Well, we are very grateful to be here with each of you today. The last day or two has been a remarkable experience of reunion and happiness for us. Forty-seven years ago I came here as a called missionary to the old LTM, which was located here, and I had the opportunity to be taught Japanese by Kats Kagiama. Perhaps many of you have had that same blessing. After all these years to be together again, even though we've had other opportunities to be together, it's been a sweet opportunity of reunion. We've also had a reunion with some of our missionaries from Japan and we've also had an opportunity to visit the sister missionaries at the Visitor's Center. We just couldn't have had a better welcome and we will leave with memories that will sustain us for a long, long time. I just want you to know that before I give my formal message. how blessed you are to be in this remarkable place. Studying, being here, being taught by President and Sister Tanner, and being taught by so many others...we are grateful for this assignment and thank you for coming here today.
We bring you the love of the members of the Church in Asia. The Asia Area of the Church comprises 22 countries or territories, with half of the world’s population. In many countries of Asia, the Church is still emerging while in others, the Church is well established, with many members and stakes. In this wonderful part of the world, there are 2 temples (with one more announced that will be located in Bangkok, Thailand), 11 missions, 37 stakes, over 30 districts, and congregations found in 19 countries. Although we have half of the world’s population, we have only about 1% of the world’s Church membership. There are untold millions of people who need the message of the gospel preached to them and we, together with remarkable members and missionaries, are working with all our heart, might, mind and strength as we undertake this remarkable assignment.
Wherever I go, I try to meet with the youth and young single adults. I have come to love the many faces and languages found in this part of the world. You are not only the future of the world, but you're the future of the Church. I am pleased that among you there are 315 students from the Asia Area here at BYU Hawaii. These students come from 13 countries and you represent the very best of those whom the Lord is raising up to assume leadership in the wards, branches and, most importantly, families of Asia as you receive your education and then return to the countries from which you have come.
The doctrine of the gathering of Israel is one of the most important doctrines of the restoration. The reason for this is that not only do we seek to understand and teach this doctrine, but in our own way we actually participate in the gathering. It is because of this doctrine that we hope that after you receive your education in this and other institutions of higher education you will return to the country, culture and language from which you came. The gathering to where God placed each of us is a vital part of the Lord’s plan for you, your family, and for His Church and Kingdom. President Russell M. Nelson taught this important doctrine in this manner:
“This doctrine of the gathering is one of the important teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...
“...in the early days of the Church, conversion often meant emigration... But now the gathering takes place in each nation. The Lord has decreed the establishment of Zion in each realm where He has given His Saints their birth and nationality. Scripture foretells that the people ‘shall be gathered home to the lands of their inheritance, and shall be established in all their lands of promise.’ ‘Every nation is the gathering place for its own people.’"
Now I continue,
"The place of gathering for Brazilian Saints is in Brazil; the place of gathering for Nigerian Saints is in Nigeria; the place of gathering for Korean Saints is in Korea; and so forth. Zion is ‘the pure in heart.’ Zion is wherever righteous Saints are. Publications, communications, and congregations are now such that nearly all members have access to the doctrines, keys, ordinances, and blessings of the gospel, regardless of their location.
“Spiritual security will always depend upon how one lives, not where one lives. Saints in every land have equal claim upon the blessings of the Lord.”1
I have now lived almost 10 years of my adult life in the Lord’s service in Asia. Consistently, I have seen that each new generation of leaders is largely composed of those who have come to understand the Lord’s doctrine concerning the need to gather back to the lands of their birth and nationality. These leaders made the choice to seek and follow the Lord’s will in this important matter.
In some cases, this may feel as if this is hard counsel or hard doctrine. For some of you, it will mean giving up some of things of comfort and, for some, even wealth. It means that your children will learn the language of their grandparents, rather than the language of some other country. For some of you, it will mean that you may not live in even as comfortable a place as you do as a student here at BYU Hawaii. It also means that, if you desire, the Lord will have provided a way for you to enter this wonderful university to learn, and you will have chosen to have faith and return to serve and build up His Kingdom. It will mean that as you are faithful now and later, you will look back on your life and realize that you have done what the Lord desired of you and that, even with sacrifice, it was worth it in every way. What I promise you, and what the Lord has already promised you, is that you and your family can be spiritually secure regardless of where you live, and that you will have enough as you first seek to do His will in your life. Your spiritual security, and that of your family, will depend on how you live the gospel, not by living in some different culture or country.
Although I serve in the Asia Area Presidency now, my first assignment as a General Authority was to serve in the Asia North Area Presidency. We lived in Tokyo and traveled often to Korea and the islands of the Guam Micronesia Mission.
During those years, there were, perhaps, hundreds of meetings that I attended in Korea. Some of them were in small branches, and others were in the largest stakes. I had many feelings and impressions as I participated in teaching the gospel and in bearing testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ. For me, one of the most important meetings did not happen at a church or in the temple. Rather, the meeting that may have had the greatest impact on my understanding of how the Lord desired to grow and more firmly establish His Church in Asia and other parts of the world happened in a busy restaurant with only four of us present.
I had been assigned to preside at a Stake Conference in Korea. I asked Elder Choi Yoon Hwan, who was then an Area Seventy, to arrange a dinner appointment with the stake president. That evening, the Stake President, one of his counselors in the stake presidency, Elder Choi and I sat down to dinner and just talked.
I asked the stake president whether he had known Elder Choi as they were growing up as young men in Korea. The stake president told me that he, Elder Choi and his counselor had all served missions together as young men. After their missions, they each had a variety of experiences that created opportunities for education and employment. In Elder Choi’s case, he left Korea and first came here to BYU Hawaii and then to Utah State University for his education. He and his wife, Bon, then chose to return to Korea, raise a family and serve the Lord. In each of the others’ lives, they had had educational and professional opportunities, but through their individual choices, they had chosen to stay in or return to Korea, marry, be sealed in the temple, and have children. They worked to build up the Church in Korea, the country that had given them the gospel as well as parents, family, birth, life, language and culture. Each had served as a bishop and as a member of a stake presidency, and each had made a significant contribution to the building up of the Lord’s church in that country. As many of you know, Elder Choi now serves as one of the General Authorities of the Church and is a member of the Asia North Area Presidency.
That evening, we talked about young men and women serving together and choosing to follow the Lord’s counsel to return to their country and work to build and strengthen the Church where they had been born. It was during this conversation that I first had come into my heart a spiritual understanding that the Lord would build up and more firmly establish His Church in each country, culture, language and people by having the rising generation accept His doctrine, and gather back to their own country. There they would work together to build up and strengthen the Church in that place. There they would establish multigenerational families who will be the spiritual strength of that country and place. That night, I not only heard the stories of these three men and their families, but I could also see so many others choosing to follow the Lord’s will in this matter, raising their families in spiritual security and happiness, and making contributions to His Church in their own country. These contributions can never be made, and this spiritual security can never be had, without accepting the Lord’s counsel and following His will in one’s life.
Now some of you will ask, “Can there be any exceptions to this pattern?” The answer is that surely there are exceptions. The exception is that there are some of you, maybe even many of you who have fallen in love with and married someone who is not of your culture, language or place. That's what happens at BYU Hawaii! The two of you will need to prayerfully consider your choices and make sure that the decisions you make are consistent with the Lord’s will for you and your family. Be sure to prayerfully consider the Lord’s teachings and seek His will in this most important family council and decision. Together with the decisions regarding the bringing of children into the world, I can think of no decision that will be made early in your marriage that will have a greater impact on the ultimate happiness and spiritual security of your family than this important decision.
As you make the decisions that will affect your life and the lives of each member of your family and others, please remember that the spiritual guidance necessary to know whether your circumstances and choices are pleasing to the Lord will come as you first desire to do His will and then accept His doctrine, and then seek the guidance of the Holy Ghost in your life and the life of your family. He has always promised that those who keep His commandments and seek to do His will will have spiritual direction and guidance, and that “ the Holy Ghost, [will] show unto you all things what ye should do.”2
Another gospel truth that we must not forget is that our Heavenly Father, who loves us, will help us receive those things that we righteously desire. Alma said it this way:
“I ought not to harrow up in my desires, the firm decree of a just God, for I know that He granteth unto men according their desire...I know that He allotteth unto men...according to their wills...”3
However, this kind of “desire”4 is not simply what we wish for or want. It is defined by those things that we are willing to live for, and work for over time. This is powerful doctrine. Of course, the way we show our desire to God is through what we do -- our actions and our works -- not just through our words, our wishes or even our prayers.
The Savior’s greatest desire was to do the will of the Father. He said, “Behold I have given unto you my gospel, and this is the gospel which I have given unto you--that I came into the world to do the will of my Father, because my Father sent me.”5 He also described how difficult it was even for Him to do His Father’s will. “...I have drunk out of that bitter cup which the Father hath given me, and have glorified the Father in taking upon me the sins of the world, in the which I have suffered the will of the Father in all things from the beginning.”6 Just as in the Savior’s life, we will need to choose to follow the will of the Father daily, and throughout our lives. Indeed, continuing to choose the will of the Father becomes the mark of our discipleship. It is when we choose right and follow His will, especially when the choices feel difficult, that we grow the most in our love for God and our fellow man. This is how we become true disciples of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
A few months ago, I visited a city in the Asia Area where the gospel has been preached for many years. We had a devotional with some of the members of the church and had a period of questions and answers. One of the first questions was, “When will we become a stake?” I knew that a member of the Twelve had been in that same city about a year earlier. In response to their question, I responded by asking this question: “When you asked the member of the Twelve the same question a year ago, what was his answer?” The response was immediate –“You will be a stake when you want to be a stake.” They then said that they did not fully understand the response. Of course they wanted to be a stake – they had wanted it for years.
My response was then the same as had been given by the member of the Twelve a year earlier, with one clarification. “You will become a stake when you want to be a stake enough that you are willing to do the work that is needed to become a stake.” As you may know, in order to become a stake, there must be a certain number of members, and they must have a certain level of faithfulness in paying their tithing, and so forth. The things that they were lacking when I visited a few months ago were the very things that they were lacking a year earlier when a member of the Twelve had visited. In the year that had passed, they had lived good lives and had done much good. But they had not focused on the work needed to reactivate a relatively few members, or to invite a relatively few to receive the blessings of being full tithe payers or the work needed to invite a few more of their friends and family to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, their desire to become a stake had not been strong enough to motivate them to do the things that they needed to do to become a stake.
Today, we are about 4 months from that visit. During those months, the district leadership, the branch presidents, the missionary force and others went to work to do the things needed to become a stake. I am pleased to report that within a very short period of time – certainly this year – there will be an additional stake in the Asia Area. This is because they came to understand that “desire” in the gospel of Jesus Christ always and must always include the action and work needed to accomplish whatever is desired. Remember, we show our desire to God by what we do, far more than by what we say.
Perhaps I can give another example from the experiences of missionaries around the world. Many of you have served, for which we are so very grateful. As President Monson has said,
“We affirm that missionary work is a priesthood duty—and we encourage all young men who are worthy and who are physically able and mentally capable to respond to the call to serve. Many young women also serve, but they are not under the same mandate to serve as are the young men. We assure the young sisters of the Church, however, that they make a valuable contribution as missionaries, and we welcome their service.”7
Sisters, if you have not yet served, but have a desire to do so, ask the Lord whether it would be pleasing to Him for you to serve. Brethren, if you have not yet served and are physically and emotionally able, please be worthy, or become worthy, and step up to your duty to do whatever is needed to receive a call.
Sister Evans and I served together as I presided over the Japan Nagoya Mission. Our desire was to increase the quantity and quality of convert baptisms and to more firmly establish the Lord’s church in Japan. As many of you know, in recent months, Elder Oaks has reminded us that the very doctrinal purpose of missionary work is to “teach repentance and baptize converts.”8 That is what we wanted to do! That was the desire of our hearts. We set goals and made plans on how to accomplish those goals. We worked with greater focus and desire than we had ever done in anything in our lives. As we worked with missionaries, we were blessed and the work increased. We found more opportunities to teach repentance and then saw the blessing of an increase in the number of convert baptisms. However, after experiencing this remarkable blessing, we then experienced a period where we plateaued and we stopped reaching our goals.
Have you ever felt this way in those things that you want to achieve? As I contemplated what to do, one of our missionaries wrote to me a letter in which he said:
“I am really thinking about what I can do to [achieve our goals]...I know that it will require more dedication than I have had to accomplish these goals. I think so many times when we have missed our goals, it came down to the sad fact that we just didn’t care. Of course we wanted baptisms, but we didn’t really care enough to do the things that make baptisms happen. It is sad, but when we all really think seriously about it, we all know it is true.”
Elder Neal A. Maxwell of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles taught this principle in these words. He said:
“Desire denotes a real longing or craving. Hence righteous desires are much more than passive preferences or fleeting feelings... Therefore what we insistently desire, over time, is what we will eventually become and what we will receive in eternity.”9
This gospel principle was first taught to me in my patriarchal blessing. After calling me by name and declaring my lineage, the beloved patriarch then pronounced a personal and guiding blessing on me from Heavenly Father. At the end my blessing, the patriarch then said, “These blessings are yours, dear brother, if you live for them and work for them.”I have come to rejoice in this blessing. I have come to understand that my Heavenly Father, who loves me, gave me the moral agency and freedom to choose to live for and work for those blessings which He has already prepared. I came to understand that I would largely determine what kind of life I would have. Through my choices and my actions, I would choose whether or not I would follow the Father’s will and receive the blessings that He had already determined to give me.
President Boyd K. Packer taught this doctrine of moral agency, choice and obedience this way:
“Obedience-- --[God] will accept when freely given. And he will then return to you freedom that you can hardly dream of--the freedom to feel and to know, the freedom to do, and the freedom to be, at least a thousandfold more than we offer him. Strangely enough, the key to freedom is obedience.”10
Mary and I have found the same thing. As we have chosen to be obedient to the will of our Heavenly Father, He has given to us and to our family blessings that we could never have imagined. In giving God our agency and in choosing to follow His will, we have found that rather than feeling constrained by this choice, we have experienced real freedom. This freedom all that our Heavenly Father desires us to feel, to understand, to do and to become. Each righteous choice to follow the Father’s will deepens our discipleship and, ultimately, leads us to the gift of eternal life.
You will need the Lord’s help and the guidance of His Spirit to make the right choices as you consider the big decisions of your life:
What will I study? When will I serve my mission? What will I do for a living? Who will I marry? When should we start a family? How many children should we have? Where will my family live? Who will I become?
Your greatest happiness and spiritual security will come as you love and trust God enough that you will willingly give your agency to Him and say, “I will do as you direct.” Understanding our Father’s will and choosing to follow His will is the great test of our lives. Any other path will bring you less of everything that is truly important. I add my witness that when you are ready to make this commitment and remain faithful to it, you will find happiness – even joy – spiritual safety for you and your family, as well as “the freedom to feel and to know, the freedom to do, and the freedom to be, at least a thousandfold more than we offer him.”11
I close with a recent, personal experience. Not long ago, Mary and I knelt by our bed to say our evening prayer. It was my turn to say the prayer, and I began by praying for many of the same things that we've always prayed for. We prayed for President Monson, his counselors and the Twelve. We prayed for our missionaries and for other missionaries, for our children and for our grandchildren, and for ourselves. Then an unusual spirit came upon us and I said, “Heavenly Father, all that is left in our lives is to do whatsoever Thou would have us do and to work to bring the blessings of the gospel more strongly into the lives of our children, our grandchildren and, if Thou allows it, our great grandchildren.”
After so many experiences together, Mary and I have come to that place where we are willing, absolutely willing, to fully surrender to our Heavenly Father’s will, not because of force or fear of consequence, but because of our love for Him, and our gratitude for His Son, and our complete confidence in Him as our Father, who loves us. We know that He sees farther than we do. We know that He can provide for us and others in ways we cannot understand. We know that as we follow His will, even when we do not fully understand why, and even when it is contrary to something that we have planned or even worked toward, He will bless us in ways we cannot now even imagine. How we love Him and His Son. How we trust them. How grateful we are for His blessings, and especially those blessings which have required work, faith and trust.
My prayer is that each of us will consider our own desire to follow the Father’s will in our lives. Doing so will take much more than simply keeping the commandments. It will take sacrifice and even consecration. It will take a firm commitment to doing those things that are consistent with His will. It will take a lot of work, and it will take some sacrifice, but it will be worth it. May you find the faith and the courage to find out what God really desires of you, and may each of us have the faith and courage to do those things that are necessary to do His will, and accomplish His purposes, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.
[1] Russell M. Nelson, “The Gathering of Scattered Israel”, General Conference, October 2006.
[2] 2 Nephi 32:5
[3] see Alma 29
[4] Neal A. Maxwell, “According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts”, General Conference, October 1996.
[5] 3 Nephi 27:13
[6] 3 Nephi 11:11
[7] Thomas S. Monson, “Welcome to Conference”, General Conference, October 2012.
[8] Dallin H. Oaks, “Find People to Teach”, New Mission Presidents Seminar 2016.
[9] Neal A. Maxwell, “According to the Desire of [Our] Hearts”, General Conference, October 1996.