Letter to a Missionary

Letter to a Missionary BY ROSCOE \. EARDLEY, PRESIDENT OF THE NETHERLANDSBELUIUM MISSION My Dear Brother: A week since you left us, and I venture to say it has been a week of intense interest to you, perhaps the most interesting you have experienced in your life. And now you are in Chattanooga, not in fancy, as at your farewell, but in reality, and before you lies a broad two or three years' mission.

It is strange to you now, but pregnant with wonderful possibilities.

The manner in which you fulfil this mission will not only determine, in some measure, your own destiny, but will effect the eternal welfare of others. How wonderful it all is, and how true. As you work through this mission, you will realize more than ever before the forcefulness of the beautiful counsel given by the Savior to his apostles : "Be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves." To lead others to walk in the light, even as you are in the light, by means of faith, kindness and love, is the very happy duty now before you. As you stand on the threshold of this important, divinelyappointed work, I may be pardoned for offering a suggestion or two, that will perhaps assist you in your labors "We learn to love that which we serve." The two or three years that you spend in the south should wonderfully increase your love for your Heavenly Father and his children. You will be asked to serve him and them, in a whole-souled way that you will ever remember. You will not devote just a part of your time, but all, to teaching his gospel. You will talk about it by day, dream of it by night, and live it all the time. And as your love for him increases, his Spirit, which is the spirit of love, will swell up within you, and make your mission very happy, even though you are denied some of the pleasures and comforts of life. "We appreciate that most which costs us the greatest effort." Think of all the things you have done in the past. Which vour soul with greatest joyi Ts it not the thing for which

fills Written to a missionary in the Southern States when the author was bishop of the Third ward. Salt Lake City.

37D IMPROVEMENT ERA you struggled hardest? Is it not the thing for which you fought the good fight, and won the victory ? Then, as difficulties present themselves to you each day, as you are called upon to pass through trials and hardships, remember that it is the things that cost you the greatest effort that you will remember longest. To illustrate, when you return home, you are not going to tell us about the meal that you received the first time you asked, but you are going to tell us of the experience you had in walking over the hot, dusty roads all through the long summer's day, and asked twenty times for food, and each time you were refused. While you still hungered you knelt by the roadside, or crept into the deep and silent woods, to pray. You asked the Lord to direct you to the home of some kind person who would administer to your wants, and then, perhaps, you found the food that your stomach craved, and the bed you needed to rest your tired and aching body. These are the experiences that will make you glow with enthusiasm, that you will delight to tell. They are the kind that will develop your physical powers of endurance, and that will increase your faith. They will help to strengthen your testimony that God lives, and that he hears and answers your prayers. These experiences will teach you better than any human tongue that "Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

A young man living in one of our southern stakes one day was called on a mission to Europe. He cheerfully responded to the call; he left his beloved mother and father, his dear wife and sweet baby, to do the work whereunto the Lord had called him. When he arrived in the mission field, he found, to him, a strange land, with a peculiar people, who spoke an odd language. For weeks and weeks he struggled to master that language, so that he might perform the labors required of him. But though he struggled with all his might, it seemed impossible to conquer. At last, one night, as the gloomy, chilly, foggy, autumn twilight settled over Schiedam, he felt utter discouragement creep over his soul. Downcast and disheartened, he decided that his mission was vain, his time was lost, he could not master the tongue of the Dutch, and on the morrow he would ask for his release and return home. Thoughts of wife, baby, parents, crossed his memory, and he would have fled to them in the fastnesses of the Rocky mountains. Night, as dark as his foreboding thoughts, closed around him, and he did return home.

LlOTTKK TO A .MISSIONARY 371 He was back on the old farm with father. He again harnessed to the big farm wagon the faithful team that he had driven so often before. He climbed upon the seat beside his father, and together they drove away. After a while the road led to the foot of a steep mountain, and the son stopped the team, knowing not which way to go, save back over the road they had already traveled. "Drive on, my son, drive on," said the father. "Uut, we cannot go on," said the boy, "for no team is strong enough to pull a wagon up this steep mountain." "Look," said the father, "can you not see that the grass is trampled and the sage brush broken? Some team has passed this way before, and in all this county there is no better team than ours."

The horses were started again. They lay to in the harness, tightened the tugs, planted their feet firmly for a hard pull, and they climbed the steep mountain. When the summit was reached, the son looked back; after all, the way did not seem so steep, nor the effort of the team so hard. As he looked, he turned to his father and said —and then eyes opened his Father, !

horses, mountain, home — had vanished, and between him and all them lay a mighty ocean and a vast continent; but he said, "I will ascend the mountain before me. What another has done, I can also do. I will stay. I will master this language. I will perform, honorably, the mission to which God has called me! He will give me strength. With his power to help, I cannot fail."

The time passed so quickly that it seemed only a day or two, but in reality it was two years, when this same young man stood in a large hall in the busy city of Rotterdam, and told over 600 people the story of the great latter-day prophet, Joseph Smith. So wonderfully had he succeeded in learning the language of the Hollanders, and so abundantly had the Lord blessed him, that when he touchingly related the story of the martyrdom of that great prophet, not only sympathetic women but strong men wept because of the sympathy that filled their souls. Work and prayer are the weapons that will win the battle in the missionary field.

There was a great strike raging in one of the big cities. Ten thousand men had walked out to try and force their rights. Ten thousand larders were empty, and twice ten thousand children were crying for bread. Mothers were bowed down with sorrow,

372 IMPROVEMENT ERA and fathers were torn with anger, because their children's cry w as almost in vain. Elder Harvey Leigh was sad, too. No one in that great city seemed to want to hear his story. Why was he there, anyway? Would he not be happier back at the old home with father and mother, and enjoying the comforts of life? His thoughts were leading him to the land of the blues, when he seemed to again hear, ringing in his ears, the eloquent words of his mission president :"Pray and work. Work and pray." He bowed his knees and poured out his soul to his Father, and then he arose and went to work. All day it seemed the same, same story. No one cared to listen to him. The cry was bread, bread! And could he blame the people for uttering this soulstirring cry ? No, a thousand times, no. And yet, if the message which he carried was received by men, mankind would be at peace, and all would have bread. Sooner or later the glad tidings which he bore would bring salvation to the race, and he was one of many that the Lord had called to help plant the truth in the earth. And so he worked. on. When night came, he would at least feel he had not shirked his duty. His conscience would be void of offense before his Maker, and sweet sleep could enfold him with her kind embrace. As the shades of evening began to fall, he met three persons —two women and a man, all three belonging to different faiths and at first all three repulsed him with great bitterness, accusing him of being an emissary sent from the capitalists to soothe the feelings of the strikers. Finally, however, he made them understand who he really was, and the nature of his work, but his being a "Mormon" did not help him very much in the presence of the three listeners. Then he remembered that he, too, had gone the entire day without food. In this he and his listeners stood on common ground. The missionary took the opportunity to explain how "Mormon" missionaries often travel without purse or scrip, depending upon the people entirely for food and shelter, and he concluded, "Even this night, I do not know from whence my evening meal will come, or whether it will come at all." This part of the missionary's message appealed to one of the three, and she said, "I believe you speak the truth, and I still have in the house one loaf of bread. If you will come in, I will gladly

LETTER TO A MISSIONARY 371

share it with you." The young elder did not think it necessary to share this last loaf, preferring to go without himself, rather than take the last in the house, when his friend did not know where the next was coming from ; but he did give her more than she offered him —he was able to feed her with the bread of eternal life.

The strike is over now and, with the other cares of life, almost forgotten but there are two persons who will remember ;

forever at least one happy hour during that unhappy strike. Now, my dear elder, you have been sent to the Southern States because there is a work there for you to do.You have the ability to do that work. No one else can do it for you. If you do not do it, it will never be done. The Lord expects you to start today and do a little, and then a little more tomorrow, and a little every day. until your president says that it is enough, and then there will be work for you elsewhere, always and forever. May you be blessed with God's Holy Spirit to guide you, that you may keep well and strong, that you may use wisdom and discretion in all things, is the prayer of your brother in the gospel. Salt Lake Citt, Utah.

Elder C. Byron Whitney, writing from South Africa, says: "On Friday, November 10, President Gottlieb Blatter, of the Transvaal conference, in company with Elders Elmer P. Chipman and C. Byron Whitney, now laboring in the Johannesburg branch of the conference, visited Pretoria, where they had been invited to address a local society of Evolutionists, on the subject of "