Make Time for Members Ricciardi must sound incredibly perfect to you. He had his weaknesses. He rarely worked with members. His sense of independence to a certain degree was a weakness (stubborn plus Italian is quite the combination). Ultimately, the members of the church are the best way to bring people into the gospel as I am sure you already know. Truthfully, a lot of members were intimidated by Ricciardi’s brash personality. Ricciardi always felt guilty when we were at member homes because cultivating member relations takes time, and he always felt like time was too precious. Hence, he saw member missionary work for the most part as a waste of precious time. Nevertheless it is extremely difficult to be a good missionary without getting the members involved. Take the time to do that. Lesson Learned One important experience I had, not with Ricciardi but because of Ricciardi, was a life changing event for me. After my first two months Elder Ricciardi transferred to another city. I spent the next two months with an Elder who had three months left on his mission. To be candid, he was “trunky”, which back in the day was a term for “ready to pack his trunk and go home”. Our first morning together he woke up at 9am(I had companion study alone and watched him sleep for over 4 hours), we left the flat (apartment) and had breakfast at a local café (which in my first two months with Ricciardi we had never done because we were both too poor to spend any money) and we basically took a day off for my new senior companion to acclimate to his surroundings. At first, I felt relieved. It felt good to just relax. We got along great, laughed a lot, one P day we left our area boundaries to play golf (something Ricciardi would have considered a sin AND it was against mission rules to leave your area without permission). The days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into a month. I started not sleeping well because I knew we were not doing the right thing. I was pressing this Elder (who was the senior companion) about street contacting, going to the local schools in the afternoon etc. He just wanted to take it easy. We had long lunches, we “hung out” at members’ homes, we changed P days on occasion to accommodate site seeing. By the end of our first month I felt sick. I realized that Ricciardi’s influence, which I was so happy to get out from under, was now in me. I knew what the right thing to do was. Soon enough my senior companion and I began to not get along. We began fighting (not literally, but verbally). One night after companion prayer, as we were going to bed, I went to his bedside and asked the Elder why he thought we were not getting along. He said “You are way too uptight Elder. Ricciardi must have brainwashed you or something”. I told him that we got along initially because we were both relaxing together. But we were not getting along now because one of us wanted to work harder, and one of us didn’t. I told him that if I was the one in the wrong to simply let me know. He agreed that we had essentially taken a month off. The next day our vigor for the work returned. I’m not trying to take credit here, but when transfer day came, I was transferred from Loughborough to Birmingham. This Elder thanked me for being able to share my frustrations effectively. I had used Ricciardi’s conversation word for word. Whenever you are not getting along with your companion, ask yourself “who of us wants to do right in this companionship.” If you get along great with your companion, ask yourself “are we getting along for the wrong reasons (mutual lack of obedience, work ethic, dedication, spirituality etc) or for the right reasons.Teaching with The spirit in D&C 50 verses 13-14, 17-22 it says:13 Wherefore, I the Lord ask you this question--unto what were ye ordained? 14 To preach my gospel by the Spirit, even the Comforter which was sent forth to teach the truth. 17 Verily I say unto you, he that is ordained of me and sent forth to preach the word of truth by the Comforter, in the Spirit of truth, doth he preach it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? 18 And if it be by some other way it is not of God. 19 And again, he that receive the word of truth, doth he receive it by the Spirit of truth or some other way? 20 If it be some other way it is not of God. 21 Therefore, why is it that ye cannot understand and know, that he that receive the word by the Spirit of truth receive it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth? 22 Wherefore, he that preach (Missionary) and he that receive (investigator or companion), understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. A few weeks into my companionship with Elder Ricciardi, I was ready to be the lead in teaching a discussion. I was nervous. We were teaching a family. The husband was a very articulate knowledgeable man. During the discussion, I really felt what I thought was the spirit. I say “thought” because it is a big challenge of a missionary to decipher if you are actually feeling the spirit, or if you just happened to be in a good mood. You know…you might have received a really awesome letter from home that morning, breakfast tasted especially good, your uncle sent extra money. Who knows the reason, but there is still personal doubt as a new/experienced missionary as to what would cause the kind of euphoric good feelings you might have while teaching someone the gospel. Anyhow, we reached a point in the discussion where I spoke about the First Vision. Deep emotion came over me as I recounted the story. Elder Ricciardi looked at me and I could tell he wanted me to identify the spirit that was there in our discussion, Ricciardi was feeling it too. Again doubts cropped into my mind, but I looked at the husband and said “the spirit is here with us, confirming the truthfulness of the things we are saying. How do you feel right now?” He replied “I feel fine, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it the spirit. You have a nice story to tell, it is interesting”. I didn’t know what to say, but Elder Ricciardi reliably stepped in. “Sir, that good feeling, as subtle as it may feel, is the spirit, letting you know these things are true”. Again, the man was adamant that he certainly felt good, but would hardly call that the spirit. Again, Ricciardi responded “Sir, we feel the spirit, and as representatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, can assure you that this same spirit is touching you now. We know this for one simple reason, we are telling you the truth, we feel the spirit, and the Lord has told us in the scriptures that when the preacher preaches by the spirit of truth and the hearer receives it by the spirit of truth, both are edified. In other words, because we are teaching you, we know if we feel the spirit, you feel it as well.”Again, the husband said “well, I also just had a cup of my favorite coffee, how do you know my good feelings aren’t from that?” Ricciardi replied, “Because there is no reason at this time, as we are teaching, for the Lord to ONLY want to edify US at your expense of time and hospitality. We know that you feel it, you may not understand these feelings at this time, you might not even want to agree with us on this matter, but we know you are feeling the spirit.”We were hastily asked to leave this man’s home. He definitely did not take kindly to the suggestion that he did not want to admit to assigning his good feelings to the same thing we were. Here is why this is such an important story. Those verses above unveil a very powerful concept vital to missionary work. When you are teaching by the spirit of truth, and you feel the spirit, know this…that the hearer of the message is feeling it too. Whether it is to the same magnitude as you or the same emotions is not relevant. Whatever “extra” good feeling they have, no matter how subtle, is the Lord’s promised mechanism from the above referenced verses that he that receiveth the word by the Spirit of truth receiveth it as it is preached by the Spirit of truth? Wherefore, he that preacheth and he that receiveth, understand one another, and both are edified and rejoice together. Now that experience seems like we certainly did not “rejoice” together, but that was the investigators choice, his freedom, if you will. Is this so? How are we to know? The truth is, the spirit was there, he felt it, we felt it, we identified it, and he chose to assign those feelings to something else. That is ok. He has that agency. But we did what we were supposed to do, knowing that the promise of the verses from D&C 50 indicate that if we feel it as the preachers of truth, the hearers are feeling it to. I testify to you that this is how missionary work gets done. Many will react as the man I just described. What you must come to terms with is that the Lord distributes his spirit in these discussions, but it is still a world of agency. Did we understand one another in the way the verse above meant? Perhaps only in the sense that we made clear the spirit was there and he made clear that his good feelings about our message doesn’t necessarily mean it was the spirit. Nevertheless, the spirit was there, we felt it, and he felt it, and he kicked us out, and we KNEW we had done what the Lord wanted us to do (or should I say that Ricciardi did what the Lord wanted me to do).Elder Ricciardi did not need him to agree with us to know that the spirit touched him, because the spirit touched us WHILE WE WERE TEACHING HIM THE TRUTH. If you will embrace these verses, open your mouth at all times in all places (just swing), be strictly obedient, your mission experience will change your life forever. These are courageous moments to boldly tell someone they are feeling something they don’t either understand or necessarily agree with. But here is the key, many will “rejoice together with you” and many won’t. You must be ready to make that bold statement when the spirit prompts, and not let fear (that tool of the devil and the devil alone) creep into your heart. BUT IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW THE PROMPTING, you are keeping investigators from the chance to understand that what they are feeling is directly correlated to the truth they are hearing. Remember, you teach truth and feel the spirit, know that they are feeling the spirit too. The difficulty comes in the courage to identify and explain it to the investigator, and the investigators willingness to accept that this is what’s happening. When you have meetings where the preacher (missionary) and hearer (anyone you are teaching, which includes your missionary companions) understand one another and rejoice together, it is life changing. Remember, this event still may not end in the investigator being baptized, but that does not take away from the courage to recognize and identify the spirit when teaching gospel truths, and the effect that such experiences have on you personally.You will not feel the spirit in every discussion that you teach, I sure didn’t. When you do feel the spirit, know that the spirit is not just touching you for your own personal edification and leaving everyone else in the discussion “out in the cold”. Heavenly Father can provide you those feelings of the spirit in your own private moments. While teaching investigators, he gives you those feelings to let you know that “he that preacheth and he that heareth” are in the presence of the spirit of truth, who is there to confirm the words being spoken. Don’t let an investigator who denies or chooses to not acknowledge the presence of the Holy Ghost make you lose confidence or else your future investigators will miss the opportunity to be taught the importance of what those feelings actually mean, and that those feelings come from God.The wisdom of our God is epitomized in the missionary program of the Church. The Church asks young people to have a goal to be worthy to “serve a mission”. What the outside world sees as brain washing, the Lord sees as striving for something so important that one would shun the vices of the world to not lose the privilege of serving a mission. Think of your life in 10 year increments starting from when you are baptized at 8 years old, from 8 to 18, 18 to 28, 28 to 38, and 38 to 48 and on and on. What 10 year segment contains the most life changing events? Answer: 18 to 28. So the Lord understood the value of kicking off that critical time of your life with a mission. What better commitment for such an important period than to forget yourself for 2 years, delay formal education, and focus on God, Jesus, and everyone else but yourself. It is the perfect example of the classic scriptural saying “to find yourself, you must lose yourself”. You gain 10 years’ worth of life experience from a mission. You leave at 19, 21 for the sisters, and return with 10 years of life wisdom and experience crammed into 18 to 24 months. In that age segment of 18 to 28, not necessarily in this order, you serve a mission, get an education, marry, choose a profession/occupation, and have children. There is no other 10 year increment with so much hanging in the balance. Wow, what a wise Heavenly Father to place the mission experience as the springboard for such a critical decade of life.
The Ricciardi Letter Part 5
The Prayer RoomThis last story runs very deep in my heart, as it represents a major turning point in my thinking about mission life. As I mentioned earlier, I was transferred to Birmingham as my second area. It was a tough blue collar city, populated with a lot of people from all over the world. My new companion was an Elder from California who had one month left on his mission. We were in a part of Birmingham known as Sparkhill. Tough neighborhoods, with lots of people from Pakistan and India. Very Muslim influence, so you can imagine how missionaries preaching Christianity might feel surrounded by mosques. I remember on the second or third day wondering “why put missionaries amongst people who are so devoutly religious but don’t care about Jesus Christ”. A month later my senior companion went home and I received a new companion from Germany who also only had one month left on his mission. This was very difficult for me, as I wondered if God was punishing me. It was very emotional for me to have had two consecutive months of sending missionaries home. Muslim area, two companions, last month for each. Month three I received a new companion and I became a senior companion. My new companion absolutely didn’t care about his mission, and was frankly biding his time, watching the clock, simply waiting to go home (and he had 14 months left).I deployed the Ricciardi work schedule on him, and he began to come around. 2 months later when he left, he thanked me, but he was really thanking Ricciardi. This was a tough area, we had taught very few discussions, handed out hardly any copies of the book of Mormon, no investigators to church since I had arrived. It was wearing on me. At that point in time I was called to be a trainer. I thought “what a bummer to have to train a new missionary in such an “armpit of the mission” area (please excuse that reference). My spirits where really low, because I had been working harder than ever, being more prayerful than ever, really obedient, and no one wanted to hear our message. At that same time, I was seeing missionaries in neighboring parts of Birmingham scheduling baptisms. One companionship bragged that they had just come back from three days in Scotland (not just outside our area, outside our mission, WHICH IS AN ABSOLUTE NO NO) on a site seeing outing and they had a baptism scheduled the next weekend. I couldn’t believe it. That night I asked the Lord, flat out, why do this to me. Why should I work so hard when those other Elders are having fun, being disobedient, and still baptizing.I believe this kind of pivotal moment comes into every missionary’s time in the field. It is a moment where you have to decide what is more important, obedience OR everything else…I was now praying to leave the city of Birmingham, because I’d had enough. When transfers came, I thought for sure I would leave (typically missionaries stayed in an area 3 to 4 months). I was now into month 7, but neither of us was transferred. Now I was really mad.The next morning after the news of no transfer, I got up and went into a spare room on the third floor of our flat that I regularly used for personal prayer. I said what I would describe as an angry prayer. I asked the Lord what the use of staying so darn obedient was if I was to have no baptisms. I said “Father, you are almighty, I pray over the map every day, I stop our bike rides at the slightest prompting to rethink what we are doing, where we are going, all to prove that I am listening, and you still send me to neighborhoods where there is nothing but vile, mean, personal rejection”. Ricciardi of course would have been overjoyed at those kind of prospects. I wasn’t. I could write 10 pages about what I said that morning in that damp, musty, moldy room.Then it happened. The answer to prayer that changed the course of my mission and frankly my life. Let me fast forward a minute to May of 2007 before I finish the prayer room story. I was working in New York City, living in New Canaan, CT (had lived there 14 years), and married with 6 children and one day I received a call from an old mission friend Michael Walker. We were never companions, but back in 1986 he and his companion at the time had moved in with me and my companion for three weeks while they looked for an apartment in another part of Birmingham.He was coming to New York City on business and asked if we could meet for breakfast. I had not seen or heard from Michael in over 6 years so I was surprised not only to hear from him, but that he sounded so anxious to see me. I wondered if he was okay or needed help. I picked him up from the airport that morning and we had breakfast at my favorite spot in Manhattan. We reminisced about a lot of mission memories, and then seriousness fell over our meal. He looked at me and said “Can I ask you a question about something that happened when I was living with you and Elder DeGala in Birmingham”. The strangest impression came over me when he asked that because at the very moment he asked the question I already knew what he was going to ask me… I knew this had to do with the “prayer room”.I quietly said “sure”. The first line out of his mouth was “there was this room on the third floor of that apartment in Birmingham...” I immediately raised my hand motioning for him to stop talking and I began weeping so uncontrollably that restaurant patrons sitting around us became uncomfortable and uneasy. He waited for me to respond. It took 10 minutes for me to gain my composure. He patiently waited, then continued, recounting to me that he had seen me pray in this moldy smelly room in our flat, and he had started using it for his own personal prayers. One morning he came to the room to pray and could hear me praying out loud in the room. He left and came back 10 minutes later and could still hear me praying. He returned several other times over the next hour intending to use the room for his own prayers, and could still hear me in there praying. I had never until that day prayed out loud in my personal prayers, nor had I prayed for longer than 5 minutes, but that morning, with all my frustrations and anger, I decided to say my prayer out loud and I had plenty to say. My friend recounted that though he could not hear what I was saying; when he pressed his ear to the door he could sense the earnestness and emotion of my prayer.He returned again and this time did not hear me praying, but below the door could still see my shadow. Another 20 minutes went by and upon hearing me open the door he came down the hall and saw my eyes almost swollen shut from crying. As we passed each other no words were exchanged. After telling me the story up to this point over breakfast, he began to weep, as he told me that he entered the room to pray and a flood of emotions enveloped him immediately without explanation, causing him to cry and wonder what had taken place in that room. So there we were at breakfast 21 years later, in New York City, and he wanted to ask me a simple question. “What happened in that room?” That brings us to the moment that changed my mission forever. What happened in that room is simple, for the first time in my whole mission I asked through earnest prayer for answers I deeply desired and needed, and I received an answer from the Lord, a literal answer that I could hear with the same clarity and resonance that my friend was talking with during breakfast.That morning I had prayed for close to 45 minutes when I decided to cease praying, still not having formally closed the prayer, just quiet in my thoughts and tears. I was having thoughts of going home, giving up. Then I heard this message: “Elder Humphrey, I am here. I know who you are. I sent you to those neighborhoods, the very ones where you experienced nothing but rejection. I prompted your changes in direction to even more difficult neighborhoods. I know where each of the elect in your area resides. I know their names. I could send you to those addresses only, and save you the time and sacrifice looking for them. BUT ELDER HUMPHREY, WHAT GOOD WOULD THAT SERVE YOU? The mission experience is to do what you are told, when you are told, to go where you are asked, and know that the blessing comes from enduring what I ask of you. This is not about you; it is about opening your mouth at all times in all places. Doing my will without thought to the end result or consequence… this is what serving a mission is.That day in September of 1986 completely changed my focus. My anger went away. I became cheerful again for the first time in many months. When doors slammed in our faces, I would say to my companions, “The Lord knows these doors are slamming in our faces. This is part of his plan, the experience. He sent us to this neighborhood; he needs to know we can be trusted servants. That we will actually go where he wants us to go, do what he wants us to do, when he wants us to do it”. I became jovial. Missionary work became fun, not work at all, because I stopped taking the rejection so personal and blaming myself. I now knew that all I had to do was talk to as many people as I could for the remaining 14 months, make sure that only the truth came out of my mouth, be prayerful about EVERYTHING, and the Lord would do the rest. The week before I was transferred out of Birmingham we baptized a woman. Nearly 8 months in that area and we finally saw someone step into the waters of baptism. Patience and prayer saved me from possibly quitting.CS Lewis, one of my favorite authors said something that to me captures what it means to see the Lord Jesus Christ while on your mission. He said “We can say we believe in Christ as we believe in the sun at noon day, not that we can see it, but that by it, we can see everything else”. The things you will witness on your mission, is what makes you a witness of the Lord Jesus Christ. By no means am I suggesting you are a witness in the way that our apostles and prophets are, I am saying that to see people change their lives, to love people from another place, is a testament to the existence of God and his son Jesus Christ. Even as I write this, I am looking out my kitchen window, I see the trees swaying, I see grass and flowers, but I don’t see the sun. However, it is the light of the sun that allows me to see what I see, and that is how I know the sun exists. The existence of the Son of God has that same value to us, as CS Lewis put so well, it is because we can see at all that we know Christ lives.Thank you for the opportunity to share some thoughts. I have a deep abiding passion about missionary work. I know that your family does too because I have seen it. I will never forget the unconquerable spirit I became on my mission. To walk off that plane and know that I gave it my all was a powerful testament to me that God lives. As you know, you cannot fake or feign a mission. I have over my post mission years attended many missionary homecomings. It’s not hard to tell who really gave themselves to the work, and who had a two year “somewhat interesting experience”. Going on a mission, and serving a mission are two different things. Most anyone can go on a mission, but serving a mission is a whole other ballgame. It is in your blood and upbringing to be nothing but the best missionary. Give Satan a good strong kick in the mouth and “just swing”. Thank you for your service to the Lord.