A letter I recently wrote to my mission president and his wife, which I would now like to share with all of you:
"Dear President and Sister Alba,
At our last mission reunion I shared with you some of the miracles I have seen while sharing the gospel online. I'd like to tell it to you now in a little more detail.
On my mission I developed a sincere love for the gospel and I wanted to share it with everyone, but my introverted personality made it difficult to talk to people on the streets. I remember Elder L. Tom Perry coming to our mission and saying 'When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook he had no idea that he was hastening the work of the Lord.' When I became a Facebook missionary I instantly saw its potential and I knew it was something I could do.
The last few months of my mission I was determined to not get trunky (as Elder Spencer Davis will testify), and so I convinced myself that my mission would never end and my return home would literally just be another transfer.
With that attitude I returned home (August 6, 2013) and immediately began searching for opportunities to share the gospel. But, as I had discovered on the mission, talking to people wasn't exactly my strong suit. In my desperate desire to share the gospel with someone, I started a blog. I called it 'My Experience in Truth.'
I began posting short inspirational messages on it and it was read by a few of my friends, but then one day I felt a strong prompting to write about my experience with bullying in school and how I overcame it. I immediately began writing and the next day I posted it with the title, 'Just Be you.' I shared it with my friends on Facebook and then went on with my day. Less than an hour later my notifications started going crazy with people commenting on it and thanking me for being so open. I began to get messages from people who had experienced similar things and even some from people I had known in school who now wanted to apologize for not making more of an effort to be my friend. Soon people began sharing it on Facebook, and that's when the miracles started.
That week the post was read by over 1,000 people in seven different countries. I had a woman from Italy contact me to thank me for writing it. I had a someone I had never met come up to me and say 'You're the guy who wrote that blog, aren't you?' She then told me how much it had helped her daughter. My institute teacher came up to me after class one day and told me that the blog was circulating around seminaries and institutes and it was being recommended by teachers to students who were struggling.
I knew the internet was a great place for sharing the gospel, but I never dreamed my posts could reach so many people. As of today, April 14, 2016, my blog is being read in 17 different countries, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Ukraine, Moldova, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Greece, Belgium, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates. Needless to say, I'm glad I followed that prompting. :)
But the miracles don't stop there.
Although I've made an effort to share the gospel via Facebook since I got home, it eventually began to dwindle as a priority. A few months ago as I was contemplating where I wanted my life to go, I received a very powerful prompting that I needed to consecrate all my online efforts to building the Kingdom of God. So, as I'm now learning to do when I receive a prompting, I immediately went to work. I purified my Facebook profile of everything that didn't uplift or inspire and I began sharing uplifting messages every single day. I also created a couple other pages called 'Testify of Christ' and 'Just Be you.'
Next I moved to Instagram and Twitter, where I've seen huge success. On Twitter each of my posts reach about 2,000 people, and I've seen some reach as many as 8,000. I also receive messages from people all around the world thanking me for what I post. One man from Hong Kong told me that he had seen missionaries but hadn't had a chance to talk to them. He had questions about the Book of Mormon, so he and I chatted for about 30 minutes. After that I moved to Pinterest, quickly attracting more than 5,000 followers. Just this week I also expanded to Tumblr and Google+, both of which I have good feelings about.
In all, there are over 15,000 people following these accounts. That means I literally get to share the gospel with 15,000 people every single day. How cool is that? God wasn't lying when He said He's hastening His work! Just think about it: the testimony of one average guy from Utah is reaching all across the world. Not a day goes by that I don't thank my Heavenly Father for giving me such a privilege.
I am so grateful for my mission. I will never be able to adequately describe it, but in the words of Jeffrey R. Holland, 'I loved my mission as I am sure no young man has ever loved one before or since.'
Thank you for being a part of it. Thank you for being such great examples to me. My life was forever changed the day God called me to Santa Rosa. No other mission on earth could have inspired me like ours did. God really does know what He's doing, of that I am sure.
-Elder Jordan M. Anderson"
Links:
"Just Be You": http://my-experience-in-truth.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html
Profiles:
Facebook: @andersonjordm
Twitter: @AndersonJordanM
Instagram: @andersonjordm
Pinterest: @AndersonJordM
"Dear President and Sister Alba,
At our last mission reunion I shared with you some of the miracles I have seen while sharing the gospel online. I'd like to tell it to you now in a little more detail.
On my mission I developed a sincere love for the gospel and I wanted to share it with everyone, but my introverted personality made it difficult to talk to people on the streets. I remember Elder L. Tom Perry coming to our mission and saying 'When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook he had no idea that he was hastening the work of the Lord.' When I became a Facebook missionary I instantly saw its potential and I knew it was something I could do.
The last few months of my mission I was determined to not get trunky (as Elder Spencer Davis will testify), and so I convinced myself that my mission would never end and my return home would literally just be another transfer.
With that attitude I returned home (August 6, 2013) and immediately began searching for opportunities to share the gospel. But, as I had discovered on the mission, talking to people wasn't exactly my strong suit. In my desperate desire to share the gospel with someone, I started a blog. I called it 'My Experience in Truth.'
I began posting short inspirational messages on it and it was read by a few of my friends, but then one day I felt a strong prompting to write about my experience with bullying in school and how I overcame it. I immediately began writing and the next day I posted it with the title, 'Just Be you.' I shared it with my friends on Facebook and then went on with my day. Less than an hour later my notifications started going crazy with people commenting on it and thanking me for being so open. I began to get messages from people who had experienced similar things and even some from people I had known in school who now wanted to apologize for not making more of an effort to be my friend. Soon people began sharing it on Facebook, and that's when the miracles started.
That week the post was read by over 1,000 people in seven different countries. I had a woman from Italy contact me to thank me for writing it. I had a someone I had never met come up to me and say 'You're the guy who wrote that blog, aren't you?' She then told me how much it had helped her daughter. My institute teacher came up to me after class one day and told me that the blog was circulating around seminaries and institutes and it was being recommended by teachers to students who were struggling.
I knew the internet was a great place for sharing the gospel, but I never dreamed my posts could reach so many people. As of today, April 14, 2016, my blog is being read in 17 different countries, including the United States, Russia, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, Canada, United Kingdom, Sweden, Ukraine, Moldova, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Greece, Belgium, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates. Needless to say, I'm glad I followed that prompting. :)
But the miracles don't stop there.
Although I've made an effort to share the gospel via Facebook since I got home, it eventually began to dwindle as a priority. A few months ago as I was contemplating where I wanted my life to go, I received a very powerful prompting that I needed to consecrate all my online efforts to building the Kingdom of God. So, as I'm now learning to do when I receive a prompting, I immediately went to work. I purified my Facebook profile of everything that didn't uplift or inspire and I began sharing uplifting messages every single day. I also created a couple other pages called 'Testify of Christ' and 'Just Be you.'
Next I moved to Instagram and Twitter, where I've seen huge success. On Twitter each of my posts reach about 2,000 people, and I've seen some reach as many as 8,000. I also receive messages from people all around the world thanking me for what I post. One man from Hong Kong told me that he had seen missionaries but hadn't had a chance to talk to them. He had questions about the Book of Mormon, so he and I chatted for about 30 minutes. After that I moved to Pinterest, quickly attracting more than 5,000 followers. Just this week I also expanded to Tumblr and Google+, both of which I have good feelings about.
In all, there are over 15,000 people following these accounts. That means I literally get to share the gospel with 15,000 people every single day. How cool is that? God wasn't lying when He said He's hastening His work! Just think about it: the testimony of one average guy from Utah is reaching all across the world. Not a day goes by that I don't thank my Heavenly Father for giving me such a privilege.
I am so grateful for my mission. I will never be able to adequately describe it, but in the words of Jeffrey R. Holland, 'I loved my mission as I am sure no young man has ever loved one before or since.'
Thank you for being a part of it. Thank you for being such great examples to me. My life was forever changed the day God called me to Santa Rosa. No other mission on earth could have inspired me like ours did. God really does know what He's doing, of that I am sure.
-Elder Jordan M. Anderson"
Links:
"Just Be You": http://my-experience-in-truth.blogspot.com/2014_07_01_archive.html
Profiles:
Facebook: @andersonjordm
Twitter: @AndersonJordanM
Instagram: @andersonjordm
Pinterest: @AndersonJordM
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