Homecoming

Well, I always thought I'd be here, but I didn't think it would come this fast. Buenos Dias, I have to start with that 'cause it makes me feel comfortable. I'm sorry. I also have ADHD, so if I ramble on a tangent, I'm also sorry. If it doesn't make sense, it made sense in my brain, so I'm really sorry about that. My mission was awesome; I loved every single second of it. Even when it was hard, I loved it. The mission is the greatest place anyone can ever be in their entire life—until after the mission. Then, it's great to be here, I guess. Truthfully, if I'm being honest, I do not want to be here; I want to be in my mission. And every time I think of that, I think of Jeffrey R. Holland's voice ringing in my head, "Remember Lot's wife," and I get really scared because I'm looking back in the past. It's because I grew a lot in my mission; I had a lot of spiritual experiences. I know it's a foundation, but it means a ton to me of how it was just anything anyone could want and more. Puerto Rico is the best place anyone can serve a mission. I know a lot of people that would agree with that.

So, I started my mission in a little beach town called Aresvido. I had an amazing trainer who taught me how to work hard, and it was awesome. We baptized a super cool lady named Carmen, and my mission was going amazing. I was homesick for like two weeks, and that was it. I remember always hearing that the first six weeks were the hardest, and I disagree with that. I think the first six weeks were amazing. I think I got lucky. But after I was in Aresvido, I was about four months into this routine that I fell in love with. Then, the Lord thought it was time to change. Change truly became my favorite part of the mission. But when I changed my first area, it was super hard for me. I got transferred to a small mountain town known as Ibonito. When I got there, that was my refiner's fire. That's when the Lord was truly helping me become the missionary I needed to be. In Ibonito, it was super hard for me because the house was tiny. I had a companion who was an awesome person, but the way he worked was so different from my last two companions. As a missionary, it's just kind of hard when you switch companions for the first few times because their work style isn't wrong, but it's just different. It was on my nerves like crazy. Then the branch president's wife was mad at me because I was one of the pickiest eaters ever. She was talking about food, and I made a face, and then I got called into the office. Everything was going wrong. I had bed bugs, and then I was trying to call my parents to ask for some relief, and then my parents told me that my dog died, and I was like, "What is going on? This is horrible." I just wanted to go back to Aresvido. I had no desire to go home, but I wanted to go back to Aresvido. I remember I was praying super hard for a sign, for some relief, and people were telling me all these things. There were so many scriptures shared with me in the district, lots of things were happening, and nothing was working. Then one morning, I remember in the apartment, I was kneeling down praying, and I wouldn't say I had a dream; it was more like a vision. This is something super special to me, and it's lasted with me since. But I fell asleep, and I had this dream of a huge white field, and there were tons of white. It was kind of like Lehi's vision where it was pure and white. There was this beautiful yellow butterfly that I was running after and chasing, and as I chased after this butterfly, I was running and running and running. I went to grab the butterfly, and I finally got super close to it, it closed. And I was so confused about what happened. I had no idea what any of this meant. I had no idea what was going on. I woke up from that dream, that vision. I woke up with an inspired thought that came to my head about how long the life cycle of a butterfly was. I asked my companion, and he was like, "I have no idea." I've asked him about this story after, and he has no recollection of this, but it was something super important to me, super special, and I ended up looking up the life cycle of a butterfly, and it was 4-6 weeks, and I mean a missionary transfer is 6 weeks. There's a lot of symbolism in the transformation of a butterfly and the spiritual changes to become who you are, and it's really correlated with Jesus Christ. I was wondering about this, and things still kept getting worse. I was throwing up in the morning, probably because of anxiety; it could have been a sickness, I have no idea. And then finally, my mission president decided to give me a priesthood blessing and an interview. And I remember we were in the house, he shuts the doors to the room, and we were talking in our room. The first thing he said was, "Elder Tew, happiness is a lot like a butterfly. We're always trying to run after it and grab it, but when we try to catch it, it runs away from us. If you're always trying to chase happiness, it'll elude you. The way to obtain happiness is to live after the manner of happiness, and like a butterfly, if you're small, reverent, and living the way that you should, it'll just tap you on the shoulder." And this has always stood out to me because I told no one about this dream, and the first thing my mission president says was "happiness is like a butterfly," and I'm like, how does he know to tell me this? And I've talked to him about this after, and he was just sharing a talk given by Jeffrey R. Holland. It's insane how God is so aware of every single person, that every single person that God knows, he knows us perfectly and he knows exactly what's going to help us. I'm sure my dad shared things with me and my district leaders and my zone leaders to try and help me, but this is exactly what I needed to hear in that moment and exactly what helped me a lot. For that manner of happiness, it's such an interesting concept. The reason I love it so much is because the manner of happiness, the way that we obtain happiness, is truly just living the gospel of Jesus Christ. A lot of people, when they think about the gospel of Jesus Christ, they think the first principles and ordinances of the gospel are the articles of faith. That's not the gospel of Jesus Christ. Those are the first principles and ordinances of the gospel. And so it's pretty important to me to realize that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the teachings of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ's teachings and what he taught is the gospel of Jesus Christ. That the first principles and ordinances are the doctrine. The gospel truly does bless lives by living it. And something that's always stood out to me is the sermon on the mount. Because personally, I find the sermon on the mount super inspiring because that's when Jesus had the most people to talk to, and he decided to share what he shared. And a lot of it comes from loving your neighbor and being humble and selfless. I was pondering this manner of happiness a lot because in that moment, I decided that it really doesn't matter where I am or what I'm doing, but as long as I am humble and repenting, I can have happiness. And I saw that throughout the rest of my mission, and pondering the happiness of a missionary and the success. In Puerto Rico, you think that the rejection is like a door slammed in your face or a Book of Mormon thrown in the trash can or hanging out the door for when you come back. But Puerto Ricans like to play with you; they like playing games. They'll give you their phone number and tell you to come over Tuesday at two, and they knew they had a volleyball tournament for their daughter Tuesday at two. Like they love wasting your time, and I have no idea why. If they get your hopes all the way up here, then you show up and it's like, "Oh wow." So that was always interesting to me, that the rejection was like that, but yet, we were so happy. As missionaries, we were always living up to the manner of happiness, and we weren't perfect. We weren't perfectly humble or live perfectly like that, but we were very, very repentant, and I loved a lot of times my favorite part about my mission was the repentance. Every single day, we were calling people unto repentance. And most of the time, we weren't just walking out there, telling people to repent. More so, we were inviting them to keep commitments. And keeping a commitment is inviting people to repent. I think, and I think as missionaries, we were repenting every single day, every single day, because of the commitments we were keeping as well. And because we were repenting and living that gospel and being humble enough to repent, we were able to have the spirit and change.

There are a few people I want to tell a story about. So, about a year into my mission, I got transferred to the British Virgin Islands, and the reason I love the British Virgin Islands so much is because those people literally have nothing, and they were so happy. The people of the Virgin Islands were so happy. They worked like four jobs, but they were the most God-fearing people I've ever seen in my entire life. No matter what religion it was, they were at church 30 minutes early, they were living the gospel in a way that they should. I know that it doesn't really matter where we are, that as long as we are living the gospel of Jesus Christ, that's what truly matters.

So, it was super inspiring because we met this man, Franklin. And Franklin has been this super big inspiration to me. The day I landed on Tortola, we met Franklin in a park, and he was in his Baptist church singing in a choir. I remember him telling us that, sorry, this just means so much to me. Franklin was telling us that he was super mad at his Baptist church and his Baptist choir because, kind of like Joseph Smith, Jesus Christ told him they were teaching doctrine and the commandments of men, and they were preaching, confessing with their lips, but their hearts were far from him. And so he told us that he said a prayer in his church that he would do anything to find the truth, and we were in his path at the right time and in the right place in that park that day. Franklin, he wasn't a person who was so spiritually smart, he just lived the gospel of Jesus Christ so well. He was so humble and so repentant, so willing to change for the Lord. It's truly that what we need to be, we just need to be willing and humble to repent. None of us are expected to be perfect. We're just expected... the gospel isn't about perfection, it's about progression to perfection. I think that part is super important, that we are progressing to be perfect. It's not that we're being perfect in the first day.

Something that I love Franklin for is every single time we invited him to keep a commitment, he would keep it. In the first lesson we had with him, we were teaching him, sorry. There's a religion on the Virgin Islands called the Black Hebrew Israelites. They are super obsessed with the tribes of Israel. And this guy comes up and starts asking us about the gospel, and our friend Franklin, it's the first lesson we're having with him, and he starts bashing this guy. And it was so interesting to me that he was so focused on loving your neighbor and changing and repenting that he just knew to listen to us with the spirit that he could feel.

So, the day of Franklin's baptism comes around, and we'd actually baptized another man named Algren the same day. And we told him to be waiting at 6:30, and a ride would come to pick him up because Franklin doesn't have a car. Franklin had to, in the Virgin Islands, they had to hitch hike a lot. They had to catch rides a lot, so we had a member who would always take him. So we told the member to pick him up at this spot by the road, by the street at 6:30. Somehow, Franklin got it mixed up that it was 3 in the morning. So Franklin woke up at 3 in the morning, and he sat at the place where he was supposed to be waiting for 2 and a half hours until 6 am waiting to be baptized. It just means so much to me that not only did he call us, and we didn't answer, but the ride never showed up, and he went back home. So when we showed up, we didn't even see on our phones that we missed a call from him until we were at the beach waiting for him. We called him and asked what happened, and we decided to move on with Algren's baptism without him and deal with Franklin after. It's so important to me to see how repentant he was and how humble he was because instead of kicking against the pricks, he could have decided these missionaries are arrogant, they didn't answer the phone, or this is a sign from God that I shouldn't get baptized because it got mixed up, or all these many things that he could have chosen. But he stayed humble and true to the feelings of the Spirit that he had. He knew that the Lord put him in our path to join the church, to make covenants with God. It's not about the true church; it's about our relationship with Jesus Christ. And I think that if we truly love the Savior and if we truly have that faith, we will end up in this church because this is the only place that we can have that relationship with the Savior. And Franklin knew that; he knew that he needed to be baptized that day. And not even anything, this is just the amount of humility that this dude had, he canceled work the rest of the day to get baptized at 3 pm that afternoon. It meant so much to him to get baptized that he decided to do it. It just means so much to me because Franklin, he's someone who truly changed my life because he was someone who was so humble and so willing to repent. I think that's such a good principle, is that it's not about being perfect. And somewhere, not in the doctrine of the church, but in the culture of the church, it's taught that your kids need to be perfect, and if you're not perfect and you mess up, you're no longer allowed in the church. And I have no idea where that came from because that is not the gospel of Jesus Christ, at all. Jesus Christ hung out with sinners; he told them to go and sin no more. He wants us to come here; he wants us to repent; he wants us to be humble; he wants us to change our lives and become closer to him. The Hebrew root of repentance is not to be perfect; it's actually coming back from a path to the correct path. So I think it's super important that we try and get rid of that culture because there are so many kids that won't repent because their parents are scared of what they'll say to them. They're scared that their parents will kill them, and their stake president would kill them, their bishop would kill them because they messed up. I don't know why it's like that because that is horrible. First of all, these aren't even our kids; these are God's children, and because he loves us so much, he gave us his only begotten son. And second of all, these kids are so scared to repent because of their parents that they end up missing out on the blessings and that manner of happiness. I think it's super important that we get rid of that. The gospel is all about change. It's all about coming back to that path, and none of us are perfect. I make mistakes every single day. Us as missionaries, we make mistakes every single day, but we are so willing to keep these commitments that we're repenting every single day. And I think that's why Russell M Nelson invited us to repent every single day. It's daily repentance that truly brings us happiness, coming back to the path, the true manner of happiness, the covenant path of Jesus Christ that brings us that joy.

And so, I want to share a story about another family that I met, a couple. Me and my companion, Elder Donaldson, we were walking, and Elder Donaldson is a super awesome person. He's someone who really changed my mission. Elder Donaldson and I were walking in Dirado, a small beach town about 30-40 minutes west of San Juan. And that day, because we were repenting and living the gospel of Jesus Christ, we received a prompting to visit a less active. For me, this story was always super important because this neighborhood had been knocked countless times. There were 4 or 5 less actives that lived in this little organization. We actually, well, the transferred before I got transferred with him, he what's called white-washed the area from sister missionaries, and they had a few friends they were teaching already in this neighborhood. So for us, it would have been so easy to be like, "Yeah, we don't need to go there. It's already been knocked too many times. The missionaries have talked to this person a million times." But we decided to go, and we ended up getting lost. I remember Elder Donaldson said, "Everything happens for a reason." We walked down this path, we pressed forward, not questioning what the Lord had in store for us. We were in the right place at the right time because our hearts were humbled and we were repentant. I loved this couple, Jose and Marie. They're a couple that truly changed my life because not only was Jose an atheist in the beginning, and he started keeping his commitments and changed to join the church, but him and Marie were having so many marriage problems. We were dealing with so many marriage problems in our lessons, and every single time we would teach them about the manner of happiness, and it stood out to me because I went through what I went through in Abonito, and I was able to teach these people exactly what they needed to hear for their marriage. It's super interesting to me that they went to church every single week after we invited them. And they were so willing to keep commitments. They were some of the busiest people I've ever met in my entire life. Marie was working, Marie had college, Jose was working a full-time job; he owns an air conditioning company. And in Puerto Rico, air conditioning companies are huge. It's 95 degrees every single day, humid, peoples A/C goes out all the time. An air conditioning company in Puerto Rico, you're super busy, and he ran the whole island, so he's driving all the way around the island. It looks like it's a small island, but it's actually pretty big. It takes like 3 and a half hours to get from Carboroho to get to San Juan, which is like the bottom point. It's huge. And it just meant so much to me that they were so willing to keep those commitments, and that's what changed their hearts. I'm glad keeping the commitment of reading the Book of Mormon or coming to church with us. They were repenting and coming unto Christ. And that was us inviting them and keeping our purpose as missionaries. I ended up baptizing Jose and Marie. It was a super spiritual experience, but before we baptized them, we had to invite them to be baptized 10-12 times. We had 10 or 12 lessons where we had to invite them to be baptized and they said no. And we had no idea why they kept saying no because they were reading the Book of Mormon, they were coming to church, they had member friends. Every time we prayed about what we should teach them, it always came back to baptism. And so it's just super important to us, at least to me the importance of persisting with the people that aren't changing and ministering to those that need ministering. Because we could have invited them 3 times and thought, "Oh yeah, we're done," but we knew that the Lord was telling us it was their time, and we just had to keep trying. And I think that's important with all people too. Especially going back to repentance. There are so many people who just need love and support. They just need someone to keep pushing them to be better and giving them that love that they need, and they will eventually get there. And it was just a super spiritual experience when they accepted a baptism date because we decided to get down on our knees and pray. And all 4 of us got in a circle, and we all kneeled and prayed, and all of us said a prayer that they should get baptized. After that experience, both of them got baptized. My companion got transferred to St. Kitts, and I was lucky enough to baptize both of them. It was a super spiritual experience because those two are two people that changed my life. I'm super grateful that I was able to be in the right place at the right time to help bless them.

My mission was amazing, and it was everything I wanted and more. I could go on forever and end up talking about more people that I found and taught. I just loved it. I loved being a missionary. Missionary work is amazing. It's like what Russell M Nelson said, "The best place to be." I don't know how to say that in English, gathering Israel. I know that the Book of Mormon is true. I came to know that the Book of Mormon is truly the only way that people can overcome addictions and join the church. If you get someone reading the Book of Mormon every single day, it's about consistency, not about quantity. If you get them reading the Book of Mormon every single day, they will come unto Jesus Christ. Every single person that I met and taught, that read the Book of Mormon, was baptized. Every single person that truly read the Book of Mormon with real intent was baptized. In my personal life, I was going over 700 days reading the Book of Mormon every single day, and I am not sick of it. And I am so happy from reading the Book of Mormon. There is true power in the Book of Mormon, and I know that that book is true. And because that book is true, I know that Joseph Smith was the prophet of the Restoration. I know that there is no way that that young boy wrote that book that changes so many lives, that gets rid of so many people's addictions by reading it. It's about replacing those addictions with a good addiction. And if you replace those things that you're struggling with, with the Book of Mormon, it changes everything. I know that this is the true church of Jesus Christ and the only place where we can have those relationships and covenants with God. I invite all of you to read the Book of Mormon every day. There is true power in reading the Book of Mormon. If you don't think the church is true or you need help, you need to read the Book of Mormon. The Book of Mormon is the key to everything. I know that it's true, and I live by that. I say these things in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.