Whether you’re a full-time missionary, a member of the stake high council,
a Relief Society president, or the president of your Young Women class, we’re all really doing the same work— helping Heavenly Father’s children bind themselves to the Savior by making and keeping covenants.
And the way we do that is by loving, sharing, and inviting.
I believe this is why President Nelson said that anytime you do anything that helps anyone make and keep covenants on either side of the veil, you're gathering Israel. It is the greatest cause on Earth,
but it’s also doable. It flows naturally from being bound to the Savior ourselves and is for everyone, including youth.
The Lord’s Youth Battalion, to use President Nelson’s term.
Elder Uchtdorf, we just heard Elder Cook mention the principles love, share, and invite. As we’ve seen, that’s a major theme of this meeting. How would you define these principles? And what do we mean when we say love, share, and invite?
Well, hopefully these principles are familiar to all of us
because they really are at the foundation of what it means to be a covenant follower of Jesus Christ.
When I think of love, I remember the Lord's two great commandments to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and serve Him; and to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Love ought to be the foundation and motivation for everything we do.
It makes our efforts more meaningful and more joyful.
When we say share, we mean be generous and open with others freely. Gift to them what God has so freely given to us. Talk openly about your experiences,
how gospel truths and your covenants with the Savior have blessed your life.
Share what it is you have in your heart as a testimony.
And to invite simply means to include other people in your experiences.
Give them the opportunity to receive the same blessings.
It's like opening a door and letting people know that we want them to come in, to come and see, come and help, and come and belong.
I believe these principles have the power to transform your service from a missionary assignment or a duty, to a joyful way of life.
Love, share, and invite should not be seen as the Church’s new program for sharing the gospel. Rather, these are fundamental gospel principles that we are re-emphasizing in order to bring greater focus to all aspects of the Lord's work.
When sharing and inviting become a natural expression of genuine love,
then we will not talk about missionary work as a discrete and separate activity that some of us do some of the time.
Instead, we will talk about helping others come unto Christ by making and keeping covenants, and it will be an integral, permanent part of our daily lives.
And church leaders will no longer have to ask members to add sharing the gospel to their already lengthy list of things to do.
We will share the gospel naturally,
sometimes without even realizing we're doing it,
because it is simply part of who we are.