Conference Address

My brethren and sisters, I very sincerely hope that you can't hear by heart beat but that you can hear my words, for I do want to affirm to you my testimony of this gospel. ¶

When the Presidency called Sister Doxey and me to the office to be interviewed regarding the mission and we were told that we were called to preside over the East Central States Mission, I didn't know where that was. So it may be interesting to you to know the East Central' States Mission includes the very wonderful states of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, or it did include those states. I have the unique experience of reporting on the East Central States Mission and yet actually reporting upon two missions, for recently that mission has been divided and now is the East Central States Mission and the Central Atlantic States Mission. ¶

One of the great blessings that came to us as missionaries was the privilege of getting out of the world of competition, the business world, and getting close to the Lord, feeling the spirit and inspiration of his direction in the work we did. It was a great blessing to associate with the missionaries and though we didn't have many young elders during the war years, we had a number of young ladies who took their places and did a wonderful work. We have been told many times that it seems rather futile to go out and spend two years attempting to convert someone to the Church, or bring the message of the gospel to them, and yet see no results of your labors. Because of the war and the fact that we had many older men come back to the mission who had served in that area, forty or fifty years before, we had opportunity to discover that the Church is growing and growing solidly. In that fine section of this great land one elder told me that fifty years ago he traveled over the whole state of Virginia and there was not a branch of the Church in it. Today we have probably twenty or twenty-five organized branches of the Church there with many chapels, and the same applies to the other states, so that the vitality of this Church is evident in the testimony of the people who were converted by these early missionaries and those who followed them. ¶

We held a conference in one of the little branches of the Church in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and the members came from the nearby hills, and villages, and from their farms to attend the conference. The importance of being enthusiastically engaged in the work contained in the Lord's challenge to us in the fifty-eighth section of the Doctrine and Covenants was pointedly brought to my mind. At that conference we had about seventy-five members of the Church and when I asked those who were kinsfolk of Granny Rowland, converted forty years ago, to stand up, fifty-seven of that seventy-five were her kinsfolk and besides that fifty-seven, there are other members who came to the West, and there are members in New York State and in other parts of Virginia who didn't attend the Conference. This shows the importance of being enthusiastically engaged in the work of the Lord. The elder who was instrumental in bringing the message of the restoration of the gospel to this good lady forty years ago little realized that that message would be vital enough to bring about a membership sufficiently large in a generation, to make a branch of the Church. ¶

We were very pointedly aware of the change in the attitude of the people in regard to the missionary work and in regard to the Church. President Smith has done so very much to bring friends to the Church. We met men with whom he had acquaintance, important and influential men who were friendly to us and invited us into their homes and into their offices and always spoke highly and very enthusiastically about the Church and its membership. ¶

We were surprised, one time, to receive an invitation from; the minister in charge of St. John's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where the great principle of freedom was announced for all time by Patrick Henry when he said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The minister of that church invited our branch in Richmond, Virginia, to come to his church and take over a meeting, preach the gospel, our gospel, and sing our songs to his congregation or to whomever would come to his church that evening, We did, and our little branch choir sang the songs of the Church and the message of the gospel was given. After we finished this minister stood up and said: "Will you sing 'Come Come Ye Saints'? I heard that sung in the west, one time, and it impressed me very much." That is only indicative and suggestive of the attitude of many important and influential people regarding our Church and its work. ¶

Those southern people are hospitable people. They are generous; they are humble, and certainly they are prayerful. It is not an uncommon sight Sunday mornings to see men and women with their sons and daughters walking to Church with a Bible under their arms. It impressed me and brings to me the feeling that in those states where the people are prayerful and humble this Church will have not only great branches and missions but also stakes of Zion and they are already being organized. ¶

One of the most wonderful privileges of a mission president's life is to come into the hearts of the members of the Church, whose vital testimony of the gospel and whose great humility bring to you the strength and the promotion of your faith, and along with this to have the opportunity of loving and fathering the missionaries who come out into the mission. ¶

We had a strange experience. One elder who was coming back for the second time, seventy-two years old, said that fifty years before, his father had been a missionary in that section of North Carolina, that he preached the gospel to a man who, as a young boy, was in a home when a cottage meeting was being held. Then over fifty years later the son had come back as a short-term missionary, just two or three years ago, and had met this man in his tracting, had been invited in and after a short time this man said, "I knew the gospel was true when your father preached it over fifty years ago, and I want to be baptized into the Church." That power of the gospel was a great blessing to us. One interesting thing to me was that when the elder was telling about this in a conference he announced that although he was in his seventies Sister Doxey and I seemed to him like his real father and mother, and so we really felt the blessing and advantage of getting into the hearts of the young people as well as the old people who were still young in heart. ¶

My brethren and sisters, I do want you to know that this has been a great and rich spiritual experience for us. I could ask and wish for no greater blessing to come to any man and his good wife and children than to have the privilege of going into the mission field together. The Lord blessed us and I believe the work developed and is developing and prospering and going forward. ¶

The report last night in the missionary reunion of the many chapels that have now been contracted for and will soon be erected in that mission is indicative of the strength and the power and vitality of the Church in that section. ¶

I have a testimony that this is the Lord's work and these good men, whose kindly attitude and expressions of love and desire to serve so warm us and strengthen us, are a power and blessing to mankind. To you, my brethren and sisters, your work and your strength and your sincerity are a blessing to me and to those with whom you come in contact. May we all remember that it is important to live this gospel for its example is vital. ¶

I received a letter not long before I left, from a woman in Tennessee who said, "I want you to take my name from the records of the Church. I recently made a trip to Utah and the attitude of the people with whom I came in contact assured me that it was not the Church of Jesus Christ." Now, that is a challenge to us, my brethren and sisters, that within our lives and within our daily walks, without actually preaching the gospel, we have an opportunity to be a blessing by our example to these people coming in our midst, or on the other hand to destroy their faith. I pray that we may all be strong in our testimonies and bless the Lord for the great things we have had in this day, and I ask it humbly in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶