Week 21

Hola,

This week I've been trying to be like Captain Moroni, more on that later though.  Happy football season by the way.  

This week went well.  We have two investigators that are progressing really well so far and have baptismal dates for the start of this next month.  We also have a lot of other investigators that are steadily increasing in the faith, and we hope to have baptisms for them in the near future.  

I've also learned that the easiest way to make friends with people in Mexico is to baptize the members of their family.  There is a less active woman in the ward here that recently decided that she wanted to go back to church on her own free will.  At the same time she has a son that's eight years old, and she wanted him to be baptized.  Because she had been less active for a while, and the ward here isn't the most organized, we got to help her plan the baptism and she asked me to baptize her son.  Since the baptism, she has become a very active member of the ward and has been talking with the missionaries a lot.  It's just another example of how the gospel is able to bring people together and draw them closer to the Lord.

This week I've been trying to be like Moroni.  This is because whenever Moroni is talking, he sees the world in a very binary way.  In other words, for Moroni there is only right or wrong, good or bad, righteous or wicked.  Take for example his battle against the Zoramites(an ancient race of Nephite apostates).  During this battle, Moroni and his army through means of strategy and better equipment, as well as strength from the Lord had managed to surround the Zoramites and were at the point of destroying them if Moroni so desired.  At this point, He called a cease fire, and promised to let the Zoramites go if they surrendered their weapons of war and make a vow to never take up arms against the Nephites again.  

Originally, the Zoramites said that they were willing to give up there weapons and go in peace.  They did not however agree to make a promise that they felt they couldn't keep.  In response to this, Moroni responds: we will end the conflict.  He refused to retract the words that he had said, and decided, knowing that the best option was for the Zoramites to make this vow to continue fighting so as to compel them to make this vow or eliminate the potential threat in its entirety.  And as he planned, after a little bit more fighting, with the Nephites clearly in a better position to fight, the Zoramites agreed to his demands.  

What we can learn here, is that Moroni was justified to make his demands.  The Zoramites had attempted to attack the Nephite cities to bring them into captivity and subjugation.  Moroni only demanded that the fighting stop indefinitely, and until this goal was achieved, he refused to stop fighting.  He wasn't looking for a short term fix, he was looking for a long term solution to the problem.  

As missionaries and members of the church, we have the chance to be like Moroni every day in this regard.  Often at times, Satan tries to deceive us by making us choose between two good things, or tries to tell us that a little bad is acceptable if we can accomplish some good in the end. For example, Moroni could have chosen to listen to the Zoramites and agree to end the fight there with the condition of handing over there weapons.  But had he done that, the Zoramites would have returned with a larger army in a few years and continued the fighting. 

We all face our own Zoramite army today. we might feel that we can be justified in speaking harshly to someone because we disagree with one of their beliefs or ideas.  We might be struggling with addictions, and feel justified in partaking in smaller doses than normal.  We might think that so long as we meet the basic requirements for our callings in the church we can say that we are magnifying our callings.  We might say that we are keeping the Sabbath day holy if we just go to church for an hour or two before we go to watch the big game.  While all of these ideas might sound tempting, and many of us hear them regularly, they are just that temptations of the devil.  If we yield to them, we lay the foundation of our own destruction.

I invite everyone to be like Moroni.  Be unmovable in the faith, an unafraid to say no to sin, even if it seems like an easy of justifiable option at the time.  After all, the scriptures say that if all men were as Moroni, the very powers of hell would be shaken to their foundation so that the devil could have no power over the hearts of the children of men.

Elder Gooden