Mexican Mission Testimony

(President of the Mexican Mission) ¶

I esteem) it a very great privilege, my brethren and sisters, to stand before you this morning and bear my testimony because I know that the gospel is true. I know that it has been restored to us in this day and age in which we live, with all the gifts and blessings and the powers and privileges that have .ever pertained to it in any age of the world. I am very grateful to the Lord that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later-day Saints. I am thankful to the Lord for the holy Priesthood that I bear and for the calling that has come to me to minister in the world as a missionary. The happiest time of my life— and I think the most, profitable to me, has been spent in missionary labors among the children of men who have not been acquainted with these glorious principles, of the gospel that we as a people enjoy. I feel that if the Lord requires it at my hands, I can feel happy in spending the rest of my life, or as much of it as he requires of me, in ministering the gospel to the people of the world who are not acquainted with these glorious and saving principles. I am very grateful that at this conference the president of the Church, whom we sustain as prophet, seer and revelator, has spoken to Israel concerning the missionary work that is expected of us. I think that there is no work or responsibility resting so heavily upon the membership of this Church today as that of disseminating the gospel among the children of men. As I travel up and down the country and see the millions of people who are in spiritual darkness but who are honest in heart, who are desirous of doing right, and who, if they err, err in ignorance, I feel greatly resting upon me, my brethren and sisters, the responsibility of carrying to them the gospel. We are grateful to have your sons and daughters laboring with us in the mission field and I trust that the admonitions that have come from the president of the Church at this conference, will be followed by the fathers, mothers and brothers and sisters, and by the bishops of this Church, in that they will encourage their sons and daughters and the members of the wards to remain in the mission, rather than to suggest to them that they discontinue their labors at an early date. When we are cultivating the fruits of the field, my brothers and sisters, we do not pick the peach or apple, or garner the wheat before it is ripe. ¶

I sometimes think that those fathers and mothers who are so anxious for their sons to come home are doing that very thing, and their boys have not ripened in the service of the Lord. They come home and sometimes are not in as fair a way to make a success after they return as they would be were they left a little longer in the missionary field. ¶

Our work has prospered during the year that has passed, in the Mexican mission. We have never baptized in any single year of the history of that mission so many people as we have baptised during the months that have passed of this year of 1921. With sixty missionaries laboring we have baptized two hundred and twenty-five people, and they are wonderfully faithful in their living of the gospel. I am grateful to the Lord that he has privileged me with my brethren to re-open the mission in the Republic of Mexico, after a term of years that we have not been able to labor there due to the revolutionary conditions ; and I am thankful to him for the faithfulness and integrity and the faithful lives of the Saints who were left there for years, as it were, as sheep without a shepherd. They have remained faithful. We have been able to hold conferences with them recently as in the years that are past and they gather around the elders and' are anxious to hear again the gospel taught among them, and their^ lives are an example worthy of imitation before the people with whom they are surrounded. ¶

I bear you my testimony, my brethren and sisters, that I know that God lives; and that Jesus Christ is his Son and is the Redeemer of the world. I bear you my testimony that I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, raised up to establish this work in the day and age we live in, and I know that he who stands at the head of the Church today is in very deed a prophet, seer and revelator unto the world, and I for one wish to| follow his counsel and advice and admonition and put my life, so far as I can, in harmony with the principles of the gospel. The Lord bless you, my brethren and sisters, and help us all to serve him with full purpose of heart, is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶