Farewell Talk

So here's my farewell talk for those of you who are interested. This isn't a perfect replica of my talk because honestly all I had up there was a jumbled mess of ideas and bullet points, but I did my best to remember the words I used in my talk. I don't know why any of you would want this anyway, but whatever. Here it is.

Face the Future with Faith

“Brothers and sisters, Priiiiviet”

My topic for today is pie. It can be any pie you want. I probably be thinking about more of a meat pie, but let me explain.

Bro lowder calls me, gives me a talk I can speak on, Face future with faith. For those who don't remember which one that is, it’s the one with little boy up next to screen blowing kisses at his grandpa.

So I go and look in my notebook and find what I wrote about this talk. “Destin, toss aside your fear, walk forward in faith.” Analogy: a wise farmer does not hate the rain. It may ruin his plans for the day, but he knows that without it, his crops would wither and he would have no means to survive.” So many of us only see the trials we go through, but fail to see how much we will grow from them.

Woo, sweet. Faith. Got it. I can look to my future knowing that things will be great! But maybe I should at least read the talk before I speak about it in church. So I put down my notebook, start reading the talk.

These words start popping out to me. (Read parts that talk about kids and grandkids)

So it’s talking about grandkids and posterity and stuff and I’m thinking, “I did not notice this stuff the first time.” This is where the pie comes in. At first I was only looking at the crust. Faith.

Suddenly I’ve stuck my fork into the crust of this pie and all of this meat starts coming out and all of these juices. Woah, this doesn’t apply to me. I don’t have kids or grand kids. I don’t have a baby that’s had baby. I don’t want to speak on this, I want to speak on faith!

But the point of a pie is not to pick at the crust, but to eat what’s inside. So instead of taking the easy way out, I think to myself, “how does this apply to me?” “What can I get out of this talk?”

And immediately, my perspective just blossoms. This talk isn’t just about teaching your kids the correct principles anymore, it’s about missionary work, it’s about the pioneers, it’s about the prophets of old, it’s about writing in your journal.

So with that, I’m going expound on this idea. Let’s just dive into this pie.

At BYU, I took Brother Bott’s mission prep class, He’s the best everyone should take from him. Bla bla.

He said that of all the positions he had as a missionary, from bottom of food chain, greenie, to head honcho, mish prez, he would take trainer. As a trainer, you can pass on your faith to future missionaries and thereby pass on your faith to the greenie that they train and so on and so forth. Just like a parent teaching their child the correct principles, a missionary does the same thing to future missionaries.

But you don’t have to be a trainer to spread your faith. All missionaries have this responsibility. If you baptize just one person, your seed of faith will spread like you wouldn’t believe! In five generations, you will have created a mission president, 2 patriarchs, 5 stake presidents, 9 bishops, and a hundred missionaries!

Let’s look at pioneers. Many of you just went on trek… It’s a hard thing. And that’s just a sliver of what they went through. We will honestly never know how it really was. But because they left us a record of their hardships in journal entries, they continue to plant their seed of faith in the hearts of people today. If you want to spread your faith to future generations, keep a journal.

So that’s what I got second time. Read again. New words and phrases poppin out. “Eternal perspective stuff.”

What is the work and the glory of God? To bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man… We looked at the surface of the pie. We looked at inside. Now we see the third layer of the pie. The crust underneath it all. And it’s funny, because it’s just as simple as the top layer. It’s as basic as I thought it was in first glancing at it. Any child could tell you what this talk is about. It’s what they learn about in primary each week. It’s the plan of salvation. It’s living with God again. It’s knowing that families can be together forever, through Heavenly Father’s plan.

Yes, it is true that you should live in faith that God will grant you your daily bread. Face tomorrow with faith. Great philosophy. And yes, it is also true that we should hope the best life possible for our kids and grandkids, that they will be able to live comfortably, be happy. That’s what everyone should want for their posterity. But if you really want to face the future with faith, you will look at things with an eternal perspective. You will plant the seeds of faith for future generations and look forward with a knowledge that you can live with all of them, your kids, and their kids, and their kids, you can live with all of them together with God. That’s why we need the faith in the first place.

Now, many people will stop there. Why go any further? We’ve gone through the whole pie… Well, let me ask you something. What’s underneath the pie? What’s that thing you’re scraping against when you’re trying to get that last piece of crust off the bottom?

It’s the pan. The pan is what’s underneath it all. The pan is what the pie is baked in. The pan is what gives it it’s shape, it’s structure. Without the pan, the pie would fall apart. In fact, the pie would never have even been made. It would have never worked.

… So what’s the pan? Well, reading the talk one last time, one phrase stood out to me.

“It is true. We live to die, and we die to live again.”

Who died so that we could live again? …Who sacrificed all he had, more than just two years of his life, more than what it took to trek across the plains.
Christ’s atonement is what gives it all structure. It is what the plan of salvation is based on. It gives shape to the entire thing. Without the atonement of Jesus Christ, we would have none of this. We would have no faith. There would be no reason for it. Faith would be for fools. Faith would be for the missionaries. For the Pioneers. For those poor people who actually believed that there was life after death. Without Christ’s atonement, there would be no eternal life, no plan of happiness. It would be absolutely impossible for us to make it back to heaven…

Good thing we have that pan, huh?

Bros and Sis’s, I’m going on a mission to Samara Russia. Hopefully, as a missionary I’ll be able to show people how to look to their futures with faith. That everything will be okay. Even more I want to show them to look to their posterity’s future with faith, and to spread that faith throughout the generations. If possible, I want to broaden their perspective even more so instead of just hoping for their children and grandchildren to lead good lives here on earth, they would hope for them to lead good after-lives in the Celestial Kingdom. But… If I don’t have the opportunity to give them that knowledge, to give them that pie, I pray that they will at least accept the pan. I pray that they will come away with a knowledge of the atonement and one day use it, realizing what a gift it truly is.

I bear testimony to you that the atonement is the backbone of our religion. Christ is only reason we have a shot at making it back to live with our father in heaven. And because of that, I bear testimony that we can face future with faith. We can cast away our fears and doubts about our future and live in peace that God will help us if we are trying our hardest. We can send our faith into the future, letting it reach further into the generations to come. We can have a sure knowledge that when we die, we will be able to live with our families forever and never have worry or want about what is to come.

I bear testimony to you that this is the way. That this is the true church. I have prayed about it and I’m ready to tell everyone in Russia that this is where true happiness comes from.