Swedish Mission Report

My brothers and sisters, it is a pleasure to me and a great honor to be called on to report the Swedish Mission. I have walked, as it were, in the air since a few days ago, when I arrived back home. On the afternoon when my wife and I left for Sweden two years ago last spring, we were surrounded by our children and grandchildren who bade us farewell at the station. The emotions we had to fight back as we left them, we two aged, grey-haired people going out into the cold world to teach the Gospel, were quite different from those that we had when we returned. ¶

God's anointed servant had called us on this mission, and who were we that we should not be willing to accept? ¶

We are glad to be home again among God's people, to be among our loved ones and to see the faces of our file-leaders and to hear their voices. Some of my brethren have spoken and complimented themselves on having the opportunity to come back every six months to be encouraged by our leaders and to enjoy this beautiful sight of thousands of people in the congregation. It is quite different from being away for two and a half years and not having one of our leaders visit us and encourage us, but we have had the Lord to whom we could go, and he has been very kind to us. ¶

I also want to bring greetings from our missionaries to their parents. When I left Sweden we had forty-eight missionaries in that mission, besides the president and his wife. Two are on the way there now and there are some more, I understand, ready to go. They are doing a fine labor. Some of them are learning the language very quickly. They are determined to do their duty and they are a fine lot of young men, most of them at the age between nineteen and twenty-three years. ¶

Paul wrote once to his young friend Timothy, "Rebuke not an Elder but entreat him as a father." My wife and I have followed that advice. Our missionaries have been like a family to us, and we love them and have found them willing to do anything that we asked them to do. ¶

The Swedish people are a good people to labor among, but, as Elder Gaeth said regarding the people in Czechoslovakia, they do not like religion very much. They like pleasure, and yet there are tens of thousands of people there looking for the truth. ¶

"I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not ; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive." That is pretty much the condition in Sweden today, and for their sake — those who come in their own name and introduce teachings of men — I want to continue, shall the truth be spoken evil of, and it is, although many are seeking after it. ¶

I am a great believer in prayer, which I learned at my mother's knee. When I arrived in Sweden in 1934, there were nineteen mission- ¶

aries in that mission, and a number of them were ready to be released to return home. I wrote the president, Joseph F. Merrill, and asked him to present our case to the First Presidency that we might have some more help and assistance. Shortly thereafter I received word from him that the depression was still on and it was hard to get missionaries to go out from home. He said, "It is most likely that you will not have as many missionaries this year as you had last year in the Swedish Mission." ¶

I turned to the mission secretary and asked, "How many missionaries did we get last year?" ¶

He said, "We received three." ¶

I said, "Nothing doing. The Lord has sent me here to do his work and I cannot do it without help." ¶

I went before God on my knees and asked him for assistance. I told him I was willing to do my part but he must assist me. When the year was ended I counted up and found that we had received fourteen Elders. We have now about fifty or a few more in that long stretched-out country of six million people. ¶

I feel sometimes that it is a day of gleaning, and yet if we had say ten native Elders to work with the American Elders who are there we would do much better. However, we have had more baptisms so far this year than we had last year at the same time. ¶

Among our missionaries we haven't so many of the Andersons, Petersons, Johnsons, Carlsons, and so on, nowadays as we have others whose names are sometimes hard for the natives to pronounce. We have Atkinson, Young, dinger, Choates, Boyd, Coles, Barnes, Wasden, Crowther, Burke, Cahoon, Shurtliff, Newey and Cook; and the reason for this is that their mothers were born in Sweden or of Swedish parentage, and they are trying to redeem some of their relatives. ¶

I wish to mention that I believe in the Word of Wisdom. We were visited by Dr. E. G. Peterson of Logan, the president of the Utah State Agricultural College, this summer. He is a member of one of the national clubs. He told me one day, "I wish you would go with me to visit the Rotary Club tomorrow." ¶

And we went. I shall not endeavor to tell you in one minute what I said in seven on that occasion. There were present five foreigners — four Americans and one Canadian. I did not enjoy my meal for once, because I did not know what to say and how to say it, but Dr. Peterson gave me the key, and I was happy. He had been introduced as Peterson No. I, and I was introduced as Peterson No. 2. I was the last speaker. ¶

He said, "I am a Mormon and so is my friend, Mr. Peterson," and he explained our belief. He told them that he was not there as a representative of the Church on that occasion but that I was, and there was no escaping — I had to represent the Church. ¶

When the time came for me to speak, I said, ¶

"Gentlemen, you were no doubt very much surprised to have two Mormons in your midst today." ¶

There were present about fifty or sixty of the most prominent men of Stockholm. ¶

"You have heard some stories about our people that are not very nice to repeat. Isn't that true?" ¶

They nodded their heads and smiled. ¶

"Now let me tell you something about the good side of the Mormons. They must not use tobacco in any form and they cannot use liquor and be good Latter-day Saints." ¶

These gentlemen were smoking all around us and they were drinking their coffee and they had a good time. They laughed at what I said. ¶

I said, "The Lord did not mean you, particularly, when he spoke about it. We all have our free will, but he advises us not to use it." ¶

Dr. Peterson introduced me as a seventy-five year young man and I said, ¶

"I have never used these things and that is perhaps one reason why I have all my faculties and all my strength." I referred them to the scripture which says : ¶

"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you; if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are" — a mighty good lesson to some of our own people. ¶

While I was talking I was surprised at being applauded several times. After I sat down the chairman stood up and said, ¶

"I know that the Mormons live these principles. One of my relatives is a Mormon and she repeated these things to us often when we were in her company, and I will say this : If that is true — and I have no reason to doubt it — then we have something to learn from the Mormons." ¶

You may imagine how happy I felt when he said this, and how thankful I was that the Lord had put words in my mouth to speak. ¶

Brothers and sisters, let us be honest and true to ourselves. (The clock before me runs too fast, but it reminds me that I am talking on somebody else's time.) Let us be true and honest to our leaders who. night and day, are planning for our welfare. Let us be honest and true to our God, is my humble prayer in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen. ¶