Elder & Sister Mundell

It's not easy being a full-time missionary, even for retired senior couples. We're away from our family and friends, we miss our homes and familiar surroundings, and adjusting to a new routine can be stressful, especially if we start having health issues. But the greatest blessings in life come to us by doing things that we may find difficult or unpleasant, and it's the growing and stretching required to accomplish our mission that molds us into the kind of disciple of Christ our Savior wants us to be. This week we had the difficult task of helping a sister in our ward with the funeral for her husband, who passed away at the early age of 47, leaving her with three young children and one on the way. Funerals are never fun, you feel awkward and don't know what to say to comfort those left behind. This particular funeral was especially hard for us because we had met the deceased only briefly one day, and we weren't close friends with his widowed wife. But we persevered...

We feel extremely blessed to serve as seminary teachers. It's not something we've done before, and it's really hard to get up early in the morning prepared to enlighten and inspire teenagers day after day. We have wonderful examples in our stake like Auntie Nette Makua (who's been teaching seminary for 26 years) to follow that offer to help us, but we feel like we still have so much to learn as we try to motivate our kids to read the scriptures, participate in class, and do the online assignments. When we have days like Monday, it feels like it's all worth it! We have eleven junior and senior students, typically around 8 or 9 each morning. Sometimes we only have 2 or 3 there when we have an opening prayer, song and devotional at 6 am, but within a few minutes most of the class is there. We were talking about the allegory of the olive tree in Jacob 5, and gradually our hearts overflowed with joy each time we had to keep adding more chairs - because all of the class s...

We always look forward to conference weekend, and the opportunity we have to receive guidance, counsel and revelation from God through latter-day prophets and apostles. Sometimes we get instruction on a wide variety of gospel topics and principles, and other times the talks are more focused on a single theme or message. This was certainly true this weekend, as nearly all of the speakers emphasized the importance of covenants and the temple, including President Nelson in his concluding address. I loved the talk by Elder Renlund because it reinforced the basic fourth article of faith principles and ordinances of the gospel we know as the "doctrine of Christ". I always try to remember to apply the "virtuous cycle" of faith in Christ, repentance, partaking of the sacrament to receive the Holy Ghost and enduring to the end in my own life as we strive to become more and more like the Savior Jesus Christ and become perfected in Him. But one talk in particular made a deep i...