Eyring - True Friends - April 2002

President Eyring speaks about new members and the nourishment that is needed as someone is baptized and starts their journey of enduring to the end.  He talks about the struggles that can happen in peoples lives and the need for someone to be there to strengthen them.  He says that his comments in the talk come from something that he heard President Hinckley say.

• These words of President Hinckley energize me: “I hope, I pray, I plead with you, every one of you, to embrace every new member of the Church. Make a friend of him or her. Hold onto them.”
  

He shares a letter from a young man in Africa.  This man explains how he was invited to a church activity, met the missionaries, eventually had the missionary discussions, attended institute, and was baptized into the church.  He speaks about the influence that others had on him to encourage him along his path.  The influence of those that cared about him helped him along his journey to joining the church and remaining strong afterwards.

President Eyring shares that a lot of the responsibility is on the new member to stay on the right path.  But a friend can encourage, help, and strengthen along that journey.

• There are limits on what friends can do to help the ones who must endure. It is the new members who must pray. It is they who must rely on the strength they will receive in answers to their prayers. They must choose for themselves in faith to be baptized, trusting in their perfect friend, the Savior. They must choose in faith in Him to repent, to be humble and contrite. They must choose to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. The words of confirmation into the Church are an invitation: “Receive the Holy Ghost.” And that choice must be made not once, but every day, every hour, every minute. Even when the Holy Ghost comes and inspires them what they should do, doing it or not is a choice. Even when they read the scriptures regularly, it takes a choice to “feast upon the words of Christ.” And even the feast is not nourishing without a choice to do what the words of Christ tell them to do. With faith and obedience practiced long enough, the Holy Ghost becomes a constant companion, our natures change, and endurance becomes certain.
  

Although the new member is responsible for staying on the right path and doing things to encourage their discipleship, there are things we can do to help.  He speaks about four things and goes into detail about each.

• The member must make the choices, but the true friend is vital. There are important ways for us to share the new member’s burden that it may be bearable. We can love, listen, show, and testify.
  

• First, we must love them.
  
  • That is what the Savior does. We can do it with Him and for Him. The Savior watches over the struggling member as a friend. He laid down His life for all of us. He loves us and will grant us, if we are faithful, the gift of feeling a part of His love for them. I have at times been blessed by the Holy Ghost to sense the Savior’s love for a struggling new member. I know for myself that is possible.
    
• Second, we must listen to the new member with understanding and empathy.
  
  • That also will take spiritual gifts, since our experience will rarely parallel theirs. It will not be enough to say, “I understand how you feel,” unless we do. But the Savior does. He is prepared to help you be a friend who understands even those you have just met, if you ask in faith.
    
• Third, we must be an example for the new member.
  
  • We can feast upon the word of God. We can ask for and live for the companionship of the Holy Ghost. We can be obedient out of our faith in Jesus Christ. And in time we can become an example of a disciple who is born again through the Atonement. It may be gradual. It may be hard for us to discern in ourselves. But it will be real. And it will give hope to the new member and to all those we befriend on the path to eternal life.
• Fourth, we must testify of the truth to the new member.
  
  • It must be sincere, and it is best when it is simple. It is most helpful when it is about the reality and mission of the Savior, about our Heavenly Father’s love, and of the gifts and companionship of the Holy Ghost. And it is essential to testify that the Father and the Son appeared to the young Joseph Smith and that the full gospel and the true Church have been restored by heavenly messengers. The Holy Ghost will confirm those simple declarations as truth.

President Eyring concludes with this summary of his talk.

• All of us will be tested. And all of us need true friends to love us, to listen to us, to show us the way, and to testify of truth to us so that we may retain the companionship of the Holy Ghost. You must be such a true friend.

True friends make the journey of life a little easier.  It is good to have support.  It is good to have someone that you look up to and encourages you to be a better person.  Over the years, I have had a few people that I have called true friends in my life.  They have been good to me.  They have inspired me to be my best self.  They have made me a better person through their influence.  I would hope that they would be able to say the same about me.  I know the value of a good friend in my life.  I hope that I can be that type of person to others as they come into the church.  Today I am thinking of one specific person in my ward.  I am going to reach out to them today to say hello and maybe over time, we will become friends.  Maybe that friendship will allow us to be strengthened together to follow the Savior a little more.