Thursday, December 11, 2014

Christmas Time

The Christmas season is very special in the mission field.   It's particularly true if you have a beautiful Temple decorated for Christmas with a nativity and wonderful music.   As you can imagine the Temple and  Visitor Center have huge numbers of people coming and enjoying the spirit.   I suggested to the Director that we move one of the Sr. couples from the Brigham Young home to the Visitor Center to give additional help in the 5PM to 9PM rush.   He liked the idea and asked if we could start that day.   Dawna and I were scheduled at Brigham's and I knew the only way it would work was if we switched our own schedule.  We did and once again I was shown that the Lord really is in charge and is making things happen to accomplish his purposes.  By making this change we could have 1 couple outside mingling rather than staying inside the building. 

I was mingling with dozens of folks at the Nativity and introduced myself to a man and his daughter.   I told them that as special as the Nativity is that within the Visitors' Center were other very special things to see at Christmas:  The Christus Statue,  50 nativities from around the world,  a "He is The Gift" display and 7 beautifully decorated 12 ft. trees with themes.   They accepted the invitation to come in and the magic began.    It turned out that he was the CEO of an Aerospace company doing work for a Brazilian aircraft manufacturer.   One of his important clients is Sky West headquartered in St. George.   He and his daughter indicated they were Christian and active in their church but knew they needed to see our beautiful temple.   My background working in Aersopace for IBM for the past 25 years matched perfectly.   We knew many of the same people.   He loved Elder Uchtdorf's  testimony and was dumbfounded to learn that a man would leave Lufthansa as their Chief Pilot to serve his Church.  An hour down the road they had listened to the Christus, visited the beautiful paintings in the Savior of the World room, seen the Christmas decorations, listened carefully as I taught about the Godhead and our final stop was the Book of Mormon display.   As I explained what the Book of Mormon is they both readily accepted a book and I knew for certain the schedule change we had made that morning was so I could meet and teach them that night. 

In most cases because of the huge numbers at Christmas we don't get this type of teaching opportunity  especially since we start outdoors at the Nativity.   We had over 400 people that night and only specifically identified 4 as non-members;  2 being the couple I met.    Needless to say I almost didn't need a car to get home last night because I was flying so high.   We are so grateful and happy to be serving the Lord on this Mission.   For our Sr. friends  if you can't think of a thing to give a spouse because you have all you need,  give the gift of a mission application. 

Love  ---- Elder Borchert 

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