"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks"

This week we were able to bring the entire mission in for our Christmas Conference.  It was a wonderful event filled with music, testimony and inspiration. ( I will blog about it in more detail later.) But for now I want to leave with you some thoughts I had about the shepherds in the account in Luke 2 with regards to missionaries.

I had prepared some comments for my talk that I decided at the last second not to give. (Don't you hate when that happens!) Instead, I decided to discuss with our missionaries the similarities in what happened to the shepherds and what happens to them while on a mission. We had just watched a presentation of the nativity ("presepio" in Portuguese) that I had helped some of our missionaries to act out. I was struck at how the references to the shepherds in Luke 2 have great application to our missionaries.  I can see a pattern for the experience of a missionary in what happened to the shepherds.

In v. 8 of Luke 2 we read that the shepherds were "keeping watch over their flocks by night." In other words they were doing their duty. They were at their post tending the sheep. They were in the right place at the right time. Because they were doing their duty they were in a position to receive revelation from the angel. Missionaries usually start out their missions because they have come to do their duty.  They want to tend the Lord's sheep. But like the shepherds, the Lord has greater things to reveal to them.



In v.10 the angel appears to the shepherds and the first thing the angel says to them is to "fear not."  As missionaries we face many fears and in order to fulfill the mandate the Lord has given us we have to let the Lord help us lay aside our fears.

After the angel shared the good news of the Savior's birth to the shepherds, the shepherds "went to see the thing which had come to pass." They desired to obtain their own witness of the Lord. (v. 15).  Our missionaries must also obtain their own personal testimony and witness of the Savior and the things they have been taught. They too must make their way to the Christ.



"And when they had seen it (v. 17) they made known abroad what they had been told and had seen." Once a missionary has his own personal witness of the things he has been taught he then desires to make known that testimony to others. This is when we see the powerful difference in a missionary who is there to do his duty and one who is there to share what he has come to know for himself to be true. It is then that they, like the shepherds, are excited to make it known abroad the good tidings of great joy concerning Christ and His Restored Gospel of which they have become a witness.

"And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds." (v.18) We do indeed see many people wonder at the extraordinary nature of the message we have to share! 

And then in v. 20 it says that "they returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen."

Like the shepherds in this story, our missionaries start out doing their duty.  And by doing so, they find themselves in the position to receive greater revelation. This increased light and truth causes them to desire a greater personal witness of Jesus Christ, instilling in them a deeper desire to share that witness with others. 

I expressed to these wonderful missionaries my deep desire for them is that at the end of their missionary experience that they, like the shepherds, will return home glorifying and praising God for all the things they have heard and seen and witnessed while acting as shepherds here in Brazil,where they have sought to find and feed the precious sheep here and gather them into the fold of The Good Shepherd. 



Until next time.  Merry Christmas!  and 

Onward, Ever Onward.