President Neavitt's Vision

June 13, 2022

Brother and Sister Stahlecker reported to the High Council the morning of June 12th and made the comment that it was the best mission that any missionary could have “ever” had.  They served for 19 months in the Denmark Copenhagen mission, in their assignments they worked with the YSA’s and as Member Leader Support missionaries.

Then later that day, after visiting with the full-time missionaries for about 45 minutes at my home I could not sleep with this thought eating away at me, what can I do to give the full-time missionaries the feeling that they have come to the absolutely best mission in the world?  The answer is obvious, we have to give them teaching opportunities.  And we have to love them.

These great young missionaries open up a call letter and have to read that they are called to the Gilbert AZ mission then have to muster a smile and tell those that they are with, how blessed I am to serve in Arizona!  We are the ones that are blessed to have them come and dwell with us for a time.  They might as Ammon in the Book of Mormon be blessed to meet a daughter of ours to marry, but they come with a desire to just serve here and help the Lord save a soul.  And with that desire, which I am trying to instill in our youth, they come to do the work of salvation and exaltation.

May we each make the pledge that because of our efforts they will not leave without feeling what the Stahleckers felt leaving Denmark, what I felt leaving Peru in 1976, and what the Sons of Mosiah, more specifically Ammon felt in Alma 26 felt, that we all had finished the “Best 2 years (or 15 years, or 18-19 months) of our lives.”

Please “arm” your ward mission leaders with names that have been discussed and prayed over by the ward council.  These names of over age youth, Prospective Elders, those that are less active or inactive today, some of those having served missions, YM that have mission calls that could accompany our FTM’s to friends of theirs to invite to attend Institute with them, or give a discussion and bear a testimony of Joseph Smith, all helping our YM to prepare for their own missionary service, all this will bless ultimately the lives our full-time missionaries to help them feel that gratitude that helps them to know these are the best years of their lives.

My vision is that we do not let these missionaries leave us without having had baptisms and that they know what it is to feel the deep gratitude of those they taught the gospel and seen the success of their faithful labors in Arizona.  We will not only save souls that are here in our wards and communities, but we are saving these souls that have come amongst us to only be our servants, that have come obediently to help us in our work of gathering Israel.  Prayerfully think of the impact we can have on these faithful young men and young women and their families for generations to come. 

Now is the time for us to act, to do what God expects of us…days never to be forgotten, by us and these full-time missionaries that only want to “be our servants.”

I love working with you in the work of gathering Israel.

President Nevitt