I remember as a youth in the Church, when young men and women left for missions, we sang the hymn:
“I’ll go where you want me to go, dear Lord,
Over mountain or plain or sea;
I’ll say what you want me to say, dear Lord;
I’ll be what you want me to be” [1]
I always referred to this hymn as the “mission farewell” hymn since the words were so appropriate. But as years have gone by, I realized that the words to this hymn are not just for those who serve missions but for all of us as we ask ourselves: “Am I willing to go where the Lord wants me to go and am I willing to be what He wants me to be?” Am I willing to allow Him to mold me into what he wants me to become, which is my very highest potential, to be like Him so that He can share all He has with me?
55 years ago, two faithful missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were where the Lord wanted them to be, and doing what the Lord wanted them to do, as they were tracting house to house in the Sandhills area of Wailuku, Maui. It was a hot day and in those days the missionaries did not have cars but walked everywhere.
Elders Dwight Flickenger and Michael Mickelson walked down our long driveway and knocked on our front door. My mother, Katherine Gima, was home and opened the door. Seeing the Elders, she quickly but politely stated that we were Christian and that she was not interested in hearing what they had to say. She had them wait on the porch as she went to get glasses of cold water to quench their thirst. My mother actually had 2 older sisters, Ethel and Lillian who had joined the Church on Oahu, so she had heard a little about the Church and knew that these were Mormon missionaries.
My brother and I were attending St. Anthony School, a Catholic school. We were not catholic but my parents felt like this school would give us a good education so we were enrolled there. In fact, my mother refused to join the Catholic Church because being the extremely practical person she was, she could not understand or accept their doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost being one person. How could 3 people be one being?
So as my mother took the empty glasses of water from the missionaries and was about to close the front door, one of them said, “Do you know that we believe that Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost are 3 separate beings?” Well, the front door opened widely and she invited them in. After that first discussion, the missionaries made an appointment to meet with my father and rest of the family, which consisted of myself being the eldest child and my brother Ron and younger sister Leona.
I remember that night quite well, as my mother kept us children in the kitchen as she prepared glasses of juice for us to take to the missionaries and our Dad. She held us back as she said, that Dad would probably ask them to leave in a few minutes. Well the minutes went by and she finally sent us out to see what was up. My Dad who was a quiet man, was chuckling and having a good old conversation with these two Elders as they were chatting about golfing. You see my Dad was an avid Sunday golfer and he had a whole trophy case full of trophies to show for all the golf tournaments he won. The missionaries had not even begun talking about the gospel but were talking about golfing!! Well a few months later, after hearing all the discussions, my father, mother and I being 9 years old, were baptized in Waiehu, Maui.
I will be eternally grateful to these two humble, faithful missionaries who taught my family the gospel, who listened to the prompting of the Holy Ghost as they stood on our front porch and said what the Lord wanted them to say concerning the Godhead. These missionaries have become lifelong friends and we share a strong bond of love for each other. Although Dwight Flickenger has passed away, we still keep in contact with Mike Mickelson.
I will also be eternally grateful to my mother and father for accepting the gospel of Jesus Christ and doing what the Lord wanted them to do. Their acceptance of the gospel and staying faithful to its teachings, mapped and changed our whole lives. As an adult, I realize even more the sacrifices my parents had to make. They had to be willing to change some of their lifestyle and habits, which many people rather not do in midlife.
My father changed his golfing schedule from Sunday to Saturdays. This meant that he would not be meeting with his Sunday golfing buddies, which he had done for years. He also gave up many tournaments since they were usually held on Sundays. When the Church started having golfing tournaments, which were held on Saturdays, my father competed and enjoyed those immensely.
My father was the oldest of 10 children. He was the eldest of 9 boys in a row with the 10th child being the only girl. He had a brother who was a Baptist preacher and who was very saddened and disappointed that my father would join the Mormon Church. Yet my father was willing to accept the gospel because he knew it was true. We were sealed as a family in the Laie Hawaii Temple a year after we were baptized. My parents never wavered in the gospel, they held many positions in the church and even served a temple mission in Tokyo, Japan.
Many of you are pioneers as you are the first in your family to accept the gospel of Jesus Christ, or the first to gain a university education, or the 1st missionary or the first temple member. It takes courage and discipline to be a pioneer and to do what the Lord wants you to do since you may not have the support of your family and friends and may be ridiculed instead.
You may ask how do we know what the Lord wants us to be and what he wants us to do? We do this by seeing ourselves clearly.
President Dieter F. Uchdorf explained what this means in the October 2014 General Conference:
“Being able to see ourselves clearly is essential to our spiritual growth and well-being. If our weaknesses and shortcomings remain obscured in the shadows, then the redeeming power of the Savior cannot heal them and make them strengths. Ironically, our blindness toward our human weaknesses will also make us blind to the divine potential that our Father yearns to nurture within each of us. So how can we see ourselves as He sees us? We must approach our Eternal Father with broken hearts and teachable minds. We must be willing to learn and to change.”[2]
Many times the only way we learn and change, the only times we see our weaknesses and strengths is when the Lord allows us to go through trials like sickness or injuries, death of loved ones, financial struggles or other hardships. As we go through these hard times, if we keep looking to Him, trusting in His wisdom, accepting His will, being grateful for each blessing, doing all we can to endure, then we are on the way to becoming what He wants us to be. As the hymn says, “O Savior, if thou wilt be my guide, Tho dark and rugged the way. So Trusting my all to thy tender care, and knowing thou lovest me, I’ll do thy will with a heart sincere; I’ll be what you want me to be.”[3]
Sister Neill F. Marriott in October 2015 General Conference stated:
“Paradoxically, in order to have a healed and faithful heart, we must first allow it to break before the Lord. “Ye shall offer for a sacrifice unto me a broken heart and a contrite spirit,” the Lord declares. The result of sacrificing our heart, or our will, to the Lord is that we receive the spiritual guidance we need.
With a growing understanding of the Lord’s grace and mercy, we will find that our self-willed hearts begin to crack and break in gratitude. Then we reach for Him, yearning to yoke ourselves to the Only Begotten Son of God. In our brokenhearted reaching and yoking, we receive new hope and fresh guidance through the Holy Ghost.”[4]
It is difficult to change negative habits and traditions especially if we are immersed by these in our daily life.
My father-in-law, Samuel Kaina Lowe came from extremely humble beginnings. He was as he describes it, “poorer than poor”. Please allow me to read his words:
“As the first born son, I grew up in a family with an abusive father who preferred to gamble and drink away his paycheck, forcing my mother to somehow provide for seven children. To obtain food my mother caught salt water crabs with her bare hands. She caught fresh water shrimp with a net in the Nuuanu stream and gathered seaweed from the brackish waters off Waikiki. She gathered discarded tuna fish heads and bones from the fishermen on the docks. From the ground she picked breadfruit and mangoes that had fallen from their trees. I experienced going without food for days at a time. As a result, my mother had to give away two of my younger brothers because she couldn’t feed them anymore. Losing her sons forever and her total sacrifice of giving them up, took its toll and broke her heart. But she knew my brothers would have something to eat and have a better life with their new families.
One day I stepped on broken glass that severed a major blood vessel in my foot. The bleeding would not stop. We couldn’t afford an ambulance so my mother packed me on her back and carried me over five miles to Queens Hospital. She was drenched with my blood when she released me to the doctors. But her fear that I was going to die and her love for me gave her the strength to get help for me.
Fear also meant abuse by my father. My mother was severely beaten and abused by my father each time he came home drunk. My mother died at the early age of 38, heart-broken with a massive stroke. I was fourteen. My mother, friend and care-giver and the only person who loved and cared about me was dead. I had no will to live. However, after witnessing the abuse that my father afflicted upon my mother over the years, I vowed never, never to strike a woman! And I am proud to say that I have kept that promise. My fear of following in my dad’s footsteps of abuse, “like father, like son”, had been turned around in my life, for I am not like my father. My mother’s love for me taught me that fear and abuse can be controlled, and her love for me knew no fear as she protected me and raised me into a man.” I need to add that his father in later years did change his life and became a man of great faith and one who actively lived the gospel.
My father-in-law, was true to his word, he never not ever abused my mother-in-law. He broke that evil tradition and instead showed great love and respect for his wife. He allowed Heavenly Father to mold him into the best person he could be. Besides serving as a leader in the Church wherever they lived; Johnson Island, California, Kansas, Mississippi, England and Hawaii, he served as a counselor in the Laie Hawaii temple under 4 presidents, served in the Hawaii Mission Presidency for 7 years and then served a mission in the Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.
I am eternally blessed as I married his son, Warren Kahele Kaina Lowe. Because his father broke that cycle of abuse, Warren was a kind, supportive and gentle husband –a perfect father for 6 daughters.
My husband learned wisdom in his youth and was always willing to go where the Lord wanted him to go and to do what the Lord wanted him to do. He had a calm demeanor because he had an eternal perspective on life and trusted the Lord 100%. But he still had to be refined and was sorely tested several times in his life. During the latter part of his working career, he was a controller for a very prestigious company in downtown Honolulu. He was asked to make inaccurate accountings on reports which he refused to do. He was told that if he would not do the reports as they asked, he would lose his job and they would make it so he could not get another job. Knowing this, he still refused to be dishonest so he lost his job.
He could not find fulltime employment for a whole year. This was a very difficult trial as he was not asking the Lord for a new car or a swimming pool, but to find decent employment to support his family, a basic righteous desire. Instead of being impatient or frustrated he kept living the gospel, paying tithing and continued to serve in his callings. He did not take his frustrations out on his family but instead kept saying that what he was going through was not near to what Job had experienced in losing possessions, his health, his friends and finally his family.
He kept his eternal vision and was willing to be even more humble and allow the Lord to mold him and refine him. It was a grueling year. But almost a year to the day, his trial was over as he found full time employment once again.
We are promised in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that the Lord will not allow us to go through trials or tests that are more than we can bear. It reads “…but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”[5]
God promises that He will not allow us to go through trials or temptations that will overcome us. This promise means that each one of us has the power and fortitude to conquer whatever comes our way. And we do not do this alone, we have the Lord’s all powerful help each step of the way. If we choose to humble ourselves and ask, He will help us. He does not take away the trial but helps us pull the load which makes our burdens lighter and eases our suffering and brings comfort, understanding, peace and acceptance to our hearts. If we fail, it is not because the trial or task is too hard or difficult, but we fail because we choose to give up.
So what holds us back from going where the Lord wants us to go and becoming what He wants us to become. In 2nd Timothy 1:7 it says: “The Lord does not give us the spirit of fear, but of power, of love and a sound mind.” [6]
If the Lord does not give us the spirit of fear, who does? Where does the spirit of fear come from? Who wants us to fail and be miserable like him? Who wants to hold us back, does not want us to progress and be better? Who wants us to think that we just don’t have what it takes? Satan wants to destroy us. Satan gives us the spirit of fear.
But our Heavenly Father gives us “power”, His power, which is the power of His priesthood that blesses all of our lives, male and female. He gives us spiritual power that comes as we make and keep sacred covenants. The power for good cannot be under estimated. His power replaces fear.
He give us “love”, His pure love, true charity that is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, all powerful love that can love the sinner and not the sin. Because of this pure love, He atoned for our sins and tears, pain and suffering so we can be sustained and we can live.
He gives us a “sound mind” to think clearly as we listen and follow the promptings of the 3rd member of the Godhead, the Holy Ghost, who can be our constant companion, if we choose. A sound mind to make wise decisions, to see things as they really are, to have an eternal perspective. What huge blessings these are for us.
How do we keep doing what the Lord wants us to do? Here are a few suggestions:
1.Look to our patriarchal blessings, which is our own “liahona”, a very personal guide that allows us to see our spiritual potential. It allows us to see ourselves as Heavenly Father sees us.
2.Look to the House of Light – Hale La’a – the temple that literally gives light to our minds, bodies and spirit. In Mosiah chapter 2 when the people gathered around the temple to hear King Benjamin, each family faced the door of their tent towards the temple, to better hear the words of their king. Are we facing the doors of our tents, the doors to our hearts and minds to the temple?
I am so proud and pleased at the number of students that work in the temple or who weekly go to do baptisms. You are so busy with school, work and have an active social life, yet you make the time to do a sacred work because you understand early in your life the eternal blessings that come from being in the House of the Lord.
3.Sister Neill Marriot suggested in her October 2015 General Conference talk that during the sacrament, which she calls the heart of the Sabbath, after she prays for forgiveness she asks Heavenly Father, “Father, is there more?" She goes on to say “When we are yielded and still, our minds can be directed to something more we may need to change—something that is limiting our capacity to receive spiritual guidance or even healing and help.”[7] So, let’s ask the Lord “is there more that I can do”?
4.Like breathing air, drinking water and eating are essential to living, personal prayer and scripture study are essentials of living the gospel. Our testimonies will not be able to survive without these essentials that lead to personal revelation from the Lord and His guidance and instructions.
My favorite scripture is found in 2 Nephi 31:20 which says: “Wherefore, ye must press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope, and a love of God and of all men. Wherefore, if ye shall press forward, feasting upon the word of Christ, and endure to the end, behold, thus saith the Father: Ye shall have eternal life.”[8]
This archaic piece of equipment is rarely seen or used now days. It is an iron and when plugged in, heats up and if we add water into the hole at the top, the water gets hot and produces steam, so that as we press our wrinkled clothing it makes them smooth and beautiful. We must press forward using heat and even steam from the trials and life experiences that Heavenly Father allows us to go through, to iron out the wrinkles in our lives. If we do not press forward, we will be pushed backwards.
In the next verse in 2 Nephi 31:21 it says: “And now behold, my beloved brethren, this is the way, and there is none other way nor name given under heaven where by man can be saved in the kingdom of God. And now, behold this is the doctrine of Christ, and the only and true doctrine of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, which is one God, without end. Amen”. [9]
So, brothers and sisters, may we work every day doing all that we can to live the gospel of Jesus Christ so that we can say: “I WILL GO where you want me to go, Dear Lord and I WILL BE what you want me to be.” And from another favorite hymn: “here’s my heart, oh take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above”. I pray that we may do so. In the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
[1]Hymn: “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” #270
[2]President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Lord, Is It I?”, 2014 October General Conference
[3]Hymn: “I’ll Go Where You Want Me to Go” #270
[4]Neill F. Marriott, “Yielding Our Hearts to God”, 2015 October General Conference
[5]1 Corinthians 10:13
[6]2 Timothy 1:7
[7]Neill F. Marriott, “Yielding Our Hearts to God”, 2015 October General Conference
[8]2 Nephi 31:20
[9]2 Nephi 31:21