Homecoming Talk

 Good morning everyone!!! Wow I am so happy to be here!! I know that the ward got changed while I was gone, so for those of you who don't know me, my name is Phoebe Brinton. I recently just returned home from my mission in the Charleston West Virginia mission. Best thing that's ever happened to me hands down. I actually had a really hard time writing this talk, trying to sum up 18 months of my life into just a couple paragraphs. 

If I could just get up and read the 26th chapter of alma, it would explain perfectly how I feel. I can relate to ammon when he says, 

"My brothers and my brethren, behold I say unto you, how great reason have we to rejoice; for could we have supposed when we started... that God would have granted unto us such great blessings?

And now, I ask, what great blessings has he bestowed upon us? Can ye tell?"

When I started my mission September of 2019, I could never have supposed that I would serve my mission during a worldwide pandemic. Neither did I suppose that I would have received SUCH great blessings from the Lord. 

Ammon continues, "our brethren...were in darkness, yea, even in the darkest abyss, but behold, how many of them are brought to behold the marvelous light of God! And this is the blessing which hath been bestowed upon us, that we have been made instruments in the hands of God to bring about this great work".

When I started my mission, I could never have supposed that I would grow in the ways that I did. That I would experience days harder than ever before. That I would feel more JOY than ever before. That I would see miracles each and every day. That I would gain life long friends and learn life changing lessons. That I would be able to share the gospel with so many of God's precious children.

Once again, i say along with Ammon, one of history's greatest missionaries, "Yea, they were encircled about with everlasting darkness and destruction; but behold, he has brought them into his everlasting light, yea, into everlasting salvation; and they are encircled about with the matchless bounty of his love; yea, and we have been instruments in his hands of doing this great and marvelous work”.

I know that every miracle, every tender mercy, every blessing I witnessed on my mission, was a witness of God's love for me and for the humble people of West Virginia. I love in that verse I just read where it describes the Lord's "matchless bounty". A definition for matchless bounty is "an incomparable generosity, evidenced by a willingness to give freely". AN INCOMPARABLE GENEROSITY, EVIDENCED BY A WILLINGNESS TO GIVE FREELY. I can testify of the Lords matchless bounty. 

There's a story that I felt prompted to share with you all today about God's love and awareness. 

So this story begins with a guy named Larry. We had been teaching him for about 2 months. He was so prepared and loved meeting with us and told us that he wanted to "join the saints" and be baptized, so that's what we were working towards, until one day we got a very sad text message from him, telling us that he needed to overcome some personal things before he kept meeting with us or made any further steps. We were heartbroken for him. Fast forward a week or two-

On my one year mark of being on my mission, my companion and I went to go get some icecream to celebrate with a recent convert. Afterwards, we realized we had a meeting over zoom with some other missionaries so we sat in the parking lot for another 30 minutes before we drove home. On the way home, we saw a man walking on the side of the road and I immediately thought "I think that's Larry". Then my companion, outloud says "was that larry??" And I was like "that's what I thought!!" So of course we turned around and drove past him and screamed "Larry?!" But embarrassingly enough, it was not him, so we awkwardly drove away. Keep in mind this is a rather busy road so it wasnt easy to turn around or flip a U. But, my companion was like, we both had that prompting and we literally turned all the way around just to talk to him. There has to be a reason. So we decided to turn back around and go talk to that poor guy we yelled at. Luckily, he turned up a less busy road to where we were able to pull off and jump out of the car to talk to him. He probably thought we were crazy but we just asked if we could talk to him and told him that we knew God loved him and was aware of him and that we felt prompted to come talk to him. He responded with "hi sisters, my name is Michael. I'm actually a member of the church!" We were definitely not expecting that. Roanoke Virginia is a huge city with very few members of the church. He went on to tell us, fighting back tears, that he had been praying to god to help him feel loved and known. He didnt know why, but he felt like he should walk to the 7-11 down the street, and so he did, and that's where we found him. He had recently moved to the area and didnt know anyone. He didnt even know if there was a church in the city we lived, he had just gone through a huge breakup, had recently gotten 4 hip surgeries, and was trying to make it back to Colorado to help his dad who was super sick but couldn't afford a bus ticket so he was just stuck. He said he had been trying to get a hold of the church but just didn't know how and then we showed up. You could tell he was starving and we even had a pizza that a member had given us in the car that we were able to give to him. I was so overwhelmed with love for michael and for my heavenly father. He was SO aware of us. He knew michael needed someone, that he needed hope. Even though Michael was in a strange town and literally knew nobody, God sent us to be his hands. To be an answer to his prayers. Michael was an answer to my prayers as well. God is in the details. There was no coincidences that day. If we hadn't stayed for the zoom meeting in the parking lot, if we wouldn't have thought it was Larry, if michael wouldn't have walked to 7-11, if we wouldnt have followed our promptings, NONE of that would've happened!! Long story short, we continued to meet with michael. He came to church, we got him in contact with the bishop, and eventually he got enough money to buy a bus ticket back to Colorado. It was truly a miracle. 

Ammon closes his sermon by saying, "Now my brethren, we see that God is mindful of every people, whatsoever land they may be in; yea, he numbereth his people, and his bowels of mercy are over all the earth. Now this is my joy, and my great thanksgiving; yea, and I will give thanks unto my God forever. Amen". I know that god is mindful of me, of the people in West Virginia, and I KNOW that he is mindful of you. 

When I started my mission, I could never have guessed that 6 months later, I would be quarantined in my apartments for an entire year. Who knew that I wasnt going to be able to be out among the people, teaching people in their homes, eating dinner with members, and going to church. I can honestly say, that along with ammon "I have suffered all manner of afflictions...for i had many afflictions; i did suffer much, both in body and in mind... and also much labor in the spirit". Those first couple months in quarantine were the HARDEST days I've experienced yet in my life. I could never have supposed that on my mission, I would feel so alone, so useless, and so forgotten. My companion(the person I was locked up with literally 24/7), was very verbally abusive and didn't want to be on a mission or want to work, I had nobody to talk to, we were teaching one person and that one person we had on date for baptism (my only hope at the time) dropped off the face of the planet, I was missing my sisters wedding, and I had really bad anxiety, that I had never experienced before and didnt know how to handle it. It was rough. 

But as always, God knew what he was doing. I learned and grew more in those 3 months than I have my entire life. I was closer to heavenly father and jesus christ than ever before cause i literally had nobody to turn to, except them. I came to understand grace. I came to understand the enabling power of the atonement. And even though I never thought I would be serving my mission during a worldwide pandemic, I am SO glad that God trusted me enough to let me be his servant during this time. The new way of doing missionary work definitely took some getting used to and took much trial error. At first, I had a hard time seeing how we were ever going to be able to teach people over technology and how we would find new people to teach if we couldn't go door to door. But boy was I wrong!!! The past 6 months of my mission, we were reaching higher numbers than we've ever reached before. Before covid, we were lucky to find 2 new people to teach in a week with maybe a few people attending sacrament meeting. But before I left, we were finding up to 12 new people to teach in a week and had up to 9 people attending sacrament meeting. I have such a strong testimony of the new ways of doing missionary work. It is so much more effective and we were able to reach SO many more people. People that we NEVER would've met if we were just out tracting. I was able to find and teach someone from Taiwan that I found through a Christian bible group on Facebook and now he is on date for baptism. I was able to find and teach someone from New York that is now meeting with the missionaries and the book of mormon has changed his life. I am so grateful for the Divine Reset that this pandemic brought on. God definitely knows what he is doing. 

When people ask me what my favorite part of being a missionary was, I always say that it was to watch people change their lives for the gospel. And to see the gospel change their lives. To watch them be changed by the healing and transforming power of the atonement. Not only did Christ change their habits or lifestyle, but their very countenance. I came to see the light of christ in the people I was teaching as they came to better know and love the savior. One in particular changed MY life. His name was Raymond as I'm sure many of you remember him from some of my weekly emails. 

Raymond was found while tracting before the pandemic of course. He was one of the first people I met when I got to the mission. And my trainer can testify that I was terrified of him... To be honest, I thought he was a crazy drunk that just wanted to argue with us. But my trainer saw his potential and wanted to go back. We gave him a book of mormon and he told us he would read it. Keep in mind that Raymond is in his 70's and he was a devout baptist with a very heavy smoking addiction. At first, he told us that he would never give up smoking and that he would never change his religion. We kept going back. We noticed that his heart continued to soften as he read the book of mormon. He started to listen more. He became more humble. He looked forward to our meetings. He started coming to church each week and every sunday he would wear something a little nicer. He would comb his hair. He would shave. And I began to see a LIGHT inside of Raymond. I saw how the gospel was changing not only his actions but his very countenance. He read the entire book of mormon in just a couple of months. We invite him to be baptized 3 different times, but he was still a little too stubborn to say yes and to give up his smoking addiction of 50 something years. After much work and countless prayers, Raymond told us that one night he woke up in the middle of the night, knelt down, and prayed that the good Lord would take his desire to smoke away. At that moment, the desire left him! It wasn't easy, but he was able to quit smoking in just a couple weeks with the help of the Lord. That grumpy old man I met the first week of my mission, the crazy devout baptist man that said he'd never quit smoking OR change his religion... walked into the waters of baptism on February 22, 2020. I know that the book of mormon softened his heart. I know that people can change! I know that the gospel of Jesus Christ will bless his life forever and into the eternities.

Although I got to see many people change for the gospel and come closer to jesus christ, I always heard that the most important convert on my mission would be myself. And to that I can testify. I have truly been changed by the atonement of jesus christ, to the point where I have no desire to sin but to do good continually. I have built a foundation for the rest of my life. My faith has truly become unshaken. If you are lacking faith, I invite you to lean on mine.

I was reflecting the past couple days and asked myself if I would call my mission a sacrifice. And for everything it seems I might have sacrificed, I have been given tenfold. If I say I have sacrificed time with my family, then I must realize that I have been rewarded with a family more united and loving than ever. I even got a new brother in-law. If the mission has been a sacrifice of time, I have been rewarded with knowledge that no university in the world could have taught me. If it has been a sacrifice of talents, I have been rewarded with more talents than I ever had before. If it had been a sacrifice of human relationships, I have been rewarded with new friends and relationships with people from all different walks of life. If I have sacrificed my earthly possessions, I have been given new ones that I value infinitely more. For anything that I have sacrificed, I have been given more. 

Ezra Taft Benson said, "men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life". 

I know that the gospel of jesus christ is the answer to every concern, question, or trial. I know that reading the book of mormon will bring power into your lives, even if it is just one verse a day. I know that god knows you by name and that he hears your prayers. I know that jesus christ is my savior and yours. I love him. I say these things in his name, jesus christ, amen.