Mission Reflections from Elder Weatherford

 

President Woo and Elder Weatherford

Josh’s homecoming talk – April 24, 2020 on Zoom to the Laramie Wyoming Stake High Council 

I am excited today to talk a little bit about my mission. I’ve been home from my mission for about two months now, and I wish I could have done this in person, but I’m actually grateful that we can do this over technology because I can show you some pictures from my mission and there are some things that I couldn’t do if I were in person. I served my mission in Singapore, but the mission itself also included the whole country of Malaysia. It was pretty cool. Singapore and Malaysia are pretty different countries, and so this felt like two different missions. I served about nine months in Malaysia, then went to Singapore for another nine months, and then went back to Malaysia for the end of my mission.

Malaysia is a country that is mostly Muslim; it is about 60% Muslim. We were not allowed to talk to these people about the gospel; we were not allowed to contact them. But the other 40% of the country is made up of mostly Chinese and Indian people, and so we would talk to them. Even though we were not allowed to teach Muslims, it was really cool to get to know them and to experience them. In most of my apartments in Malaysia, I would hear the call to prayer at 6:00 AM every morning which was pretty annoying, but also very cool. Malaysia is right on the equator; it is a very hot country. We were biking so we were almost always covered in sweat or soaking wet because it rained so much. Malaysia also had a lot of crazy animals and insects. It was not an uncommon thing to see a dead lizard on the side of the road.

Singapore, on the other hand, was a very, very rich country. And very small, too, so it was very well controlled. It was just as hot as Malaysia, but instead of biking we would mostly use the public transportation. They called it the MRT or the Metro. We would walk up and down the Metro and talk to people on it. Singapore is very strict. If you brought food onto the MRT it was a $1000 Singaporean dollar ($750 USD) fine. If you brought a drink on the MRT, I think it was a $500 fine. It was very, very strict. There were a lot of rules, so we had to be careful. While I was in Singapore I served in a Chinese-speaking ward which was mostly people from mainland China, which was so cool for me. It was one of my favorite parts of the mission because, when I was sixteen, I had studied abroad in China for a couple of months, and I fell in love with it. I loved the language, the culture, and the people. But of course, we do not have missionaries in China. Serving in Singapore and being in the Chinese ward, talking to people who were from China, was such a dream because I kind of felt like I was serving in China. So that is a little bit about my mission, and I wanted to share a couple of spiritual experiences I had with you.

My mission was an amazing time. I grew a lot. It was really hard, but I think that is how it is supposed to be because we grow the most when we are going through hard times and we have to reach out to God and really humble ourselves before Him. One of the biggest things I learned on my mission is just how big the love of God is for all of us and how important it is for us to love everyone around us.

The first story I wanted to share was about Judy. She was from China, and she had been living in Singapore for about five or six years. This happened while I was in the Chinese ward, one of my favorite areas, with one of my favorite companions. We found Judy, and she was golden, and we loved teaching her. Every lesson that we had with her would end with all of us in tears; we felt the Spirit so strongly; we were all so emotional. These were really Spirit-driven lessons. But as happens so often on a mission, Judy did not get baptized. We prayed so much; we taught her so many times. My companion and I would spend so much time figuring out the perfect language to use in her lessons, figuring out what scriptures we should use, how we could bring the Spirit, what questions we should ask. We tried so hard to get Judy to really feel that she was supposed to join the church, but she did not. It was actually really hard for me and my companion. We felt like we had done so much, so we felt a little, I guess, betrayed. We felt like we had done everything, and it had not happened. My companion was going to be transferred, and he felt that we should go over and have one more lesson with Judy. So, we went over, and we were teaching her outside of her complex, and Judy thought to pray. She was always pretty shy about praying; she did not like to pray in public, and she really did not like praying out loud. But that time, we talked with her and we invited her to pray out loud in front of us. And she did. It was really an amazing experience. The Spirit was so strong; you could tell that she was really talking to her Heavenly Father. Of course, we were all in tears again. At the very end of her prayer, it had been a really cloudy day that day, but the clouds broke up and this amazing ray of sunshine came in and landed on all of us right as she finished her prayer. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my mission because it brought a lot of peace for me, because I felt like I had tried everything I could and she still did not join the church, but that sunshine reminded me that there is a God who is over us, and He knows exactly what we are going through and what is best for us. Especially, I felt that God loved Judy, and that He had a perfect plan for her, and that for some reason, we were not the Elders that were supposed to introduce her to the Church and baptize her. That was okay because He had a perfect plan for her, and He loved her.

The second story I wanted to share is about someone I met in Malaysia whose name is Herbert. In Malaysia, because most of the people are Muslim, we did not really "door-knock." We would go to these outdoor food courts, public cafeterias, and go from table to table and talk to people we saw. We met Herbert and his family at one of these outdoor “hawker centers” as these cafeterias were called. He had a son with special needs. He had autism, and it was pretty severe, pretty far on the spectrum. But we could tell that Herbert had a lot of love for his family, and we felt that, too. So, we started to teach them. We first met them for dinner, and we taught them over dinner. The next time we invited them to come to the church. My companion would do this: one would teach the lesson to the family, and the other person would help their autistic child, hold his hand, talk to him, and do something to help him stay calm. It was amazing again, to feel the love for them, especially to feel the love that God had for them. In the end, Herbert was baptized, and it was not because of anything that we did. It was because God had the perfect plan for him, and God let us feel a little of the love He had for Herbert, which was really cool!

Today I want to bear my testimony of God’s love. God really does love us so much. Everything that we go through, every blessing we get, every trial that we have, is all from God’s love, which is perfect. This scripture really stuck out to me as a missionary. It is 1 Nephi 11: 16-17 -- “And he said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God? I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I do not know the meaning of all things.” This is Nephi in his vision, and an angel asked him, “Knowest thou the condescension of God?” I picture this as if the angel is asking, "Do you understand everything about God?" And Nephi’s response is so humble, so amazing to me. He says, “Of course, I do not understand everything.” He still has questions. He still knows that God loves his children. God loves us. Brothers and sisters, that is my testimony to you. It is that God loves us. A lot of times we do not understand why something has happened, but we can know of a surety that God loves us. Because of that, everything will work out. He has a perfect plan for all of us. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.