Doing Good to Others

I taught in Relief Society again this last Sunday. This week's lesson was chapter 22 of Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Lorenzo Snow, entitled Doing Good to Others.

I began by asking the sisters to think about a recent act of service they had done. They didn't need to tell me about it right then, but I wanted them to have something in mind. I told them about an experience I had the day before when I helped a bewildered looking older man find something he needed in a JoAnn store I was shopping at. I mentioned the lift I felt as I walked away. When we serve others, we feel good, and we are blessed.

I asked the sisters to list some of the blessings that we receive when we serve others. This list included things like feeling good, peace, fulfilling covenants, friends. I pointed out that while the lesson is on serving others, the point that Lorenzo Snow repeats over and over again is that we receive blessings as we do good to others. I referred to some of the lines from the manual that I had printed out and stuck to the chalkboard with magnets:

• “Granting one favor often leads to obtaining another.”
• We have been sent into the world to do good to others; and in doing good to others we do good to ourselves.
• Just in proportion as you … sacrifice one for another, just in that proportion you will advance in the things of God.

We read a couple scriptures in which some of the greatest blessings from service are mentioned:

• Mosiah 4:26-27 - Remission of Sins
• Matt 25:32-40 - We can inherit God's kingdom

Another great blessing we realize is that of greater happiness. We read the following paragraph from the book (p.260):

Our happiness increases when we help others find happiness.
We should have before us a strong desire to do good to others. Never mind so much about ourselves. Good will come to us all right if we keep our minds outside of ourselves to a certain extent, and try to make others happier and draw them a little nearer to the Lord. … When you find yourselves a little gloomy, look around you and find somebody that is in a worse plight than yourself; go to him and find out what the trouble is, then try to remove it with the wisdom which the Lord bestows upon you; and the first thing you know, your gloom is gone, you feel light, the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, and everything seems illuminated.

I told the story about when President Hinkley as a young missionary received the letter from his father telling him to "forget himself and go to work" and then asked the sisters to share any similar experiences they might have had.

I told the story from the Life of Lorenzo Snow in my own words:

From the Life of Lorenzo Snow
Lorenzo Snow and his family were part of the Latter-day Saints’ initial exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois. With a group of other families, they headed west in the state of Iowa in February 1846. Weather conditions made their trek difficult—day after day they struggled through rain, snow, and mud.

As the Snow family traveled one day, a member of the company asked them for help. Lorenzo Snow wrote in his journal that a man “requested that I would let him put his trunk in my wagon, said he could not get it carried anywhere else.” The wagon was “perfectly crowded and as much as seemed we could possibly get along with,” Lorenzo recalled, but “still I told him to put it in and come along and share with us.”

The next night the family experienced what Lorenzo called “a very unpleasant affair”: an axle on their wagon broke. He recounted: “It was then raining very hard and [was] quite cold. We immediately pitched our tent [and] made a good hickory fire. … The water and mud was very deep and we could not get to the wagon without wading. … We were now about fifteen miles from the camp and nine or ten to the first house, and none of us being mechanics, the prospect of getting our wagon repaired was not very encouraging.”

Unexpectedly, relief came from the man they had helped the day before. “I was lamenting over my misfortune,” said Lorenzo, “when he came up to me and informed me that his trade was wagon making and could very easily repair my wagon. … As soon as the weather would admit, brother Wilson (that being the name of the aforementioned person) went to work and made an axletree much better than the one I broke. Our wagon being repaired, we left this place, having stayed several days on account of rain and mud.”

For Lorenzo Snow, this experience reinforced a valuable lesson about service and fellowship. He wrote in his journal, “Granting one favor often leads to obtaining another.”

One blessing of service is that when we are willing to serve others, we are more likely to receive service in return when we are in need.

Sometimes when we sacrifice to serve others, we receive great blessings from heaven. We read (p. 262):

… Let your minds be expanded to comprehend and look after the interest of your friends that are around you, and where it is in your power to secure benefits to your friends do so, and in so doing you will find that those things which you need will come into your hands quicker than if you labor entirely to secure them to yourselves independent of regarding the interests of your friends. I know this is a good and important principle.

I then told the story of the widow woman who sacrificed to give Elijah food to eat when she had very little herself. (Isaiah 17:10-16)

When we sacrifice in order to serve, we draw nearer to heaven. We read (p.263):

There is a self sacrifice to be made for the interests of those with whom we are associated. We see this in the Savior, and in brother Joseph, and we see it in our President [Brigham Young]. Jesus, brother Joseph, and brother Brigham have always been willing to sacrifice all they possess for the good of the people; that is what gives brother Brigham power with God and power with the people, it is the self-sacrificing feeling that he is all the time exhibiting. It is so with others; just in proportion as they are willing to sacrifice for others, so they get God in them, and the blessings of the eternal worlds are upon them, and they are the ones that will secure not only the rights of this world but will secure the blessings of eternity. Just in proportion as you … sacrifice one for another, just in that proportion you will advance in the things of God.

I asked the sisters why sacrifice brings us closer to heaven.

I closed by showing one of the video clips suggested: Unselfish service. I felt like these words from Elder Dallin H Oaks talk summed things up very nicely.

There were more things I didn't have time to incorporate into my lesson, but I'm offering them here in case they are helpful for you:

Who should we serve?

We should be friends everywhere and to everybody. There is no Latter-day Saint that hates the world: but we are friends to the world, we are obliged to be, so far as they are concerned. We must learn to extend our charity and labor in the interests of all mankind. This is the mission of the Latter-day Saints—not simply confine it to ourselves, but to spread it abroad, as it of necessity must be extended to all mankind. (p260)

We are of the same Father in the celestial worlds. … If we knew each other as we should, … our sympathies would be excited more than they are at the present time, and there would be a desire on the part of every individual to study in their own minds how they might do their brethren good, how they might alleviate their sorrows and build them up in truth, how [they might] remove the darkness from their minds. If we understand each other and the real relationship which we hold to each other, we should feel different from what we do; but this knowledge can be obtained only as we obtain the Spirit of life, and as we are desirous of building each other up in righteousness. (p.260)

It could be pointed out that the LDS Church helps people all over the world, no matter what religion, including victims of natural disasters, like the typhoon that recently hit the Philippines. As sisters in the Relief Society, we have opportunities to serve, by making hygiene kits and blankets, donating food, and participating in other service projects.

How should we serve?

Be upright, just and merciful, exercising a spirit of nobility and godliness in all your intentions and resolutions—in all your acts and dealings. Cultivate a spirit of charity; be ready to do for others more than you would expect from them if circumstances were reversed. Be ambitious to be great, not in the estimation of the worldly minded, but in the eyes of God, and to be great in this sense, “Love the Lord our God with all your might, mind and strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” You must love mankind because they are your brethren, the offspring of God. Pray diligently for this spirit of philanthropy, this expansion of thought and feeling, and for power and ability to labor earnestly in the interest of Messiah’s kingdom. (p260)

This quote reminded me of Henry Van Dyke's fictional story, The Mansion, in which a man lives his life doing good to others, but always making sure that he received some good out of it - his name on a building or some political gain. The man had a vision of being in heaven and seeing the mansions that that people had built through their actions on earth. He was surprised to see that his own was very small and shabby. When he asked why, he learned that because he had been publicly rewarded for the good he had done on earth (indeed, that was why he had done them) he had already been rewarded for them. He had building up his treasure on earth, and not in heaven.

I found this particularly interesting, as a blogger:

In pursuing any kind of study a man has to continue to work, and after going through one course he has to go through again, and keep to work in order to make himself master of them, and he never will master them near so well as by communicating his information while engaged in gaining it. Let him go to work and gather up his friends and endeavor to give them the same knowledge that he has received, and he then begins to find himself being enlightened upon those things which he never would have known unless by pursuing that course of teaching and imparting the information he is in possession of unto others. Any one that has been a school teacher will understand me well upon this point. (p261)

It is definitely true that a teacher learns far more than the students. I've learned as I've tried to record what I've learned from my institute lessons here, that I've learned and internalized the lessons far better when I try to pass on the information I've gained.

I actually thought of an experiment I wanted to try in my lesson to prove this point - have everyone think of something they had learned or found interesting today (in Sunday School, Sacrament Meeting or wherever) and spend a minute telling their neighbor about it. After a minute or two, switch, so everyone has a chance to tell someone something they had learned. By telling someone else what they had learned, they would remember that bit much more strongly than if they had kept it to themselves and told no one.

While we shouldn't serve others only because we want blessings, great blessings do come to those who serve. I love serving as a Relief Society teacher!