So any call to bear witness and to care for others is not a request for extra service it is a blessing designed by a loving Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ. Every member has made a covenant to do works of kindness as the Savior would do. Every member has made the covenant in the waters of baptism to be a witness for God. Such work is an opportunity, not a burden. Those faithful teachers saw what they were doing for what it really was. I will never again see home teaching or visiting teaching as only programs of the Church. As we parted, I realized that I had learned something too. As we parted I think he knew why he could expect that there would be more visits, more evidence of caring, and more patient waiting for the opportunity to bear testimony of the restored gospel. He seemed, at least to me, to understand that those visitors were driven from within by a covenant they would not break. And he knew their caring sprang from a belief that impelled them to come back. My new friend recognized that the visitors had genuine concern for him and for his wife. There is no other way to explain what had happened. Those home teachers and visiting teachers understood and believed that the covenant to be a witness and to love were intertwined and that they reinforced each other. “Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life” ( Mosiah 18:8–9). “And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light I didn’t quote these words, but you will remember them as Alma asked those he had taught whether they wished to be baptized: I told him about the baptismal covenant as Alma described it in the Book of Mormon. I told him that the love that he had felt from those many visitors and their constancy over the years in the face of little response came from a covenant they had made with God. And then I tried, as best I could, to tell him how hard it would be to teach such teachers to quit. He said to me something like, “And there they were, right in my face, with another plate of cookies.” He told, with a touch of exasperation, of another night when he came home from a long business trip, put his car in the garage, and then came out to find his home teachers standing there, smiling. He told of one evening when he went out to walk his dog alone only to find the home teacher happening by with his dog, eager to visit with him. He said that in those 25 years of married life, in which his wife showed no interest in the Church, visiting teachers and home teachers had never stopped coming to their home. Then, he told me why he thought we ought to make a change. In their years of marriage she had only once stepped into a building of the Church, and that was to tour a temple before its dedication, and then only because her parents had arranged it. She had been a member of the Church since childhood. You need to tell your people when to quit.” He explained that he and his wife had been married for 25 years. He said that his wife was a member of the Church and that he was not.Īfter he came to trust me, he said something like this: “You know, there is something in your church you should fix. He asked about my family, and then he told me something about his. I had never met him before, but apparently he had seen me in the crowd because his first words after I introduced myself were, “I’ve been watching you.” He told me about his work. I saw again the power of keeping covenants through a chance conversation with a man I sat down next to on a trip. He always keeps His promises offered through His authorized servants, but it is the crucial test of our lives to see if we will make and keep our covenants with Him. From the day of baptism through the spiritual milestones of our lives, we make promises with God and He makes promises with us. The Latter-day Saints are a covenant people.
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