Farewell Address

Good morning brothers and sisters. For those of you who don’t know, I will be leaving to begin my missionary training at the Provo MTC on Wednesday. While I was waiting for my mission call to come, Lauren Taylor received her call to the Italy Rome mission. After we found out Lauren would be serving in the same mission as my mom, my mom told me “You better not have had any hopes of going to Rome, they wouldn’t call two people from the same ward to the same mission.” Then Colton Bell received his call to the Rome Italy Mission. Again my mom said something to the effect of “Well you’re definitely not going to Italy. They would never call three people from the same ward to Italy.” Needless to say, I think my mom was the most shocked when I opened my call and was assigned to serve in Rome. On top of being the third member of our ward leaving to serve in the Rome, I will also be the second person in my nuclear family, and the fourth in my extended family to be serving in this mission. The best part is none of my family ever thought to teach me any italian, besides “mammia mia” , “andiamo bambini” , “pizzaria”  and a word I’ve been told not to say over the pulpit. However, they have told me that the easiest way to get into an Italian’s home is to sniff around the air for a second and then say “oh my goodness, it smells so lovely, what are you cooking” and apparently they’ll just invite you right in and probably give you some homemade pasta.

Now. One might think that having a father in the bishopric would make getting a topic for a talk pretty easy. A simple “Hey Dad, what should I talk about at my farewell?” Oh no. When I first asked him, he said “that’s not my job, Nate’s in charge of this month, you can’t ask me, you need to ask Nate” So I texted Nate. Nate’s response was “Just ask your Dad.” So I asked my dad. So after juggling back and forth my dad basically said “here are some scriptures that are nice, think about them and then talk about whatever you feel.” Thank you for specificity Dad. Though the scriptures were really great, I got too many ideas, so for a while my talk was covering a lot of different topics and making very little sense. I think I’ve narrowed it down, but if this talk seems all over the place, we’re going to blame my dad for giving me too many ideas. I’ve decided to speak on becoming perfected through Christ.

The goal of our existence here on earth is grow and develop spiritually so that one day we can live again with our Heavenly Father. All we have to do is follow God’s commandments, listen to the Holy Ghost, keep our covenants, oh and also be perfect because “no unclean thing can dwell in the presence of God.” If that were it, I could probably just sit down and be resigned in the fact that none of us are perfect, so that’s that. We’ve already failed. But we know that our Heavenly Father is merciful and loving, and he knows that we would never be able to reach perfection on our own. In 2 Nephi 12, we read “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.”

It is so easy to feel hammered down by the high expectations of “perfection” in the gospel, and self-deprecating feelings can seem unavoidable. It’s important for us to realize that these feelings don’t come from God. When we fail, our Heavenly Father doesn’t say “Nice job, you really messed up this time. You’re basically a lost cause at this point.” Our Heavenly Father acts just the same as a loving father does when their child makes a mistake; He helps us recognize our wrong, then comforts us, cares for us, and heals us. My favorite analogy to this comes from a talk called “His Grace is Sufficient” by brother Brad Wilcox, a professor at BYU. He says that our life can be compared to learning the piano. It’s very easy to say “Don’t you realize how hard it is to practice? I’m just not very good at the piano. I hit a lot of wrong notes. It takes me forever to get it right.” Now wait. Isn’t that all part of the learning process? When a young pianist hits a wrong note, we don’t say he is not worthy to keep practicing. We don’t expect him to be flawless. We just expect him to keep trying. Perfection may be his ultimate goal, but for now we can be content with progress in the right direction. Why is this perspective so easy to see in the context of learning piano but so hard to see in the context of learning heaven?” I’ve been playing the piano since I was very little, and I started teaching piano when I was thirteen. I was lucky enough to have taught two of my cousins. One cousin decided he wanted to take on a very challenging song from Star Wars. Everything about it was harder than any other song he’d ever learned. Not only is my cousins a hard worker, but he is a perfectionist. Every wrong note was hard on him and there were days when he just wanted to be done trying to learn this song. From a teaching perspective, it made me sad to see him frustrated over little things, when every week he was getting better and better! I’m very happy to say that my cousin didn’t give up and this past week he played the Star Wars song memorized and perfect at our lesson. I learned so much from him about hard work and I also got a very very small glimpse into the way Heavenly Father must feel when we make mistakes. We are inevitably imperfect, and sometimes we can’t help but fall a little bit. We shouldn’t tear ourselves down because we falter, He knows we’re not perfect. What matters to Him is that we keep “trying to be like Jesus” even after we mess up.

After receiving my call, I was hit with some serious feelings of weakness. It just struck me how flawed I am and how many mistakes I’ve made, to the point where I was feeling unsure about my decision to serve. I asked Heavenly Father over and over to help take away my feelings of inadequacy, but it wasn’t until I finally expressed my emotions to my dad that I felt any peace. At the end of our conversation he said “Maren. It’s okay that you’ve made mistakes. Everyone does, and it’s important that we feel remorseful so that we can sincerely repent. But I want you to know that your harsh self-judgements don’t come from God. I know that in His eyes, a mission is exactly the right thing for you to do now.” His words helped me realize that I am a Daughter of a Heavenly Father who wants his children to succeed. He wants me, and all of us, to become like him, despite our best efforts in convincing ourselves that we’re beyond saving.

Sister Lara Isaackson said “Satan has somehow managed to make covenants and commandments seem like curses and condemnations. For some he has turned the ideals and inspiration of the gospel into self-loathing and misery-making.” After talking with my dad, I realized that I was allowing my imperfections to make me miserable, and that was not God’s plan. Satan was making me feel worthless, whereas God would have wanted me to be hopeful. I now understand that our journey in trying to learn perfection is what matters in God’s eyes. What we learn from our mistakes is what brings us closer to Christ. I know that my feelings of inadequacy weren’t immediately taken away by Heavenly Father when I asked, because I needed to have that conversation with my dad. We make mistakes so that we can learn from them, and that way we can always be progressing.

Though mistakes are ultimately for our benefit, it doesn’t change the fact that in order to be with our Heavenly Father again we must be completely clean. There has to be a way for us to be “without spot.” And there is. Elder Holland illustrates this in his most recent conference talk through a parable. He says “Our only hope for true perfection is in receiving it as a gift from heaven—we can’t “earn” it. Thus, the grace of Christ offers us not only salvation from sorrow and sin and death but also salvation from our own persistent self-criticism.

A servant was in debt to his king for the amount of 10,000 talents. Hearing the servant’s plea for patience and mercy, “the lord of that servant was moved with compassion, and … forgave … the debt.” But then that same servant would not forgive a fellow servant who owed him 100 pence. On hearing this, the king lamented to the one he had forgiven, “Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee?”10
There is some difference of opinion among scholars regarding the monetary values mentioned here—and forgive the U.S. monetary reference—but to make the math easy, if the smaller, unforgiven 100-pence debt were, say, $100 in current times, then the 10,000-talent debt so freely forgiven would have approached $1 billion—or more!
As a personal debt, that is an astronomical number—totally beyond our comprehension. (Nobody can shop that much!) Well, for the purposes of this parable, it is supposed to be incomprehensible; it is supposed to be beyond our ability to grasp, to say nothing of beyond our ability to repay. That is because this isn’t a story about two servants arguing in the New Testament. It is a story about us, the fallen human family—mortal debtors, transgressors, and prisoners all. Every one of us is a debtor, and the verdict was imprisonment for every one of us. And there we would all have remained were it not for the grace of a King who sets us free because He loves us and is “moved with compassion toward us.”11
Jesus uses an unfathomable measurement here because His Atonement is an unfathomable gift given at an incomprehensible cost. That, it seems to me, is at least part of the meaning behind Jesus’s charge to be perfect. We may not be able to demonstrate yet the 10,000-talent perfection the Father and the Son have achieved, but it is not too much for Them to ask us to be a little more godlike in little things, that we speak and act, love and forgive, repent and improve at least at the 100-pence level of perfection, which it is clearly within our ability to do.”

None of us will ever be perfect in this life so we have to put away the self-criticism and hate, and put all of our trust in our Heavenly Father and in our Savior Jesus Christ. It can only be through him that we can ever truly be perfect. Elder Neal A. Maxwell said “May I speak . . . to those buffeted by false insecurity, who, though laboring devotedly in the Kingdom, have recurring feelings of falling forever short. . . .

. . . This feeling of inadequacy is . . . normal. There is no way the Church can honestly describe where we must yet go and what we must yet do without creating a sense of immense distance.

. . . This is a gospel of grand expectations, but God’s grace is sufficient for each of us.”

This is, to me, the most amazing message of Christ’s gospel; That we can truly, absolutely become perfect. In Moroni 10 we read, “Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; And again, if ye by the grace of God are perfect in Christ, then are ye sanctified in Christ by the grace of God, through the shedding of the blood of Christ, that ye become holy, without spot.”

The power of Christ’s atonement covered each and every one of us, and it is through his grace that we can be with our Father again. We won’t achieve perfection now, or at any time during our mortal life. All we can do is continue to “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.” I can’t wait to teach the people of Italy about the truth that we can be clean of any mistake through our Savior. Though the thought of a  mission is pretty frightening, the thought of sharing what brings me so much joy makes me think that it will all be worth it.

As per the farewell talk style, I feel there are a couple people I owe some thanks to, specifically my family.

Charlie - Thanks for being my little cuddle buddy and teaching me to always have fun and be a little crazy.

Sydney - you’re such an amazing example of pure selflessness. I hope that I can become as kind and happy as you are.

Emma - Thank you for showing me how to loosen up and also how to be bold.

Stewart - You have always been and will continue to be an amazing example. If I’m half as successful as you were on a mission, I’ll be more than happy

Dad - Thank you for advice, blessings, and all the goofiness. You’ve always been an example of incredible faith, so thank you for letting me lean on yours when I felt my own wavering.

Mom - You’ve taught me so much about being a faithful daughter of God. You are my confidant, comforter, and best friend. I am so excited to be serving in your same mission because it means that I’ll always get to remember your example while I’m serving.

I know that it can only be through Christ that we can be perfected. I love this gospel, and I am so excited to dedicate the next 18 months of my life to teaching it.