Brother Brimley continued: “God wants you to get married before you have children. … Young women … who desire to serve should also prepare” ( General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 24.0, ). He wants you to serve a mission before you get married.” To this point, Church leaders currently teach that “the Lord expects each able young man to prepare to serve. He expects you to live your life with order. Ned Brimley punctuated his inspired lesson with a simple statement: “Vai, God’s house is one of order. The sequential order in which the earth was created gives us a glimpse not only of what is most important to God but also why and for whom He created the earth. “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” ( Genesis 1:27, 31). “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him male and female created he them. … He added plant life and animals before introducing to the newly formed planet His greatest creation: humankind, beginning with Adam and Eve. First, He started by dividing the light from the darkness, then water from dry land. The Lord took great care in explaining to Moses the order in which He created the earth. Ned reminded us that there was order to how God created the earth. Later that week, Ned and his companion came to our home with a memorable lesson. Shortly after this experience, my home teacher, Ned Brimley, taught me that many aspects and blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ are given to us in sequential order. She had arrived too late to receive the bread. She nodded, smiled, and took a cup of water. Dutifully, I approached and handed her the tray. One Sunday when I was a deacon, I was in the foyer with a tray of water passing the sacrament when a woman walked into the building. We’re grateful for missionaries everywhere for their devoted service, even when longer or shorter than they had anticipated because of the pandemic. Meanwhile, don’t be too alarmed if some of them serving in your wards and stakes are looking increasingly more like me-aging and gray. Some Tongan elders have been on their missions for three years and sisters over two years! They wait patiently with the faith for which our people are known. The pandemic has kept hundreds, perhaps thousands of young Tongan missionaries serving around the world from returning to their beloved homeland because of its closed borders. I feel your prayers and theirs.īrothers and sisters, I am a native of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific but was raised in North America. In my professional life and in my service in the Church, I have done this thousands of times-just never before the 15 men seated directly behind me.
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