Doctrine and Covenants 30:1-2

One of the greatest, yet hardest, times of my life was a number of years ago while serving as a full-time missionary in the state of New York. This concoction, of course, provided for many learning moments orchestrated through divine design. One of the things I learned almost immediately upon entering the mission field was the important and irreplaceable role of the ward mission leader. It was rather obvious from the perspective of a full-time missionary that there was very little we could do to help strengthen each church unit if there wasn't a local member whose primary role was to serve as a connection between us and the rest of the church members there. As I served in Middletown, the Bronx, Manhattan, and the West Point military academy I was richly blessed to always have very kind and diligent ward mission leaders who helped in man
y uncountable ways. Having rarely even heard of this role prior to being a missionary, I got very good first examples of fulfilling such a calling.

One day in New York, while listening to the inspired talks by the worldwide Church's prophets and apostles in the Church's General Conference of April 2013, I got the distinct impression that one day I would be called to serve as a ward mission leader. The specificity of this prompting from the Holy Spirit caught me off guard quite a bit. Would I be called soon after my time in New York was completed, or was it decades away? Where would I be living at the time I would serve? And how was I to fulfill the many responsibilities of the ward mission leader? These questions, and many related ones, filled my mind. Yet, knowing that the Lord can never lie, I looked forward with optimism when I would be entrusted with this responsibility of service.

After returning home to Utah in December, 2013 I began attending the local Young Single Adult (YSA) congregation. And within almost exactly a year I was called to serve in the role I'd received personal revelation about a couple years prior; while I knew it would one day come, I did not expect this responsibility to come as quickly, nor within the circumstances, that it did. This time of my life was already the busiest it had ever been. I was in the midst of attending the University of Utah as a double-major in mathematics and applied physics; dating life was a time-consuming priority in place; working to pay for school, a car, and other necessary expenses was also unavoidable; and volunteering to serve in the Bountiful Temple each week for about 6 hours was also on my schedule. Although enthusiastic about this additional responsibility of being a ward mission leader, how was I to both learn and fulfill this immense role in the midst of so many other priorities?

I came to learn, by studying 3rd Nephi 13:33 in The Book of Mormon, that service for God should precede other priorities. A more in depth story of this experience can be found here. However, fixing my service as first priority was only half of the puzzle to be solved. One of the many unanticipated pickles of this responsibility was finding a way to keep those called as ward missionaries enthusiastically and diligently involved in the ward's missionary efforts. Some of them were very self-motivated, but others were not. And since nearly everyone in the YSA ward was in the same phase of life, I was able to accurately predict from personal experience why the ward's missionary efforts were not everyone's first priority. School, work, and dating were on nearly everyone's plates, and were all very time-consuming. And I could easily understand why many reasoned that they were simply too busy to add on the work of reaching out to spiritually strengthen fellow ward members. How was I to help them learn, as I had, that first priorities should always be the Lord's work? How could I do this while remaining charitable and encouraging? And it even became more pressing when one of the ward missionaries came up and asked me, "How am I supposed to have time for all these missionary visits with everything else I have going on in my life?" I couldn't tell them to stop school, work, or dating as these were all necessary duties in life. I was presently unable to provide an answer to their question.

It didn't take long before I realized I could go no further in my leadership role while leaving this issue about the order of priorities untouched. But where was I to find the answer? Of course I could have searched Google for leadership techniques on motivating others; I could have checked out books on priorities from the library; I could have even posted the issue on Facebook or some other social media site and asked for input. Instead, I turned to what I knew to be the true source of all deep and sincere spiritual questions: the word of the Lord. As I studied, I was lead to the Lord's chastening of David Whitmer in the modern-day scriptures The Doctrine & Covenants:

"Behold, I say unto you, David, that you have feared man and have not relied on me for strength as you ought. But your mind has been on the things of the earth more than on the things of me, your Maker, and the ministry whereunto you have been called..."             ~ D&C 30:1-2

As I read these verses, it sounded far too familiar to the situation I was in the midst of that I could read no further. It soon dawned upon me that the concept I needed to teach was the importance of one's mindset. Was their mind focused on the things of the earth such as money, popularity, and reputation? Or was their mind centered on the work of the Lord? This, I came to learn, was in direct correlation with whether or not a ward missionary was actively involved in the work of the Lord.

Obviously with lots of preparation, I shared that scripture with as many of the ward missionaries as possible, ensuring to be bold but not overbearing. And gradually, many of them came to learn as I had learned that when the Lord's work is our first priority, everything else falls into place in life. With our mind set on the work of God, greater stability and peace was present. We came to see collectively that there is always time for helping to assist the Lord in spreading the good news of the Gospel to his children in need.