Ep. 137 "About His Business" By Elder Patrick Kearon

0:00My dear brothers and sisters, welcome to General Conference. Welcome to Closer to Christ through General Conference, where we will treasure up and act upon the teachings of this conference to allow the Lord to continue to teach and inspire us with personal revelation and guidance. This is Abby, let's jump into it. About his business by Elder Patrick Kirin of the quorum of the 12 Apostles, from July 1st, 2024 through June 30th, 2025, convert baptisms were the highest in church history, 308,000 people joined the church and increased from about 50,000 of about 50,000 from 2023, and the highest number of converts in a quarter century. June 1st, 2024 to May 31st, 2025, convert baptisms were the highest in any of the 12 month period in church history. Every region of the world saw at least 20% increase in convert baptisms in the first quarter of 2025, compared with the same period in 2024. Elder Kirin was one such convert,

1:01as he was baptized into the church in London in his early 20s. New members are joining us all over the world in record numbers. Think of the very first moments these new members joined with us after baptism. What a wonderful privilege it is to raise our arms to the square and welcome them in the wars into the church. What are we really doing when we raise our hand? Is it possible that we're pledging that we will share them on as they grow their newly discovered faith in Jesus Christ? If presenting this talk in a church lesson, it would be amazing to ask participants to reflect back to that exciting and scary time and share how those sustaining hands and affected them and affected how they felt when they first joined with us. It's no coincidence that just a week after being welcomed into the church, Elder Kirin met with a bishop to receive a calling. What is the significance of this quick transition from membership to the church to having a calling? In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, receiving a calling soon after baptism shows that you are needed immediately and truly belong. Not just as a member, but as part of how the church functions. Growth comes through service and as you act, serve, connect, and fill the spirit,

2:03your conversion deepens in meaningful ways. Collings are extended through prayer, reflecting trust to the Lord in your willingness, not your experience. Servings also helps you quickly build relationships and fill at home, following the scriptural pattern of being numbered among the people and strengthening one another. If you sit and think about how under-prepared we are and how overwhelmed a calling can be, does it help you to think that these new young saints that are also invited to step into any number of these roles are doing it? I honestly think that this theme is the major point of a calling, no matter how long or short you've been counted among the number of Christ's church and no matter how young or old you are. From the talk, when Jesus, just 12 years old, was just 12 years old, he was found by his parents teaching in the temple. He told them that he had been about his father's business. And we can be too. Every calling, whatever it is, is his business. When embraced with a humble and willing heart and a desire to lift and comfort his children and share his good news. In the talk Elder Kieran promised that this new calling would be a benefit to him and to his future service in the Lord to the Lord in his church, the following Sunday he was sustained by

3:08the congregation again, but this time it was in the position of Ward Clerk. Do we really take that sustaining seriously? When we raise our arms to the square, are we indeed going to support with patience and faith the opportunity of our brothers and sisters to learn and grow in the callings that the Lord has seen fit to call them to? Do we step in and help? Do we help with training? Do we mentor? Do we answer questions? Do we sit by their side when callings are extended? This talk gave me the opportunity to reflect on the many years of my church membership and the variety of callings that I've had in addition to the repetitiveness of some of the callings I've had and the other things that I've involved myself with. Depending on the type of calling that I've had, I would invite each of you to do the same and ask yourself the question, how has my service in church calling shaped my life and taught me more about my Savior? And hopefully, as each of us look over the course of our lives, we can be as Elder Kirin said, come and see the purpose and power in each calling that we've received. And with hindsight, understand the bishop's inspiration or other auxiliary leaders in the warden's stake that led to those different opportunities.

4:11I think we become iteratively better at sustaining others in their callings. When we ourselves have had our fair share of difficult callings, when we have said yes to something, when we really just wanted to crawl into a hole and say, now, callings have stretched us and turned us regular to prayer. When you were reflecting on callings that you or others have had, sometimes you see that it was an obvious fit for the person's gift and talents as an Elder Kirin's words. Also, sometimes you think, man, that was an interesting choice. Though he said that that was usually in response to his own callings that he received. When this talk touched on the idea of sustaining new members and sustaining members as they are all called into different responsibilities throughout the church, let's go back to the idea with the question, what we're actually going to do when we raise our hand to the square and common consent? I would love to hear how members in the class have actually sustained those in their congregations or how they have felt that sustaining power of those in their congregation, especially in callings that they didn't feel well suited for. From the talk, common consent is a

5:14beautiful mix of our agency, unity, and faith. It is a voluntary personal commitment to support, uphold, and help the Lord's cult servants in their responsibility, whether Bishop Rick member, young woman advisor, Sunday school teacher, or stick primary president. The question is, how is the sustaining done? Not just by raising our arm to the square and common consent, but by sustaining each other in prayers, our love, our patience, and our faith. Did you know that you don't have to always agree with those that you were invited to sustain? You don't have to think that they're doing a great job and serving as a savior would, but as we continue to pray for them and they for us important bridges of unity are built. So why do we serve in the restored Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints? Why do we say yes when it would be so easy to say no? The answer that you may come to is that these very callings afford us the opportunity to pursue Christ in his virtues such as charity, humility, meekness, forgiveness, and love. The people who may be very different from us. The Lord works through imperfect servants, but blesses those imperfect servants as they strive to discern his will

6:15for those that they're serving. When you look over the arc of your discipleship and the callings that you've had, did you notice that a handful of them were highly stretching while others left you thinking, what more could I be asked to do? What did you do during those times when you felt underutilized? Some callings are highly visible, others are quiet and unseen. Some callings affect ourselves while others have a huge impact on our lives as well as our families. If you didn't take the opportunity before to consider the callings that you've had in your life and how those impacted you individually and your families, I would again invite you to do so now. What did you learn from those that you served with? What did you learn from those that you served for? When you were feeling underutilized, did you take that matter to the Lord in prayer and learn what he would choose for you to fill those gaps with? Was there a time in your life when you were invited to participate in a calling that you just didn't feel like the circumstances would allow you to perform that service? I thought a lot about the line in this talk. I turned down a calling

7:17once my very early college years and I deeply regretted it afterwards to the point that I promised myself no matter what calling I was given in the future, I would always say yes. And I'm not saying that everybody has to say yes every time, but I do want to testify that when things seem impossible to accept a certain calling based on the life experience that you're having, I'd encourage you to take it to prayer. If it does settle with you that you can turn the calling down that's great, but what if the thing you've been praying for, the thing that you need, the quality of Christ that you're trying to seek is inside that calling. And you don't see it from the outside. It just looks like overwhelm in the beginning. I just want to say in my own life, I'm looking back at callings. I feel like they're always perfectly timed for the person that he sees me. He wants me to become the best way for him to get me there is usually through a calling, serving others. Again, he's seen the bigger picture. He knows the desire of our hearts and a lot of times the person that's directing callings is inspired to answer those prayers through these callings. One time,

8:21I was thinking about this when I was preparing this podcast. My mom was serving as a Relief Society President and one of her counselors lost her husband in a plane accident near the end of their service. And from the outside, I'm sure a lot of us were thinking how great the timing was that they were just about to finish serving in that Relief Society Presidency, you know, paired with just losing your husband, but the Lord saw fit in her grief to call her to be the next Relief Society President. I can only imagine how difficult it would be to be a single mother with financial responsibilities and losing a spouse and then having this burden of supporting a whole word in such a visible calling. But I know she said yes. And I'm using something that happened decades ago. I'm thinking what an opportunity it must have been for award members at that time. You know, if she invited, if she invited you to do something, you know, how many people maybe would have paused and thought, you know, she's busier than anybody and she's got a lot on her plate and she said yes, maybe it helped them say yes when it wouldn't have been easy for them to do the

9:22same. Again, my last state president supported his old son through his battle with cancer the entire last year of his 10th year of service on top of all the other responsibilities he had. I'm thinking a lot of people, I felt like I can do my little part, my assignments that I'm being asked to do. Look at all that they're navigating and trying to do as they're trying to serve. So I think it's a misconception when people think of their callings that they're expected to do, thinking that they have to do things so perfectly that they're that or do it like the last person that had the calling. Neither of those statements could be farther from the truth. I'm grateful for people who have sustained me in callings that I've had that I was definitely under equipped to perform. And I'm grateful that in performing those callings imperfectly that I was required to rely on the Lord even more than I would if I had naturally come by the ability to do those callings. Right now, I serve in primary. It doesn't stretch my capacity, but it's such a beautiful calling to have right now. I get to team-teach with one of my dearest friends and the testimonies of the young primary children. They're incredible. They fill me up. They fill my cup for the week certainly.

10:28The music in primary fills my soul. I fill the spirit every week. And because it's not a super stretching calling, I'm invited to substitute music either as a chorist or at the piano quite regularly. And I wouldn't be able to easily say yes to these requests if I didn't have the calling that I have, you know, the one that I'm set apart for. So I think it's a valuable opportunity to consider the callings that we have and anticipate that we'll have callings that may be inconvenient, ones that stretch us, ones that we don't feel prepared for. But if we take them with the intent to do to or the best of our capacity, there's always going to be that growth. We're always going to come out of those callings better than we started. Once some callings, they make us feel isolated. And so reluctantly, we say yes to them. But even those callings can help us develop a testimony in areas that we maybe otherwise wouldn't have. And anticipating that there's going to be sometimes some callings that aren't our most ideal if like the first thing that we'd want to do, maybe we can work on developing a testimony in advance that, you know, in whatever way that we

11:34engage in the Lord's economy and whatever capacity that we're always going to come out ahead. I'm sure no one felt as underprepared for a calling as the first apostles of Christ's church in his day. They could have filled those great responsibilities in a lot of ways, but the invitation from the Savior came time and time again. The main focus of their job was to feed a sheep. So just like prayer studying the scriptures and worship, worship at church and temples help develop our faith in Jesus Christ so do our service in the church in these various callings. Let's reflect on Ilder Kirin's question here for a moment. He asked, how how we come to see our callings as having a foundational role in the expansion of our faith. This question from the outset could be the sole focus of an entire 25-minute lesson. I like to think that I'm service-minded and that I put myself to study and deepen my faith in the doctrine of Christ, but I just, I can testify in my own life that I wouldn't put nearly the same amount of effort into those things if it weren't for the, you know, relief society's

12:34sisters, lessons that I was preparing for, like if I get asked to give a talk and sacrament meeting, I put the kind of effort into those that I wish that I was naturally inclined to do all the time. If I'm executing a girl's camp or a young woman's lesson, etc, all of those things are magnified because I'm doing it in the service of other people. So I both learn but I also get to bless others by inviting them and encouraging them in their learning too. I want to add my testimony to this truth. Elder Kirin said, callings from the Lord are tailor-made for our growth as we humble ourselves look outward and learn that indeed we are in the service of our fellow beings. We are in fact in the service of our God. It really isn't where we serve, but how that matters to the Lord. It's good to remind people that just before this talk was presented, we all had the opportunity to participate in a solemn assembly to sustain a new prophet of God. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a solemn assembly is a sacred gathering where members unite to sustain leaders, such as President Delaney jokes. As the prophet Cyr and

13:38Revelator through the principle of common consent, his calling reflects a lifetime of faithful service and humility, accepting a responsibility he did not seek while trusting in the Lord's guidance. The moment is both reverent and joyful, as each member equally participates in expressing faith, support, and willingness to uphold the Lord's chosen servant. Did we each take that opportunity seriously? Did we raise our hands to the square when we sustained him and promise with our hearts that we would do everything in our power to join him in the effort of gathering Israel, spreading the gospel to the world? We sustain our prophet by doing our small part in whatever corner of the earth we're in and lifting our brothers and sisters around us. I want to add my testimony to Elder Kiran's when he says, we are not merely filling an assignment when we respond to an inspired calling, but joining the Savior of the world in his infinite redeeming work. He needs you and he needs me. Life is better, everything is better when we are about his business, and he said these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. We'll catch you next time. As the messages from this conference are

14:39published, we invite all to study and ponder them prayerfully and to act in faith on the principles they