How Great Shall Be My Joy!

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes member missionary experiences happen because you notice someone else’s efforts to spread the good news. That’s what happened when I exited a small gas station market in McLean, Virginia recently. Positioned on top of the sanitizing towel dispenser, which is on the right side of the exiting doorway, were some Spanish religious postcards promoting faith. Those postcards ca...

Send us Fan Mail Successful member missionary work is always about the other person.  Sometimes on a flight you sit next to an open-hearted person; sometimes you sit next to a closed-hearted person. I had the experience of sitting next to one of each on a recent trip across the country.  The condition of their heart is not in your control. Just do your best in the situation you’re put in! ✈️ ❤️

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes God drops a member missionary situation in your pathway when you’re at work. That was the case with this story which happened two days ago in Chevy Chase, Maryland. A lady purchased a dining room set we had hauled away from another customer’s home. It turns out it was the exact style set that her mother used to have in her home for many years. Recently the lady‘s mother...

Send us Fan Mail I was supposed to be on a plane to Utah tonight. For various reasons, I decided to stay home. Around 8 o’clock I was listening to a song performed by the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.  I had the thought, “That would be a fun song to play on the piano.”  So I walked over to the piano and gave it a shot. 30 minutes later I was done. Wanting to record what I had created, I turne...

Send us Fan Mail Sometimes member missionary experiences happen when you simply step outside of church in between meetings. That’s what happened with a wonderful young lady named Jackie.   I met Jackie as she walked along the sidewalk towards my car one day in between church meetings. Jackie went on to take the lessons and join the Church. Now, years later, she still is an active member of the Chu...

Send us Fan Mail In October 2019, I made a quick trip to Detroit Michigan to visit the Detroit Michigan Temple. To get from the hotel to the temple, I took my first Lyft ride. I’m glad I did! My Lyft driver was named Chantil. She had been driving for Lyft for about five weeks. She was a terrific lady who was very nice. When she asked more about where we were going it naturally led to a conversatio...

Send us Fan Mail If you want to be involved in member missionary work, it’s important that you associate with people not of your faith! Attending dinners designed to strengthen mutual understanding and respect between various religious groups is a great place to do that. In my case I was invited to attend the American Muslim Institution dinner in Springfield, Virginia a few years ago. Although I d...

Send us Fan Mail Joy Exiting the Langley Mart is an experience I had two days ago when I stopped at a little gas station/market to buy a drink.  Sometimes the prompting to be a member missionary comes after someone else has shown you how to do it themselves. In this case, somebody had left some postcards on top of a paper towel dispenser that the customers will see on their way out the door. It wa...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of How Great Shall Be My Joy focuses on a lesson learned from Bro. J. Willard Marriott when he was 25 years old. In the wonderful book, Bill Marriott, Success Is Never Final , it tells a story about negotiating for a hotel to be built in Dallas, Texas when Bill was 25. The lesson he learned about working with other people through those negotiations is priceless for me...

Send us Fan Mail  This episode is about a letter that I wrote and sent to a lady I had recently met, because I wanted to follow Elder M Russell Ballard‘s counsel of inviting one person per quarter to learn about the restored gospel. This experience happened about five years ago and this particular episode took place the day after I met a lady at the Norfolk Virginia landfill.   Most importantly it...

Send us Fan Mail  Joy with Jeff describes how you can be a member missionary in a natural way during the middle of your workday. This experience happened last week as I was helping Jeff clean out his home prior to his move.   If you’re patient, the Lord will prompt you, in a natural way, on how to help somebody learn more about the Restoration of the gospel. I hope you enjoy it! 

Send us Fan Mail  God can make you a missionary even when you’re stopped at a stoplight.  Enjoy this episode of a real experience that happened to me while doing just that a couple of years ago. It’s amazing how fast these member missionary opportunities can surface, happen, and conclude.  Enjoy! 

Send us Fan Mail Successful member missionary work is like being a subcontractor helping a general contractor build a house. You do your part when the general contractor, the Lord, calls for you. Remember it’s His house; not yours. Consequently it needs to be built under His timing, not yours.  Peoples lives (His sheep) are also His. He knows what’s going on in them; you and I don’t. So let Him gu...

Send us Fan Mail  This episode happened last week, around April 8, at the Chicago O’Hare International Airport.  I found myself waiting for a few hours for my flight back to Baltimore and a young man who was randomly seated not far from me asked if he could use my iPhone.  It turns out he had just been released from prison the day before and was headed home to Mississippi.  He needed my phone to m...

Send us Fan Mail “Drink Your Own Medicine” is my own experience of realizing that people are more important than goals. It happened as I was getting ready for April General Conference in striving to meet my goal of sharing the message to the Restoration with 200 people before general conference. In the last few months I’ve shared it with 38 different people.   I do podcasts and write books about t...

Send us Fan Mail This episode of my podcast looks over the statistics for worldwide missionary work in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints going back 41 years to 1977. It suggests there is plenty of opportunity for members of the Church to help others learn more about what we have for them. Check out the charts on my Facebook page, How Great Shall Be My Joy, to see the statistics visua...

Send us Fan Mail Joy with the Pizza Delivery Guy talks about my experience with a gentleman who delivered me some pizza a couple of years ago. Who would have known when he showed up outside my apartment building that he had a son, daughter-in-law, and three grandkids who live out in Utah that are Mormon!   This episode teaches the importance of knowing where we have temples. Our conversation devel...

Send us Fan Mail Acts 10:38 talks about how Jesus went about doing good for “...God was with him.”   This episode of How Great Shall Be My Joy is called “Joy at the Landfill.” It happened a few years ago at the Norfolk Virginia landfill where we were doing a house clean out in that area.  It’s a great example of how having an Articles of Faith card in your wallet can really come in handy. It’s als...

Send us Fan Mail  Enjoy this third episode in my podcast titled “Joy with Alma (the Lady...)!   It happened last week on Tuesday, March 3, 2020.  I enjoyed this experience so much I actually stopped in the driveway of my next appointment to record it.   It’s the story of an interaction I had with a customer from Yugoslavia whose name is Alma. To members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day...

Send us Fan Mail This episode, Joy at the Burger King, happened on Saturday, February 29, 2020. It’s the story of how I pulled up behind a car that had some bumper stickers on the back that prompted me to follow up and try and share the message of the Restoration with the people driving inside. It is a wonderful story about how every once in a while, when you’re not sure what to do, you just give...

Send us Fan Mail This is the first podcast that I’ve done, giving an introduction to my new series called How Great Shall Be My Joy!  It is important to understand from the outset the process that is working so well for me.   It is characterized by the photo on the cover of my first member missionary book, which shows me at the age of three sitting on the lap of my grandfather, while he is sitting...