This week in Come, Follow Me, we have been reading about going up from Babylon unto Zion, reading the parables in Matt 25, etc. As I prepared my thoughts to share in this talk, I felt to share something from my youth.
I grew up in a family where I remember us reading the scriptures together every day, praying every morning and evening and asking a blessing on the food at every meal. We had Family Home Evening every week and on the first Sunday of the month. Church was held on Sunday morning and evening, with MIA on Tuesday night, Relief Society and Primary on weekdays, and regular activities and service projects, building chapels, carting bricks and sand, gardening, cleaning windows, camping, hiking, and so much more.
I remember sitting in the Carletonville chapel at age about 9 years, listening to Elder Boyd K Packer, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ who was there to dedicate the chapel, saying to civic leaders who were present that the Saints that they saw in that congregation would be 'part of the solution and not part of the problem'. That resonated with me and I wanted to have that mindset - well, I hope that I live up to that mindset!
We started this sacrament meeting with the hymn #249 'Called to Serve'. For some 36 years I was a public servant. I was a chef in the army, a laboratory technician in the Tygerberg Medical School, a gardener, scientist, botanist, record keeper, education officer, technologist, and had leadership roles in IT, health and safety, and other things, and I served in several other roles at South African National Biodiversity Institute. I served in other places outside of the public service sector. I served for two years as a missionary, plus a year with Sally as a BYU Pathway missionary. During all of my youth and adult life I served as class president or secretary, branch president, quorum president, district/branch/stake/ward clerk, teacher, ward mission leader, and in various roles as leader/administrator/teacher, bishop, stake patriarch, ministering.. In all of these roles I was serving and not being served. I loved hearing King Charles say during his coronation that he is there as King of Great Britain to serve and not to be served.
I often had my mother remind me that saving money was better than earning more because money saved has already been taxed and tithed. I appreciate my experience with ecology, especially plants that are the source of life as primary producers in the web of life. We, and all life on Earth survive because of the presence of plants. I was happy to be able to build Zion by paying tithes and offerings and to build South Africa by paying taxes. The more that I earned, the more tithes and taxes I was able to contribute for building up the Kingdom of God on the Earth and for building our dear land South Africa.
I also think of several times that people were not sure that they wanted to be sealed to family members, or to be associated with certain people, because they had bad feelings towards them. I reassured them that if they and those family members or associates were welcomed into the Celestial Kingdom, then they would be Celestial beings! Would we not want to be with Celestial beings? I always encourage people to work on becoming a Celestial being and trying to inspire others to become Celestial beings.
We lived in the Krugersdorp branch and ward - it included people living and working at Rand Leases Gold Mine, Randfontein, Magaliesberg, Rustenburg, and many far flung places. I remember someone not having transport arranged for a Sunday morning. In those days of the 1960s we did not have the easy communication of cell phones or e-mails, and so he left home very early and walked about 31 km to the Kugersdorp Town Hall where we met, and he was early for priesthood meeting at 9 am. My family gave him a ride back home after Church that day.
When Sally and I lived in Nelspruit with our two oldest children, we had members who arrived from Sabie about 60 km away, Sabie Sands Nature Reserve about 110 km away, and Barberton about 43 km away. I home taught branch members, travelling some 16 km, 60 km and 43 km each way each month.
We had a brother in Panorama Ward who, when living in Baragwanath years before, had walked some 16 km to the Ramah chapel. Many people in the Eastern Cape and other rural areas walk great distances to attend church every Sunday. The Saviour and His disciples walked great distances from Nazareth to Jerusalem, Cana, Bethlehem, Galilee, and so forth. Would Jesus have arrived too late to prepare the sacrament or to be in good time before the meetings were due to start? Will we follow His example?
The Lord is my shepherd. I love Psalm 23. He cares for us. He asks us to care for the sheep of His fold. We agreed to it before we were born. We were reserved to be born in these latter days with so many wonderful blessings - and with every wonderful blessing comes challenges that refine us to make us better in building Zion in 2025. I pray that we will rise to our potential and be what the Lord wants us to be in building up the Kingdom of God on the Earth. May we specifically be builders and not wreckers.
If we had faith, repented, were baptised and received the gift of the holy ghost, then we have been cleansed. But if we do not continue on the covenant path, or if we sin because we're promised free forgiveness, we have left the covenant path - we are not keeping our covenant. We need to remember that Jesus Christ said that of those to whom much is given, much is required. (Luke 12:48) He also said that 'I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise.' (Doctrine and Covenants 82:10) I have a special testimony that everyone will be blessed for all of the good that they did, but they cannot be given credit for anything that they neglected to do when they could have done it! Blessings withheld are not punishment, but are failure on our part.
The words of Jesus Christ in the 4 gospels tell us very clearly that being born of the water and of the spirit are not just once off, but continually, for as long as we live, especially serving regularly in the Temple on behalf of others, and each week as we partake of the sacrament. We have covenanted to not just be consuming, but producing, not just receiving, but giving, not just demanding, but supplying. We learned to not be burying, but doubling or magnifying or multiplying that which is given to us according to our several ability. (Matt 25, Alma 5)
We are to be shepherds, united, a fruitful bough. (John 15, 17. Matt 5 to 7, 3 Ne 12 to 15, Ez 34:2,31, Ps 23)
By entering into a covenant with our Father in Heaven, we are committing to being servants, sacrificing. We agreed to come to this mortal experience in order to serve the Lord and His children, facing opposition in all things, but learning to rise and shine despite the darkness around us, being like those tiny fireflies that are so delightfully visible in the dark.
No individual, family, community, nation, or Zion can be sustainable without everyone serving and working to the extent that he or she is able. Even if not in the chapel every Sunday, we can be as active as Elder Michael Cziesla's Oma who taught her family the gospel, the scriptures, the hymns, so that her son could recognise the name of her church when they moved to a new city and he saw one of the chapels. (Oct 2025 General Conference). Sometimes we have seasons in our lives where we are less capable than we might be at other times - we were all babies, some of us will become handicapped, less capable, dependent on the service of others. But we will be acknowledged for what we did when we could, not condemned for what we did not do when we were less capable.
I love to consider how a family member magnified his small talent. He lived to nearly age 80. He worked as a Hospital Porter at Red Cross Memorial Children's Hospital and Somerset Hospital for about 50 years. He also served in Boy Scouts and St Johns Ambulance Service. All of the time he was as someone of about age 12 years, possibly due to his mother having had a fall that damaged his brain before he was born. He touched hearts and lives as he wheeled patients about. I am grateful to have had him as part of my life because I learned so much from him.
I have known people who are deaf, blind, have cerebral palsy, birth defects, defects resulting from accidents, wars, illnesses, cancers, dementia, sometimes consequences of doing good to others (like contracting HIV or COVID because of serving someone they did not know was infected). They have been productive regardless of their circumstances.
Are we leaven, salt, light, or combinations of two or all three? Leaven is like yeast, those tiny cells that are dispersed throughout the dough and as they respire they produce gas that makes the bread rise. Small and simple things do amazing things. Fireflies that we are seeing at the moment are 3 mm long and the source of the light is about 1 mm, and yet we see it very distinctly in the dark, even at a distance of several metres. Salt is also small and simple, and yet it adds flavour, cleansing, healing, melting ice. We can do amazing things, even when we are small and simple, or when we do small and simple good things.
Elder Godoy quoted President James E. Faust who stated, “It has been said that this church does not necessarily attract great people but more often makes ordinary people great.”
My one sister once told me one year after she had helped typing the financial report that our father paid more tithing than anyone in the ward. Our family had few luxuries. I had to mow the lawns, prune trees, grow vegetables, clean house, cook, grind wheat, grow vegetables. My mother made fudge, Turkish delight, etc to contribute to supporting my older brother on mission. I sewed on buttons, darned socks. We lived by the adage 'Fix it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.' Sally and I still do. I recently reversed a shirt collar so that the shirt can serve me well for a few more years.
I had sacrament bread in my tooth last week until after the sacrament meeting. I have not hurried to have the tooth fixed since at the moment we are using money particularly carefully and our medical aid has run out. I have often wondered what Adam's teeth were like? What about Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jesus, Peter, James John, Moses, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young? What were their beds like, their food, or their joints, or arthritis, or any kind of malady? Do I have to have everything perfect in my life when such forebears put up with less than perfect lives?
In Come, Follow Me this week we have been reading about preparing for the Second Coming. The parable of the talents, the ten virgins, and so much that the Saviour taught is preparing us for when we will report to the Father on what we did with the talents that He gave to us, with the callings that we magnified, with how fruitful we were, multiplying, replenishing, subduing, and having dominion over all that He entrusted to us.
In 1 Ne 7 we read about how Lehi sent his sons to fetch the family of Ishmael as the Lord wanted that they 'should take daughters to wife, that they might raise up seed unto the Lord in the land of promise.' The focus was not on companionship, attraction, or sexual gratification, but on human capital development. In so many instances in my lifetime I have had friends who would be very able to rear great future leaders, but who chose to have no children because they did not want to bring them up in this wicked world, or they did not want the inconvenience or burden or expense of raising children. They could have been part of the solution to the problem, but chose to bury their talent. In many cases it is like NIMBY (Not in my back yard). 'The world needs leaders, but let others provide them and I'll sit and moan and criticise when they are less than perfect.'
Let me address the children and youth that one day might extend callings to leaders in decades to come. When you call someone to serve, you might use a list of questions that I used years ago about their family, their talents, their interests, their commitments, their career, testimony of the Gospel, time and availability. After such an exploratory interview you will feel if it is appropriate to extend the call because you know from the Spirit that it is right, and you can comfortably say that the Lord wants them to serve in that specific way. If you do not feel that the call is right for them at this time, thank them for the chat and they might have no idea why you had the chat.
Remember that we are not running a kraal, but growing sheep and setting up a safe and functional kraal for the sheep to be wonderfully productive. I was astounded one day when a sister came up to me and told me that when I had called her to serve as the Primary president in Mowbray Branch several decades before that, she had felt that she was the last person that would ever serve as a Primary president. But, she said that the calling changed her life and it prepared her for serving in the smaller George branch while living in Plettenberg Bay. Let us not second-guess the Lord when He prompts us to call the least likely person to serve as Primary president, or teacher, or secretary. Let us remember the other hymn #270 that we sang 'I'll go where you want me to go, dear Lord'.
There are basically two kinds of farmers. One kind grows animals quickly to let them become big and then they slaughter or sell them for meat. The other kind nurtures the sheep or cows or animals for long-term harvest of milk, wool, or other products. Similarly, some grow grain or annual crops that they sell every year, and others nurture trees that will bear fruits for many decades or centuries. The difference is between capital gains and cash flow. The Lord wants us to nurture His children so that they will produce long-term products as fruitful boughs on the true vine that is described in John 15.
My mother taught me many wonderful things. One thing that she often quoted was 'It takes the effort of every blade of grass to keep the meadow green.' She also often reminded us that 'The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence'. In my many months in the Namib Desert, I have come to appreciate those concepts. There is always wonderful grass in the desert - but most of the time we do not see it. It is dried out detritus blowing about, providing food for lizards, insects, and other animals that need food. The very small seeds are always being blown about in the wind and are widely dispersed. John Acocks said that it rains every year in the Karoo, but it takes seven years to get back to your farm. It might be more than 7 years before it rains on any specific part of the Namib Desert, but when it does rain, that seed quickly germinates and puts down its roots and grows beautiful green leaves and produces seed for the next few years. The seed is all about, even if we cannot see it because it is so tiny and mixed in with the grains of sand. But, it is there! On one occasion I was amazed to see the dunes that are always just big red sand dunes, but on this occasion they looked like amazing green pastures! When we got close and had a bird's-eye view, we saw a lot of sand between the blades of grass, but at that angle where I first saw it, all that I could see was the delightful green grass 'on the other side of the fence'.
I am so grateful for my experiences in nature. I mentioned how plants are primary producers and they provide food for you and for me, for cattle, sheep, and all consumers. Every living thing depends on those primary producers for oxygen and for nutrition, and they have great value for medicinal and other uses. The Lord wants you and me to be primary producers, not just consumers. He wants us to supply and not just demand. He wants us to 'Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.' Gen 1:28. Let us always be part of the solution and not part of the problem, to help those around us to rise to greatness, to let our light so shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven. Matt 5:16. Let us add flavour, zest, cleansing and healing as salt.
Brothers and sisters, may we follow the Saviour's example. Let us rise to any callings that the Lord sends our way. He is preparing us for our divine potential. That potential is not just simple things in mortality, but preparing us to be worthy to be entrusted with all that the Father has, and that is not just every thing, but He wants to be able to trust us with all power and knowledge as well. We need to raise our vision to think Celestial and not just to be like teenagers who have Friday night as their long-term view. He wants to be able to say to each and every one of us 'Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.'
May we follow the Saviour's example and be as He said ''And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.' (Mark 10:44), is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
