Faith and Unity

The Helaman Sons Letters, Vol I, No 3 – September 3, 2000

(The following is from an issue of the GUIDElines dated June 20, 1989 and will give you further background on the program as we begin reading the missionary adventures of the Youth Guides.)

FAITH is the driving principle behind what we are doing at the Arizona Temple Visitors’ Center.  We have faith that if we learn what we need to do, plan our course of action and work as hard as we can to reach our goals that the Lord will bless us with people to teach.  He has!  There have been literally thousands of people come for tours in the past and there will be thousands in the future.

UNITY is what makes the Youth Guide program so awesome.  Each of us knows that everyone else is studying his/her scriptures and the Missionary Guide, praying for the program and for each others’ success and that the leaders are doing everything in their power to move the program forward for the benefit of all, and the glory of the Lord.  There is no doubt that every night at 6:30 the Guides are in their District Meeting learning how to become better missionaries and that between 7:00 and 9:00 p.m. they are working, praying, and hoping for the opportunity to give tours and present copies of the Book of Mormon to those the Lord brings to the gardens.

What could be better than what we are doing?  Elder M. Russell Ballard has asked that we become better FINDERS and has promised that if we follow the SETADATE program we WILL be successful.  SETADATE is a tool that will increase the fruits of our faith a thousand fold.  As each of us fasts and prays, pleading with the Lord for assistance in spreading the gospel, our unity will increase and success is assured.

FAITH and UNITY are the watchwords for June.

Below are some quotes from Elder M. Russell Ballard.  Perhaps they will give you added courage to set your own date, now:

I have a file of hundreds of letters of people who have taken that challenge and have SETADATE.  Set it within 90 days.  Work with the full time missionaries.  Talk with them about the date.  Ask them to pray with you.  You can bring about a resurgence of missionary work in the lives of members of the Church.  If they will do that and fast and pray about it and then talk to everyone they see, the Lord will put people in their pathway and they will have people prepared to be taught.  I mean it just works that way.

I would encourage everybody to SETADATE.  Then I would get those dates clearly understood by everybody.  This is your primary role.  Then I would help them learn the proselyting techniques of opening their mouths, using the videos, using these tools [the Visitors’ Center] in order to have spiritual experiences, which will bring about an opportunity for people to be taught.  If you say set a date … who are you going to have ready.  That won’t work.  But if you will give me 90 days, my family and I will be on our knees and we will fast and pray and we will have someone because the Lord will bless us.  In my own experience we have done this over and over again.  Repeatedly.  We have nobody on the radar screen at all.  Then out of the clear blue sky someone will come into sight to teach.

I never taught that all you have to do is SETADATE.  Fast and pray and then talk to everybody that the Lord puts in your pathway and you will have positive beautiful experiences and you will see people come into the Church.

Brother Bowden [the YG Director] says the youth of Zion are Sleeping Giants.  AWAKE!  Sleeping Giants!  Our goal is 24 referrals for June.  Have you done your part?

My family and I invited the Sister Missionaries to our home where we discussed setting a date.  I explained that while I was praying on Saturday morning it came clearly into my mind that July 4^th is an excellent date.  Therefore, the 4^th of July it is!  We have prayed with the missionaries for success in having someone come with us to the Visitors’ Center on or before that date.  Hopefully, it will come in June!

May the Lord bless each of you, is my prayer, as we do His work at the Visitors’ Center, in Sacrament and Member Missionary meetings, and in our daily lives.  In the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Bro. P.

As we were approaching Christmas one year, we began searching for a good Youth Guide Theme that would capture what we wanted of the excitement that is Christmas in the Gardens.  It was a tradition to start with Christmas in July, often with a Christmas tree, Christmas lights, the singing of Christmas carols, and talked about what we needed to do to get ready for Christmas.  I found that starting that early we were able to recruit enough new Youth Guides to fill all the slots that were needed for Christmas.  With a million people coming to see the Christmas lights and thousands to listen to the concerts each night during December, we also thought it would be good to have a new Youth Guide Theme that would help us get ready.  We settled on:

The night is far spent, the day is at hand:

 let us therefore cast off the work of darkness,

and LET US PUT ON THE ARMOUR OF LIGHT.

No unhallowed hand can stop the work from progressing.

Persecutions may rage, mobs may combine,

armies may assemble, calumny may defame,

but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent,

until it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime,

swept every country and sounded in every ear

 . . . until the purposes of God shall be accomplished,

and the Great Jehovah shall say…

THE WORK IS DONE!

The Theme was recited at the start of each Sunday Night Training Meeting, usually followed by a rousing rendition of Called To Serve!

We changed the theme from time to time as the old Guides left for their missions and new ones came with new ideas.  One young man stood and bore his testimony one night by just reciting all the themes that he had had to memorize during his time in the program!

In the next post of The Helaman Sons Letters, I’ll reprint a letter I wrote to one of my Helaman Sons as he prepared to receive his endowment prior to leaving for his mission.  He was one of the great ones, saved for the latter-days, and was a good youth leader.  As adult lay leaders in the Church we still have to maintain a living for our families.  It was difficult to keep everything going in the program and work too, as it is in many Church positions.  Although we ran a 7-day a week operation as though it was a mission, we were not called full time so we still had to work during the week.

At that time I was doing all of the word processing for the program and all the secretarial work for a staff of over 100.  The extensive roster of up to 100 Guides changed each week and required lots of energy and time to keep up with it.  Without a roster of phone numbers and assigned positions it was impossible to expect the organization to run smoothly.  So, when I found a young man or young woman who was willing to help me with the work in a major way, I was able to delegate, and it wasn’t long until we became good friends as well.

Since I have now sent a son on a mission, I can look back on the emotions of letting my Helaman Sons and Daughters go and understand a little better how I felt about them at the time.  Since we were a mission-like organization, when they left us I knew that we might never be associated again.  My office at the time was on the seventh floor and faced west so I had a view of the planes leaving from Phoenix Sky Harbor.  Almost every Wednesday one or more of my friends and fellow workers was on an early morning flight to the Salt Lake City and the MTC.  One of my old friends said that the best-kept secret in the Church was how much it hurts to send a son on a mission.  We love to do it, but it is tough!  Sending son after Helaman Son on missions took its toll and each left a void in my heart.

Another reason I wrote to them was that I felt that they needed someone to remind them of how special they are to the Lord.  These are the ones He has saved for the latter-days and often they can’t see how awesome they really are.  As we worked together in the program, I considered it a primary goal to help them realize who they were in an eternal sense, and realizing that, how to order their lives so they maximized their potential.  Tomorrow we’ll read a typical letter to a Helaman Son.  When I was young I always knew that my Mom loved me best, although in retrospect I realize that she loved us all equally.  She was just a master at making each one of us feel special.  I tried to show that same kind of attention to all the Youth Guide leaders and by doing so developed some good friendships.  I told them that although I was really old now, someday, in the eternities, time would be irrelevant and we’d all be pretty much the same age.  Having gone back to a 27^th high school reunion a few years ago, I realized that when I was a freshman the seniors were so old and wise that I could never imagine having one as a close friend.  After not seeing them for that many years, 2 or 3 years were really no big deal, we all felt about the same age.

Bro. P.