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Elder Holland recently observed that

For me, bearing another’s burden is a simple but powerful definition of the Atonement of Jesus Christ. When we seek to lift the burden of another, we are “saviours … on mount Zion” (Obadiah 1:21). We are symbolically aligning ourselves with the Redeemer of the world and His Atonement. We are “bind[ing] up the brokenhearted, … proclaim[ing] liberty to the captives, and … opening … the prison to them that are bound” (Isaiah 61:1).

When I read this a couple of months ago I nodded my head in firm agreement—what a great Christian message—and redoubled my resolve to be the kind of person that willingly bears another’s burden. And then summer vacation happened.

It started with an unusual request from a member in a foreign country. [Edit: see footnote below] She was planning to visit the city where I live and had contacted my bishop to ask for help looking for affordable accommodations. With me being the bishop’s general dogsbody, the request ended up on my to-do list.

Well, I like to plan trips, so even if this didn’t seem like the kind of service one normally provides I was game. I started by trying to find out how much was affordable. I turned out that “affordable” meant “entirely unrealistic for a European capital in the height of the tourist season.” I tried in vain to manage expectations, providing links to several hostels that were close but still over budget. The visitor was traveling alone and wanted her own room, so hostels with dormitory rooms were out. Understandable, but the going rate for a single room still exceeded the available budget. So after some back and forth, our visitor decided to cut back on the number of days in town. After some explanation of how to make a reservation and fill out visa application paperwork I thought my job was one done well; even if I did grind my teeth a little in the process, it wasn’t too much skin off my nose and helped make a stranger happy.

A couple of months later I went on vacation myself. I had just taken up a perch on the beach when I received another email: “Dear Brother, I’m arriving in a few days and need someone to pick me up from the airport.” I shifted back into expectation management mode and tried to explain that I was goofing off in a foreign country and couldn’t help, the bishopric and many of the members were off on a stake temple trip (these are week-long affairs due to our distance from the temple), the arrival time was during regular business hours on a weekday for those who weren’t on vacation and, besides, this is an urban ward where most members don’t have a car anyway. Finally, the public transport from the airport is cheap and excellent, and by the way here are the timetables.

The visitor’s reply was firm—she was a single woman in a foreign country who needed assistance. She wasn’t asking for much, just someone to meet her and accompany her to her hotel. And that’s when I realized that my vision of burden bearing is not just fairly abstract but also quite narrow in scope—try as I might, I just couldn’t imagine myself using church networks to facilitate my vacation plans.

But doing just that must be a thing because last week a couple of acquaintances turned to social media to broadcast a request for reliable babysitters in a resort town (not local to the couple making the request) for a few hours on an upcoming Saturday. See, mom and dad wanted to go rafting but the river was too wild for the three- and five-year-olds (really easy kids though!). “You should contact the YW President,” someone suggested helpfully. “We would if we knew who she was. So far we could only find the Bishop’s contact info and he hasn’t replied yet,” the couple replied.

Does it make me a bad person that I hope the bishop maintains radio silence? Surely our time and talents could be put to better, more urgent use than facilitating summer vacations for visitors. But what do you think—how expansive a view should we take of the call to lighten another’s burdens?

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Footnote: As I noted in a comment below, it’s probably worth taking into consideration that the visitor was from an economy in transition with a reputation for corruption, where I assume you get things done by working your relationships. This is why I was willing to go above and beyond in the first place, though ultimately not quite as far as the other party would have had it.