Mission Songs: Where to Find Them? or Can You Even Find Them!

Recently I looked at all the official mission sites on LDS Mission Network searching for mission songs. Most sites are very complete with information about the mission, missionaries, and mission presidents. A few even have recipes but there is something lacking that I discovered and that is there are few if any mission songs listed. I have tried Googling mission songs but not too many come up.

I was able to find the following handful of songs from the LDS Mission Network, which included:

Arkansas Little Rock Mission
California Fresno Mission
Canada Vancouver Mission
Chile Osorno Mission
Colorado Denver South Mission
Czech Prague Mission
England Bristol Mission
France Paris Mission
Germany Hamburg Mission
Haïti Port-au-Prince Mission
Indiana Indianapolis Mission
Idaho Boise Mission
Ireland Dublin Mission
Japan Kobe Mission
Kansas Missouri Mission
Kentucky Louisville Mission
Mississippi Jackson Mission
Missouri-Independence Mission
New Jersey Morristown Mission
New Mexico Albuquerque Mission
North Carolina Charlotte Mission
Norway Oslo Mission
Oregon Eugene Mission
Oregon Portland Mission
Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Mission
Peru Lima Central Mission
Philippines Olongapo Mission
Tennessee Nashville Mission
Texas San Antonio Mission
West Virginia Charleston Mission

Ardis Parshall did a post on a few older missions songs in January 2009 and one lady shared the You Tube rendition of the Latvia Riga Mission. One commenter shared her New York mission song but she doesn't identify which New York mission.

It really is hard to dig up a complete collection of mission songs anywhere on the Internet. Even LDS.Com is lacking on this topic. I ran across another one recently when reading Marvin and Ellen Slovacek's Czech Prague Mission Experience 2007 - 2010 blog. A few weeks ago Sister Slovacek, the mission president's wife, and Elder Tanner composed a mission song:

Our mission is fortunate to have some very talented musicians. When Elder Tanner arrived last year, we knew it was time to create a mission song. He and I sat down at the piano and pounded out a few notes. Then we got a notebook and wrote the lyrics. Elder Tanner then input our notes (mostly his) and lyrics (mostly mine) in a computer program. The result is a stirring rendition of this song at every zone conference. Every time I hear it, I think of us at the piano debating over past martyrs and whether it should be near and far, or far and near. (He won. He said most of us come from far, then near. I couldn't argue with that logic.) Thank you , Elder Tanner. You have left an indelible impression on the Czech Prague Mission for many years to come!

I remember when I served in the Canada Toronto Mission that we had our own special song also. I remember how President M. Russell Ballard would have his mission secretary Elder Bellon who was also an accomplished pianist play for us in zone and mission-wide firesides as we exuberantly sang our song. I am not sure if every mission has their own mission song since they are hard to find.

As to their content and words some merely use the tune of existing songs with new lyrics. A few like the one above from the Czech Prague Mission has original melodies and lyrics which is rarer than the first kind.

I am interested in acquiring a copy of every mission's song and posted it here on this blog. When I can save a couple hundred bucks I will write off to all the 350 missions and ask for a copy. You would think someone in the Church's historical department like Ardis could help me with this. It would be a valuable resource. If you want to include your song feel free to put it under the comment section. I will find a way to index them so people searching for mission songs can find them on my missionary blog which is devoted to all matters about missions.