October 2021 Come Follow Me Ministering – The Nauvoo House and the Good Samaritan
The October 2021 Come Follow Me Ministering Printable ties together Elder Gerrit W. Gong’s April 2021 General Conference talk “Room in the Inn” and this October’s Come, Follow Me lesson on “The Lord wants me to welcome and accept others.”
These ministering printables are a great way to help families incorporate the “Come, Follow Me” lessons into their own study. They are also perfect for Young Women’s, Relief Society, Sunday School, or Family Home Evening. I hope that these ministering printables will be a simple way to reach out to those we minister to.
Download October 2021 Come Follow Me Ministering Printable (4×6) (Four to a Sheet PDF)
You can print these printables as 4×6 photo prints. My local drug store prints them for just pennies.
I totally fell in love with how the handouts came out this month. You can pick up the little ceramic pumpkins at Target in the Dollar Spot. And these clear boxes for greeting cards are great because there is so much you can do with them. I decided to fill them with pumpkin spiced flavored pretzels. Then I hot glued the ribbon around the box and hot glued the pumpkin on top. You can just peel off the pumpkin and use it to decorate for the fall! Then I tucked the printable under the ribbon.
I think they would be really cute with Reeses Pieces inside too.
October 2021 Come Follow Me Ministering Printable
The Nauvoo House and the Good Samaritan – The Lord wants me to welcome and accept others
I served in the Argentina Buenos Aires West mission and loved going to the temple in Buenos Aires. I actually became more familiar with the temple in Spanish before I did in English!
My brother and I should have been serving missions at the same time, but instead he was home fighting cancer. I was only in Argentina for a short time when I got the call that my brother’s cancer had spread. My companion didn’t speak English and I was in an unfamiliar land. I spoke some Spanish before I served my mission, but they speak Spanish quite differently in Argentina. There was no one I could really communicate my feelings with on any meaningful level. I felt very alone.
But when I went to the Buenos Aires Temple for the first time, I immediately felt at home. Even though everything was in Spanish, I could understand it. Inside the temple, it looked like, felt like, and smelt like the temples I was familiar with at home. I was no longer in a strange land. Everything was familiar. It was the house of the Lord. I felt so cozy that I had to fight the temptation to curl up and take a nap.
The Temple
At the end of my mission, my parents came to pick me up so that I could show them around Buenos Aires and visit Iguazú Falls. My mission president had us met up at the temple. What an amazing place to reunite with my parents! It was unreal to see them standing in the place I had so often longed for them.
On the temple grounds there is housing for members who travel long distances to visit the temple. Many members in South America would travel for days at an enormous sacrifice to get to the temple. The patron housing allowed them to stay several days before returning home. My parents and I were allowed to stay there the first night. There was a wonderful and scared spirit there. From the windows you could see the temple lit up at night.
Later on our vacation we would have to navigate mass transit and hotel rooms in unfamiliar areas, but that night we could just focus on being together as a family.
The Nauvoo House
When I read about the Nauvoo House in Doctrine and Covenants 124, I think about my stay on the Buenos Aires temple grounds. The Lord commands that the Nauvoo House “shall be for a house for boarding, a house that strangers may come from afar to lodge therein; therefore let it be a good house, worthy of all acceptation, that the weary traveler may find health and safety while he shall contemplate the word of the Lord.”
For my parents and I, the Buenos Aires Temple housing was a beautiful place to reconnect. It was definitely a place to find health and safety as we contemplated the word of the Lord. Some of my most vivid memories of my parents’ visit to Argentina are on the temple grounds. I still get emotional thinking about our experience.
Just like I looked out the window to see the Buenos Aires Temple, visitors to the Nauvoo House would also be turned to the temple. Many would be waiting and longing for the day they would receive more power from on High.
The Inn of the Good Samaritan
Trials and difficulties are an important part of our growing experience. But just as important, we must also have safe places to rest and learn.
During the April 2021 General Conference, Elder Gong talked about another kind of inn that acts like a safe haven to the weary traveler. In the parable of the good Samaritan, the Lord is our Good Samaritan. He binds our wounds and carries us to the inn – a representation of His Church. He invites us “to make His Inn (His Church) a refuge for all from life’s bruises and storms.” The Lord’s Church is also a safe place where the weary traveler can find health and safety.
In the parable, the Samaritan asks those in the inn to take care of the injured man until he comes again. As members of the church, we are not only the injured man in need of help, but servants at the inn. When we fail to see the dual nature of our roles, we miss out on the unifying blessing of service. We miss out on the lessons learned and relationships built not only from serving, but being served.
Elder Gong shares, “He trusts us to help make the Inn the place He needs it to be. As we offer our talents and best efforts, His spiritual gifts also strengthen and bless.”
Christ (the Good Samaritan) is our example of how to be good neighbors to our fellow travelers regardless of race, class, nationality, politics, or any other distinction. Elder Gong says, “[Christ] entreats us to make His Inn a place of grace and space, where each can gather, with room for all. As disciples of Jesus Christ, all are equal, with no second-class groups…. Imagining ourselves in their place, we welcome friends, visitors, new move-ins, busy individuals pulled in too many directions. We mourn, rejoice, and are there for each other. When we fall short of our ideals and are rushed, unaware, judgmental, or prejudiced, we seek each other’s forgiveness and do better.”
Safe Places
The Lord has created sacred and safe places for us, whether it is in chapels, temples, or on temple grounds. They are places of learning, healing, and preparation. Elder Gong said, “The house of the Lord is a place where, as with the wounded man on the road to Jericho, the Good Samaritan can cleanse and clothe us, prepare us to return to God’s presence, and unite us eternally in God’s family.”
Our part is to care for others in the inn as Christ does. We are promised that when we come unto the Lord with “broken hearts and contrite spirits, we can find voice in Jesus Christ and be encircled in His understanding arms of safety.”
