The Most Important Investigators

In general conference on Saturday Elder Hales talked about teaching our children, and he made this comment: “Parents, you are called to be loving teachers and missionaries to your children and youth.  They are your investigators. You bear the responsibility to help them become converted. In truth, all of us are seeking to be converted — which means being filled with our Savior’s love.”  I remember a friend relating to me how he had expressed frustration to his father at the thought of returning from his mission because there was so much meaning in serving and teaching the gospel to the people in his mission, and he was afraid that in going home the future responsibilities wouldn’t be able to measure up to the past experiences on the mission.  He told me how his father chastised him a bit, telling him that he had only practiced on his mission—now he had to go home and have a family and teach his children the gospel in what really mattered the most for his own eternal consequences.  This is I think the same sentiment that Elder Hales was sharing—our most important investigators are our children, not anyone we may have baptized on our mission, as important as that was.   

                As I’ve thought about the way we as missionaries treated our investigators—doing everything conceivable to try to help them accept the gospel, come to Church, read the Book of Mormon, solve their individual challenges, etc.—I’ve often thought that this verse from Isaiah 49:22-23, “Behold, I will lift up mine hand to the Gentiles, and set up my standard to the people: and they shall bring thy sons in their arms, and thy daughters shall be carried upon their shoulders.  And kings shall be thy nursing fathers, and their queens thy nursing mothers.”  To me that is, at least in one interpretation, a description of missionaries serving their investigators—figuratively carrying them in their arms and on their shoulders—as they try to bring them to the gospel and establish them in the faith.  Missionaries all over the world will often fast with, pray with, study with, plead with, and cry with their investigators as they try to use all righteous means to help that individual or family accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and develop the faith necessary to make covenants with God.  So as I think about that in conjunction with Elder Hales and his message, how much more should I give my all to serve and teach and love my children as I try to help them to accept the gospel!  And as I certainly would never have raised my voice to someone investigating the Church, how much more should I avoid letting anger into my parenting, even if I do need to apply discipline and correction.  As I tried to have to have on my mission, so should I have this attitude as I seek to teach and love my own children: “The Lord… formed me from the womb that I should be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him” (Isaiah 21:5).  My purpose in being “formed” by the Lord was to be his servant and bring back to Him the House of Jacob, and that responsibility is no greater than in my own home.  As Elder Hales stated, the most “impactful” Christian service will come in the home in family home evening, family scripture study, family prayer, and family council meetings.  As a parent I must seek to do more to “bring [my] sons in [my] arms” and carry “[my] daughters… upon [my shoulders” as I try to teach them the ways of the Lord.