“My Mission Is to Bless” President Eyring Tells Mission Presidents, Wives
Contributed By Sarah Jane Weaver, Church News associate editor
President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency, displays a plaque that has hung in his home for many years. It bears a quote inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley: “My mission is to bless.”
Article Highlights
- President Eyring was inspired by President Gordon B. Hinckley, who told mission presidents and their wives to make their motto “My mission is to bless.”
- If we love the Lord, we can find time to be missionaries.
- Latter-day Saints can offer others the gospel out of the same love that the sons of Mosiah felt for their enemies.
“Our greatest opportunity and our greatest challenge is to bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He gave His life for the sins of each of us.” —President Henry B. Eyring
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PROVO, UTAH
Latter-day Saints have covenanted to do all they can to help others gain and exercise the faith in the Lord that will lead them to qualify for the glorious blessing of eternal life, said President Henry B. Eyring at the 2015 Seminar for New Mission Presidents on June 26.
“Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ generates the power to make covenants and to keep them to the end,” said President Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency. “It is faith in the Lord that brings people to true repentance. It is faith in Jesus Christ that leads them to be baptized. It is faith in the Savior that leads them and all of us to always remember Him and thus have the Holy Ghost as our companion. And it is faith that will motivate us to pray always to the Father that we will not be overcome.
“Our greatest opportunity and our greatest challenge is to bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He gave His life for the sins of each of us.”
President Eyring began his remarks, titled “My Mission Is to Bless,” by sharing a memory from a similar seminar he attended long ago.
“I listened then as President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke. He didn’t say why every mission president and his wife had chosen to serve; instead he told them why the Lord had called them. He urged them to take this sentence as their personal charge: ‘My mission is to bless.’”
President Eyring said President Hinckley’s words went so deeply into his heart that he carved them into a wooden plaque.
“It hung on the wall of our home while our four sons grew up and left to serve—two in Japan, one in Chile, and one in the Netherlands. They looked at it when they came home to visit us as they each served as a bishop. I read it as I left to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the children of Heavenly Father across the world.”
A choir of missionaries serving at the Provo Missionary Training Center sings during a session of the 2015 Seminar for New Mission Presidents. Photo by Matthew Reier.
The 2015 Seminar for New Mission Presidents drew 126 couples from throughout the world for instruction at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah. Photo by Matthew Reier.
The blessings of most worth come from God, he explained.
“In every moment of our service to others for Him, we can demonstrate by our actions that the Savior is our dear friend, our beloved brother, and our constant Exemplar,” he said.
President Eyring said out of love for the Lord, everyone can find time to be a missionary. “It will be in your own way and as your circumstances allow, but you will find ways to speak to someone on a park bench or in a train station—as I did once in Tokyo.
“You may not speak the language, as I did not in Japan. But a tall young man stood out to me in the crowd. I approached him. To my amazement he spoke and understood English.
“He was from China and was studying in Japan. We talked. He asked why I was in Japan. That gave me the opportunity to bear my testimony of the Savior. He seemed interested. I introduced him to the missionaries standing nearby.”
That is a simple story, President Eyring said, “but it changed me, and it changed the missionaries. I had a confirmation in my heart that the Lord had brought that young man to meet me and me to meet him. The missionaries saw that an Apostle took time to offer the blessings of the Atonement to a stranger.”
President Eyring said Latter-day Saints can offer others the gospel out of the same love that the sons of Mosiah felt for their enemies.
“And when you do, you will feel the love and appreciation of the Lord. You will feel that He went before your face—as He promised He would.
“He will take you to people He has prepared for you. And He will place angels, like those missionaries in Japan were for me, on your left and on your right.
“And then you will be able to testify from your own experience that the Lord is in the work with us.”
Latter-day Saints are the Lord’s servants in His vineyard, said President Eyring. “Heavenly Father will answer the request of the Savior to send you the Holy Ghost as a companion in your missionary service. The Holy Ghost will perform His mission to bear testimony of the living Christ. … Your power to testify and teach of Him will grow.”
President Eyring closed by bearing testimony of the Savior.
“I testify that I know that Jesus Christ lives. I testify that this is His Church. … You will be blessed as you bless others with your testimony of the Father and of His Beloved Son.”
