Missionary work: the Mormon way
Since I became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon Church) I have been involved with missionary work. My involvement has always been a natural consequence of the happiness that came to my life because of the work of Mormon missionaries, who found me and taught me, many years ago in Italy.
I remember spending many hours with the missionaries in Italy, talking to people, including my friends and relatives, about what I had found and the happiness that it had brought to me. However, as it often happens, most of them were not interested in what we had to say.
When I moved to Brazil, I had many wonderful experiences working again with missionaries and serving in several positions in the Mormon Church, most of them related to missionary work. During my last three years in Brazil I had the privilege of serving as a counselor to two wonderful mission presidents, and my vision and experiences in that area really grew exponentially.
To move to Utah a few years ago was an interesting change. Now I live in an area where most of the people are members of the Church, or they heard about it several times. I realized that opportunities of doing missionary work are still available, but they come in a different form, and I need to confess that I felt almost “inactive” in missionary work for a few years, even because my time was consumed by school, work, and family to a level that I was not used to in the past. All of this was complicated by the fact that I had to learn a new language and how to live in a new environment.
Three years ago I joined the More Good Foundation, and I enjoy being involved again with missionary work, even if it is a new kind of missionary work, a “virtual” one.
When More Good Foundation started, we were seen with a little suspicion even from many members of the Church who had not yet made the connection between the Internet and missionary work. In fact, we can say that when we started, the information available on the Internet about the Mormon Church was clearly dominated by its critics, because members (with a few exceptions) had not been involved in it.
It was a great day for the missionary work in the Church when, a little less than a year ago, Elder Ballard gave his first speech about online missionary work at the graduation ceremony at BYU-Hawaii.
And it was even better when Elder Ballard repeated a similar message at BYU Idaho.
One of the suggestions of Elder Ballard in his talks was about creating and regularly writing in a personal blog, like this one. Since I speak a few languages, I created gmormon.com (in English), GiuseppeMartinengo.org (in Italian), Gmormon.org (in Portuguese) and gmormon.net (in Spanish).
It takes time to write for these blogs, and it is harder in some languages (e.g. Spanish). At times I have the impression that they are not as useful as I would like them to be. However, this week something happened on my Italian blog that really convinced me that it is worthwhile to keep going.
I wrote a post about the critics of the Mormon Church and someone posted a comment. The comment led to my response, and then another comment, until I decided to write an email to this person. After a few more exchanges I realized that she was interested and ready to listen to the missionaries. I am not sure what will happen, but it is difficult to describe the joy I felt for having been the instrument to connect a precious daughter of heavenly father to the missionaries. Some of the email she wrote were really inspiring, and confirmed to me that there are special people that the Lord prepare to listen and accept the gospel. They recognize the truth when they hear it, and they are separated from the truth only because they do not know where to find it. It is our responsibility to help them find it.
The great thing about the Internet is that it helps to find people who are really interested, or better, people who are really interested can find information about the Church even if they are shy, or leave hundreds of miles from the closest church or missionary. Sincere seekers of the truth can learn on the Internet about the gospel and talk to the missionaries only when they feel ready.
I have no doubts that the Internet is going to help hundred of thousand or even millions of people to find the truth and help the missionaries to spend more time teaching, instead than finding people to teach.
In short, to have our personal blog and to learn how to make it a little more effective is a worthwhile effort. We need to use our skills to foster the work of the Lord. We need to lenghten our stride, the time has come.
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The Mormon Church is looking for those who want to know | Giuseppe Martinengo on
Fri, 5th Dec 2008 12:05 pm
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