We are doing a great work and cannot come down!

We just finished specialized training and it was so awesome.  We played the talk from Elder Uchtdorf entitled, “We Are Doing a Great Work and Cannot Come Down.” for our doctrine.  We had some wonderful role plays on teaching and finding and played some team building games. 

I wanted to talk a little about Elder Uchtdorf’s talk.  We stopped it several times to discuss different points he was making.  We first talked about change.  It’s important for each missionary to always know when we come to trainings that they may feel the spirit when they are in the meetings but if they walk out the door and never change then their time spent there has been a waste.  We want to change always.  It’s beautiful.

E. Uchtdorf talks about What Matters Most and that we could all give great talks about it, but, “our weakness is in failing to align our actions with our conscience.”  Sometimes we sacrifice doing the best things in place of doing good things. 

This sure can be true in missionary work.  At this point we stopped the video and talked about the difference of doing good; “missionary like activity”, vs. best; doing “missionary work”.  Sometimes as a missionary it’s easy to be comfortable being busy, but not really be focused on finding people to teach or teaching when we have the opportunity.  Missionaries, who are finding and teaching Christ no matter what they are doing during the day, are doing the best way, to spend their time and we define that as missionary work.

Then E. Uchtdorf goes on to give the great story of Nehemiah.  Listen to the talk https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2009/04/we-are-doing-a-great-work-and-cannot-come-down?lang=eng  It’s very inspiring.  I listened to it 5x’s over the 5 days and never got tired of it.

Next we related Nehemiah’s story to the Missionaries.  As Missionaries we face opposition, we must be consecrated and move forward no matter what distractions we face, we must, “have a mind to work”, and we must be firmly planted in the fact that, “We are doing a great work and must not come down.”  I think the missionaries could relate on many levels of how we sometimes come down off the wall and loose our focus.  We had a wonderful, inspiring, open discussion about being firmly resolved to be strictly obedient, and helping each other to be more firmly resolved to have a mind to work, so that we cannot come down.  We have resolved as a mission to change.  The spirit always invites change and we must, “align our actions with our conscience.”  I felt a lot of power in all 5 days of our training as we saw missionaries excited to give more and do more for the Lord.  We asked them to go out and give it their all for 4 days and come back and report.  We had those follow up accountings over the weekend and they were awesome.  Many missionaries shared their personal witness of miracles and blessings that happened when they consecrated more to the Lord.  We are now doing the same thing until interviews.  Then we will do it until Elder Nelson comes. 

We are doing a great work and cannot come down.  We are preparing our hearts and minds to receive an apostle of the Lord, Elder Russell M. Nelson who is coming to our mission April 18 & 19.  We are committed to being 200% accountable for ourselves and each other.  I felt the Lords hand in guiding us and directly giving us this training.  (I feel that a lot in our trainings I just don’t have time to write them all down.)  And it is inspiring to see our good missionaries, with their good hearts be willing to give more to the Lord.  They are so fantastic.  What amazing youth this gospel creates.  It reminds me of Joseph Smith’s powerful statement:

“Let us here observe, that a religion that does not require the sacrifice of all things, never has power sufficient to produce the faith necessary unto life and salvation.”