Elder Brigham S. Young

(President of the Northwestern States Mission.)

My dear brethren and sisters, I feel very grateful for the opportunity I have of standing before you for a few moments and reporting conditions and affairs in the Northwestern States mission. I have come to a realization as never before, of the great value of a human soul. To the degree that I stand at the head of that organization, I have been entrusted with the most precious things that God has in the earth and that we, as parents, possess in our families, your sons and daughters. We are endeavoring so far as lies in our power and, according to the best judgment we possess, to guide them in those ways that will make of them what God intended they should be.

We realize in the mission field, as in no other place in life, the real meaning of life. And I want to say to you, .that your sons and daughters are among the most noble creatures it has ever been my good fortune to affiliate with. They do not hesitate at the performance of any noble duty, no matter how humble or how much it may call for what we term sacrifice. But when I think of that term sacrifice, I am constrained to the conviction that we are entirely mistaken respecting it. We think it is a sacrifice, some of us, to keep our sons and daughters in the mission field. There is no blessing that comes to a father or a mother equal, in my judgment, to maim raining in the mission field for the length of time necessary one of the members of their family, because of the value it is to their family and particularly to the young man or young woman.

There is a great deal of criticism and attack by those who have constituted themselves the judges of this community and this organization and this work. I think the best answer that can be given men who attack this organization, this Church, is the lives and accomplishments of the boys and gifts who go into the mission field; because they learn the best, the most vital, the most enduring thing that can be learned in all the world. Your sons and daughters stand up in the communities of Christendom affirming, with all seriousness and in humility, that God has spoken, that they have received a witness of that fact. They have stamped upon their lives the great fact that God is our Father and that their duty to him and his children is the greatest consideration of life. And that duty teaches them the strictest and most beautiful morality. It teaches them honesty; it teaches them service, service to God and his children. Can there he formed or found in all the world a higher idealism than the worship of God and theservice of his children ? And when people attack this organization and this community, they are attacking the highest idealism known to man, found in the worship of God and doing good to humanity.

We sometimes think that the missionaries are subjected to great sacrifice. I have an instance in mind. There is in the mission a young woman. She comes from Sevier county. Her name is Velma Nebeker. She is educated, beautiful, and possesses all of the requisites not only for a successful missionary but for a woman fitted to occupy the highest social position a woman who some day will make her mark and write her name large in the history of this community. She is a paragon of excellence as respects appearance and dress. The mission needed a teacher on the Indian reservation at Wolf Point, a most forbidding place. Our Church sits on a little hill, wind- swept. It is desolate. It is on the great arid bottoms of the Missouri river, mostly of mud, stunted cottonwoods, and poor growth of grass. Inhabiting that particular part of the country is a tribe of Indians, and there has been established among them, or was established during the days of Elder Ballard, of the Council of the Twelve, an Indian school. We have anenrollment of nearly thirty pupils, and we teach from the primary up to the sixth grade. This young woman, among her other accomplishments is a school teacher. The mission needed just her stamp of woman for the performing of the duties, necessary to the instructing of those little Indian children. I called her into the office. I had been praying for a month as to the selection that should be made, because I recognized its importance. And when I called her into the office-Wolf Point is the most abhorrent to all the missionaries, because it is the most difficult and sacrificial place in which to labor-and said to her, "Miss Nebeker, I want you to go to Wolf Point," her face blanched. The tears shot from her eyes, but she set her teeth and said, "I'll go." She went, and I said to her before she departed, "I want to say to you that when you return from your mission you will say-and I know it now as well as I shall know it in the future-that your labors in Wolf Point have been the very crown of your missionarylabor." She is a heroine, and you men and women, parents in Israel, have hundreds of young people out in the mission who are just like that. They do not hesitate at any duty. There is no sacrifice they are called upon to perform that they do not go willingly, depending upon the Almighty not only for the knowledge that they disseminate but for their food and their shelter.

We have recently concluded our great summer work in which the boys (not the young ladies, because we do not entrust to them that duty) have gone into all the surrounding country, through Oregon, Washington, parts of Idaho, all of Montana, and into British Columbia, proclaiming the gospel without purse or scrip. And I want to say to the parents of these young men and women, if you want to give your sons and daughters the very best or leave for them and fix in their lives the very best that you can, there is nothing that can be bestowed that will be of as much value as missionary experience. They go out in humility, but they acquire information with great rapidity, and some of our boys who come from the remote districts come into the mission field crude, it is true; their grammar is poor; their knowledge of the gospel is almost nil; but in a few weeks you commence to see a fire in their eyes, you commence to see a bearing and a manner in their attitude toward one another and the world, you begin to see an inteligence shooting forth from their whole being that was not there when they came. They improve with remarkable rapidity, and it makes of them the kind of men and Women that the world needs for its regenerating, for its saving; because if it is saved, it will be by men and women who possess the qualification and the understanding that these young men and women have who go out into the world as missionaries.

And when they come back to you, they will understand that the highest duty they have to perform is the duty of marriage-parenthood, good citizenship, as children of God our Father. And it cannot but be that this community will rise to an eminence that has been and will be enjoyed by no other people, because of the younger people of the community and the teachings that they receive in the missionary field which fit them for the great duties of life. They learn that it is themselves who are responsible to themselves and to God for that which they do in life. They learn the value of life. They know what time means. They are preparing for eternity. And I want to say, brethren and sisters, encourage the young people to go on missions.

Do not write discouraging letters to the missionaries as to your circumstances, if it can possibly be avoided; it affects them in their labors; it affects them in the finest duties they have to perform, not only there, but it seriously affects their future. So encourage them, keep them out there, though you may have to struggle to get the money to maintain them. If you do not send them as much as you have been in the habit of sending them, let them live on less; it can be done. There are young men in the mission and young women, too, who are living on very much less than some others are using. And even though you have to restrict the amount you are sending them, make every effort to keep them in the missionary field.

And to you, brethren and sisters here at home, I wonder if you are measuring up to the standards of the young men and women you are sending us to the missionary field ? Do you have in your thoughts always that God is our Father, that you are amenable to him for every act of your lives ? Do you know that we, as we stand, are great radio stations, sending off into the universe just what we are? What we think, what we say, what we do, is written in the great volumes of the future, and you will read it, you will hear again the things that you have said. The things that you have done you will know. The very thoughts of your hearts will be inscribed upon volumes that will live eternally.

Let us remember, brethren and sisters, our duty to God and these children of ours, who are his. They are the greatest heritage that God has conferred upon us. Let us be careful of them. Let us teach them in the right, so that when we as well as they stand in the presence of the great Judge and he shall say, "What is the judgment of this man ?" and another shall say, "What is written on his heart ?" that written on our hearts and lives may be the great desire to serve God, to labor for his children to help him in the great work which he has established in the earth, the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And I want to bear testimony to you that your sons and daughters are the finest objects in all the world. Those with whom I have the pleasure of laboring, I love almost as if they were my very own. Let us cherish them-not only those who are there but those who are here. Our neighbors' children are our children; because they are the children of God. Let us labor and save them and all mankind and enjoy the missionary spirit; for that is the spirit in which God expects all his children who know his truth to labor.

That we may so labor, that we may so live that we may so help that we may redeem ourselves, our kindred, and help the Lord in this great work is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

A soprano solo, "O Lord remember me" was sung by Beulah Huish.