They Left Everything to Follow Jesus Christ (Feat. Kirk & Marianne Leininger) - EP 131

What happens when God asks you to leave behind a successful career and step into the unknown? In this inspiring episode of Walking With the Savior, John Merrill Kirkman welcomes Kirk and Marianne Leininger as they share the remarkable story of leaving a thriving medical practice, selling their dream home, and accepting a senior mission call that changed their lives forever.

What began as an office assignment quickly became an unexpected opportunity to lead and strengthen a French-speaking branch. From miraculous Facebook referrals and helping refugees, to teaching and baptizing a man from Libya and witnessing him attend the Houston Temple, they reveal how consecration, simple promptings, and trusting Jesus Christ opened doors they never could have imagined. Their testimony reminds us that when we place the Savior first, He leads us to miracles beyond our expectations.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We watched understanding dawn. We actually watched his face as he was like trying to process all of the things that he had just heard about Jesus Christ and how Jesus Christ's life and suffering and resurrection gave him the ability to be clean, forgiven, and exalted back with his Father in heaven. And we just watched the realization dawn and just the wonder of having a savior just washed over him. And he'd never had that before. And it it was such a holy moment. I don't know that I've ever had a moment quite that holy.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

You're valuable. We want you to know that. Oh my goodness. And today we got Kirk and Mary Ann Leiniger. Did I say your last name right? Yes. Okay, and I heard Kirk and Mary Ann speak on Sunday or a couple Sundays ago, and I was like, well, we gotta bring this on. You two had this miraculous mission, and and here you are. Uh I don't know, Kirk, how far away do you think you are from actually retiring? How far away are you, do you think?

SPEAKER_05 1:48

Within 10 years.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Okay, sometime in the yeah. But but in the middle of your career, and uh you decide to drop everything and go serve a mission. Now, if you're not a member of our church, that's okay. This is about Jesus Christ and faith in him and walking with Christ. And uh wow, what an incredible bold move to drop your career and say, I'm gonna go serve a mission. Where and if you don't know much about these missions, it's like, okay, we're not gonna work, we're just gonna care about people, serve people wherever we can, and when we're given the chance, talk about Jesus Christ. That's the mission. So let's just start with how in the world did you two decide to drop your career, your plans, and your life, you know, quote unquote, your life that you knew and you'd set up, uh you built, you just recently had moved into a newer home and remodeled the whole thing. And then you're like, sell the home, let's go to Houston, Texas, and serve Jesus Christ full time. Tell us the the the story behind that.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

We well, the first little part of that story is that is that the mission president and his wife had been our next door neighbors for about eight years when we lived in a previous neighborhood, and they got called to the Texas Houston South mission. And we went to their farewell, and before I walk up and say, Good job, we're so proud of you, we're so excited. And um, President Garn just was like, cut through all of that. He's like, Come with us, we come with you, and we come with us. And we're like, Oh, ha ha ha, wouldn't that be so great? That would be so fun, of course, that would be amazing. And he's like, No, I'm absolutely serious. I need this, I need this, this, and this, and you guys fill all of those holes. I need you. And so we left that farewell, kind of going, Whoa, if he needs us, why are we here? Why aren't we doing this? So I get texts from Sister Garn periodically over the next several months. She's like, You really should consider coming out. We would really love you. Are you making like any effort to get out here? I'm like, I just don't see how it would work.

SPEAKER_05 4:12

But just not, it wasn't practical to say, hey, I've got 10 more years before I retire, and I'm just gonna take a year off of work. I had a busy medical practice, and it just wasn't, I couldn't see how that could happen that I would leave for a year or 18 months or whatever and go serve a mission.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

But it was definitely on our minds because we kept getting texts from the guards. So um, fast forward until about October of that year, and all of a sudden something happened at his work that our initial knee-jerk reaction was to get really angry. Like, how could they do that? Um, but the day before that happened, it was a Sunday, so this you know tragic thing happened on a Monday, but Sunday before, the day before, we just kept looking at each other like this mission thing just kept keeps coming to our mind. And I think we said a prayer that night and said, Heavenly Father, if we're supposed to go on a mission right now, open the door because we don't know how to do it. We don't know how to make this work. And so the next day, that Monday, something happened at his job that, like I said, we initially got very upset about, but then he was changing out of his work clothes and we just stopped and stared at each other standing in the closet, and he's like, Is that the door? Is that the door that just opened for us to serve a mission? That's the door. So immediately our reaction to this tragic thing that had happened was like, oh my gosh, this is happening. This is the door. So we we started talking about this work incident as a gift, as a this is this is gonna make it possible where it before it wasn't possible. So we started getting real about how that was gonna look. Like, okay, if we're going for a year and not coming back to this job, we're gonna sell the house, this house that we've just finished renovating, and we're gonna quit the job, and we're gonna do all these things that didn't make sense. And man, we got pushback from family, we got pushback from friends, people were calling us nuts. They're like, What are you doing with your life? This is the peak of your career, this is when you are raking in the money or whatever. I don't even know what their thought was. But like, what are you doing? This doesn't make any sense. And the fact that it didn't make sense was actually proof that it was from Heavenly Father because sometimes when he answers prayers, that doesn't make sense. Like, step into the Red Sea and I will part it for you. They're like, really? Well, what we're gonna all drown. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but miracles just end up not making sense a lot of times.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

So anyway, we well, we kind of figured out that if you follow what Heavenly Father prompts you to do, that he always blesses you. And so once we, you know, we'd had previous experiences with that where we felt prompted to do something kind of unexpected and and strange, and we ran with it, and um, it turned out to be really a positive thing. And so we thought, well, if this is Heavenly Father prompting us, and then He's gonna bless us, He's gonna give me another job when I get back, He's gonna give us a new home when we get back. So let's let's do it, let's just go all in and serve a mission.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

So we opened up the mission portal, we did all of our you know mission papers and submitted them. I guess it was February that we submitted them. And um, the state president pushed submit right in front of our faces on Sunday evening when we had the interview with him, and then Monday morning we started getting calls from Salt Lake. Like, hey, this is the mission department. We wanted to ask you a question, thinking that he was retired. Would you, you know, we see that you're medical, would you consider being area medical in Africa? And we're like, yeah, sure, if that's where you need us. And then the next call would come, would you consider being area medical in Europe? We're like, yeah, we could do that. Um, four or five different things. Would you consider this, this, this, and this? We're like, yes, we would do anything because we wanted the mission call to be organic. We wanted it to be organic. And so, because of all of those random uh, you know, options that we said yes to every single one of them, when we opened our mission call and saw Texas, Houston, South, which is where our friends were mission presidents, we felt that it was definitely organic.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

So And there we go. We never put it on your papers, hey, we want to go to the Texas Houston South, our friend's a mission president, he's our buddy, we want to work with him, he wants us there, let us go there.

SPEAKER_05 9:06

I mean, we we did actually, but they as senior missionaries, they let you put a preference. And so we actually did we we put Texas Houston South as our preference, but we thought that they kind of canceled that out when they started calling us saying, Oh, hey, since you're a doctor, we'd love to have you be area medical authority over you know these different areas. And so we thought, oh, our whole purpose in serving a mission now was to go to Texas Houston, you know, Texas Houston South, that might change. And we had to, you know, basically come to grips with the fact that the it may not be what we expect it to be. And uh so we said, well, that's okay. You know, if Heavenly Father wants us to go to Africa, then we'll go to Africa. But um we did put it as our preference, and President, we notified the guards who are the mission leaders, and they said, Well, we'll we'll request you guys also from Salt Lake, so that when um you know they're they're looking for it, they'll they'll kind of lean you in our direction. But there's never any guarantee with that, it's just a preference. But the the calls are inspired, and so we knew that if God wanted us to do a mission now, then wherever he sends us would be fine.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

Yeah. We had gotten to the point where we wanted anything, we wanted to be exactly where God wanted us to be. And if it was Houston, great, and if it was Africa, also great. So it came, Texas Houston South, and we called our friends and said, guess who's coming to Houston? And they're like, We did not think we were gonna get you. So it was definitely a more organic feeling call and answer to prayer. So so there we go. And we the call actually came as office missionaries. You will be serving in the office of the Texas Houston South mission. And so um, our friend, you know, President Garn said, You get trained, Sister Leininger, you get trained is how to run the mission office, and Elder Leininger, you get called, you get trained to you know, do the fleet of cars, you know, manage the fleet of cars. So in the MTC, that's what we did. We did preach my gospel training for a week and then office training for the next week, and then um we go out to Houston. And as soon as we get there, President Garn's like, yeah, you're not gonna do any of those things.

SPEAKER_05 11:30

We had another plan the whole time. Yeah, because I speak French, so I served a mission in France when I was younger, and uh President Garner said, I need you to help the French branch. So they had just started within the last year or year and a half, uh, they started a brand new French branch in Houston, Texas. And so all people from West Africa or Haiti or anywhere else in the world where where people speak French as their native language, um they kind of brought together and uh created a branch there, and they wanted us to help serve uh among that population.

SPEAKER_00 12:08

So it was about that must have been a shock to your system. I think maybe Kurt, you're excited about that. How about you, Marianne? I mean, I I don't know about your French speaking skills. Do you we they they don't exist?

SPEAKER_01 12:20

I don't speak French. Um so so I was a I was excited for Elder Lanier because I knew that he was gonna just do great. And I can hear French, but I can't produce it. Like if you asked me to say something in French, I would I would have no idea. But just for example, he was saying a prayer this morning in French and I understood every single word, but I I don't know how to put them together. Anyway, so um so we said, sure, we'll go and serve the French branch, and it's a branch of about 50 people.

SPEAKER_05 12:57

Well, there's 80 members on record, um, but about 50 people come to church every Sunday.

SPEAKER_01 13:02

And we fill the Relief Society room in the Stake Center because we we weren't big enough to take the chapel, and so we're we're in the relief society room, and there were weeks that it was standing room only, and um, it was a thrilling place to be. It was wonderful to worship with these saints, absolutely wonderful. Even though I didn't understand what was going on, I got to the point where I could understand.

SPEAKER_00 13:29

You show up, and what was that first day like when you're like Kirk's just jiving with all the saints and French, and you're just like that's exactly what I was doing.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Exactly. Um so everybody starts swarming around Kirk because he's the new French speaker, and he has beautiful French from France, so it's formal, it's beautiful sounding.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

And um wait, wait, wait, wait, they were just flocking to him. Let's hear a little bit of that beautiful uh French say something like uh you know, I am from Utah, but I am here to serve you with all my heart and soul. Go ahead, say something like that. Exactly, exactly. I did I did get Utah out of that.

SPEAKER_02 14:29

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

So I had been prompted when we were at the MTC to buy a French hymn book.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Cool, and uh whoa whoa, at this time you don't know you're going to a French Prince. So what are you doing by a French handbook? That just seems odd.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

The MTC has a bookstore and it has things in all different languages, and and it I don't know, it just was kind of cool. And so I bought it and I I picked it up and I'm like, oh wow, it's called Cantiques, you know, hymns with cantiques. Am I saying that right? Wow. Um look at that. And I had it spiral bound because I mean I'm I'll even show it to you.

SPEAKER_05 15:13

Well, at the time we um we knew that there was a French branch, and so we figured that they would um have us help out in some way, but we thought we'd be in the office and maybe just like periodically periodically uh attending the French branch or something. So um so here it is, and I spiral bound it.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

We you had it spiral bound. I I had it spiral bound so that it would sit flat because that's the problem with hymn books when you're playing, they don't sit flat, and then the pages start flipping anyway. Um so I took it to church that first week, and I'm just holding it because nobody's asked me to do anything, and I'm not gonna step up and insert myself where I'm not wanted. And um the relief system president speaks fairly nice, fairly decent English. She said, Do you play? And I said, Yes. And all of a sudden, everybody that was around Kirk starts flocking to me. They're like, Oh, we've never had a pianist, we need a pianist, you're an answer to prayer. They kept saying, You're an answer to prayer, you're an answer to prayer. I'm like, Me? What? So they lead me over to the piano, and the first sun, the first Sunday, I'm playing um How Great Thou Art.

SPEAKER_04 16:34

Ooh, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 16:35

Oh it's like it's one of my favorite hymns anyway, but I feel very comfortable playing it. So I'm not used to playing in front of people, so I get kind of nervous, but I'm used to I like that one and I'm comfortable playing that one. So here I am starting How Great Thou Art. These 50 people raised the roof with their volume, with their just their energy, just their fervent singing. It was so awesome. I don't know if this is true everywhere, but there are a lot of wards that just barely make a peep. You can hear the organ, you can hear the chorus tree, you can hear no one else. No one else is making any noise whatsoever. And I'm like, I would I was getting frustrated in our ward. I was like, come on, come on, there's the the room full of people. We ought to be able to hear you.

SPEAKER_00 17:28

We're singing how great thou art, people.

SPEAKER_01 17:33

Wait, how great if if that even if that so I was absolutely floored with how much volume and how much emotion we were able to sing with so so special. Um so anyway, I became the pianist for that ward and quickly translated all of the songs because I don't know what this says. So I went and I was like, oh, okay, that's come listen to a prophet's voice.

SPEAKER_02 18:10

Okay, that's this one.

SPEAKER_01 18:11

So I wrote down the titles on top so I wouldn't even know what they were.

SPEAKER_00 18:16

That's so funny. That because they're not the same numerical numbers, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

Right. And they have hymns that we don't have, and we have hymns that they don't have. Yeah, so I did a little bit of research and wrote down all the song names so that I would know what they were.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

All of a sudden you had purpose.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

We all of a sudden I had purpose.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

You had purpose, and you have purpose and you got that attitude like you two have, then you're gonna have power. And when power comes, then miracles come. So let's talk about that. Was a good smooth transition, wasn't it? I gotta tell you. This is not scripted, people, but that probably sounded scripted. Uh, let's talk about some miracles. I mean, did where did you see the hand of God? I mean, obviously, this is quite the tender mercy here. They're they're saying we prayed for a piano player and you were it, and you're like, what?

SPEAKER_05 19:10

Uh but she was prompted to buy a hymn book in French.

SPEAKER_00 19:14

Out of the blue, yeah. We bought a hymn book in French. You you had that thing spiral brown, you you know, spiral bound. You showed up, you're ready for the journey. Oh man, I love that. Oh, you're getting me excited with God, miracles happen all along the way. We would all the time. I want to call that a tender mercy. I call it a miracle. You know, it's kind of something small, and you're like, Where did but man, I I call that a miracle. Now let's get into what other things happened that showed you, yeah, we were supposed to be here. We needed to be here.

SPEAKER_05 19:49

We yeah, that I mean the timing was just incredible because we arrived in mid-May um in Texas. We started our our uh MTC experience on May 5th, but by the time we finished there and drove to Texas, it was uh the middle of the month. And uh there were several people who just happened to move to Houston, Texas in the middle of May or right around that same point in time that we ended up meeting because the they reached out to the missionaries uh uh to uh as a response to a Facebook ad. So our mission did a lot of Facebook ads where they'd have you know missionary companionship say, Hey, would you like to uh learn more about Jesus Christ? Well, we have missionaries that would love to come and teach you. Or would you like to come to church with us on Sunday? Do you need a place to worship? And uh even better, they started putting out ads saying, Hey, would you like a congregation that speaks French here in Houston?

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Or Spanish or Vietnamese or Chinese. There's five weeks in that mission.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah, and that that connects some people.

SPEAKER_05 20:58

Yeah, so these would just come through Facebook and people would click on the ad and a pair of missionaries would call them and say, Hey, we saw that you just clicked on an ad. Do you remember doing that? And and the missionaries were usually pretty on top of things, and so they'd say, Yeah, I just did that two minutes ago. So um they met a lot of people that way who basically were coming to us instead of the missionaries knocking on their doors, the people out there in the world are knocking on our door saying, Yeah, I'd love to learn more about Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

It's very, very effective. And the THSM, the Texas Houston South Mission, gets 4,000 media referrals every week. Every week. Wow, that's how many missionaries do you get? We've got 210 missionaries in that mission.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Average is 20 a week. Everybody's calling 20 a week per missionary.

SPEAKER_01 21:55

Everybody's calling, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

So if that's per missionary, that'd be 40 per Companionship. We uh be air.

SPEAKER_01 22:06

No matter what you're doing, you're on the phone with these, you know, you're eating breakfast, you're on the phone, you're texting, you're in the car, your companions driving, you're on the phone, you know, you're doing we didn't want to let any of them fall through the cracks. And one that came to us um or came to a set of sister missionaries was this man named Diab, Mohammed Diab. Wow, and he was from Libya. We okay, and he was here in Houston doing some um on-site training for oil field engineering, because that's what his job was. And the sister missionaries got him as a media referral, and they said, Okay, Elder and Sister Leininger, will you come with us and do a church tour with this guy? And we're like, of course, because we've always wanted to go on lessons with the missionaries, because that was that was thrilling.

SPEAKER_05 23:04

The best part of a mission as a senior couple, the best part is is going out and teaching with the young missionaries.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

So we got to the church and we met Diab with the sisters, and um he was he was hungry and had no idea, he'd always wanted to learn about Jesus, and obviously being a Muslim, he didn't have the freedom to do that. And so here he is in Texas, and he decided to click on a Facebook ad.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

And uh where did that progress when you went and met with him?

SPEAKER_05 23:39

So, well, it was um he was a very humble, very interested man. And um the first thing when when we showed up at the church and the sisters were there, and and Diab um was there, we he just said, Could you please teach me about Jesus Christ and who he is? So we're you know, it people love to talk about Jesus in in Texas, and that and so that was actually pretty common that people love to talk about Jesus. But here's here's somebody from outside the country visiting who was super eager to learn about Christ. And so we just sat down and you know asked what he knew, and he said, you know, I really don't know much at all. I just know that people believe in him. So why? Can you explain why? So we sat down and talked with him for an hour about Jesus Christ and about the plan of salvation and about uh how Jesus Christ uh went about doing good in his life and how he um taught people how to love one another and even love your enemies. And so there were these just revolutionary teachings that Jesus performed, but people got upset with him and and they uh there was a lot of people that were very influential who didn't like that, uh that he was gaining so much influence, and so they actually uh put him on trial and and uh had him put to death by the Romans. So we explained the whole story of Jesus and even uh how Christ was chosen before we came to earth to be our savior, but that in uh this act of his atonement, that his suffering in Gethsemane and on the cross, that uh he bled and died for us, and that in that act, he actually took upon himself the responsibility for our sins and our weaknesses and our shortcomings, and that because of Jesus Christ and his atonement and then his eventual resurrection again, that we can all be saved and go back and live with Heavenly Father. And so we explained this to Diab, and he was just silent and tearing up, and for about three minutes he didn't say a word, and we were just kind of waiting to see what he thought. And finally, he you know, eked out the words. There are no words to describe that kind of love, and it was just, you know, it just the spirit hits you, and you realize there really aren't words to describe how great and marvelous the love of our Father in heaven and our Savior Jesus Christ is for us.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I've I love that moment where we watched understanding Dawn. We actually watched his face as he was like trying to process all of the things that he had just heard about Jesus Christ and how Jesus Christ's life and suffering and resurrection gave him the ability to be clean, forgiven, and exalted back with his father in heaven. And we just watched the realization dawn and just the wonder of having a savior just washed over him. And he'd never had that before. And it it was such a holy moment. I don't know that I've ever had a moment quite that holy where we were just sitting in the front of a chapel, and at the end of that meeting, we knelt down at the front of the chapel, and he said a prayer. It was his first prayer ever. And his prayer was so simple and so pure and so beautiful, and just like a like a child. Um again, that was one of the most beautiful moments I think we've ever experienced. Um Diablo Diablo's baptized um a couple of weeks ago.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Let me share a story that kind of reminds me of a story. This this sacred moment that you're talking about. I recall experiences in San Antonio, Texas, where we were out knocking doors and we got invited in by a sister, and this is before the days of and and she was older, she was probably in her sixties, and and uh we're just two young missionaries, but uh we were sitting there talking to her, and the first thing we were talking about is Jesus Christ and God and Jesus Christ, and and we were just teaching those principles, and I just felt this strong, you know. D do you pray? No, I know I don't pray. Have you ever prayed? No, I've never prayed. I was like, would you mind if we teach you how to pray? You know, and then I said, Would you mind? Uh would you would you be interested in talking to God right now for the first time? And uh we knelt down in her living room right there, and we taught her to pray and say this simple prayer. And I I wanted to introduce her to her Heavenly Father and Savior. And it was just like, man, that first prayer moment, if you yeah, like if if if somebody's like that doesn't really know God at all or Jesus, and just like that first prayer moment when they're sincere like that, it can be so powerful. Like it was just cemented into my heart and my soul that experience. And we never saw that sister again. Uh things just, you know, for whatever reason, you know, but I felt like I was sent on that mission to introduce her to God, Heavenly Father, and maybe help her to continue on that journey of prayer and relationship. Because that's really what we want. We don't want to be checking boxes and saying prayers and reading scriptures, just check boxes. We're trying to build a relationship here, and that's sometimes what we miss when we just say, Oh yeah, read your scriptures, go to church and pray. Uh, it's no wait, what is this about? It's a relationship. And what you just experienced to me is kind of like that holy reunion. Like the the shepherd found the lamb, and he is so excited to greet that lamb, embrace that lamb, hug that lamb. And that lamb might be lost, wet from the storm, and stinky, and like messed up his life, and Jesus shows up and carries that lamb, and that's what he did in that moment with your friend. Yeah, what a what an incredible story. What was the rest of his journey like? You said he you know got baptized, but what was eventually?

SPEAKER_01 30:24

Yeah, he got baptized. Um, and then his his work trip was over. His I think it was a class that he took, right? Um, and he had to go back to Libya. We took him out to dinner right before he left, and um we were like, okay, the travel ban is gonna make it so you can't come back, and we can't go to Libya either, but we can go to this country or these countries. What if we what if we figure out how to meet up sometime? So that's still somewhat in the works. We're gonna try and figure out a time that we can go to a country where we both can be and um and reconnect. But he was um, he was such a I don't, he was a very serious person. But on his baptism day, when he came up out of the water, he was bouncing like Tigger. He was just bouncing, he was so overjoyed. He kept grabbing our hands, and you know, Muslims aren't really demonstrative often, and he was grabbing our hands like we are family now, we are family now. I'm like, yeah, we are, we are so family now. Um, it just he was just a totally different individual. He was so full of joy that he bounced. It was fun.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Yeah, that sounds amazing. And uh what is what do you think it were it was or is that that you're talking about flying to Europe to meet him again? What what what would lead somebody to do that? I mean, after uh, you know, not even that much time with him. Considering you're 50 something years old and and you meet a man for and maybe you work with them for the whole year, you know, but now you want to fly to Europe and and meet up with him and have a reunion. What what is it that drives that?

SPEAKER_05 32:20

You know, for me, uh he doesn't have any members of the church in his country, you know. In Libya, I mean there might be members of the church that live in Libya, but uh we don't know of any. There's no congregations there, there's no organized church in the country of Libya.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Some of those countries, you say you're a Christian, you might lose your head.

SPEAKER_05 32:38

Exactly. Yeah. Uh-huh. And so he has to be very careful. You know, he let us know that he had to be very careful going back, um, not to let people know what he that he had looked into Christianity or yet, let alone be baptized into a Christian church.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

So I mean, this is Daniel on the lines, Dan, but it's uh not always do they come out alive the next day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:04

I think for me, it's because we shared something so personal and so special and so spiritual together that that's a different kind of bond than you know, say a golf buddy, you know. Not saying that that can't also be a spirit a spiritual bond, but this was such a spiritual bond. And he just um he was a very special individual. And because of the timing of everything and how it worked out so well, like he had come to Houston to take this class, and the class was, you know, six weeks, and we had come to Houston, and he clicked on an ad, and it was the sisters that took the referral, and they couldn't meet with a single man without help, and so they took us. And so it just it felt so orchestrated, it felt so purposeful that we were supposed to be the ones, we were the privileged to be the ones to share the gospel with him that that bond is something really, really special that it doesn't matter that he lives on the other side of the world, we are a family and we still feel it.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

And and so you were literally only with them for six months or six weeks?

SPEAKER_05 34:20

Six weeks.

SPEAKER_00 34:21

Yeah, after six weeks, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:23

Wow, he had to go back, otherwise, he was gonna lose his job.

SPEAKER_01 34:27

Yeah, so the class was finished, and he had passed the class, you know, the oil-filled engineer class was out here.

SPEAKER_05 34:33

So he stayed as long as he possibly could because he wanted to go to the temple and get baptized for the dead, and uh he was hoping to take his grandfather's name. Yeah, but we uh weren't able to pull that off. We did get him to the temple and he did do baptisms for the dead, but he wasn't able to do his own family members uh before he left. But we told him that the nearest temple to him is Rome, Italy, and he said, Oh, I go to Rome periodically, so you know that's the there's a connection between Italy and Libya, uh, so there's not a travel ban there. But uh I think it's just interesting that there was such a short window where there wasn't a travel ban for um people from Libya coming to the US, so he was able to come and do this training course, and then it got put back into place, and uh so he once he left, he could not come back. So we said, we'll come visit you.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Well, when he went to the temple for the first time, that was also a miracle. The Houston Temple isn't very big, and um the baptistry is often very full. So to get an appointment for the two sisters, the Liningers and Diab, five appointments, it's just unheard of to have five available appointments. And we kept trolling, trying to find, you know, trying to find a time that would work for him and to have appointments, and nothing was coming up, nothing was coming up, nothing was coming up again. Late one night I was prompted to go check the appointments on online. So I checked the Houston appointments, and there were five opened up, whereas literally 20 minutes earlier there were not. All of a sudden there were five, and I snatched all five of them, and he got his temple recommended, he was ordained to the Iranic priesthood, and he was able to baptize the two sister missionaries that taught him for temple names, and he baptized you and you baptized him, and then it was such a special day in the baptistry because he had a very thick uh Middle Eastern accent, and he was reading names that were from Mexico, you know, Spanish, Latin Latin names. In uh I just thought, you know, the recorders up in heaven have got to be just grinning. Like, look at this, look at these children coming together through the ordinances of the temple. I mean, it was it was such a special experience to be around him for the the time that we were privileged to be around him.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

Yeah, that that's just some tender, tender experiences. And to think you only had a window of six weeks and and to see how deeply you love this person and you you had a window of six weeks. I mean, sometimes you know, that's just that's just incredible. There's something deeper, there's something, there's like soul building, soul attaching. I don't know how to put it, but like like there's something powerful that happens when the gospel of Jesus Christ opens up into a soul of a person, and and uh you you witness it happen. It's almost like you've been through 30 years of life together to watch that transformation with the person, and that's deeply uh so powerful. Um that's so like undeniable. So I want to talk about your stories with refugees and the uh food bank that you worked at. Um could we could we dive into that a little bit now? Yeah, um tell us how you got connected with this and lead us down the road because this is fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 38:17

So we um we were with the Bishop Storehouse um mainly because the the members of the French branch, being refugees and immigrants from French speaking countries, were sponsored to be here in the US, and their sponsorship lasted for about three months where their rent was paid, their groceries were paid, and you know, they were able to have a little bit of a living stipend. But um, after three months, they were kind of left on their own. And most of these people didn't speak English, and so and they didn't have a green card, they didn't have a work visa, they didn't have a student visa, and so they're they were just unable to get government services. And and it was really hard because they were at this point unable to work, so they couldn't buy their own groceries, and they were asking the church for help with their rent and their food, and so um, because we were in the meetings with the branch leadership, we learned about their their needs for food, and the relief society president had asked because well, backing up just a slight bit, because they didn't have jobs or income, none of them had cars. So transportation was it was impossible. So our truck, who we named Elder Ford, because we were in a trio with the two of us, Elder Ford, our F-150. Elder Ford was one of the most valuable missionaries.

SPEAKER_00 39:57

It was like, dude, if every if every senior couple had a Ford, man, that's a pickup truck, a big pickup truck, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:05

A truck, because we knew we knew we would be helping people move, we knew we would be helping haul things to and from. Anyway, so Elder Ford. Um, because we had a big vehicle, we got asked to go up to the Bishop storehouse and pick up these gigantic food orders for the members of the French branch.

SPEAKER_05 40:27

Well, it's not necessarily that they got a lot of food each, but it was that there were so many people in need that we would go up and get 10, 14 uh you know, orders of food. And so there's, you know, when you start adding that up, we were trying to figure out how we put it all in our truck.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

Yeah, we got uh we got some inspiration regarding that.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

You you might need to call Elder U-Haul to we thought about it.

SPEAKER_01 40:58

Like, should we just buy a like kind of a junker van and just have it out here as a mission van? Anyway, we did not decide to do that, but yeah. Um anyway, these food orders would max the truck out. We were we were like we looked like we were the grapes of wrath. We had things hanging out of every possible place. Um anyway, we would drive up there, drive back, and then spend the entire rest of the day delivering these food orders. And I would kind of like sneakily take a picture of their face when we would knock on their door. You know, we would call and say, Are you home? And like, yes, and so I'm like, Okay, we have your food, we're coming in like 10-15 minutes. And I would sneakily take a picture of their faces, and their faces were so full of gratitude and so full of joy, and just like these beautiful souls with tears just springing out of their eyes. And they would call me mama, they're like, Thank you, mama, thank you, mama. And um, it was obviously not me, it was the relief study president and branch president pulling this all together, but um, we got the privilege of delivering it to them and just just seeing how the bread of life, yeah, actually, bread makes such a difference in their lives, and um, it was very, very humbling. We had one story with um a friend, he was not a member yet, his name was Joie, and which is the French word for joy, and he had no food at all, and the Bishop Storehouse can't actually give food to people who are not members. The food is basically for church members. So we talked to the Relief Society president, and we're like, he's not here legally, so he can't get government services, and he needs food, and the local food banks only give out food once a month, and he's through his he's through his food, and we don't know what to do. So the relief society president said, come and come and get food from my house. So she like loads up four bags of food from her house, and we take it, and we were just like absolutely floored with the holiness of that offering because she doesn't have a lot either. So four bags of food from her own pantry, and then we take Jouie to the food bank and just are like pleading, like, I know it's not been a month yet, and the man saw the need that was in charge of the food bank, and he's like, Don't tell anybody. And he gave him two more bags of food. So he took six bags of food and laid them out on Jouie's table, and Jouie immediately was like, Let's pray. We're gonna pray right now. So he offers this beautiful prayer where he thanks God for being such a wealthy man. I am a rich man, he kept saying. I am a rich man because of these six bags of food. And then the rest of his prayer was, God, there are so many people who have bigger needs than mine. Send angels to them like you sent angels to me. And help them. You know where they are, you know who they are. I don't, but you do. Please send angels to them to help them in their need. And that was, again, one of the most holy days we've ever lived through. Just like coming back home after that, just looking at each other like we just saw so many miracles in one day. Starting with the Relief Society president raiding her own meager food stores, four bags full of groceries, that's a lot of food to give away. And then Joa's reaction to it, and then the local food bank saying, Don't tell anybody, I'll do I'll help this guy out. Just so many miracles, one after another, to keep this man, Joie, with food in his kitchen.

SPEAKER_00 45:06

What does it come to mean to you to be an instrument in God's hand? You clearly have showed up at the right time. It's just like, you know, the tender mercies are all over these stories, and you just what does it feel like for you to be used by God to bless people's lives the way you did?

SPEAKER_05 45:34

That is truly the motivation behind I think serving in any capacity is knowing that God blesses lives, other people through you. And it's really that He's blessing us at the same time by letting us see, you know, we would never have had those types of experiences and to see people's joy in receiving something that um they couldn't acquire on their own, especially, you know, we really learned from Joah that when you know when God is if I guess when God is aware of you, um, that He's aware of everybody else at the same time. And um I I think I learned more from him. You know, I when he prayed and said, Um, God, there are other people who have more need than I have, and please send angels to them. That was I I you know he was turning outward, and I would have been the kind of person to turn inward and say, Okay, I finally got you know what I need. This is this is you know a blessing for me. And he just immediately said, Okay, how are we gonna bless other people now? So that I, you know, I learned a lot from him. And I think I think that's what Heavenly Father's you know doing with us as as senior missionaries or as young missionaries is is giving people the opportunity to serve and seeing how even when you're serving, other people are actually serving you or or God is blessing you at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

I think by and I I hope this doesn't sound like we're tooting our own horn because it's not it's not about us at all, but the unique circumstances that got us on a mission where we literally left our nets, we left a job, we sold a house, we had nothing. Everything was in storage, and what we took on our mission fit in Elder Ford, our truck. So we had nothing, it felt like we had nothing, and we went to a place that we'd never been before, and we lived in an apartment in a really, really, really sketchy part of town. It was great, and we grew to love it.

SPEAKER_00 47:52

Let's just say this you did not come from a really sketchy part of town.

SPEAKER_05 47:58

No, but we learned um we we made friends with a lot of people on the street corner.

unknown 48:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 48:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 48:06

That was that was our uh drive out every morning was to have the uh the guys on the street corner uh either asleep on the grass or or knocking on our window, asking for something. Washing your window washing your window. It was like you could not leave our neighborhood without without a group of people um that you know was affected by by I guess their their challenges in life.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

Yeah. But because we because we ended up leaving our nets, the the whole um concept of consecration became more real to us because we were literally giving everything that we had. All in, we were all in to this mission. And and that's a place that God wants us to be, and he can use you when you're all in. If you're straddling, you know, the borderline between the world and Zion, there's just there's just limits to what you can do, but when you're all in, that's when that's when miracles happen. And we felt God leading us to places and to people and to situations that felt tailor-made for us. Like this person is here and you are here, and we want you to be together and teach each other. Um, with the young missionaries, with the friends that we were teaching, with the board members that we were worshiping with from Africa and Haiti, they were all, it just felt so tailor-made that um that it just boosted my testimony of of being all in. And when you're saying, Okay, Heavenly Father, use me. I am here, I'm willing, I'm able, I'm excited, use me that He will. And it's it's a thrilling place to be. It's also very scary to get there.

unknown 50:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

I I love your image there of we left the nets, you know, calling to Peter. Come follow me. I've I've always loved that story. One thing that stands out to me is like that's that's the context is Jesus said, Hey, lower your nets, and uh you know, the nets start to break. They're so full. And they they they fill up two boats and nearly sink two boats with these full nets of fish. And then he comes to shore and he says, Come follow me. In other words, leave your nets, like you're talking about. And I've always thought of it this way, like, wait a minute, my dreams just came true. I have all this now uh the mother load of fish, right? Every fisherman's dream is the biggest fish or the most fish, and he got the most fish, probably records and records, it's just stood on the record books for centuries, right? Um, and you know, he's gonna eat good. He's gonna he's gonna sell that fish, he's gonna have some good money for a while. And then the savior's like, leave it all behind. He's like, wait, wait, I just got set up. And now he doesn't say that, right? Because he just falls down and worships the savior and goes and follows him and leaves those nets behind. But that's what's going through my mind. It's like, why didn't you just call me when I didn't have all of this? Why do you call me when I do have all of this? And it wasn't a convenient call. It was somebody else got the harvest, somebody else got rich off of Peter's full of nets. And I look at you two, and you left, you know, a I shouldn't say a promising career because uh it was more than promising, it was uh what would be the word? Um prospering career, right? You're you're at the peak of your life, you paid off school debts and stuff like that, empty nesters. Yeah, you're rolling in the dough, man. And then the Lord's like, leave your nets.

SPEAKER_01 52:25

That's exactly what it was. It's exactly what it was, and it was thrilling and terrifying. And like you said, we got a lot of people calling us foolish, and this is not the time. You've got plenty of time. Wait until you're retired. There's no reason to go now, but there were so many reasons to go right now, Peter.

SPEAKER_00 52:48

Peter, why do you need to leave right now? You just got the harvest of harvest, you got to sell the fish, make the money, and then live off it for the rest of your life. You leave this, you got nothing, Peter. But you got eternal salvation. And I think of how many people in this world are named Peter. I searched it up one time. Google Google estimated over 700,000 people in the world are named Peter because we know him as a hero, an incredible disciple of Christ, right? And and um what if what if he said, nah, I'm good, I'm just gonna be, you know, chilling on my fish now that you got we we wouldn't know about Peter. True. He'd be the unknown rich kid with a bunch of fish. All right. Last question.

SPEAKER_05 53:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 53:50

How did your relationship with the savior change, evolve, or strengthen, or grow through this experience? Really dial that in for me. Your relationship with Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_05 54:04

So for me, they I was asked to teach uh institute in French. So we had a um institute, you know, once a week uh class, and there was an English class, a Spanish class, and a French class that they had started uh as you know, as this French branch uh started to develop. And so when we showed up, I was asked to teach the French branch, and the curriculum that they were teaching was on Jesus Christ. So the roles of our savior. And that was perfect. It was beautiful for me to just take one element of the Savior's life and say, you know, Christ was the good shepherd. And let's talk. What does that mean? You know, where's let's read the scriptures and and how how is he a good shepherd in your life? And you know, then the next week was Christ is the light of the world, and and then the next week was uh, you know, Christ is our savior or our redeemer. And and each week we would just go in depth on one aspect of Christ's role in our salvation, and we just did that, you know, for the whole curriculum. What is that? Uh 28 weeks or so that uh you go through it. Um, and and I just loved preparing for those lessons, especially preparing in French, because here I was, you know, I kind of started out by preparing a lesson in English and then translating it into French, but I realized that it would be more natural for me to teach if I just prepared the lesson in French. And so I started reading all my scriptures in French, writing things out in French, instead of taking that extra step of translation, because then I could talk about it more naturally. And so as I was reading the scriptures in French, I realized that there was a lot of words I didn't understand. And so I had to look them up. And then once I looked them up, I thought, well, wait, that's not the same word they use in English. And so I'd flip through in the English, you know, Book of Mormon or Bible or whatever, um, and see what the how it was written in in English, and I'd say, oh, I never understood before what that word meant. And now, seeing it transited into a different language, all of a sudden the concept becomes so much more clear. Like, like, for example, the word um, you know, in in Isaiah 53, 11, it talks about Christ bearing our iniquities. And um so in French it said, Christ takes responsibility for our iniquities. And I thought, you know, I was looking up the word and I was like, wait, wait, wait, what's this what's this word mean? I had to look it up in English. It says to take responsibility for, uh, because I didn't know that word in French. But when all of a sudden the concept became so much more clear, because to bear someone's sins or iniquities or bear somebody else's burden, you know, I always pictured that as, hey, he's gonna, we're we're on a backpacking trip and we're going up a hill. My backpack's too heavy for me. He's gonna take it till we get up to the top of the hill, then he'll give it back to me when it's easier. But that's not it at all. All of a sudden, I realized, wait, he's taking responsibility for my sins. It's off my shoulders forever. It's it's as if I never did it. But he gets the raw end of the deal. This isn't fair. Christ didn't have anything to do with my sins. And he didn't, you know, I'm the one that blew it. And all of a sudden, I am so grateful that Christ took responsibility away from me. And now I'm clean before God because of what he did, not because of anything I did, other than turn to him and repent. And when, you know, it was just so amazing for me to study the life of Jesus Christ in a different language where I had to really work harder to figure it out because I got a whole new perspective of what Christ did for me. And I am just eternally grateful to understand better who my savior is and how much he loves me and cares about me and cares about the people that I was teaching. You know, if we didn't have a huge class, but those that group of six or eight people every week, man, we had great discussions on the savior.

SPEAKER_00 58:24

Why, I love that. Take responsibility. Jesus will take responsibility, and here's the crazy thing we become the rich man. I'm a rich man, I'm a rich man because Jesus showed up and had mercy on the poor John Merrill Curtin. All right, Mary Ann, you're up.

SPEAKER_01 58:50

Well, I feel like when we would go on teaching appointments with the young elders or sisters, and we were teaching people who had had rough lives, really, really rough lives.

SPEAKER_04 59:04

Oh true.

SPEAKER_01 59:05

And um, and one lady in particular, she is my sister, and I uh love her. Her name's Alexandra, she's from Haiti. She had had some really, really rough things happen to her, as you can imagine. And um, and she was really struggling with the whole concept of repentance. And umce we showed her the scripture in Isaiah, though your sins be as scarlet, they will be white as wool. Um, and she read that in French and she just started to cry. She just started to cry like it's not possible, it's it doesn't seem like it's possible. And um, the lesson of on repentance kept progressing until she understood that yes, it is in fact possible to be forgiven and to be 100% clean. And it's through our Savior Jesus Christ. And she was just weeping because that had never crossed her mind that she would ever be free of these things.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:10

And um I sat there, I mean, not understanding everything, you know, because these lessons were happening in French, but I just got the feeling like Alexandra and I have the exact same divine origin and the exact same eternal potential. I'm not special in any way. I'm just two steps farther down the path than she is. And it's my it's my excited honor to be able to like light the path a little ways for her. Um, just the grace of Jesus Christ and the majesty of his plan and how it is all-encompassing, and how everyone has the exact same divine origin and the exact same eternal potential that I have, and that literally I'm two steps farther down the road than anybody else that we might have been teaching, and and just the just the majesty of his plan. It just I saw it in action, and it was just it was absolutely thrilling. It's absolutely a perfect plan. So my relationship with my Savior Jesus Christ just became deeper in the fact that I'm now in more in awe than ever before of the majesty of his ability and his plan to rescue us all.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:41

I love that. Thank you so much. So beautiful. I uh wow, just miracles. I think I think the message to the world today, if I had to wrap it up, drop your nets, turn to Christ, say, What do you want me to leave behind? How do you want me to use me to uh to uh be able to grow your kingdom in these last days and for it to all be about you? And when we do that, miracles just will follow, follow, follow, follow. And they won't stop if our eyes are open to every opportunity to serve somebody, loves for love somebody, care for somebody. Like he is aware of us, he knows us, he's involved in our life. And when we start to walk with the savior, and uh we get the opportunity to sing how great thou art, we sing a little differently. Um when we sing from our soul, because that soul is lit on fire with Jesus Christ, there's nobody gonna have to tell me to sing louder for Jesus. It's gonna come from my soul, and that's really what it's about when it comes to the whole singing thing. It's like, have you lit your soul on fire with Jesus Christ? Because it'll change everything. When you realize that he's taking responsibility for the burdens that you put upon him, for you for your sins that you put upon yourself, and that he walks with us, talks with us, he'll find us, and we can walk with him. Thank you, everybody, for joining us on this week's episode of Walking with the Savior. Wow, let's sing. How great that sings my soul, my savior got me. I'm okay. I don't got a good voice. But that don't matter. No, but it doesn't matter. I felt it. I felt it. Come from the soul, it comes from right here. Thank you, everybody. Have a great walk with the savior, and we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:10

Your future is bright when you walk with Christ.