“Service generates love.” That’s what our Elder’s Quorum President (I will call him “C,” as that is the initial of his last name) said during Sunday School yesterday. He’s an absolutely brilliant man whose comments are always insightful and whose commitment to the restored gospel appears deep and abiding.
To better make his point, “C” shared this story. As a full-time missionary, he was paired with a companion he described as lazy and unmotivated, often sleeping in well past wake-up hours. In an desperate and frustrated effort to motivate his companion, “C” said he would pour water on his sleeping mate to wake him which, as you can imagine, only worsened matters.
Things got bad. They got ugly. In desperation, “C” complained to his mission president who advised “C” to serve his companion by ironing his shirt and shining his shoes every morning.
Much to “C’s” credit, he started doing that. Instead of waking at 5:30, he now began waking at 5:00 am to serve his companion.
It wasn’t long before his companion noticed and started waking up on time.
Well before “on time.”
4:30 am actually.
Why? To iron “C’s” shirt and polish his shoes.
They became good friends and are still friends to this day.
Service changed the game as well as the outcome.
Service generated love.
Or in other words, it caused love to come about, to surface, to rise.
I love this story, and there are so many more just like it. I am thrilled by them – every one.
Last week in Come Follow Me, we re-read and remembered the missionary efforts of Ammon, that incredible Nephite missionary who, alongside his brothers, served a fourteen year mission to the Lamanities and had incredible success therein.
King Lamoni’s conversion to Christ was triggered by Ammon’s service. Consider first Ammon’s words: “…I desire to dwell among this people for a time; yea, and perhaps until the day I die.” (Alma 17:23) If that wasn’t an “all in” commitment, I don’t know what would have been.
Service generates love. How often does it start with the words we speak?
After declining the offer to marry the daughter of Lamoni, Ammon offered another possibility: to be King Lamoni’s servant. This was granted, and after Ammon “had been in the service of the king three days,” the king’s flocks got scattered by plundering Lamanities. (Alma 17:26, 27)
We know how the story goes.
Service generates love. Sometimes that service begins as one with a true helper’s heart simply serves. In small yet meaningful ways. Helping a neighbor reroof their home. Removing the falling snow from your walkway as well as another’s. Sending a note of cheer to one who has been on your mind.
When the servants wept and panicked about losing their lives because the flocks had been scattered, Ammon’s “heart was swollen within him with joy; for said he, I will show forth my power unto these my fellow-servants, or the power which is in me…that I may win the hearts of these my fellow-servants, that I may lead them to believe…” (Alma 17:29)
I love the turn here in this remarkable story!
Service generates love. And out of that love, Ammon was after the hearts of his fellow-servants. Knowing that he was a worthy vessel for the power of God to be manifest, he “went forth” and did as he did. (See Alma 17: 34-39)
And the testimony of the king’s servants was that Ammon “is a friend to the king.” (Alma 18:3)
Service generates love.
And we know the power of love in the story of King Lamoni, many of his people, his father, and the Anti-Nephi Lehi’s.
Service generates love.
And love changes people.
People like Lamoni, his father, and a group of incredibly converted Lamanite converts who were faithful unto the end of their lives.
And people like David Lopez who, like the Anti-Nephi Lehi’s, became known by another name: David Jackson.
The 1992 Wall Street Journal story is so heartwarming.
“…Dr. Ian Jackson, a world-famous craniofacial surgeon, was on a charity medical mission from his native Scotland to Peru. There he met David Lopez, a tiny Indian boy just two years old who had virtually no face at all. A gaping hole covered the area where his mouth and nose should have been. There were no upper teeth or upper jaw. To drink, David simply tilted back his head and poured the liquid straight down. His lower teeth could actually touch his forehead. Most of David’s face had literally been eaten away by a terrible parasitic disease called leishmaniasis.
Relief workers begged Dr. Jackson to help. He was leaving for Scotland the next day but agreed to try to rebuild David’s face if the boy could come to Scotland. Eventually a way was found, and the Jacksons went to Glasgow Airport to pick up David. As he walked down the ramp, they saw a tiny boy wearing scuffed white boots and a hand-knit poncho. A woolen cap was pulled so low on his head that only his big brown eyes and the round hole beneath them were visible.
The Jacksons took David into their home and into their hearts. There followed long years of surgery—more than eighty operations in all—as Dr. Jackson attempted to give David a new face. All of the doctor’s services were donated. Each summer, as other children played, David was in the hospital, his head swathed in bandages.
The painstaking, pioneering surgical efforts to rebuild David’s face went on for fifteen years. Today David looks like a young man who has been in a serious automobile accident, but he is well-adjusted and fully functional. He used to be teased and tormented about his looks, but over the years that has died away.
In 1982 Mrs. Jackson flew to Peru to try to find David’s parents. After a long journey downriver from a remote Catholic mission, David’s father was found. He explained that the boy had been born healthy but that he developed leishmaniasis after having been bitten by an infected sand fly. The father took his son to the mission to seek treatment.
The father gave permission to the Jacksons—who had developed a deep love for David—to adopt him as their own. Since 1984 David Lopez has been David Jackson.” (See Neal Templin, “Look of Love: As His Face Is Molded, Boy Finds His Surgeon Becoming His Father,” Wall Street Journal, 13 November 1992, A1.)
Service generates love.
Spencer W. Kimball called service “the most vital thing we can do.” He said it will “produce spiritual growth, greater commitment, and a greater capacity to keep the commandments.” (Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, 254).
Service generates love, and love is a bestowal “upon all who are true followers of…Jesus Christ…that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure…” (Moroni 7:48)
Let us serve.
Unto all the world: service generates love.