My Brethren And Sisters I Crave An...

My brethren and sisters, I crave an interest in your faith and prayers as I add my testimony to those which have been borne to us during this conference. I can in all propriety say that I conform fully to all the tributes that have been paid to our late President. ¶

There are many of you who knew him better than I did and more intimately, but I did know him and his sterling qualities. I have been on trips with him in the reorganization of stakes and have met him on many other occasions rather closely and have felt his love. ¶

I knew his father, as a matter of fact I slept on the sands of Mexico with his father and prepared his breakfast and dinner for him along with my uncle, President Grant, who recently passed away. I got out of my bed many times for those brethren and have had more or less intimate association with them. I want to bear testimony to the fact that in my experience, their purpose and motive has always been inspired of God. I am glad that I was born in the Church because I don't know what might have happened to me had I not been. I am glad for the testimony which my father inspired in me as to the truth of the gospel and for the example of service which he gave to me. ¶

Power in Gospel

In the month of June it will be twenty years since I read in the newspapers in Honolulu that I was appointed to preside over the Mexican Mission and to become one of the First Council of the Seventy. And in that twenty years I believe it has become no easier for me to stand here and bear my testimony, not that I don't have a testimony, but because I realize the importance of bearing that testimony to you brethren, and that it will fall flat unless I can gain the Spirit of God in it. There is, in the gospel of Jesus Christ, a power that you can't realize any other place. It breaks down all the barriers of nationality, of race hatreds, and all the enmities that go between peoples because of their selfishness, once we accept it into our lives and apply it. It is that love which was exemplified in the life of our President which makes it possible for us to receive unto us the various nations of the world and forget the differences of nationality. I have had the experience in my life (I was going to say my short life, but it's three score and ten next month), of laboring with the Mexicans, and the Maoris; the Hawaiians and the Filipinos; the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Koreans; the Portuguese and the Spanish, as well as with some of the other peoples, and I have seen them come together and affiliate in a brotherhood that you can't realize out of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Because of its wonderful effect upon people, because of its essentiality to their exaltation, we have a tremendous obligation to carry that message to the world. ¶

Especial Responsibility of Seventies

I stand before you as a representative of the group in the Melchizedek Priesthood which has that especial responsibility. ¶

Right now, because of the national emergency that we are facing, the flow of young men into the mission field has been very, very greatly reduced. And as I think of it, quite naturally, I think of an army of twenty thousand seventies, every one of whom is pledged to the service of his God and of his fellow men, and I wonder if we can get from that group of men now the recruits that we shall need to carry on this missionary work. It is true that there are many men in the field at the present time, but they are coming home rapidly, and their replacements are not going out. You brethren of the seventies, think of it, and if you can arrange your affairs so as to do it, tell your bishops that you are ready, that you would like to go. Now, if you love your fellows in the spirit in which we have been talking during this conference, you'll make an effort to do that very thing, for that is your calling as long as you are in the seventies quorum in the Melchizedek Priesthood, to bear testimony to the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ and to carry that testimony to people who haven't yet heard it. ¶

Testimony

I bear you my testimony that I know the gospel is true. I feel without the shadow of a doubt the reality of God our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, which is the departing point between us and other Christian denominations. They must be taught the personality of God, the authority and the restoration of the priesthood, and there is nobody else to do it. Now, you seventies, will you come and help us; I pray that God will give you the spirit and open up the way for you to do it, which I do in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶