Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Discipleship

On a hot summer Sunday afternoon after attending church meetings, my missionary companion and I walked home and ate dinner. After dinner, I was sitting on a bench, sweating and listening to the crowd of people watching and playing a soccor game across the street. In my boredom and restlessness, I reached to the side of the bench and found the June 1996 Ensign. I opened it and began to read.

The article I turned to was entitled "Becoming a Disciple" by Elder Neal A. Maxwell.

Reading that article was a "defining moment" in my life.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been listening to the General Conference talks from this last April as well as some talks by Elder Maxwell I downloaded from BYU's Speeches site. I found that two of these talks by Elder Maxwell were published in the Ensign. Both talks often refer to discipleship. I found that listening to these talks was much more powerful than reading them.

Neal A. Maxwell, “The Pathway of Discipleship,” Ensign, Sep 1998, 7
Neal A. Maxwell, “Insights from My Life,” Ensign, Aug 2000, 7