Extend kindness
Improve personal example
Open mouths
The duty to warn a neighbor falls on all who have accepted the covenant of baptism, said Elder Henry B. Eyring of the Quorum of the Twelve in referring to the Lord's charge for "every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor." (D&C 88:81.)
"Our purpose is to invite them to be taught by the full-time missionaries who are called and set apart to teach," he said during the Saturday afternoon session.
"That call to warn is made harder and more important by the fact that the warnings of most worth are about dangers the people don't yet think are real," Elder Eyring said. "Few prayers are so fervent as those of a parent asking to know how to touch a child to move away from danger."
Elder Eyring related how his family accepted the invitation from the missionaries to help prepare someone for baptism. "I was blessed to perform the baptism of a widow in her 80s, taught by sister missionaries," he said. "You know that few moments in life are sweeter."
Whether such moments at the baptismal font and in the temple come more often "will depend largely on how we see our charge and what we choose to do about it," he continued. "The Lord would not use the word `warn' if there is no danger."
"The danger may be hard to see, but it is real, both for them and for us," Elder Eyring said. "At some moment in the world to come, everyone you will ever meet will know what you know now. And they will know that you knew. And they will remember whether you offered them what someone had offered you.
"I want to do better," he said. "I want to increase my power to invite people to be taught. Love always comes first. A single act of kindness will seldom be enough."
Elder Eyring told of a crew of LDS neighbors who helped landscape the home of a new family in the neighborhood.
"This is the third yard you Mormons have put in for us," said the father of the new family, "and I think this is the best." The father then "quietly but firmly" expressed his satisfaction in his church.
Over the years, "the acts of kindness extended to him and his family never ceased because the neighbors really came to love them. "Because of the love of many,
his sonT was baptized.
"Second, we will need to be better examples of what we invite others to do. Most of us are modest enough to think that our small candle of example might be too dim to be noticed. But you and your family are watched more than you may realize."
Third, "We must do better to invite with testimony. Love and example will open the way. But we will still have to open our mouths and bear testimony.
"Perhaps some of us may find it hard to believe that we love enough, or that our lives are good enough examples, or that our power to testify is sufficient for our invitations to our neighbors to be accepted.
"We must have the faith that we can love enough and that the gospel has touched our lives enough that our invitation . . . can be heard as coming from the Master whose invitation it is."