Get to Know Her and Her Family
Visiting teaching is about
sincerely coming to know and love each sister so that we can help
strengthen her faith and give service.
Rita Jeppeson and her visiting teacher have become good
friends as they meet and share gospel conversations. But their visits
also include playing word games together, which helps Rita’s mind stay
sharp. Because her visiting teacher has learned what Rita needs and
enjoys, they both look forward to each visit. Rita knows that they are
friends and that the visit is not just an obligation. There are so many
things sisters can do during a visit, such as taking a walk together or
helping a sister with her chores.
Lucy Mack Smith, mother of the Prophet Joseph Smith,
expressed her feelings in 1842 about how Latter-day Saint sisters in
the newly established Relief Society should feel about one another. She
said, “We must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one
another and gain instruction, that we may all sit down in heaven
together.”1 This is still true today.
Elder Jeffrey R. Holland
of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, “See yourselves as
emissaries of the Lord to His children. … We would hope … that you will
establish an era of genuine, gospel-oriented concern for the members,
watching over and caring for each other, addressing spiritual and
temporal needs in any way that helps.”2
The Lord through Moses
commanded the children of Israel that “the stranger that dwelleth with
you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love [her]
as thyself” (Leviticus 19:34).
The sisters we visit may be “strangers” as we begin our service, but as
we get to know them and their families, our desire will increase to
“bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light” and have our
“hearts knit together in unity and in love one towards another” (Mosiah 18:8, 21).
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