Here's my farewell talk:
Imagine that you are at The Metropolitan Opera Concert Hall. There are thousands, upon thousands of people gathered to hear you play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E Flat Major. You are dressed in your best, and as you walk on stage, all eyes are on you. You pull out the piano bench, sit down, and place your hands gently on the keys. The audience holds their breath; the room filled with a thick fog of silence. Everyone’s anticipation is peaked, and they are waiting a beautiful first note.
Imagine that you are at The Metropolitan Opera Concert Hall. There are thousands, upon thousands of people gathered to hear you play Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 9 in E Flat Major. You are dressed in your best, and as you walk on stage, all eyes are on you. You pull out the piano bench, sit down, and place your hands gently on the keys. The audience holds their breath; the room filled with a thick fog of silence. Everyone’s anticipation is peaked, and they are waiting a beautiful first note.
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| Farewell at Church (wearing her Japan dress) |
Although this is not a very realistic story, it does
demonstrate the importance of preparation. If you had practiced Mozart’s
Concerto a thousand times, then playing in front of The Metropolitan’s audience
wouldn’t be nearly so frightening. Being prepared endows us with a certain
sense of confidence and inner strength. As it reads in D&C 38, “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear.” In other words, Preparation Precedes Power.
I have come
to understand that God is a God of Preparation, and that Preparation is an eternal
principle. Heavenly Father prepared this Earth for us, and He prepared a way for us to return to Him.
He is preparing mansions in heaven
for us, and He prepared a way for
families to be together forever. If Jesus Christ commanded us to be
“even as I am” then doesn’t that mean we
should be prepared?
So, we
should be prepared, but what does that mean? What should we be prepared for?
There are many things we have been commanded to prepare for – we should prepare
for the last days, that this life is the “time to prepare to meet God,” that we
should be prepared and have food
storage – but today I would like to talk about spiritual preparation.
In Alma 49,
Captain Moroni was anticipating an attack from the Lamanites, so he fortified
his weakest cities, Ammonihah and Noah, “in a manner which had never been known
among the children of Lehi” (Alma 49:8).
Under his direction, “ the Nephites had dug up a ridge of earth round
about [Ammonihah and Noah] which was so high the Lamanites could not cast their
stones and arrows at them that they might take effect” (49:4). Thus, because
the Nephites had prepared, they had “all power over their enemies” (49:23).
In the same way, we must build our own “ridges
of earth” by doing that which we know to be right – going to our church
meetings, praying, reading our scriptures, keeping the standards laid out in The For Strength of Youth. With each
commandment we are obedient to, we are adding another pile of dirt to our
protective walls, making them higher and higher. Like Captain Moroni, we must
fortify our weakest cities, or in other words, we must prepare ourselves
against the “stones and arrows” of Satan. Preparation brings power, but it also
brings protection.
If we are
not prepared against Satan’s attacks, we will figuratively be bringing a knife
to a gunfight. Or, in the case of the Lamanites, wearing loincloths to a
breastplate battle. Brothers and
Sisters, we must prepare NOW. If we make the choice to keep the commandments
NOW, when we are put in trying situations, we already know what our decision
will be. We will have the power and strength to say no if someone offers us a
cigarette, or urges us to cheat on a test, or whatever it might be, because we have
already made those decisions. We will have the power we need, because we were
prepared.
During my Winter Semester at BYU, I took a
Missionary Preparation class. One of the exercises our Professor had us do was
roleplaying – this entailed teaching a lesson from Preach My Gospel to a fellow classmate as if they were an
investigator. The very first week, I arrived ready for a lecture, only to
discover that I had completely forgotten about that day’s roleplaying
assignment! I was supposed to teach a lesson, but I was completely unprepared! As
I struggled to teach my “investigator,” I also struggled to feel the Spirit.
The lesson was a mess, and the investigator came away with more questions than
answers. This experience taught me that the Spirit cannot properly help us
teach if we have not first properly prepared ourselves. And as The Lord said, “If ye receive not
the Spirit ye shall not teach.”
As teachers
and as missionaries, we should seek to prepare spiritually before teaching –
that means preparing our lessons and
preparing ourselves. D&C 11:21 states, “Seek not
to declare my word, but first seek to obtain my word, and then shall your
tongue be loosed; then, if you desire, you shall have my Spirit and my word,
yea, the power of God unto the convincing of men.” Thus, before we “declare
[God’s] word” we must “first seek to obtain [it].” In a sense, we have to do
our research. We have to practice the piano before we preform. We must learn
about the gospel and gain a personal testimony of its
doctrines before we can teach with the full power of the Spirit. We cannot teach that which we do not know. And
we cannot know that which we do not live. In essence, preparation is something that is ongoing. Just
like the building of Captain Moroni’s wall, it does not happen overnight. It
takes effort, and it takes time.
Preparation
suddenly became a priority for me on a sunny October morning when President
Monson said these words:
“Today I am pleased to announce that able,
worthy young women who have the desire to serve may be recommended for
missionary service beginning at age 19, instead of age 21.”
Ever since I was young, I’ve had the desire to
serve a mission. However, it always seemed to be something in the distant
future that I might or might not get to do, depending upon if I met “the One.” But
with the age-change, the prospect of serving a mission was not a matter of
years away, it was a matter of months.
It certainly changed my life.
My life changed again, four months later, when I
read these words, also from President Monson:
“Dear Sister Weigl, you are herby called to
serve as a missionary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You
are assigned to labor in the Japan Kobe Mission.”
Such an unexpected change in direction for my
life could have been disastrous if I had not been living the way I was supposed
to. If I had not been regularly attending church meetings, reading the
scriptures daily, and upholding the standards in The For Strength of Youth, the call to serve would have found me
completely unprepared, and maybe even unable. Luckily, that was not the case.
Brothers and sisters, I KNOW that if we are
prepared, we shall not fear and that preparation does bring us power to do that
which we can not do on our own.
In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
