Of the First Council of Seventy and President of the Mexican Mission

Of the First Council of Seventy and President of the Mexican Mission ¶

I am happy, my brethren and sisters, to be with you in this conference of the Church, and to be associated again with , my brethren and sisters, and with my family, after our absence for nearly a year in South America. To me this has been indeed a wonderful conference gathering. I have been very much interested, and my faith and testimony have been strengthened in the instructions and teachings that have come to us from those who have spoken. ¶

I have been led to reflect that we are indeed a distinctive and a wonderful people, and that there is nothing like our organization and our institution anywhere else in all the world, so far as I have been able to come in contact with things in the world. ¶

Our trip into South America brought to my attention many, many things that were new to me. It seemed that we were in another world, and I observed the practices and the customs of the peoples of the countries where we went with a desire to learn and to see things from their viewpoint. We came in contact with people who believed differently religiously. I will say in regard to them that I encountered a sincerity that is very commendable, upon their part, in the faith that they have in God, as they understand him, and in their religion, or their gospel, as it is taught to them, and as they have believed in it, and their fathers before them for many years. But I will say that after this review I came back with the conviction stronger than ever in my mind that we are a people apart from the world, and although I have seen much that is good and much that is commendable in the religions and in the practices of the people of the world, I had in my heart a spirit of thankfulness which I cannot express, that my lot has been cast with a people who know that we have the truth of the everlasting gospel restored to us, that there is no uncertainty in our minds, that we can go forward with confidence and work out our salvation in our Father's kingdom, knowing that we are on the right track. ¶

It has been to me a source of joy, my brethren and sisters, to bear my testimony of the restoration of the gospel to the people of South America. As I listened to Elder Ballard's report of our trip, my mind was led to reflect upon the saying of the Savior, wherein he said : "Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not." I have had joy that is unspeakable in associating with little children in these foreign nations, and my heart has gone out to them. We asked them if they belonged to any church and invariably they say : "Yes." I have asked them, "What do you believe? What are your teachings? Do you pray?" And brethren and sisters, that which is commonplace with our children, taught to us from infancy, is lacking in the lives of these other children. I wish that each one here could see the faces of those little foreign children light up when we carry over to them the things that seem most common to us. When we taught them how to pray, when we taught them how to sing, when we rehearsed to them the stories of the Savior, and the great love he had for mankind, and the great works that he did among the children of men, we found their eyes wide open and their mouths agape, light in their countenances and joy manifesting itself from the depths of their souls, for the truths we were able to teach them. And they have said : "We have never known these things." It is remarkable to have the opportunity of carrying them to our Father's children who have been left in spiritual darkness through the systems in which they believe. Then, too, the children are not all small as pertaining to the affairs of the kingdom of our Father in heaven. The adults are children. W,e find them as such, and it has been a joy to me, my brethren and sisters, to be able to assist in teaching these adult children of our Father in heaven the truths they confess to us have brought the greatest joy that they have felt in their lives. I recall the people that Elder Ballard referred to yesterday, when they first came to our gathering, two Italian men came first, out of curiosity, I think. They had been in the United States a little while, many years ago, and they learned that we Americans were holding services in their vicinity. They came to our meetings, but they knew nothing about our religion. They knew nothing about the Bible- They wished to get the scriptures, and we obtained them for these men. After attending our meetings for some time, and hearing us try to teach the children to pray in Sunday school, one of the men came to me and said : "Can you get me a prayer book, so that I can pray, too?" I explained to him, as best I could, that we do not pray out of books, but just like a child would ask its father for what it wants, we ask our heavenly Father for the things that we alone know that we need. "Well," he said, "I have been a member of a church all my life, but I have never been taught to pray that way. I must confess to you that I don't know how to begin. Won't you men do me the favor to come to my house some night when I am home from work and teach me and my family how to pray ?" It was one of the greatest opportunities that has ever come to me in my life, my brethren and sisters. I went with him, and we knelt around his family altar, with his wife and children and with the other man whose family was left back in Italy, and who is struggling hard to get means to bring them over there. We were able to teach them how to pray, how to ask a blessing upon the food, and to thank God for those commonplace blessings that we always thank him for, and think very little about tht! great blessing that we have in knowing how to do those things. ¶

I wish you could see how that man's faith grew. I wish that you could realize and visualize as we did, who were there, how things seemed to open up and unfold to him and his companions in that home. Before we left there, he said : "I am willing to forsake all you say is wrong, for I have an evidence and a testimony that has come to me that you have brought the truth into this land of South America." ¶

"Well," I said, "prepare yourself, quit your tobacco, and do a number of other things, and when the proper time comes these elders that are left here will admit you into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, through the door of baptism." Just before leaving El Paso I had a letter from Elder Sharp, who labored with me in Mexico City, and who is now in South America, stating that those two men, a boy fourteen years of age, and the wife of one of the men, had come into the Church through baptism, and he said to me : "Brothei Pratt, I never have seen so much joy shine in the faces of men and women in all the wide world as there is in the lives of those people since they have joined the Church. This dear brother said to me: 'I would rather lose all I have, and give my life, than to lose faith in the gospel that has been brought to us in this land by you missionaries'.' "Suffer little children to come unto me," the Savior said, and we as a people who have his authority have a very great responsibility, and an obligation to carry to the many millions of our Father's children in the world the tidings of which they are ignorant. ¶

I agree with Brother Ballard that my conception of our Father's children has been enhanced and widened, in my contact with Latin people. I was prejudiced against them in a degree. My contact with them, in association with the Lamanite people in Mexico, made me so. They were the conquerors of the people. They had brought them down to where they are. I confess that I had a prejudice against them, but that prejudice has all been removed, and I feel happy that I can include them among our Father's children who are heirs to salvation, through the gospel that he has restored through Joseph Smith. And as our last speaker said, I am willing to agree that even the conquest of Mexico and the conquest of Guatemala and Central America and Peru, and the rest of South America, at the hands of those ruthless Spaniards who brought so much misery, and who have brought so much suffering in the wake of that conquest might, after all, be overruled for good, for at least it has prepared a way through which we can reach those people by having given to them a common language, the Spanish language, where before innumerable tribal languages existed that would have been almost ■ impossible for us to acquire in order to preach the gospel to those people. I am grateful to the Lord for the participation that I have had in opening up this new mission. I am desirous to continue to serve in any capacity where I may be called to labor. ¶

I leave with you my testimony, my brethren and sisters, that I know that God lives. I know that Jesus is the Christ, and I know, as well as I know anything in all this wide world, that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God, and that he was raised up to restore and to establish this great gospel in this day, age and dispensation in which we live, I know that if I live faithful and true to the teachings of this gospel, I will work out for myself a salvation and an exaltation in the celestial kingdom of our Father in heaven. I know that this is true for you and for my family, and for me, and for all whom I love. I know that if it is preached to the people of the world who know it not, and they accept it, it will result in the same to them, for this gospel is the power of God unto salvation unto all who believe it ; and those who believe it will obey it. The Lord bless you, my brethren and sisters, and help us all to serve him to the end, I pray, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶