Northwestern States Mission Report

I am pleased to report the activities of the Saints and the missionaries in the Northwestern States Mission. ¶

About forty-five years ago my father and David Eccles of Ogden established a sawmill at Baker City, Oregon. They gathered around them a few members of the Church as laborers and executives there, and gradually a little branch of the Church was formed, a Sunday School was established, and, as far as I have been able to learn, that was the first Sunday School in what is now the Northwestern States Mission. As a child I had the opportunity of attending that Sunday School. Returning after an absence of many years, what a great change does one behold. ¶

There is scarcely a city in the Northwest in which we do not find a congregation of Latter-day Saints. We now have ninety-six Sunday Schools scattered all the way from Alaska to southern Oregon and as far east as Great Falls, Montana. We have a membership of fifteen thousand people. It is interesting to me to note that our people from the stakes are moving into the Northwest. During the year we received over one thousand recommends in the office of people moving from the stakes and settling upon the lands and in the cities of our mission. ¶

It is also very interesting to me that last year our missionaries found over one thousand members of the Church whose presence we were not aware of until the missionaries discovered them. Some of our people like to move out there and go into hiding, but we like to find them and we have organized branches among the people we have found whose presence we were not aware of previously. ¶

There are many great agricultural opportunities in the Northwest. They are constructing on the Columbia River at Grand Coulee a dam which will divert the waters of the great Columbia River into central Washington and irrigate eventually 1,200,000 acres; and I want to encourage our people, if the Presidency of the Church agree, to investigate the opportunities of that project. ¶

During the year that has passed we organized in our mission ten new branches, twenty-five new Sunday Schools, thirty-four Primaries, and nineteen Relief Society organizations, and baptized six hundred people. ¶

I want to say a word about the missionaries. You are sending us a fine group of young people, and we enjoy them. The missionaries are kept going on their enthusiasm, and I hope that you will write them optimistic letters. When the old cow dies, or the mortgage becomes due, do not sit right down and write your missionary a twelve-page letter about it. Sometimes it takes us two or three weeks to get them back and going and steamed up again. ¶

I want to pay a tribute to President Edward J. Wood, who presides over the Alberta Temple. I want to say that that Temple under President Wood exerts a fine spiritual influence over our mission, and all our Saints who go there return with something that they did not have before. ¶

My brethren and sisters, this is the kingdom of God that we are building on the earth. It contains within it the solution of all the problems that perplex mankind. It has only begun to grow ; its limits are unknown to us, and of the scope of its work we can hardly conceive. ¶

In closing I want to read a paragraph from the Prophet Joseph Smith's "Wentworth Letter." In 1842, on the 1st of March, the Prophet in Nauvoo sat down and wrote a letter to Mr. John Wentworth in Chicago, who had inquired concerning the belief of the Latter-day Saints. This is one paragraph from that famous letter : ¶

No unhallowed hand can stop this work from progressing ; persecutions may rage, mobs may combine, armies may assemble, calumny may defame, but the truth of God will go forth boldly, nobly, and independent, till it has penetrated every continent, visited every clime, swept every country, and sounded in every ear; till the purposes of God shall be accomplished, and the Great Jehovah shall say the work is done. ¶

My brethren and sisters, I testify to you that the words of the Prophet Joseph are true, and I do so in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶