Texas Mission Report

I pray, my brothers and sisters, that our Heavenly Father may condescend to inspire me for the few minutes that I occupy here, that I may say something that will be worthy of your valuable time. ¶

I am thankful that I was endowed with the power to appreciate and be moved by good music. I want to commend those who have offered music during these sessions of conference ; those Singing Mothers the other day, the choir from Evanston, and these young people from Moroni. I have always been proud of the fact that I was born in Sanpete County, and I thrill whenever any one from Sanpete County produces something worth while. I am proud of these young people behind me. ¶

I am happy to report that your boys and girls in the Texas Mission are at this time well and happy, that their work seems to become more efficient and more effective from day to day. They have been instruments in the hands of the Lord in preparing more than twice as many converts for baptism this year as was the case in the same period of time last year. We are grateful to the Lord for his blessings in our behalf, and we feel that he is indeed blessing us in our work in that mission. ¶

I want to pay tribute to you mothers and you fathers who are so anxious that your boys and girls serve the Lord in honor; so anxious that they diligently go about their work from day to day ; and you wives — for we have a few Elders who are husbands of wives that were left at home. We have one very efficient man, nearly seventy years of age. He is there on a two-year mission. He reported in conference not long ago that at one time he felt a little bit blue, and wrote home to his wife and said : "Mother, I believe I am a little lonesome tonight." In a few days he got word back, a brief letter saying : "Dad, if you are lonesome you had better get to work." I want to meet that wife of that fine man. She is a champion. ¶

We find that thinking people are becoming intensely interested in the things that our Church is doing, and in the doctrine that it promulgates. I am happy that we are able to contact people of concern, people in positions of responsibility, of leadership, executives, professional men, who are anxious to learn more of what we are doing here. ¶

The broadcasts that have come from this building have done a great deal to break down prejudice, as you have already been told. ¶

People want to know how it is that our Church has been able, in such a comparatively short period of time, to do the things that it has done. "Why is it," they ask, "that you Mormon people seem so confident, seem to be so undisturbed ? What is wrong with my religion ?" My brothers and sisters, the answer is simple. We are guided by the light of the restored Gospel. You and I have the blessing and the privilege of hearkening to the counsels and admonitions and advice of the prophet of God and of his associates. We have inspired leaders with us today, just as Christ's church has always had. We believe that the Lord meant what he said when he declared that, "Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants, the prophets." It seems to me that unless the prophet of God is on earth today, His Church cannot be, for in all dispensations of time he has used his servants, the prophets, to carry on his work. ¶

I am proud to belong to a church and to be actively engaged in a church which is patterned after the Church of Christ in all dispensations when it has been upon the earth. We think sometimes it would have been wonderful to have walked with Peter, and to have preached alongside of Paul, and to have been built up by their great spirit and their great testimony ; but I rejoice in the fact that we have that privilege just as surely today as we would have had, had we been with them in those days. ¶

We have received counsel and have been advised today and yesterday by the servants of God. I am glad that I can say that I am in wholehearted support of that admonition and those counsels. "Where there is no vision," we are told, "the people perish, but he that keepeth the law, happy is he." ¶

My brothers and sisters, we should take that sound advice and put it into our lives. After what we have heard today I think we would be much like the man, as some one put it : "He who learns and learns, and never acts upon what he knows, is like the man who plows and plows and never sows." We would be foolish indeed, we are deceiving ourselves, if we know these things to be true, if we know that this admonition and this counsel are of worth and are the means of our salvation, if we leave this building not having determined in our own minds to hearken unto them. ¶

Some one said : "Why is it that we need to be told to repent continually?" There is only one answer, and that is that we are found in too much sin and waywardness. ¶

The belief in eternal progression of the individual is a thing which urges Latter-day Saints (who are true Latter-day Saints) to strive upward and onward at all times. The true Latter-day Saint knows that there is only one way to salvation. He knows that "there is a law, irrevocably decreed in heaven before the foundations of this world, upon which all blessings are predicated, and when we obtain any blessing from God it is by obedience to that law upon which it is predicated," and we cannot get those blessings in any other way. ¶

They ask us why we are so undisturbed. That is the reason. We have the light of the Gospel, and we believe those things. Every Latter-day Saint believes that this is the time to prepare to meet his God. He believes that we are now in eternity. He knows that we don't have to wait until death and the resurrection, to enter eternity ; that we are now on that great long road, preparing ourselves to meet our God. He believes, as Paul said, that "Ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy." And he knows, as Nephi promised : ¶

"But, behold, the righteous, the saints of the Holy One of Israel, they who believed in the Holy One of Israel, they who have endured the crosses of the world, and despised the shame of it, they shall inherit the kingdom of God, which was prepared for them from the foundation of the world, and their joy shall be full forever." ¶

The answer is simple, as to why the Latter-day Saints seem undisturbed in times like these. ¶

May God bless you and me to rise to the occasion and to honor the Priesthood, and to honor the Church, and to honor and love these wonderful men who are so inspired to lead us, I pray, in the name of Jesus, Amen. ¶