Missionary Work - No Talent Required

There's been a big push in the church for missionary work recently. Since the change in the minimum age for full-time missionaries, there have been a handful of General Conference talks calling for members to engage in missionary work, and our Stake Conference a week ago was pretty much all about member missionary work. So how can we get involved?

Just a few days ago, my mom told me that one of her non-member friends liked one of my blog posts, and she might have mentioned that my blog could be a channel through which I do missionary work (I don't remember exactly whether she said that or not - it was a few days ago). I've been told, by people who teach English to college students for a living, that I have a talent for writing, and I feel like I'm in touch with spiritual things pretty often, at least, I'm good at finding analogies. It makes sense to combine those two things, which may be a part of the reason of why I blog. But I have my doubts.

Writing, like any form of art, is subject to personal opinion. I can form a grammatically correct sentence and punctuate it correctly, but that's where the science of the thing ends. After that, it's all about whether the readers understand, enjoy, and learn from what I've written. I am said to have a "talent" for something that's mostly out of my hands. Yes, there are ways I can write things so that they carry a certain "tone" (one teacher called it a "voice" of writing), but whether it's a pleasant tone is mostly in the ears of the hearer, or the eyes of the reader.

Those sharing the gospel in person face a similar problem. Even if they knew just what to say, how can they know the right way to say it? There are many subtle tones and inflections in speaking in singing, much more than there is in writing (unless I decided to start playing with different fonts). How can we share the gospel in such a way that it won't come out badly or be taken the wrong way?

For that, I'm afraid we need angelic help. Fortunately, in the words of President Deiter F. Uchtdorf, "The Lord can magnify the words you speak and make them mighty. God doesn’t ask you to convert but rather to open your mouths. The task of converting is not yours—that belongs to the person hearing and to the Holy Spirit" (A Word For the Hesitant Missionary, Ensign, Feb 2013). So, maybe you're not too great at talking to people. Maybe I'm not actually all that great at writing. It doesn't matter. All that God is asking of us when it comes to missionary work is to open our mouths or stretch out our fingers and talk or write about the gospel, so the Holy Ghost can carry the message unto the hearts of the people we're speaking or writing to. That's something that we all can do, whether we have a talent for it or not.