Jarek's Homecoming Talk July 2019

Good morning everyone! How great is it that we get to be here today, alive and gathered together to feel the spirit and hear the gospel. For everyone who’s not asleep yet, I’m excited to share my talk with you all. My topic is the importance and meaning of missionary work. It also happens to be my missionary homecoming talk as well.

Let’s start from the beginning

Just over eighteen months ago I put in my papers to apply to be a missionary. They went through Salt Lake, got reviewed, and eventually a letter was sent to president Bagley. He called me to meet with him and we went over the letter. In it, it said I was honorably excused from missionary service. I wasn’t going to serve a mission. So what happened? Why am I giving a homecoming talk if I was excused from missionary work? The answer is simple. God knows and loves every one of his children, and he had a plan for this one. And part of his plan involved me serving a mission. It just wasn’t the mission I was expecting.

On January second, twenty eighteen, I was set apart as a missionary in the Arizona Service mission, called to serve for a year and a half at the Arizona Phoenix teaching Mission Office as the technology specialist. The mission call would ask me to move a whole zero miles away from my home to teach and guide the Arizona Phoenix Mission with their technological problems. Not written in my call was the fact that I would be asked to help grow the Arizona service mission. This call isn’t normal, expected, or glamorous, but it was where God knew he wanted me to be, and where I could do the most good for Him.

My whole life, or at least as much of it as I could remember, I was planning and preparing to go out and teach the Gospel. I went to mission prep in highschool, I talked about the Gospel to my friends, and I learned how to eat food I don’t like without looking disgusted. I knew the lessons in preach my gospel pretty well, and I’ve always been comfortable talking to strangers and in public. There’s a pretty good chance that I would’ve made a passable, maybe even a good teaching missionary. But God didn’t want me to be a teaching missionary, he had a different job for me. 

My mission didn’t consist of going door to door teaching people, but instead had me working with individual missionaries. As the technology specialist, I spent eight hours a day, five days a week in the mission office. When I first got in, my position was covered by two teaching missionaries. My role originally consisted of answering the phone for missionaries who had problems with their tablets, and update the contact list of all the missionaries for the President and the other office missionaries. Fortunately, that list grew in the first week. You see, at the end of December, Salt Lake had began the transition for missionaries to stop using tablets, and moving to smartphones. A consequence of this was that our mission would be given about eighty brand new smartphones for missionaries to share to replace the old slider phones that they had been using in conjunction with their tablets. 

As wonderful as the change was going to be for the missionaries, it was a bit of a nightmare in the office. President Collins is too busy to worry about that sort of thing, and the rest of the office missionaries at the time were in charge of other projects, so the first week of my mission I was asked to take care of the change to smartphones. This involved getting dozens of Sim Cards activated in a short time frame, charging over seventy phones, understanding Salt Lake’s policy, collecting the old phones, and planning how to distribute and set them up over the course of four thirty minute time periods. It was wild. I had two powerstrips running nonstop for a couple days. But it worked. By January 12th, I got to know every teaching missionary in the mission, and they got to have a smartphone instead of sliders. And that was only the beginning of the many things I would get to do to help the mission. 

One project was helping to create a document that would collate, analyze, and present mission data to every ward and stake in the mission, and continuing to update it with whatever crazy ideas President came up with. That meant twenty one stakes and one hundred fifty seven wards getting an email telling them what their baptismal goals were, how many baptisms they’d had each month, how many people their missionaries had found, along with other important information. This took a few months to set up, and I kept updating it, even up to the week before my mission ended. Time and time again, we’ve heard stake presidents and bishops be grateful for a tangible presentation of how they are doing with missionary work. We’ve also seen improvement over time as people realize they’re below the goals that they set, and want to catch up.

Other things I got to do helped smooth out the flow of the mission. Many times president came to me and asked for my help in setting up powerpoints, or putting together videos. I was asked to work with Salt Lake to approve apps for our mission. I was consulted on advice from stake presidents. I was asked to help set up a way for us to use google drive and share important documents with all the missionaries. All of these things allowed me to serve where I can excel while allowing others to not have to waste time and energy that could be used for teaching. 

One of the biggest blessings of my mission was being able to serve in an office environment. I spent a year and a half working a full time job, answering and transferring phones, dealing with deadlines, adjusting for catastrophes, and being surrounded by awesome wise people. Most missionaries get experience that teaches them about hard work and morals and that’s great. With my mission however, I got to learn life skills, understand how to manipulate excel, and I was taught how to be patient and polite in professional settings. 

In addition to that, I got to work with wonderful people who’ve taught me so much. Everyone in the mission office daily that wasn’t named elder wall was at least close to three times my age, and boy did they know a lot. Whenever there was free time in the office, I loved to just chat with them. Every morning we’d have a devotional, and they’d share wonderful insights. Many afternoons when there was little to be done, we’d discuss about their kids and how they raised them and love them. All said and done, I’m a little sad that I have to go back to hanging with my peers, because it was wonderful being lifted up by my elders. 

But the best part of my mission is one that I hope more and more people will get to experience, and that was being a service missionary. As a service missionary, I got to be surrounded by other people who were serving out of the true faith and strength of their hearts. To be called as a service missionary, you had to choose to serve. Service missionaries are people who aren’t able to serve a teaching mission, be it for physical or mental health, but that choose to serve God anyways. The missionaries I got to serve with weren’t serving because their parents asked them to, or because it’s socially acceptable. These missionaries were serving because they love God, and want to serve. Instead of being content with being unable to serve  a teaching missionaries, service missionaries choose to find where they can be helpful to the lord. 

One of our missionaries, her name was sister Valdez, was originally called to serve in the New York city spanish speaking mission. She was out only for a few months before she was hospitalized and had to return home. Three times she tried to go back on her mission, and each time she got sick again. After being unable to go for so long, and knowing she’d never be able to return to New York because of her health, she was discouraged. She could’ve moved on and accepted that she’d done what she could, but she chose to continue on. After hearing about service missions, she was called to serve here where she lives, and was one of the most faithful missionaries I’ve known.

Another one of our missionaries had some mental handicaps. Elder Kofford was excused from missionary service, similar to me, and instead of stopping, he chose to serve a mission. At the beginning, he wouldn’t say more than two words together in a district meeting, but by the end of his mission, he was the district leader and was teaching lessons on a weekly basis. His mission was difficult, and he didn’t have to do it, but he chose to, and that was amazing.

We also have a missionary who has some mental disability, and is also deaf. Nevertheless, elder Banks served as hard as any missionary. He worked with the Virtual Record Operation Center that helps with family history, and went to the temple every single week (and he lives up in prescott). On a few mission temple trips, he was even able to perform baptisms for the dead and confirmations as the one doing the blessing ordinance rather than as a proxy. That was amazing.

Finally, we have my wonderful companion elder Kornegay. Elder Kornegay has pretty difficult autism, and for most of his mission has needed one of his parents to accompany him everywhere. He originally was going to serve for six months, but now eighteen months later he’s extended to a full two years. He’s been going to meetings without either parent, and he has a wonderful testimony. It was a blessing to be his companion and talk to him almost every day.

Another wonderful aspect of the service mission is that I got many opportunities teaching missionaries don’t. For one, I went to the temple almost every week for a year and a half. Being able to go to the temple and do ordinance work for the dead is and will always be an amazing feeling. In addition to going to the temple myself, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to go multiple times with family members. At least once a month my Grandmother would go with me, and on multiple occasions my parents got to go as well. They say that they enjoyed it, but I know that I definitely enjoyed the spirit that being with family in the temple brings.

I also got the opportunity to be a tangible example to my friends and family. Since I was living a missionary lifestyle at home, my brothers got to see me every day trying to live good standards and help people around me. My friends had to deal with me following different standards than I normally do. I got to be a light, and not one that’s across the ocean, but a candle that’s stuck in the face of people that’ve known me my whole life. 

All in all, I know that God knew what he was doing when he called me as a service missionary. I know for a fact that I would’ve made a passable teaching missionary, but I also know with a firm faith that God needed me here. I know that he has a plan for everyone, and that if we put our faith in him, we can’t go wrong. I know that God’s church is here on the earth, and that it is here to help us become the best people that we can be. And I say this in the name of Jesus Christ, AMEN