Good afternoon brothers and sisters. I would first like to thank all of my friends and family for being here to support me. I’m so very blessed to have such great influences in my life. About a month ago my dad told me that I would be speaking on preparing for a mission. I thought that this would be an easy subject because that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time, but as I started thinking about it more and more I realized that I couldn’t just talk about all the things you have to buy or all the things you have to read, I also knew that I had to talk about how you have to prepare yourself to leave your family and all of your friends and almost everything you hold dear for two years. I’ve already had to say goodbye to a few friends and I didn’t think that it would be this hard. I've even said goodbye to my shoes. You have to sacrifice so much. But when you really sit and think about it the sacrifice seems so small compared to the sacrifices that our Heavenly Father and his son Jesus Christ made for us. Last week at our stake conference Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said “the road to salvation always, always leads through Gethsemane.” I know that means that I’ll have to spend some time in my Gethsemane, but I know that because of Jesus Christ’s atonement that I’ll be able to make it.
In conference a few years ago elder Bednar gave a talk that he called Becoming A Missionary and I want to read a few paragraphs from it. He said:
“Obviously, the process of becoming a missionary does not require a young man to wear a white shirt and tie to school every day or to follow the missionary guidelines for going to bed and getting up, although most parents certainly would support that idea. But you can increase in your desire to serve God, and you can begin to think as missionaries think, to read what missionaries read, to pray as missionaries pray, and to feel what missionaries feel. You can avoid the worldly influences that cause the Holy Ghost to withdraw, and you can grow in confidence in recognizing and responding to spiritual promptings. Line upon line and precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, you can gradually become the missionary you hope to be and the missionary the Savior expects.
You will not suddenly or magically be transformed into a prepared and obedient missionary on the day you walk through the front door of the Missionary Training Center. What you have become in the days and months and years prior to your missionary service is what you will be in the MTC. In fact, the nature of the transition through which you will pass in the MTC will be a strong indicator of your progress in becoming a missionary.
As you enter the MTC, you obviously will miss your family, and many aspects of your daily schedule will be new and challenging. But for a young man well on his way to becoming a missionary, the basic adjustment to the rigors of missionary work and lifestyle will not be overwhelming, burdensome, or constraining. Thus, a key element of raising the bar includes working to become a missionary before going on a mission.”
What Elder Bednar is saying is that we can’t just change over night but that we have to work at it everyday. We need to start young by attending our Sunday school classes preisthood and young women meetings. We should also go to our youth and scout activities. Our youth leaders priesthood leaders love us and want us to succeed, so they will help in our preparation long before we turn 19. Another great way to prepare is to attend seminary. Not just to go but to go and to feel the Spirit, to listen and to participate. We should lean on our parents and ask them for guidance. We must read the scriptures, especially the Book of Mormon, and also Preach my Gospel, as they are the most important books while serving our lord.
I know that preparing for and serving a mission will be a great sacrifice but that many blessings not only for me but for my friends and family will come from serving our Lord. I know that what I am doing is very small compared to what others have gone through so that I can be here today. In closing I would like to share a story that President Hinkley gave in general conference in 1981 called the Four B’s For Boys.
“I should like to tell you of three eighteen-year-old boys. In 1856 more than a thousand of our people, some of them perhaps your forebears, found themselves in serious trouble while crossing the plains to this valley. Because of a series of unfortunate circumstances, they were late in getting started. They ran into snow and bitter cold in the highlands of Wyoming. Their situation was desperate, with deaths occurring every day.
President Young learned of their condition as the October general conference was about to begin. He immediately called for teams, wagons, drivers, and supplies to leave to rescue the bereft Saints. When the first rescue team reached the Martin Company, there were too few wagons to carry the suffering people. The rescuers had to insist that the carts keep moving.
When they reached the Sweetwater River on November 3, chunks of ice were floating in the freezing water. After all these people had been through, and in their weakened condition, that river seemed impossible to cross. It looked like stepping into death itself to move into the freezing stream. Men who once had been strong sat on the frozen ground and wept, as did the women and children. Many simply could not face that ordeal.
And now I quote from the record: “Three eighteen-year-old boys belonging to the relief party came to the rescue, and to the astonishment of all who saw, carried nearly every member of the ill-fated handcart company across the snowbound stream. The strain was so terrible, and the exposure so great, that in later years all the boys died from the effects of it. When President Brigham Young heard of this heroic act, he wept like a child, and later declared publicly, ‘that act alone will ensure C. Allen Huntington, George W. Grant, and David P. Kimball an everlasting salvation in the Celestial Kingdom of God, worlds without end.’ ” (Solomon F. Kimball, Improvement Era, Feb. 1914, p. 288.)
“Mark you, these boys were eighteen years of age at the time. And, because of the program then in effect, they likely were holders of the Aaronic Priesthood. Great was their heroism, sacred the sacrifice they made of health and eventually of life itself to save the lives of those they helped.”
This talk has helped me since a very young age to gain a greater testimony of the church. I know that the sacrifices that I’ll be asked to make while on my mission will not compare to the sacrifice of those four young men, nor will it compare to that ultimate sacrifice made by our Savior Jesus Christ. I do know that the sacrifices that I make will bring blessings, and will bring me closer to Him, in His holy name. Amen
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