New Mission Presidents Instructed
"Each of you will have a wonderful experience and work very hard, perhaps harder than you have ever worked in your lives, but you will gain deeper satisfaction as you do so," said President Gordon B. Hinckley to new mission presidents and their wives at the annual seminar for new mission presidents held the last week of June (1997) at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.
"Your burden will be lightened by the Spirit of the Lord. You will be motivated by that Spirit, and you will do things you thought you were never capable of accomplishing."
Suggesting five principles for effective missionary work, President Hinckley said, "I don't hesitate to promise that if you observe them, you will be blessed in your work and in your ministry."
The principles included working with an eye single to the glory of God, practicing and teaching effective habits of study and work, observing habits of personal safety and welfare, having love be the lodestar of their lives, and living close to the Lord at all times and in all circumstances.
"Draw near to the Lord and make Him your constant source of strength," President Hinckley said.
"I know as you do that, there is joy in this service that can be found nowhere else."
"The promise I want you to carry in your minds and in your hearts and to instill within your missionaries is in the 84th section of the Doctrine and Covenants, verse 88," said President Monson: "'I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up.' On disappointing days,
if you just read that promise, the Spirit will enlighten your soul and you will be doubly prepared to move forward with that great band of missionaries."
Talking about the cooperation between stake and full-time missionaries, President Monson said, "I maintain that no mission will achieve its full potential unless it has a cooperative effort with the members of the Church in bringing that about."
He then discussed his hopes that mission presidents and their wives would help their missionaries acquire a testimony of the Savior's Atonement and of the mission of Joseph Smith and develop traits of honesty, courage, and obedience.
Ensign, Sept. 1997, p. 76
Blessings of a Mission
"You are making a sacrifice, but it is not a sacrifice because you will get more than you give up, you will gain more than you give, and it will prove to be an investment with tremendous returns. It will prove to be a blessing instead of a sacrifice. No one who every served in this work as a missionary, who gave his or her best efforts, need worry about making a sacrifice, because there will come blessings into the life of that individual for as long as he or she lives. I have not the slightest doubt about that."
President Gordon B. Hinckley
Hawaii Honolulu Mission meeting, 17 Feb., 1996
Effect of the Righteous
"I think we stand in this dispensation like the righteous in the days of the cities of the plains when perhaps the Lord might spare the wicked, some of them, because of the righteous. That places upon us a great and significant burden. That's why we are here, to make of ourselves more effective instruments, truer warriors under the direction of the Almighty to save His sons and daughters from those things which will destroy them in time and for eternity unless they turn their lives around."
President Gordon G. Hinckley
Eugene, Oregon, Regional Conf. Priesthood Leadership Mtg., Sept. 14, 1996