My Homecoming Talk - Mother's Day

Recently, I came across a quote that said that the “spiritual solidarity of the family” would determine the success of many things, especially societies and happiness in families. I thought about spiritual solidarity and instantly realized that this was exactly what my mother did and created in our home when I was growing up. Having spiritual solidarity in a family means everyone working on keeping the spirit of God, love, and unity with them. I truly believe that what I felt and learned in my home growing up and was the biggest reason why I chose to serve a mission. I had learned to love and serve my Savior and I wanted to bring this same happiness to other people and families in the world.

What would happen if each person in a whole family had this kind of self-government; if they understood spirituality and lived spiritually solid? When the family is solid it cannot be destroyed, altered or penetrated by distractions or dysfunctions.

The unity of the family is powerful, but the spiritual unity of the family is unconquerable!

To create spiritual solidarity in our home my mom did some very specific things that helped shape my personality and my testimony of Jesus Christ.

My mom was firm in her beliefs. She was religious. I saw her practice her faith daily and with us as a family. Some of my fondest memories are reading the BOM together as a family, especially the time that President Hinckley challenged families to do this. My mom has a lot of little traditions that sometimes I think I took for granted as a kid. It was very important to my mother at a young age that we recognized the spirit in our home and in our daily lives. I remember many days coming home from school, or on Sundays she would sit us all down and ask us what our spiritual experience was of the day – when we felt the spirit, on a daily basis. That really strengthened my testimony and help me prepare for a mission – to really learn and recognize the promptings of the Spirit. I used to think my mom had ESP because she always knew what was going on in our lives. I cannot tell you how many times my mom told me that she received promptings about us and how right she was most of the time. As I got older, I realized my mom specifically prayed daily to receive these promptings for us. Looking back, I am so grateful for how in tune my mom was. It always made the biggest difference in my life.

My mom always made sure that we were strengthening our family relationships by having regular and frequent family time together. We did a ton of stuff together as a family and my mom guarded family time like the mama bear that she is. She also took this idea to extreme lengths at times, as we never had our own rooms growing up, even though we had the space in our house. She purposely made us share rooms our whole lives with a sibling, usually the ones we didn’t get along with the best. We often had two rooms in our home that were set up as guest rooms and never used! She believed that there were many things we could learn about relationships, and being unselfish, and making sacrifices, that would prepare us for living with college roommates, missionary companions, and spouses someday.

My mom worked hard to decrease distractions to our family and in our personal development. I’m not sure why my mom even bought us cellphones, video games, or anything like that because she never let us use them. She always kept us really busy and focused on what was really important.

My mom was always very in sync with my dad and they were unified in their parenting and teaching. In our home there was no going to dad to ask him to say yes if my mom had already said no. I think we all tried that once, but never felt the need to try it again. This worked the other way too.

My mom created a home full of love, unity, and respect, which kept contention and frustration to a minimum in our home. I loved being home and I get very homesick. I could rarely be at my friend’s house for more than a couple of hours without calling my parents asking them to come and pick me up. My home has always been my favorite place to be and I was so grateful my Heavenly Father strengthened me during my mission so that I could focus on the work and not miss my home too much, because I was a little concerned about that at the beginning. Knowing my mom well, and knowing how much she missed me and loves me, I am positive that she was praying for me to have this strength as well.

I am so grateful for my mom, and for all mothers in the world today. I love this quote by Andy Stanley and I think it is worth pondering especially today. “Your greatest contribution to the Kingdom of God may not be something you do, but someone you raise.”

10 years ago my mom took me to hear a homecoming talk of a sister missionary that served in Cambodia. I was 10 or 11 at the time. I remember sitting, just as you guys are, listening to a sister coming home from a mission. She had a little bit of an accent, but she talked about strange foods, and a new weird language that she learned. She talked about taking bucket showers and I was totally mesmerized by this. I even remember leaning over to my mom and saying, “I want this.” From that day on, I’ve been preparing my homecoming talk, thinking about the stories I would get to tell, thinking of the ways I could express my testimony, and the people I would have to talk about. I’m so grateful that Heavenly Father gave me this opportunity and He even gave me part of my dream to have some of the same experiences that she had, even the cold bucket showers!

I loved my mission. I loved the people, and I loved them in a way that I have never loved before. Every time after being transferred to a new area, I felt like maybe this time, it wouldn’t be the same, but maybe this time the members weren’t going to be as good, or I wasn’t going to find as good investigators. Every time, Heavenly Father proved me wrong. I soon learned that no matter where I was placed it was immediately my best area in the mission. It was the best area in the world for missionary work. Because I felt in my heart that Heavenly Father had put me into that place for a reason. There were miracles that we found, people that we found to love, lives were changed. Heavenly Father expanded my heart, and he continued to make room for more and more people for me to love.

When I was called to serve in Brazil, I thought for the longest time that I would be called Irma Vance, because it means Sister Vance in Portuguese. When I walked into the MTC, I was given a nametag that said, Sister Vance. At the time I was a little bummed out about it – I wanted it to be a little bit different. But I never realized how many times being called Sister Vance in my mission that I would think of my dear mother. I would think of what she would do in this situation – I have no idea what to do, what would my mom do? Usually what I found that my mom would do was exactly in line with what Jesus Christ would do. I’m so grateful that I had the opportunity to represent my Savior, but also represent my dear mother on my mission.

I would like to take some time to share some sacred experiences from my mission:

At one point in my mission, I had been out for a little over a year, me and my companion were praying, asking for a big miracle. We really wanted to find someone that would one day serve a mission. We really wanted to find a teenager that became really converted and then one day, we would be able to see the many fruits of our work. A little bit out of the selfishness of my own heart, I started to pray to feel like me and my companion found someone, and that I was making a difference where I was serving. One day we were walking on a street at night and we saw a young guy sitting on a curb. We walked past him, we were on our way to some appointment, but I felt like I needed to talk to him. I realized I had to make the awkward turn-around, but I said I would do it. I turned around and started to talk to this young man. His name was Maurecello. As we were talking to him, we started talking to him about the plan of salvation, about who he was, and we told him that he has a Heavenly Father that loves him. I’ll never forget the way he looked up at us and asked, “I’m important to Him? I’m important to God?” I just couldn’t believe that someone who was 17 years old, couldn’t feel the love that I feel on a daily basis, because I know how essential this is. We marked a day to visit him and when we passed by to visit him, we both realized that we had knocked on his door a week earlier, but he wasn’t home. So yet again, Heavenly Father gave us another opportunity to help Maurcello. As we started teaching him, he accepted a baptismal date, and went to church. He was just ready to accept every invitation that we gave him. It was funny because I became excited thinking, “Wow, it was me that made that contact! It was me that turned around and started talking to this kid.” But every time we were at his house, the only feelings I could feel were, “you did nothing.” That is the moment that I learned that the Spirit is the true converter in this work. We really are the tools. It was funny because even at his baptism, it was the baptism that I felt like I had done the least. His story is really special to me because he struggled with his gender identity. At the time, he had to make some changes in his life. After he was baptized, he had a former boyfriend that was against him getting baptized, but he showed up to the baptism and then left and was saying all of these negative things to Maurcello about his baptism. Maurcello said that he has do continue doing what is right and that he can’t get lost in all these negative comments. He was very strong in the church. But a couple weeks later, this friend sent a text to Maurcello and said, “I’ve seen the changes in you. I want the same things in my life.” This moment was really special to me because I still hope that one day he decides to serve a mission, but through that little experience on the road, we helped Maurcello, but we also had the opportunity to see the fruits of our work. I know that people can change. I’ve changed, so anything is possible.

One night we were walking through a park and we saw a young man sitting there. As he was sitting there, we decided to go talk to him. He decided that he didn’t believe in God, he didn’t believe in anything like that. We started with the basics. We started talking about prayer with him. As we were talking about prayer, he was kind of out of it and said, “I don’t think God will answer my prayers.” We said, “In the Book of Mormon you can find a lot of your answers.” We gave him the Book of Mormon and he said he would read it. When we were marking a chapter for him to read, I felt a distinct impression to write something in there for him – a little note. We handed him the Book of Mormon and said, “Okay, we will see you the next time we have an appointment with you. Is there anything else we can do to help you?” He was going through a lot of difficult things in his life and looked up and said, “Please, pray for me.” In that moment, I pointed to what my companion and I had written in the Book of Mormon and it said, “We are praying for you. Don’t forget this.” This is just one example of the millions of examples I’ve had where the Spirit has prompted us to do something to help someone increase their faith. When he read that, he looked at me and said, “I know now that God exists. You’ve just proven that to me.” I know that Heavenly Father guides this work on the earth. I know that he led me and my companion to find people that were ready for the gospel.

There was this one woman, named Tatiani. She was a single mom. When we walked in, we started teaching her about the plan of Salvation. A lot of the people we taught were more “simpler-minded”. We were teaching her about Adam and Eve, the Spirit World, and a lot of other things. At the end of the lesson, my companion and I stopped and I felt impressed to say, “Tatiani, if you forget everything that we told you about Adam and Eve, that’s fine with me. We can come back and we can talk about it again, and we invite you to pray to know if these things are true. But the real invitation we have for you today, is we really want you to know that Heavenly Father loves you. Will you pray to know that Heavenly Father loves you?” When I was saying those words, it really touched my heart because in my patriarchal blessing it says nothing about serving a full-time mission. But something that it does talk about is that I will have the opportunity to serve and help other people throughout the world feel Heavenly Father’s love for them. At that moment, it really felt like I was completing or accomplishing my patriarchal blessing. In that moment, I really did feel the love of the Savior running through my bones.

One of my last days on my mission, I was a little worried. Everyone that has served a mission knows how weird it is to finish your mission and come home and everything like that. One of the last nights of my mission, I was packing my bags and my companion was crying because she was sad that I was going home. But I couldn’t even cry because it didn’t seem real to me. I really wanted it to hit me that I was going home so that I could be a little bit more emotionally prepared. So I said my prayers, asking Heavenly Father to help me realize that my mission was coming to an end. As I crawled into bed, I was laying there, I felt the strongest feeling whispered into my heart that said “it hasn`t hit you yet, because your mission is not over. It will never be over.” It then really clicked for me in that moment that if I am valiant, I will spend the rest of my life that way - I will still have about 40 or 45 more of these 18 months stints, working that hard, caring that much, loving that deeply. That I must never forget the feeling of working and giving everything to something and people who I love. It wouldn’t be too long before school, work, family, church callings, etc. are the ones you give 24X7. My mission was just the beginning.

The most important thing I learned about missionary work is that it’s about giving. It’s about putting your whole heart into something and loving each and every person in a way that you would do anything for them. A remember a couple stories where Irma Maria was baptized and when she came, she didn’t bring a change of clothes, or didn’t have under garments to put on and I just remember at that moment thinking, “I would do anything for Irma Maria. I would maybe even trade a bra with her or something because you learn to love these people in a different kind of way.” That’s what motivated me every day as a missionary. That’s what motivated me to be obedient. I love a quote that says, “Faith is measured by what you are willing to do.” I think that is so true. Faith is measured by what we are willing to sacrifice. What are we willing to give up to be obedient and follow the example of the Savior?

I know that when our purpose in missionary work is to give and to serve, and to focus on other people, it’s impossible to care about someone too much. Yes, as missionaries we often had many disappointments, a lot of them couldn’t follow through with what they said they would do, and sometimes we do get let down. But we were filled with the lowest of lows and the highest of highs, because people do have their agency. There were so many moments on my mission when I was teaching, that I wish I could take mental pictures. I was just praying in my heart for Heavenly Father to always help me remember the experiences I had, to always help me remember the faces that people had when they accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ, the light and countenance change they would have.

In closing, I would just like to share one last experience. My parents had the opportunity to pick me up from my mission. That was a really sacred experience for me because the people in Brazil were my family away from my family, and at home, it was my family away from my other family as well. So for the two to be able to come together was really special. On my last night, we stopped by my last area. There was a girl that was getting baptized that we had taught the week before. Her name is Lara Késsia. We were talking with her and she saw that my dad was there. She really had the desire to be baptized by the same person that baptized Sister Vance. In that moment, I had the opportunity to testify to her how worthy my dad is. In that moment, it was the perfect ending to my mission in Brazil. My last night there, my dad had the opportunity to baptize someone I had taught. In that moment, it wasn’t just the physical part of my dad being able to be there and baptize someone I had taught, but because when I looked at my mom and dad standing there, it was like the two worlds had come together – that everything that had happened before my mission, happened because of my parents. That the reason why that girl was being baptized by my dad, was because of the way I was raised – because of the way the gospel was taught in my family.

I can say another 10 pages of stories of things I would love to share that I won’t make you sit through. But I loved my mission. I love my Savior. I am so grateful for Him. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father trusted me enough. He could’ve picked anyone to meet the people that I got to meet, he could’ve picked anyone to serve where I got to serve, but I got to be there. I got to have those experiences. I’m so grateful for that.

In my first interview with my Mission President, we sat down, and he asked me, “Why did you decide to serve a mission?” I was young and dumb at the beginning of my mission and said, “Because I want to repay the Savior for everything he’s done for me.” When I look back at that, I just want to hit myself over the head because if anything, I’m just in more debt to my Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ – because every day of my mission He was blessing me, and even after my mission, he is still blessing me.

I would like to bear my testimony that I know that Jesus Christ lives. I know that Heavenly Father lives and loves us, and each one of His children. I know that it is our responsibility to share this with other people.

I would just like to close in bearing my testimony in the language that I’ve learned to love – the Portuguese language: (bore testimony in Portuguese)

This is my testimony that I leave with you, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.