Skipping Church

I’ve seen a lot of love going around Facebook for Elder Renlund lately, so I feel like maybe I should focus on saying nice things about the other two apostles. But the thing is, Elder Renlund once gave me the answers I needed almost a year before I needed them, and that’s the story I’ve been thinking about lately.

You tend to pay really good attention to General Conference when you’re a missionary. There are several talks where I can tell you what year, month and session they were given in simply because I remember what city I was in, what investigators I was thinking about, and if I had any of them there with me. So, I remembered Elder Renlund’s October 2009 conference talk even though it wasn’t one that struck me too deeply at the time (in case you were wondering, I was in Praha. I was thinking about Lubomir, Jitka and Saša. And Saša should have been with us, but wasn’t – he needed Elder Holland’s talk that session).

Fast forward almost a year. I was home from my mission and working as a caretaker/trainer for people with disabilities. I had just been moved to a shift that required me to work on Sunday mornings, with the understanding that I would be able to take some of the people I worked with to church, and thus attend myself (there are definite perks to living in Utah). I’d never worked on Sunday before. I’d never had a job that I felt justified it, but the people I worked with would not survive without 24-hour care.

The problem was, not everyone in the apartment I cared for was able to go to church. So if I was working alone, I couldn’t just leave some people home alone. But, I had felt good about moving to that shift and felt that if I did my part, the Lord would bless me to be able to attend church.

The first Sunday where I worked alone, I went to every other apartment in my building asking if there were other residents who wanted to attend church and if it was possible to combine apartments so I could take everyone who wanted to go. No luck.

Next, I asked if there was anyone who could cover my apartment so I could take my half-hour lunch break at 9 am, run over to the church building, take the sacrament, and run back to the apartment (another perk of living in Utah… that was actually a possibility). Someone said they would try.

At 9:10, nobody had come. I sat down in my apartment and cried. I felt I had done everything in my power, not only to attend church myself, but to help those who wanted to go. I’d failed. And I felt let down. I don’t think I realized until that day how much weekly church attendance meant to me.

That’s when I remembered this story from Elder Renlund’s talk the previous year:

In 1980 we moved as a family across the street from the hospital where I trained and worked. I worked every day, including Sundays. If I finished my Sunday work by 2:00 p.m., I could join my wife and daughter and drive to church for meetings that began at 2:30.

One Sunday late in my first year of training, I knew that I would likely finish by 2:00. I realized, however, that if I stayed in the hospital just a little longer, my wife and daughter would depart without me. I could then walk home and take a needed nap. I regret to say that I did just that. I waited until 2:15, walked home slowly, and lay down on the couch, hoping to nap. But I could not fall asleep. I was disturbed and concerned. I had always loved going to church. I wondered why on this day the fire of testimony and the zeal that I had previously felt were missing.

The spirit whispered to me that “the fire of testimony and the zeal” were important. As long as I maintained that, I would be OK. I would be spiritually safe even if there were times I could not attend church. I pondered on the times in the New Testament when the Savior was accused of breaking the Sabbath. I’d thought in the past it was kind of odd that it came up so many times. But now, it was a distinction I needed to understand.

The Savior fed people on the Sabbath. The Savior treated the sick on the Sabbath. I realized that I had been very blessed for several years to be able to focus on myself and my own Sabbath worship. But my job was not the only thing that would challenge that. Someday, as a mother, I would have babies and sick children. I needed to know how to keep the Sabbath in those circumstances, too.

And the answer, again, was Elder Renlund’s talk. Would I ever use my circumstances as an excuse not to attend church? Or would I maintain the fire and zeal to do everything in my power to worship in sacrament meeting every week? That Sunday, I felt my offering was acceptable to the Lord.

In conclusion, my fervent but unsuccessful effort to attend sacrament meeting that Sunday had an impact I didn’t anticipate. Because of that day, everyone in the building knew how much I wanted to attend church. I never missed again – not even on the day that the sanitizer broke and flooded the kitchen. Others stepped in to finish cleaning up so I could take people to church as planned.

And on the Sundays when there weren’t enough staff for me to be able to take people for the whole time, someone always covered me for a half hour so I could go participate in the sacrament ordinance (in fact, it was usually the lady who I had initially thought disliked me for being a goody-goody Mormon).

Here’s the link to Elder Renlund’s talk: Preserving the Heart's Mighty Change