Outgoings

Section 10

"That your outgoings may be in the name of the Lord.
And all your salutations shall be in the name of the Lord."

While Sections many of the twelve sections are focused on personal progress and individual development, in this section we focus our attention outward beyond those in our household and our extended family to our ward family and our circle of influence around us. Jesus said that people will know we are his disciples by our love one for another. Friendships among believers are much different than friendships in the world. Friendships brought together by the commonality of love and devotion to God lift us up to reach our highest spiritual potential.

When you join the LDS church you are immediately given a job and a friend. The job is called a “calling” and the friend is called your “home teacher.” A calling is a responsibility given to you by your Heavenly Father that gives you an opportunity to live out the gospel in loving service to others. When you “magnify” your calling, giving it your best effort, you find that things don’t function well without you anymore. You have an integral part in the inner workings of a world-wide organization of believers. Your service is valuable and necessary. You are valuable and necessary to those around you. Social strength is gained by joining in something larger than you by yourself.

The LDS Church assigns each member someone to visit them. This is the friend that Gordon B Hinckley spoke about. This friend comes to see you at least once a month to see how you are doing and to see if you need anything. This is something that no other church does as a part of the inner workings of their membership. So often we see each other at church, dressed in our Sunday clothes, and have no way of knowing the suffering someone may be experiencing on a personal level at home. If we only see each other in this superficial setting, the chances for making deep and lasting friendships are slim.

The next step in developing social strength is to take on the responsibility of visiting others. Men are given “home teaching” assignments and women are given “visiting teaching” assignments. Men visit families and women visit other women. When you accept a visiting assignment you are also given another friend, a visiting companion. This friend goes along with you to visit those that are assigned to you. Your life becomes fuller and more satisfying as you begin to tend and befriend people. In this section there is a worksheet called “Visiting Goals.” These are suggestions and ideas that will give substance to your visiting. You can bring your notebook with you to glance at this list. This section also provides worksheets to keep track of your visiting assignments and to jot down any needs that you want to remember to pray about or to help solve. My personal definition of a close friend is someone whose telephone number you have memorized. By this I mean that you have initiated the friendship and dialed the phone, not just received calls from them. With today’s technology, we don’t even have our closest relatives’ phone numbers memorized because these numbers are programmed into the memory in our cell phones. What will happen to us in an emergency when our cell phones are out of power or out of the range of service? How will we call for help or communicate with our loved ones? Having phone numbers written down in an organized way is the first step in being a person that has social strength, but dialing those numbers and initiating relationships is the most important step for each of us to develop real and lasting friendships with those around us.

By defining the depth of your friendships by the phone numbers you have memorized you shift the responsibility of your relationships onto your own shoulders. If you are lonely and alone, test yourself. How many phone numbers do you have memorized? Do the phone numbers you have memorized belong to people you long to have a relationship with? Developing your social strength is a very important aspect of human health overall. You can eat right, exercise and get plenty of exercise, but still feel lonely and lacking in purpose and direction. Social strength is built by your own efforts to reach out to others in loving kindness and service. This is what makes each one of us feel like we belong, like we have value and like we are a part of something greater than ourselves.