There are people you love, and people you don’t yet know.

            A missionary shared this in a district meeting early on in my mission, and it changed my mission and afterward, my life. Even since being home this has come into circumstance over and over again as I look at the teams and groups I am a part of at school, work, everything.

            Specifically though I want to take a look at this in terms of missionaries themselves. I think it is almost natural with the Spirit to guide us that we feel a love begin to swell in us as we teach someone. We begin to understand their past, their hopes and desires, what they do now, how it affects their future, we love them and offer the best thing we have, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

            But now missionaries. This includes companions, leaders, district and zone members, maybe even ward and branch members. I remember multiple times on my own mission where I knew I didn’t love my companion. This turned out to be one of the greatest blessings for me in my life, because I was able to practice this statement out: there are people you love, and people you don’t yet know.

            I think by definition there are some people we, gently put, don’t work as well with as others, am I right? Maybe you’re in a companionship that is kinda tense, a leader doesn’t understand your situation, or a district member or companionship wont work. Whatever the case is, this quote applies. I don’t remember how many times I realized that I knew more about my investigators than my companion. There were quite a few awkward moments as we would be teaching and didn’t plan that, or meeting with members and I would wonder where he got that habit or saying, and some thing should just drive me insane. I put up a block and our companionship started to crumble because for both of us, we refused to see beyond the person we saw every day.

            In one case, I found myself with a hardworking, diligent, obedient companion. It was early on in my mission, I was fired up, ready to roll, wanting to work, and so we had that working for us. We disagreed on a couple small things, nothing crazy, but it exploded on when we wanted to go running, we had a little flexibility as to working out in the morning or after coming in for the night before bed. I found that I had been so stubborn on some things that we had begun to separate even beyond this one subject. It seems childish, and it was.

            This is how we fixed it, and how you can with any relationship:

We sat down and got to know each other. We talked about our pasts, our mistakes, and our aspirations. We discussed our hopes for the mission, our dreams and vision for who we wanted to be at the end, what we wanted to do when we got back. After that, things were great. We had gotten to a point where we understood each other enough to anticipate each others sentences, we studied harder, worked harder, we pushed each other how we knew the other would respond, because we understood each other.

            I grew to love this companion. The experience and countless others taught me so much beyond just how to teach investigators, tract, find, talk with members. It taught me to love. Simply the love you have to have, it Christ’s love, and the reason Christ can love you perfectly, and anyone perfectly is because he knows you perfectly. Every decision, every thought, hope, discouragement, he knows, and because of that he loves you and knows how to help you.

            With any companion, investigators, leader, member, begin here: with an understanding of who they are. Not only will that communicate your genuine love for them but it will also build a trust in you as a servant of God, because you are doing exactly what Christ does with us, we are able to turn to Him because he listens, because he helps, guides, teaches.

            May you listen, question, remember, understand, may you love.

There are people you love, and people you don’t yet know.