Ryan Wolfe of the Lethbridge Alberta South Stake remembers clearly the cream walls, faint beeping noises and unfamiliar fragrance of the nursing home as he made his first official home teaching visit.
He and his first companion, Bob Charmbury, who Wolfe said was well over 80 years old at the time, were visiting a woman who was confined to her bed and who received few visitors.
“I remember that Bob spoke softly and gently as he stroked her frail hand,” Wolfe said.
After that, they went to see a woman who was struggling with major life challenges — but the visit was pleasant, “likely because Bob was a man who was one hundred percent without guile,” Wolfe remembered. It was apparent that the woman trusted him and was glad to have him in her home.
Finally, they visited a woman whose husband was not friendly to the Church. But he was a “car guy” just like Charmbury, and the two chatted about cars.
“It was amazing to see how well Bob knew his families in our Saskatoon ward, and how good he was at taking care of their spiritual and physical needs,” Wolfe said.
This taught Wolfe about the sacred responsibility of home teaching assignments — now ministering assignments — in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Ministering has richly blessed my life. I have built life-long friendships and enjoyed getting to know my fellow Saints,” he said.
Wolfe, along with his current ministering companion, Don Wright, each wrote essays for the Church’s Canada Area website about their learnings and experiences with ministering. Wolfe’s is titled “The Lord and His children need mighty ministers” while Wright’s is called “Ministering Musings…’I Just Have to Go.’”
Wright wrote that one night, Wolfe could not go with him to a scheduled visit with one of their assigned families: “I suggested that I go alone. His response was, ‘No, I just have to go.’ We rescheduled.”
Growing up in a small town in Alberta, Wright saw that if one person was sad, they all were — and when someone celebrated, they all celebrated.
“Today we would call that ministering. It came naturally, and we all ministered to each other,” he said.
One young man in their stake with cerebral palsy needed crutches to walk. When they hiked, his friends carried him up and down the mountain.
“Ministering is about carrying others and never leaving anyone behind,” Wright said.
When the late President Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles spoke about ministering in April 2018 general conference, he said, “Brothers and sisters, we have a heaven-sent opportunity as an entire Church to demonstrate ‘pure religion ... undefiled before God’ — ‘to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light’ and to ‘comfort those that stand in need of comfort.’"
Wright said he knows that “the essence of effective ministering is to actually be there.”
He also knows that the fruit of some efforts may not be seen right away. One young couple he ministered to in his ward included a husband who was not a member of the Church. Wright taught him about the gospel. The couple moved away, and years later the husband called to say he had been baptized, thanks to the profound impression those lessons had on his life.
“I believe that through baptism we become ministers by covenant,” Wright wrote. “Should we not then ‘cheerfully do all things that lie in our power’ (Doctrine and Covenants 123:17) to minister to all?”
Wolfe said some may believe that their assigned families are “just fine.” But in Wolfe’s experience, no one is completely “fine.”
“The need and requirement to minister transcends wealth and notions of ‘all is well in Zion,’” he wrote. “The families to whom you are assigned to minister need to know they can trust you about the challenges they are facing now or in the future.”
Section 21 of the General Handbook can help everyone better understand their role, he said.
“Hopefully we will seek out opportunities to minister the way Heavenly Father expects us to minister.”
