Homecoming talk

 

Below is a copy of my thoughts at my homecoming on December 17, 2023.

Buenos Dias. Como estan?

This is so awesome. I am so excited to be here with all of you, and to see all your faces. Like I said, my name is Spencer Stringham. I just returned from the Texas McAllen Mission on Friday. And it was the best thing that ever happened to me. (long pause as the reality of how much my mission meant to me really sinks in and I’m trying hard not to lose it!) I'm really excited to share with you all today some of the things that I learned and experiences that I had. But a little overview of my mission so you kind of understand a little bit about where I was. The Texas McAllen Mission- it runs along the United States/Mexico border and also along the Gulf of Mexico. And so it runs northward up into Laredo and Corpus Christi and down into Brownsville. Most of my mission is considered the Rio Grande Valley, which is a chain of cities that is along the border and is not quite the United States, but not quite Mexico. It's really just quite in between. Everybody there is bilingual. Everybody there doesn't have a dog, but the streets are still full of like 50 dogs somehow. The most common food by popular vote is probably hot Cheetos and everybody wears Crocs and just leaves their old refrigerators on their front lawn.  It's an interesting place, but I love it from the bottom of my heart, and I would go back in a second. In my mission I served in six areas and I had 12 companions and it's wonderful to see some of their faces here today in the audience. Hope you guys will get a chance to speak with them, they're incredible. I had two mission presidents and mission wives to the mission president. The first one I only spent a few transfers with and the second one, Presidente Larreal and his wife Hermana Larreal really touched me and really taught me a lot. So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about Jesus Christ today because that's why I served my mission. Jesus Christ, He showed us a lot of great attributes, a lot of great examples, a lot of ways that we should live our life. He really was our perfect example. One of my favorite things to do on my mission was simply to testify to Jesus Christ and to watch the change that took in people's lives as they came to love Him and to know Him, their behavior started changing and they were able to make commitments and change their life for the better, which is something that I know they all really needed. Today I really wanted to focus on four of those attributes that I saw in my friends in South Texas and also those attributes that were developed within me while I was a missionary.                                                                                                                                          
                                                                         The first one is the attribute of charity and love which Jesus Christ taught us consistently every single day. I'm going to share a quick scripture that comes from the book of Matthew. In this part, you all know, Jesus is being asked what the greatest commandment is, and he says, “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, with all thy heart, with all their soul and with all their mind. This is the first and great commandment and the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  And so, as I've been thinking about what charity means to me and why it was so important to me and my mission, this is something that came to my head. When people love God with all their heart and with all their might - they have happiness in their lives because they make good choices, and they invite the spirit. And I saw that in a few of my friends. I saw that when they had charity and they were able to make the right decision they were able to see the hand of God in their life. And I as well, when I was able to have charity, my mission was much better. One of my friends, her name is Danielle, and Danielle lives in Brownsville, TX, which is a tiny little town that is basically Matamoros, Mexico but on this side of the border. Everybody there is super bilingual like I said and everybody there is just trying to figure out how they can get their life under control. Danielle was one of those people. We found her as we were looking for an inactive member.  We were going through some membership records and trying to bring some people back to church and we stopped by her house. It wasn't her mother that we found but it was her. Her and her kids. She has four kids and their ages are nine, seven, three and one. So they're all pretty little.  When we got to Danielle's house, she actually told us that her and her son Nathan were talking about what baptism means, and we're like, well, this is perfect. We love to talk about baptism and Jesus Christ’s baptism.  We started teaching her and we started teaching her about the gospel and they immediately started coming to church. And they loved it! It was wonderful, but there was one complication. Her husband didn't want to come to church, and so she came alone with her four kids and her husband stayed home.  Her husband wasn't joining us for anything, but we continued to teach her because she was keeping her commitments, and she was growing. As the story progresses, Danielle finally accepted a date to be baptized.  When we were at her baptism, this is the time when I saw how much Danielle had grown. As we were at her baptism service, me and my companion, we're asked to prepare a special musical number, which is quite funny because I like to dance and  I've trained a lot In the world of dance, but when it comes to singing or playing instruments or anything of that sort, I'm not good at that. So me and my companion we put together a little musical number for her baptismal service and it was not good but as we were singing, the spirit flowed into the room and you can see in Danielle the excitement that she had to be there.  You could see the love that she had for God and there was a change in the room.  I really was able to see Danielle not only as a beautiful daughter of God, but as somebody who had worked so hard to overcome obstacles and to be at her baptismal date. After watching her nine-year-old son, Nathan, be baptized, I had the wonderful pleasure of stepping into the baptismal font and helping Danielle to make that covenant with God. And the best part is the story doesn't even end there. After that, her husband started coming to church with her.  I later got transferred so I don't know much about the situation right now, but it filled my heart with joy when I saw her husband come to church and support her and come with the kids. That he was touched by the charity that she gotten. That he saw that love and he wanted that as well.  Not only did I see charity work within my friends, but I saw it within myself.  Before my mission, I was stubborn.  I was prideful enough to tell my parents and my friends that I probably would not be friends with any of my companions. That I was going to go serve a mission. I was going to do it and I didn't think I was going to be friends with anybody that I served with.  But as I loved God and as I served the best that I could, I can say that I now have 12 new best friends and I love them all. I'm very grateful for the time that I was serving with them and for the times that I got to get to know them. I testified of charity.  I know that as we have charity in our lives that everything else will fall into place. I know that is the first great commandment, and so all the other commandments just kind of work themselves out and we're able to have love and patience with one another which kind of leads me to the second attribute I wanted to talk about which is humility.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Humility was a big lesson that I learned, and I saw other people demonstrate on my mission.  There's something I want to read to you about humility really quick. It comes from a very good book that I would highly recommend. It is called “Preach My Gospel, A guide to sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” The chapter 6 of Preach My Gospel does talk about the attributes, and so this little section- it talks a little bit about humility.  It says “humility is a sign of spiritual strength, not of weakness. Humility is a vital catalyst for spiritual growth. When you humbly trust the Lord, you can have the assurance that His commandments are for your good. You're confident that you can do whatever He requires of you if you rely on Him. You're also willing to trust his servants and follow their counsel. Humility will help you to be obedient, work hard. and to serve. In that when it says that you can have the assurance that His commandments are for your good, that was something that I saw in a lot of my friends.  When they were humble enough to trust the commandments, their lives were improved greatly. One of my such friends, his name is Tristan. Tristan lives in Corpus Christi, Utah. And Tristan is amazing. The cool thing is, we found him because his best friend brought him to church with him. And we would start teaching him. Tristan, when we first met him, he may not have been living all the commandments because he didn't really know them.  As we taught him them, he was readily able to just say, OK, I can change that. And his humility amazed me. It was incredible. He never doubted anything. He never second guessed. He knew he could feel the spirit. He knew that it was what Jesus Christ asked of him. So when these commandments and when these changes were presented to him, he said “OK, I can do that.” And that's the same with our Savior, Jesus Christ. I reflect often on His atonement and how, when He was suffering for us, He didn't want to do his role, but He just submitted His will to that of the Father and He, even though he was the chosen son of God our Savior and our Redeemer, He was humble enough to do whatever was necessary. And I'm so grateful for that example or His humility I saw it within myself a lot as well. Obviously missions can be difficult and you're humbled often. A quick example I share with you is so my mission is a Spanish speaking mission. It's actually, interesting fact, it's the only Spanish speaking mission in the United States. A lot of other missions have Spanish speaking programs and missionaries,  but the Texas McAllen Mission is the only one that is considered a Spanish speaking mission. And so, my mission leaders always speak Spanish and there's a lot of Spanish but there's also a lot of English. And so to kind of put this into perspective for you , in my mission, I served in four English wards, which was a large chunk of my mission. I served in two Spanish wards.  In the beginning of my mission when I had been there for about four months,  I hadn't yet served in a Spanish ward. I had been learning Spanish and I had been talking with people in the street Spanish and practicing with my companions but I didn’t really know it super well. I couldn't understand it super well but I thought I could.  So this is when the story comes in, right? I think I can understand Spanish and I have a native companion. Well, he's from Portugal. His name is Elder Oliveira and Spanish is his second language. But English is his third. And so he's very, very comfortable speaking Spanish and me, you know. I'm doing my best. And I've been learning stuff for a few months. We're out in the streets of a city called Weslaco, TX and there's this family and he's like “Elder Stringham, Go contact them.”  And I'm like “OK, Elder Oliveira whatever you say.” And so I go up and start talking to family and they speak Spanish, so I'm practicing my Spanish with them and I think I'm understanding and so I'm talking to her and I'm doing my best. And all of a sudden, her face changes, her whole countenance just drops. I'm super confused. I don't know why. What's going on? What did I say?  What did I do wrong? And so I kind of look back at my companion, who's not saying anything, not helping me at all, and he just jumps in and he starts apologizing to this lady. I’m like “ohh no.”  I later come to find out that that this woman had a very strong faith in her church. I thought she was looking for a church. Of course, I couldn't understand very well and so I was telling her very boldly the doctrine and I was I was offending her. I was basically telling her that her beliefs were wrong. Not doing a very good job about what I should do. And so my companion apologized, and he smoothed over the situation. But that night I went home, and I remember just starting to study so hard, starting to pray so hard and just knowing that I could not be successful if I could not understand people. That was a big humbling experience for me on my mission when I realized I could not do it alone. I needed to pray daily.  I needed to study and I need Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ’s atonement.  And from that point forward, they really did help me. I testify that as we're humble that our weaknesses can be made strong. That humility is kind of like the key to success in life, because as soon as you're humble, other people can help you, God can help you, and you can really grow. But if you lack that humility, you're just going to flatline. You're only going to go so far. So I can promise each one of you as you humbly come to God and ask Him what it is that maybe you need to humble inside yourself that He will help you and He will make the biggest difference in your life because I know it has in me.                                                                                                                                                       The next quick attribute I want to speak with you guys about is faith and I'm going to do this one quickly, but I really want to tell you about my best friend, Juan Messias, who lives in a city called Alton. Texas. I miss Juan so much. He got baptized about two weeks ago and I had the pleasure of teaching him in the last few months of my mission and also entering into the temple with him in McAllen to do baptisms for our ancestors. Juan is amazing because he had so much faith in Jesus Christ, similar to my friend Tristan in Corpus. He was faith filled with accepting everything that we gave him. One example that I want to share with you is actually, the night that we were planning to go to the temple with Juan, we had pulled up to the temple and we were waiting for Juan and he was supposed to be there 7:30. And it was like, 7:40 and 7:50. And, like, where is Juan? He's very prompt. He's always here. He said he was gonna be here. And so I called Juan.  “Juan, where are you?”  And I come to find out that he had had a very difficult day. He had some personal struggles with his family and his friends and he's feeling very angry and he was stressed and he's like, I can't come to the temple tonight and I was like, Juan, you can come to the temple and we were able to talk. And I basically told him that if he was able to make it to the temple that night that his life would improve, that he would be relieved of his stresses and I testified to the power that is in the temple is, as we all know, those of us that have been, it really does fill us with a lot of peace and joy. And Juan, without even like a second guess, as soon as I said that, he said “OK. I’ll come.” And so he came, and we did some ordinances and then afterwards he looked at me and said, “I'm so glad that you invited me. I'm so glad. That you made me come.” That was a great example to me of faith and that when you really do have faith and you act upon that you can feel a difference.  It could have been so easy for Juan to just push it off to another day, to say that it would be OK without going.  but he had the faith that being in the House of the Lord would be a good thing for him and so he came and he saw the benefits of it.                                                                                                                                            And kind of as a closing thought, I want to share with you my favorite Christ like attribute, the biggest thing that I learned in my mission and this is something that my family is already so tired of me saying, but I really learned the importance of consecration, obedience, and worthiness. Those are things that my wonderful mission leader said to me every single day. They invited us to consecrate ourselves to be obedient and to strive to be worthy. And that is such a game changer in life. As soon as we decide that we're going to be consecrated and whatever it is we're doing, that we're going to be obedient and we're going to be worthy, life just becomes more light, it becomes more happy. And I just love, I love being obedient. John 14:15 says if you love me, keep my commandments. And I have such a strong testimony that obedience to the commandments is the way that we show love to our Heavenly Father. It's the way to protect ourselves from the evils of the world. Without obedience, we're on our own. We're not being humble. We're not being obedience. We're not living in faith. And we're also not showing very much love to our Heavenly Father and so obedience is the big secret. In my mission, they talked a lot about obedience and preparation for the temple. Because something interesting about the Rio Grande Valley is they haven't had a temple for a long time and there's a lot of local people there who have legally not been able to get to the temple for a long time. They're kind of stuck in this in between world where they can't go back into Mexico, and they can't make it any further into the United States and so good, faithful members could not go to the temple to receive their endowments or to be sealed as a family because it was impossible for them. But while I was serving, there was a temple being built. In my last area, I got to see that temple be dedicated. The amazing thing is afterwards there was in the first couple of weeks there was over 450 live ordinances for sealings and endowments. That's so incredible. That's amazing. So many families that received their endowments, were able to be sealed for time and eternity, and enter into the house of the Lord. I love on the temple, above the door, when it says “holiness to the Lord” and how when we spend time in the temple, when we're obedient enough to be in the temple that we can become more holy, and we can have the Spirit to be with us. I really know that that the Lord is preparing His land. That's something that my mission president would say all the time as well. That miracles are happening, that they're doing their work and we're just instruments. We're just working to help the Lord who is preparing His land. I loved being a missionary. I really, really did. I'm so grateful that I was called to be in the McAllen, Texas Mission. I'm grateful for my mission leaders.  The Larreal family has done so much for me, taught me so much, and I'm most grateful for Jesus Christ, for His attributes, and for the time that I spent trying to develop them. And just like all of you, I'm very far from perfect, but I know that I've come a long way. I'm very very grateful. I remember before my mission asking my parents, “what do I need to do to make sure that I change on my mission, to make sure that I learn what I need to learn?” and my dad basically just told me, “Just go, just go work.” And you know what? It worked. I feel so happy. I'm so happy to be here in, in the chapel this morning.  I'm happy that we're able to partake of the sacrament, and I'm happy to see all your faces attending church. One last thought, I want to share with you guys that really impacted me as a missionary. It is the verse in 2nd Corinthians. This is something that I read about a year and a half into my mission and then I think I read it every single day after that. But in this scripture, it is talking about how God, He asked us to do things and He asked us to give to Him, but He wants us to do them, not grudgingly, not because we need to, but He really wants us to be cheerful givers. I love that idea of trying to be a cheerful giver to the Lord and give of Him our time and our talents, our obedience, our hearts. And I know that as we are cheerfully giving to the Lord, we are happier, that our families are strengthened, that we have the spirit in our homes, and that's one of the biggest blessings that we can have.                I finished my talk with my testimony in Spanish.