who wanted them to take the throne in his old age. They also were willing to stand up to all their people, their friends, and communities because they were absolutely sure they wanted to serve the Lord. This is peer pressure to the max!

I like the part in Harry Potter when Dumbledore says to the students at Hogwarts that it is hard to stand up to your enemies, but it is much harder to stand up to your friends. Ammon and his brothers had to hold fast even against the expectations of their family and friends. My mom likes to say that the definition of sacrifice is to give up something good for something better. Ammon and his brothers gave up so much that was good, because they saw serving the Lamanites as better.

During the last year, with Covid and quarantine I haven’t felt a lot of winning going on. I have gotten a little angry and frustrated at how trapped I have felt at times. It’s been a hard year for a lot of us. I love my family so much but being stuck in the same house all together sometimes we started to get on each other’s nerves. Just a little.

In the process of writing this talk I have found that if I put myself in the shoes of my family members and see how they feel, then I can serve them more. Christ is the ultimate example of understanding. He sees our pain through our eyes. He knows how we feel. To be a Christ-like missionary I need to try to see through other people’s eyes and serve them accordingly. It is always about empathy.

Acts of love and service are the constant little things that need to be maintained regularly. For example, when Ammon met the king of the Lamanites, he said that he would rather serve the king than marry his daughter and live a cushy life. He said he would voluntarily be the king’s servant because he wanted to serve more than anything. Ammon then went on to save the king’s flocks and instead of gloating over his victory, he went and took care of the king’s horses. Ammon did nothing but serve. He didn’t start by preaching to the people. He was focused on loving them and serving them.

Thinking about this as I prepare to be a missionary, I have come to understand our gospel not through a lens of I need to loudly preach the gospel, but I need to loudly live the gospel. Pope Francis once said, “preach the gospel always and if necessary, use words.” This phrase is fantastic. It talks about teaching the gospel through our actions and using our words as a secondary. For each of us, success and being a winning missionary isn’t about baptisms or numbers. Success is about love. I love the quote from Maya Angelou who said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” If I keep my focus on loving my brothers and sisters then it is impossible to fail as a missionary.

The greatest gift I can give them is sharing my knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Testimony