Preparing For a Mission
At a home evening when we had all the families together, each person had to participate in one way or another. When we came to one of the boys who was seventeen years of age he said, "Grandpa, do you think it would be all right for me to give the first missionary discussion tonight?"
I said, "I think that would be fine."
He said, "Well, I have the material here. I would like this family to be the investigators and I would like to give the first discussion."
Seventeen years of age, and he did it beautifully. Why? Because his family had set out to teach him that he should be prepared to go on a mission. Now there is a great difference in being prepared to go on a mission and being given the idea you should go on a mission. There is social pressure there when you try to make everyone feel that he should fill a mission because everybody is going on a mission. It is most important that our boys prepare to go and fill honorable missions, realizing that they are going out as ambassadors of the Lord, and not just to be like other boys.
(Conference Report, Oct. 3, 1964, p. 98)