Canadian Mission Report

I am very much pleased, my brethren and sisters, to have this privilege of standing before you for a few moments to report the Canadian Mission. I feel it a great honor that has come to me, and I deeply sense that there is also a great responsibility attached to that honor. I sincerely pray that I may fulfil that responsibility with some degree of success. ¶

I have enjoyed very much the three and a half months I have spent in the Canadian Mission. Sister Rich and I have been happy there. We have felt the blessings of our Heavenly Father upon our work. I am pleased at this time to bring to you greetings from the missionaries and the saints in the Canadian Mission, and should like to say to the parents of those young men and women who are lahoring in that mission, that I may not get to see personally, that I have seen them all within the last three weeks, and they are well, both physically and spiritually. ¶

It has been a wonderful testimony to me as to the truth of the Gospel, to see what influence the Church has on these good young people when they devotedly put their time and attention to it. The development and growth that comes into their lives is beautiful, and to me it is further testimony of the wonderful fruits of the Gospel of Jesus Christ ¶

The saints in Canada are scattered through wide areas. They envy you brethren and sisters in Utah the privilege you have of associating with great numbers. In many places the saints are isolated, a family here and a family there. In some cases they get to see a Latter-day Saint only once in a year, and that only when an elder may call. It is always a joy and a happiness to us to find them still faithful. When such saints go to their little treasure chest and bring out the tithing they have saved carefully for a year, and we ask them: "How, in this time of stress, could you do this ?" .they have said: "Many times we have had to borrow it, but it is a joy and a happiness to show this evidence of our faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ." ¶

I have been interested very much in another fruit of Mormonism that I have seen since I have been in the Canadian Mission. It is in connection with the young people with whom I have worked all my life. I have seen the benefit and advantage of the training we have here in Utah, in our auxiliary organizations, in our church schools and in our seminaries. I have seen young people join the Church in Canada, in the various branches, with just as fine faith, just as fine young people as we have in Utah, but they lack the experience and the development that comes through these organizations. As I have seen this growth, and as I have traveled here and there and found that the young people in the world are open-minded, that they are anxious to receive the truth, I have thought of our young people here at home, and the great responsibility that is devolving upon them to carry the Gospel message to the world. ¶

Many of the people of the world are not open to the truths of the ¶

Gospel of Jesus Christ. Their minds are closed. They sometimes are afraid of the truth, illustrated very much by a lady I met in Nova Scotia. When she was invited to attend our meeting she said: "I would like to but I daren't, for fear of the criticism of my neighbors, and I don't know what my minister would say if I should attend your services." On the other hand, we have many fine people who, converted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, do not care what the world says. Their minds are open to the truth, and they accept it and stand firmly for it. ¶

Typical of this type of individual is a young man who was training for the ministry and who became very much devoted to his church. He had influence with young people. He had gone here and there and gathered up seventeen young men that had never identified themselves with the church, and became their teacher. While he was their teacher in one of the Protestant churches of the world he met the Mormon missionaries. His mind was open and he received their message, but when he found such prejudice against him he still stayed with his teaching in the church he was with. His parents pleaded with him not to listen to the message, and then he bore this testimony: ¶

At one time, while he was in his church with these seventeen young men that he was teaching, around him, the choir sang that song, a line of which runs: "Dare to be a Daniel, dare to stand alone"; and he said he knew then that he must stand alone and that he must dare to be true to the convictions that he felt. He joined the Church and became the superintendent of our Sunday School and is doing a mighty fine work. ¶

As we travel here and there and see these signs I am reminded of what Channing Pollock, one of America's greatest playwrights, had to say, as recorded in the latest Readers' Digest, about the "World's Slow Stain." He said that we begin life in youth with our ideals high, our banners raised, and we feel that this divine man within us must assert himself. Then as we go on through life, little by little, he said, brick by brick, we are undermined until we are smeared by the world's slow stain and thus led off by detour signs from the ideals we set ourselves. He says, how beautiful it would be if, like one great playwright has written, we could be born old and grow younger and cleaner and then, as we approach the end of this life, we could come to that beautiful idealistic period of adolescence where our ideals are high and clean, and approach our life with God hereafter with our ideals still unstained. Yet, he says, with all this, and these detour signs attracting our young people away, there are evidences that the person who will keep his ideals high, who will refuse to be detracted by these detour signs, will have the world welcome him and the world honor him. ¶

Emerson is called the wisest American, and he, like the wisest European and the wisest Oriental, had it in his soul to make no compromises. Being aware of his strength, he didn't have to seek for applause or for money. We are told that the first book he wrote sold so few copies that he lived on less than we pay our chauffeur, and yet he would not change his ideals to write the things the world was demanding. When he was invited to speak before the divinity school of one of our great institutions, and was literally pelted with critical brickbats, he was led to say, when they asked him what he would do about it, "I shall go right on seeing whatever I can and telling what I see." ¶

So today we honor men like Emerson, and they leave for us a story that should be worth while to the American youth, and especially to the youth of the Church of Jesus Christ, those of the noble birthright, that the world is looking to and the world is anxiously watching. Will the youth of Zion carry forth the ideals set by their ancestors in the great sacrifices they made ? It is my opinion that with the fine set-up we have, with the homes devoted to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with our church school system and seminaries, that our young people will be able to hold high their ideals, and to so live that the world will be led to recognize that the youth of Zion, truly proud of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, will stand forth and uphold it even unto the end, regardless of what criticism may come. ¶

I am very happy indeed in my privilege to serve in this new capacity in -the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I am happy also that the people who are converted to the Gospel in Canada are in love with you people, in love with Zion. How they look forward to coming and enjoying the privileges that are every day open to you, this privilege you have today of meeting with the authorities of the Church, that does not come to them only possibly once a year. When I think of Apostle Smoot's visit to us this last year, and how those people, many of them, came hundreds of miles to see him and shake hands with him; the good he did them, and the honor they felt in having seen and talked with an Apostle, I think of the things that you enjoy in Utah that they do not enjoy out in the world. ¶

Many of those people are anxious to come to this great block and participate with the saints in the beauties that are here. We had several of our people come to Utah last summer, and I was so happy when they returned and said: "Oh, we found things in Utah beautiful, and among the most beautiful of the things we found were the saints. They were all we had expected to find them." They came home happy indeed with their visit here in Utah. ¶

These are the things that are telling the true story of Mormonism to the world. The people who visit us go back with honor and respect for our people and the things we stand for. I am proud to be a representative of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this new capacity, for I am receiving joy and happiness that I have not experienced before. ¶

I most sincerely pray that our Father in heaven will bless us here in Utah, that we may hold high the standards and ideals that have been set for us, that people who visit among us may continue to carry the report that was so beautifully illustrated by Brother Ballard this morning, and that it may spread wide that we are what we stand for, in our lives, in our ideals, as well as in our teachings. I pray that the Lord's choicest blessings may be with us all, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. ¶