Conference Address

With you, my brethren and sisters, I rejoice in the great blessing that is ours, collectively, for being in attendance at this conference. We have been fed the bread of life. We have drunk of that cup of living water which will give us an everlasting blessing. I hope our souls have been fired with a determination to serve the Lord and to keep his commandments. ¶

I should like at this time to express my gratitude to my Father in heaven and to his servants who preside over this Church for the opportunity of serving in the Canadian Mission for almost four years. You may well imagine how closely I followed the report of Elder Romney as he recounted his experiences in that mission recently. It was the first foreign mission of the Church. Work commenced there in the year 1832. Canada is a great country, great in possibilities but not great in population. Its population of about twelve million people is represented in all the churches that are dominant. The largest church in Canada is the Catholic Church which comprises about forty-three percent of the population of the country. The United Church of Canada is the second largest. Of the people more than ninety-eight percent of the total population claim allegiance to some Christian denomination, according to the records of the Dominion Bureau of Statistics. Canada was settled by English, Irish, Scotch and French peoples and there are among them many honest souls, and from that country have come faithful members of the Church of Jesus Christ. My labor among those people was most satisfying. I congratulate the membership of this Church in giving of its strength in young men and young women who have faith and fortitude and fidelity to serve the Lord in the proclamation of the Lord Jesus Christ, and I have seen in their labors the exemplification of the admonition the Lord gave to his servants when he said, "Therefore, o ye that embark in the service of God see that ye serve him with all your heart, might, mind and strength, that ye may stand blameless before God at the last day. ... And faith, hope, charity and love with an eye single to the glory of god qualify you for the work." That is being exemplified in the lives of the young men and young women who are serving in the Canadian Mission and I am sure in Other missions. I wish to express my gratitude to my companion who stood side by side with me hardly missing any appointment in her endeavor to sustain the women of that mission. Also for the fidelity of my family, some of whom were with me and others who were not. I shall never be able to express my gratitude for that experience. I pray that the labor performed may have been pleasing to our Father in heaven and that many souls have been touched by the testimonies we have borne from time to time. I thank the Lord that he has given me a testimony of the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ and that he lives today, that he is watching over his people, that he will bless and sustain us as we serve him in righteousness, which may we do I pray humbly, in his name. Amen. ¶