---
title: Missionary Work
date: 2025-11-10T08:53:00-07:00
author: Matt Bloomfield
canonical_url: "https://www.mlj.one/church/talks/missionary-work"
section: Blog
---
[ ← Church Talks ](https://www.mlj.one/church/talks) Talk November 10, 2025 

# Missionary Work

I gave this talk on August 20, 2023 in the Snowflake 8th Ward Sacrament Meeting at the Pioneer Park Chapel in Snowflake, Arizona, per an assignment from President Todd Burk. I spoke alongside a missionary who was preparing to serve a Service Mission in the Snowflake Area.

 

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 ## Why do we serve missions, and who should serve? 

- ### President Nelson, April 2022: 
    
    
    - Today I reaffirm strongly that the Lord has asked every worthy, able young man to prepare for and serve a mission. For Latter-day Saint young men, missionary service is a priesthood responsibility. You young men have been reserved for this time when the promised gathering of Israel is taking place. As you serve missions, you play a pivotal role in this unprecedented event!
    - For you young and able sisters, a mission is also a powerful, but optional, opportunity. We love sister missionaries and welcome them wholeheartedly. What you contribute to this work is magnificent! Pray to know if the Lord would have you serve a mission, and the Holy Ghost will respond to your heart and mind.
    - Dear young friends, you are each vital to the Lord. He has held you in reserve until now to help gather Israel. Your decision to serve a mission, whether a proselyting or a service mission, will bless you and many others. We also welcome senior couples to serve when their circumstances permit. Their efforts are simply irreplaceable.

## Blessings of serving a mission

- ### M Russell Ballard, April 2022
    
    
    - The Lord knows you. When you are serving your mission, you will have experiences that will help you come to know Him better. You will grow spiritually in serving Him. In His name, you will be sent on errands to serve others. He will give you experiences with promptings from the Holy Ghost. The Lord will authorize you to teach in His name. You can show Him that He can trust you and can rely on you.
- ### Meeting Jenni
- ### Jenni’s ability and passion to teach our children
- ### Gerald Causse : 
    
    
    - I made that decision ,amu years ago as a young elder going through the temple for the first time.
- ### President Newell’s son: delivering a baby at home

## Preparation to serve

- ### Ways to start now, President Nelson Youth Battalion (2018)
    
    
    - Disengage from a constant reliance on social media. He encouraged a seven-day fast from social media.
    - Sacrifice some time to the Lord. “For three weeks give up something you like to do and use that time to help gather Israel,” he said.
    - Do a thorough life assessment with the Lord. He encouraged those who have wandered off the gospel path or who need to repent to “please come back through true repentance, now.”
    - Pray daily that all of God’s children might receive the gospel. “You can be part of the power behind \[the\] gathering,” he said.
    - Be a light to the world. “The Lord needs you to look like, sound like, act like, and dress like a true disciple of Jesus Christ,” he said.
- ### Gaining and keeping a testimony
    
    
    - What is a testimony?
        - “A testimony of the gospel is a personal witness borne to our souls by the Holy Ghost that certain facts of eternal significance are true and that we know them to be true.” - Dallin H Oaks, 2008
    - How do we gain one?
        - From that same talk, four simple steps:
            - **Desire to Know**. This is the first step in gaining any kind of knowledge.
            - **Ask God in Sincere Prayer**. As we read in modern revelation: “If thou shalt ask, thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal” (D&C 42:61).
            - **Bear Your Testimony**. Someone even suggested that some testimonies are gained on the feet bearing them as well as on the knees praying for them.
            - **Partake of the Sacrament**. We need to qualify for the precious promise that we will “always have his Spirit to be with \[us\]” (D&C 20:77). Of course, that Spirit is the source of our testimonies.
    - **Moroni 10:4-5**
        - And when ye shall receive these things, I would exhort you that ye would ask God, the Eternal Father, in the name of Christ, if these things are not true; and if yhye shall ask with a sincere heart, with real intent, having faith in Christ, he will manifest the truth of it unto you, by the power of the Holy Ghost.
        - And by the power of the Holy Ghost ye may know the truth of all things.
    - ### My experience
    - ### Later doubts
        
        
        - MTC
        - Sitting on a bus

## Member Missionary: 

- ### Pray for others
    
    
    - Story about sister missionary
- ### Minister
    
    
    - “Missionary work is but home teaching to those who are not now members of the Church, and home teaching is nothing more or less than missionary work to Church members.”  
        — [Harold B. Lee](https://quotefancy.com/harold-b-lee-quotes)

## Ministering at work, a story from Gerritt W Gong

When Peggy told me her husband, John, after 31 years of marriage, was going to be baptized, I asked what had changed.

Peggy said, “John and I were studying the New Testament Come, Follow Me, and John asked about Church doctrine.”

Peggy said, “Let’s invite the missionaries.”

John said, “No missionaries—unless my friend can come.” Over 10 years, John’s ministering brother had become his trusted friend. (I thought, What if John’s ministering brother had stopped coming after one, two, or nine years?)

John listened. He read the Book of Mormon with real intent. When the missionaries invited John to be baptized, he said yes. Peggy said, “I fell off my chair and started to cry.”

John said, “I changed as I drew closer to the Lord.” Later, John and Peggy were sealed in the holy temple. Last December, John passed away at age 92. Peggy says, “John was always a good person, but he became different in a beautiful way after he was baptized.”

## Quentin Cook Conversion Story

A missionary assignment to Great Britain late last year allowed me to reflect on the precious spiritual events that were foundational to my decision to serve as a missionary. When I was 15 years old, my beloved older brother, Joe, was 20—the age of eligibility then to serve a mission. In the United States, because of the Korean conflict, very few were allowed to serve. Only one could be called from each ward per year. It was a surprise when our bishop asked Joe to explore this possibility with our father. Joe had been preparing applications for medical school. Our father, who was not active in the Church, had made financial preparations to help him and was not in favor of Joe going on a mission. Dad suggested that Joe could do more good by going to medical school. This was a huge issue in our family.

In a remarkable discussion with my wise and exemplary older brother, we concluded that his decision on whether to serve a mission and delay his education depended on three questions: (1) Is Jesus Christ divine? (2) Is the Book of Mormon the word of God? and (3) Is Joseph Smith the Prophet of the Restoration? If the answer to these questions was yes, it was clear that Joe could do more good taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the world than becoming a doctor at an earlier date.

That night I prayed fervently and with real intent. The Spirit, in an undeniably powerful way, confirmed to me that the answer to all three of these questions was yes. This was a seminal event for me. I realized that every decision I would make for the rest of my life would be influenced by these truths. I also knew that I would serve a mission if given the opportunity. Over a lifetime of service and spiritual experiences, I have come to understand that true conversion is the result of the conscious acceptance of the will of God and that we can be guided in our actions by the Holy Ghost.

I already had a testimony of the divinity of Jesus Christ as Savior of the world. That night I received a spiritual testimony of the Book of Mormon and the Prophet Joseph Smith.

## Why we serve; it’s about Christ 

Bear testimony of the atonement and how amazing it is that we can repent, change, and be clean over and over