Area Leadership Message
I Can Help Others Come to Christ by Showing My Love, Sharing My Belief and Inviting Them to Join with Me
“Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
“This is the first and great commandment.
“And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:37–40).
As we live the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ, we realized that there are many friends, relatives, acquaintances, and colleagues who do not share the same belief and are not enjoying the same blessings and peace of mind as we do.
Thirty-three years ago, as a young boy, I received the ordinance of baptism. The baptizer was my father, Samuel E. Otuonye, who had just found the new faith and embraced it with the greatest joy. Though we had no full-time missionaries posted in our area then, as the Church was relatively new, I saw my father proselyting from home-to-home sharing the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. As a farmer, he would gather us, his children, for a service to those he was sharing the gospel with. The Church was very far from us, and my father would use his motorcycle to carry the investigators three to four times every Sunday to church and bring them back in the same manner.
During our family home evening or family council, he would always emphasize that all his sons would serve a full-time mission eventually. It was very easy for me and my other siblings to make the decision to serve a mission when it was time. We are all happy today for the good example of my father as we were growing.
In April of 2000, I was called to serve in the Ghana Accra Mission. It became the greatest opportunity for me to show my love, share my beliefs and invite others to join me to come unto Christ. Four of my siblings have also served in various missions.
I then realized that there are many yet on earth who are kept away from the truth because they know not where to find it. (See Doctrine and Covenants 123:12). Because of this, I join my voice to encourage the stake presidents, the bishops, and the parents and guardians to prepare all our young men to serve a full-time mission and the young women, if they so desire. This period of 24 and 18 months, respectively, provides a time of great devotion to them. They deny themselves of worldliness and only focus on the Lord’s errand.
My wife, Kate, and I are both in the medical field. After our marriage, we looked at our circumstances and began to think of how to share our blessings with others. We both worked in the state hospital as a medical doctor and a laboratory scientist. We realized that it would not give us the full opportunity that we needed to share our love with others. After much consideration, we established our own hospital, Ensign Hospital, which has become a great avenue to show our love to others.
As a leader in the Church and a medical practitioner I often encounter those who are in pain, those who are depressed, some who suffer with substance abuse, some who are near the point of suicide, accident victims, etc. It offers a great opportunity for me as I help to restore life. During my one-on-one visits with patients, after giving medical attention, I restore hope to them by sharing my belief and how my family and I have been blessed. Several times, I have pulled out my family picture and shared the joy we feel together. Many develop an interest and listen to the missionaries and are brought to the waters of baptism.
Sharing the gospel alone may not be very productive. Rather, it is our lives and those of our family members, the joy that radiates within us, the unity and how we live our lives that becomes the nonverbal message that we share to those around us. This has the greatest impact in their lives.
Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, “Whenever we show Christlike love toward our neighbor, we preach the gospel even if we do not voice a single word.
“Love for others is the eloquent expression of the second great commandment to love our neighbor; it shows the refining process of the Holy Spirit working within our own souls. By demonstrating Christ’s love to others, we may cause those who see our good works to ‘glorify [our] Father which is in heaven.’
“We do this expecting nothing in return.
“Our hope, of course, is that they will accept our love and our message, though how they react is not within our control. …
“Through Christlike love to others, we preach the glorious, life-transforming properties of Christ’s gospel and we participate significantly in the fulfilling of His great commission.”
Brothers and sisters, there is no hard and fast rule on how and where the gospel of Jesus Christ should be shared. Sharing can be done directly or indirectly as you bear your testimony of the divine help of the Lord, during your discussions with friends.
Because I have lived almost all my years within my environment, my life has become a testimony to those who know me as I have been growing. Many are now coming to me to express their feelings after I invite them to join the Church. One of their questions in responding to my invitation is often “Will your Church take me to America if I join?”
I will then answer with my usual joke, “We better write in front of our Church gate ‘express visa to America after baptism’”.
I then tell them no, but what they will get is the everlasting gospel that brings peace and restores hope. I explain that they will learn about the plan of happiness and that their family will experience a great unity of love.
I bear witness and testimony that my family and I have been blessed tremendously beyond measure, we have a living prophet, God lives, Jesus is the Christ, and this is His Church.