Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Glistening Soldiers of Light

Dear Elders and Sisters,
I hope you are having a wonderful day and feeling the spirit still from our zone conference with Elder Nielson.  I want you to know that we are very very proud of our missionaries for your effort and for the spirit that you had with you in the zone conference.  Elder Nielson told you publicly, and told me several times privately that Cebu Mission is the most obedient mission in the Philippines.  We are also the most productive and having the greatest success of all 17 missions in the Rescue.  I hope you can see that those two things are tied together.  Just like our mission motto says, "Success Through Obedience".  I know there are still a few missionaries in our mission who have not learned this principle yet, but increasingly those missionaries are finding that they are alone in their choices.  Let us all love each other and encourage one another to become the Lord's missionaries.
As you know, it has been a very busy but very special 3 or 4 weeks as I have had the opportunity to visit with all of you and see you again at zone conferences.  I want to apologize to all of you for my inability to write letters during these weeks.  And I want to thank you all for the letters you have written me.  They are a blessing to me.  It is the high point of my week to read them and see the marvelous things you are doing with your lives and your missions.  I wish I could be like the prophet Elisha and pray to the Lord that you could see the eternal importance of your work here in the mission.  Elisha said "Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes that he may see.  And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."  (2 Kings 6:17).  So I would pray for you that you could open your eyes and see yourselfs as glistening soldiers of light in a darkened world, bringing salvation to the souls of men.  Do your work with the utmost assurance that God is watching, and so are his angels, and they stand ready to assist the righteous missionaries in their work.
I am writing letters to all of you this week.  But I am not yet done.  So when you open your email today, if you don't yet have a letter from me, I will give you permission to go back again tomorrow to access your imos account and retrieve your letter from me.
I'm looking forward to seeing you all at the conference with Elder Nelson.  Please prepared to learn from an apostle of the Lord.  There will be no requests granted for a special temple day that Wednesday.  So even if you come in from Bohol or Negros, please don't ask to be allowed to go to the temple.  We'll see you soon.
Love,
President Schmutz

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