While I have been sitting here today, I have been wondering how many of you in this audience have sons or daughters in the mission field. I don't believe President Smith would mind if I ask you to show your hands. Please do so. [A good number of hands.] I am interested also in knowing how many of you folk here have ever traveled on missions for the Lord and for the Church and at one time or another on those missions have traveled without money. Would you mind showing your hands? [A very large number responded.] The number is sufficient to give me courage to go ahead and talk.

RESPONSIBILITY OF A MISSION PRESIDENT

I have a distinct feeling of humbleness when I realize that I am one of a large number of men in whom the Presidency of the Church has placed the responsibility of guiding the young men of the Church on missions. The Lord said, in trying to explain his purposes to men, and of course he had to use the words of men:

. . . this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man  Moses 1:39

When I see your boys come out into the field, with fear in their eyes and fear in their hearts, not knowing how to commence, I realize that somehow my responsibility is to bring to pass in their hearts and their lives what the Lord desires when he said he wanted to bring men into eternal life. It fills me with fear. I confess to you that I have spent more hours of the night in sleeplessness since I arrived on this mission, worrying about it, than I have at any other time in my life.

I am sure, too, that I speak for my co-laborers when I say this.

WITHOUT PURSE ON SCRIP

How well these young men perform you need have no fear. They are remarkable. They come among the people of the world, and they are determined that theirs shall be a mission filled with honor. They do not yet know for certain the one great lesson they must learn before they can be good missionaries, but they certainly are anxious to learn it. I can still see a six-foot four lad with eyes so large—it seems to me they filled his whole face they were so large—he came into the mission home after a long ride and sat down, and we talked. Somehow he had heard he was going to go out and do some work in the country so he was nervous about it, and he began to ask me questions. He said, "President Young, are we going to carry copies of the Book of Mormon with us?" I assured him that he was. He said, "May we read these copies of the Book of Mormon?" "Oh," I said, "we want you to read them. You are supposed to know what's on the inside so you can tell the people of the world about them." He thought about that for a minute. He said, "Do you mean we can read the Book of Mormon we carry with us, and that we're going to carry some?" "Yes, sir." He heaved quite a sigh of relief and finally said, "Well, I don't mind going without purse, but I didn't want to go without script." The boy really thought we were going to take his Bible, his Book of Mormon, his D&C, his Pearl of Great Price, and all of his tracts away from him and let him go with an empty suitcase.

CARRYING GOSPEL TO INDIANS

Now, I should like to say one thing with regard to the principles of this matter. Brother Bowen's remarks today are the key to it. Any boy who goes into the mission field with an idea that he is going to get personal development out of it will fail. If he goes into the mission field forgetting himself, with only the idea that he is going to do something for the people of the world, that his message is the most sacred trust that he can possibly have, he cannot fail. That's the lesson that the elders learn. How well they learn it I should like to attest before you by letting them speak for themselves. I sent two of your boys out, recently, to a tribe of Indians. That's nothing unusual. Ever since Brother Kimball has urged us to get busy, most of the brethren in the missions have done so, but I have delayed until just recently. These young men said to me before they left, "What are your instructions?" I had none for them. I did not know what to tell them, so I said, "I don't know, but you go up there, and if you have had the proper training in this mission, you will know what to do, after you have asked the Lord." I assured them that if they were humble enough and really desired to help those people find out about their ancestors, the way would be opened. Their faces were white when they left, and I am sure they were uneasy about the assignment. May I now let them speak for themselves? I borrowed from one of the boy's parents a letter and would like to read a small portion of it to you:

"President Young gave us no instructions, but we have had free rein and have only to depend on the Lord to guide us in presenting our message. He has blessed us even more than we could have hoped for." Then he tells how they hired a hall in the reservation hoping the Indians would come out, how only one or two showed up, even though they had promises from many, how they felt very much discouraged about it. Finally, they left. An old gentleman at the hall walked out, too. Catching up with them on a corner, they began to talk as they walked along. Finally the gentleman said to them (as they were silently praying to know what to do, because they didn't want to have their evening spoiled). "I know a lady down here who I think would like to hear you."

Their letter continues:

"Well, we had nothing to lose and felt we should go in and see her, so we did. They were the people to whom we had loaned a Book of Mormon, a Mrs. Shay and a couple of other people. These are Indian people with American names. We were just going to spend a while visiting one or two people, we thought, and maybe to talk about the Church some, but the Lord had other ideas. The people who were in the house didn't avoid us as most would, but came on in the living room and sat down, and another girl came in and sat down in the living room. The Franceses came in, then came another Mr. and Mrs. Shay who were going to the hall quite late, but finding us not there just happened in at the place where we were. Another young man drifted in and took a chair, another young girl, then two ladies came. They had been directed to where we were by a sick man who had just heard," (and the Elder adds in his letter) "I wonder how he heard about where we were.

"Then Chief Tahachee himself drifted in, and before the evening was over a couple or three more. It was miraculous how people just seemed to gravitate to where we were. It just worked in perfectly for a warm friendly cottage meeting which I suggested, as Elder M. felt the same way. With an audience of ten or twelve adults and a couple of children we began the meeting. Elder M. prayed beautifully. I stood and talked on the restoration of the Book of Mormon for twenty minutes or so, the most inspired, easiest talk I ever gave. It was promoted by the Holy Ghost; I know it was. I bore my testimony humbly and fervently to the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon, their book, and that the Church is true, and that Jesus lives. I told them of the vision of Joseph Smith, of the bringing forth of the book, about the Witnesses, the need for the Book of Mormon. The people were very attentive and drank it all in, and then Elder M. got up and gave a beautiful talk confirming mine, telling more about the Book of Mormon, how to get a testimony and other great points pertinent to the time. It was an inspired talk. Then a half hour of questions, and we loaned or gave to them" (according to how it works out, I suppose) "five more Books of Mormon. They were eager to have them, and I think will really read them with real interest and with real intent to know the truth. After I closed with prayer, there was a little more questioning, and we left with a fine spirit in the place and went with Chief Tahachee toward the river. As we left, Mrs. Shay told us we could hold a meeting at her place again if we didn't get the hall, and she would invite those interested. Chief Tahachee took us to his house to meet his wife and played records of her singing of Indian songs, and he chanted and played tom-toms for us. He was very friendly. As we left his place and headed home across the frozen river in the bright moonlight, I said, 'You can't tell me prayers aren't answered.'"

That letter is from a pair of missionaries who went out some time ago in the mission field and were obedient, with the belief that if they did their best and were humble, they could hear in their hearts the voice of the Lord directing them what to do. They are opening up the work with that particular tribe of Indians, not by my direction, I assure you, but under the inspiration the Lord gives to those who humbly desire to discover for themselves by works what he desires.

CHANGE WROUGHT IN MISSIONARY

I would like to give one more incident, if I may: We had a missionary go out to stay but a year. He informed me that he had come out to get an experience. He didn't want to go through his life and finish his college without being able to say that he had had a missionary experience. He felt it would do him good. This is what he writes:

"In these past three months He has abundantly blessed me beyond my power of words to express, and a rich deep feeling of happiness which I have within me at this moment and which I have enjoyed during this work has been pay enough for me. May I enumerate just how He has blessed us and what the results are?"

( He isn't going home at the end of his year.)

"The way was opened to us to change our place of lodging and to find a lovely three-room apartment completely furnished for only ten dollars a month, (They had been paying ten dollars a week,) "living in the house of good Christian people and every opportunity to preach the gospel to them. During these three months we have sold forty-five copies of the Book of Mormon and held fifty-two cottage meetings.

" We organized a Sunday School with an attendance of twenty-five persons there this past Sunday and a promise of fifteen others that they would start attending in the immediate future. Been invited out to ninety dinners, thus cutting down our expenses, and also providing a way that we could preach the gospel to them. We have had the following items given to us: Thirty-three quarts of preserves, ten dozen eggs, three pies, four cakes, six jars of jams and jellies, three cans of honey, thus cutting down some more on the expenses. Perhaps the greatest exhibit to show for this work is the fact that five persons have requested baptism at our hands, and two men who have been members of the Church, have repented of their sins and are earnestly living the Word of Wisdom and are desirous of advancing in the priesthood.

"Two future requests to speak before large groups of from forty to sixty people on the subject of Mormonism. All of these items point to the fact that it can be done if a missionary desires to do the will of his Father in heaven and realize the hopes of the folks who send him, and it can be done in the period of a few short months."

Those two young brethren, my friends and fellow workers, are only two of four thousand who feel just exactly the same way.

May the Lord help us to give them support by our faith and prayers, I ask, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.