Remarks

My dear brethren and sisters, these occasions are very memorable in the life of a missionary, because he rarely has the opportunity of addressing so large a gathering as the present one. The work in the northwest is progressing. Our baptisms, I am happy to state, are gradually increasing, the spirit among the Saints is better at present than it has been in the past. We are making very strenuous endeavors to erect churches where we lack them in the various places where we have organized branches, for (frequently we '.have only a Sunday School in some places, while in others we have branches with completely equipped organizations, Relief Society, Mutual Improvement Associations, and Primaries. We are rather stressing the work of the Primaries; because we find that we are able to and do gather into our little associations the children of people who will not themselves attend our services. We have some very faithful local as well as missionary sisters, who are engaged in Primary work, and the average of the mission is that two-thirds of the membership is non-"Mormon."The parents in many instances are being interested through their children, the children carrying home to parents some suggestions of the truths that they have acquired in the Primary associations. ¶

The missionary work which is the particular feature that engrosses the greater part of my attention, because of the fact that I have largely to direct the labors in it and do not to the same degree come in personal contact with the brethren and sisters who constitute the various organizations — is of the character that I cannot speak in too high terms of the workers, their excellence, their faithfulness, their cleanness, the beauty of their lives and the strength they manifest in proclaiming the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is an inspiring thing to any one who has the opportunities that I have had to observe it so closely. ¶

We endeavor to teach the missionaries not only the gospel of Jesus Christ (and I refer more particularly to the first principles of the gospel), but we are also endeavoring to implant in their hearts a proper idealism of the greatness of this work with which we are associated. We endeavor to teach them that the missionary experience they are enjoying is only a small part of what is expected of them in the Church of Jesus Christ, that it is merely the laying of the foundation upon which they may build their future lives. We are endeavoring to establish in their hearts and consciousness the ideals of "Mormonism,"the greatest ideals that God has ever given his children to enjoy We teach them that they have come to the earth for a specific purpose, that that purpose is the salvation of the souls of men, that the mere fact that they are in the field for a couple of years is only ¶

incidental to the life that they are expected to lead, to the work they are expected to perform. And they are faithful, they are attentive in their desire, and endeavor to acquire a knowledge not only of the gospel but of the things pertaining to the progress of civilized peoples, the history of the world, and the association that men and women have with each other, all of which should have for its object the benefiting of society. These are the fundamental things we endeavor to teach the missionaries. They sometimes come to us crude; they come to us with a lack of understanding; they come to us sometimes with but little education; and to the degree that they lack education, to that degree are they handicapped. We are learning that in order to reach any class of people you must have a man or representative who is capable of teaching that class of people. And, while the boys and the girls are highly successful in their contacts with men of affairs, we find the more highly educated they are, the greater is their sphere of usefulness. I am convinced that the standards of education are being constantly advanced in our community, not alone for the purpose of improving the power of the missionaries, but that also we may rise to the lofty plane that sometime we must occupy in filling our destiny; for, as Brother Stephen L. Richards said yesterday, we are a great people, and there is no power that can prevent us from occupying a high place in the history of the world, if we will be true to the ideals that God, through his servants, has revealed to us. ¶

Speaking again of the Northwest, we have an Indian school on the Fort Peck Reservation, in Montana, which is maintained by the Church. We have at the present time thirty pupils in that school, which is the crowded capacity of the school. We cannot, with our present force of missionaries — for we are limited on the Reservation as well as in other parts of the mission — send out among the people of that tribe, the number of missionaries necessary to have contact with all the residents of the reservation. But we do take as many of their children into our schools as we can accommodate and teach them there the principles of the gospel, while at the same time we are giving them the fundamentals of education. We board them, and we provide lodging for them; they live at the mission home during the entire school year. And while some of the adjoining schools, which are conducted by other churches, have some difficulty in retaining their pupils, keeping them within the confines of the school, we have the same difficulty in getting the Indian children to go home and remain there, owing to the different spirit that characterizes the teaching of your boys and girls as its influence is reflected in the hearts and minds of those little children. I have seen them hang about their teachers in attitudes of almost worship, because those boys and girls love these Indian children, and you cannot touch the Indian heart, any more than you can touch any other human heart, except by the glorious emotion of love. And so the Indian children love your sons and daughters, ¶

and there has come to be a great respect for the ''Mormon"people. ¶

It was only a few days ago that I was in Wolf Point and had the opportunity of conversing with two of the chief Indians of the Assinniboine and Sioux tribes, George Conners and Meade Steele. I had met with them a year or more ago and they had asked me for letters to our senators and representatives in Congress, at Washington. I had been very glad to comply with that request, particularly as I have the honor of being a personal friend of Senator Reed Smoot, of Senator William H. King, and also of Commissioner Spry, who is located in Washington. My correspondence has been chiefly with Senators Smoot and King, and these Indians testified to me that never had they met with such kindliness of treatment as was accorded them by these brethren. And, said they, "We have taken our other Indian friends, of tribes from other parts of the states, Oklahoma, and other places, and introduced them to Senators Smoot and King, and it is our fervent testimony that we have never had the same success in achieving our rights as has been accorded us under the able advice and tutelage of Senators Smoot and King."And so they say, "We know that your people are our friends; the great men among your people have evinced such great interest in the Indian affairs."And they both testified to me that by reason of the kindness they had received at the hands of our brethren they had been led to investigate the faith of, the Latter-day Saints, and each of them testified they knew the Book of Mormon to be true, because they had read it from cover to cover, and because it told them, illustrated to them the great truths, in a plainer and more direct manner, of the legends which are so generally maintained among them. ¶

The mission, as I have said, is prosperous. We are, I hope, doing our job. It is the desire of your sons and daughters to do the thing they have been sent there to do, and I would like the parents and the friends of the boys and girls in the mission field to encourage them in their work. But do not send them too much money; they are just as well off without it. The boys and girls who have accomplished missions on the least money have evinced the highest development. So if you would have your boys and girls properly educated as missionaries, do not in the kindness of your hearts, send them too much money. You may even stint them a little and it will not be to their injury. Sometimes young people, not having had previous experience in the expending of money, as is the case with some of them, do not always spend it judiciously. While they are good, they are just young people, and we may not be too lavish with our children, because lavishness in parents has a tendency to break down the finer and better morale of the nature than to increase it. Remember, brethren and sisters, that our fathers worked for what they had, as you doubtless are doing, and as I know in many instances the parents and friends are doing to maintain in the missionary fields their boys and girls, at great sacrifice to themselves; and it is only proper that the boys and girls in the field should share in those sacrifices. ¶

I am grateful to you, to the Church, to the leaders of our community, to God, for the opportunity he has given me for the associations I enjoy with your sons and daughters. They are a great inspiration to any man who observes their faithfulness and the beauty of their lives. Endeavor to encourage them when they shall return, that they may continue in the spirit of missionary labor; for if this people shall once come to realize their real mission in life, they will know that they are missionaries — not missionaries in the word alone but missionaries in every act of their lives. You cannot understand or know, how much you affect your environment by your acts, but every man every day writes his impress on the universe by the acts of his life, by the thoughts of his heart, by the words that he speaks; and the highest idealism in "Mormonism"is that we shall save these children of our Father. Let us be worthy of the great heritage that has come to us from our forebears; let us be faithful to God. My testimony to you is that your boys and girls are faithful to God. They are striving to the full, as opportunity is afforded them, to perform the duties that they have gone out into the world to perform. ¶

My testimony is, brethren and sisters, that this is the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the work of God. And your boys and girls are learning it by contrasting it with other religions, so called, of the world, and they are learning that "Mormonism"is indeed the truth of the Lord Jesus Christ. That we may be worthy of what God has promised us, and that we may live so as to enjoy it, I humbly ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶