Be Not Weary in Well-Doing

To my son, 

This week I finished listening to a book called Endurance that told the incredible story of the voyage of Ernest Shackleton with 27 other men to the Antarctic. They left from the island of South Georgia on November 5, 1914 and were headed to Antarctica so the crew could be the first to walk across the whole continent. About 200 miles away from their destination in January of the next year, the ship got stuck in the pack ice and eventually was surrounded and could not move. The crew waited and waited for months on the ship but the ice was compressed around the ship more and more until it eventually crushed it and the crew was forced to leave the ship on October 27^th of that year. They camped on the ice—in the middle of the ocean—for months and months, always at the peril of their lives. They had to move from place to place, constantly worried about the condition of the ice and whether it was going to crack open and send them into the ocean. Shackleton was a powerful leader and helped keep the group alive and together and they hoped day after day for a way to escape to a nearby island. But they were totally at the mercy of the ocean and where the ice took them. They finally were able to get into the three lifeboats and risk a treacherous journey to a nearby island, sleeping in the boats in the most cold and horrible conditions. They were hungry and wet and sick and often faced terrible arctic storms upon the ocean. But incredibly they never gave up and miraculously landed on Elephant Island in April 1916. Unfortunately there were no people there, so Shackleton took a small group back out onto the treacherous waters and went via a small boat for South Georgia—where they had begun a year and a half earlier—800 miles away. It was an absolute miracle from God that they survived the trip among gales and terrible conditions on the ocean. What impressed me was their tenacity—Shackleton simply would not give up to save the lives of his men. They should have died dozens of times, but he always found a way to keep hope alive and move forward. After a harrowing journey they got to the island only to find that they would have to go overland across treacherous mountains in the bitter cold to reach civilization. But they did it and, like the story of the sons of Helaman, none of the crew died despite so many times when they should have. They were an example of incredible perseverance, and it motivated me to want to try harder to endure even amidst life’s challenges.

                I hope that you and I can both learn to persevere in trying to do good and follow the Lord no matter what challenges we face. I love this encouragement from the Savior to the Prophet Joseph Smith: “Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing, for ye are laying the foundation of a great work. And out of small things proceedeth that which is great” (Doctrine and Covenants 64:33). Alma said something similar to his son Helaman: “Teach them to never be weary of good works” (Alma 37:34). We must not weary of doing what is right, even if it seems that things are hard or that we can’t make progress. If we seek to persevere He will help us and we will find joy in doing the things that the Lord has asked of us. Mormon said this to his son Moroni when they struggled against the wickedness of the people: “And now, my beloved son, notwithstanding their hardness, let us labor diligently; for if we should cease to labor, we should be brought under condemnation; for we have a labor to perform whilst in this tabernacle of clay, that we may conquer the enemy of all righteousness, and rest our souls in the kingdom of God” (Moroni 9:6). Those are words for us to live by—in all things good we must labor diligently and never cease working. I know that there is far more joy in striving through difficulty and overcoming than in any entertainment or leisure activity we might participate in. Ammon and the sons of Mosiah are among those in the scriptures who chose to persevere and do the work of the Lord despite incredible difficulty. They labored as missionaries for fourteen years among the Lamanites and at the end of it, this is what Ammon said, “My joy is full, yea, my heart is brim with joy, and I will rejoice in my God…. Let us glory, yea, we will glory in the Lord; yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full (Alma 26:11,16). He was full of joy because he had persevered in the work of the Lord, and I know that we too will find great joy as we strive to do the same. 

Love,

Dad