Lessons on Missionary Service
Lesson No. Five
Preparation is the Key to Missionary Service
Missionaries to Match Our Message – This is the title of a booklet by President Ezra Taft Benson on missionary service. We gave it to all our missionaries in the Kentucky Louisville Mission for Christmas 1990. The following quotes and many of the ideas are from this booklet.
Prepare Early and Well – “Prepare well for a mission all your life, not just six months or a year before you go. Some are better prepared to serve the Lord the first month in the mission field than some who are returning home after twenty-four months.”
Prepare yourself physically, mentally, socially, and spiritually:
- Prepare physically – Live the Word of Wisdom. Be fit. Eat healthy.
- Prepare mentally – A mission requires mental preparation. You must learn the scriptures and often a foreign language. Too many missionaries come with mental and emotional issues.
- Prepare socially – Learn to enjoy people. A mission requires you get along with others including your companion who is with you 24 hours a day. Missionaries need to be gracious and practice good manners which are learned at home. Members and non-members notice.
- Prepare spiritually – Obey all the Lord’s commandments. Stay morally clean. Control your thoughts and actions by carefully selecting your reading material, the movies you see, and the other forms of entertainment.
Prepare by gaining a burning testimony through prayer, fasting, study, and service. A missionary must have a testimony of the divinity of this work. They must know and be willing to testify that God lives, that Jesus is the Christ, that Joseph Smith was his prophet, and that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the Lord’s true and living church on the earth.
Prepare by knowing and loving the Book of Mormon – “The Book of Mormon will change your life. It will fortify you against the evils of your day. It will bring spirituality into your life that no other book will. It will be the most important book you will read in preparation for a mission and for life.” I add that it is the most important book you can ever read in your entire life.
Prepare by learning to work hard – Missionaries who have learned responsibility in their homes and have been taught and expected to work are the ones who have the greatest success and happiness. It doesn’t matter if it is physical work or school work if they know how to dedicate themselves to a task. “One of the greatest secrets of missionary work is work!”
Prepare by being obedient – “Obedience is the first law of heaven.” If you have learned to keep family rules it will be much easier to keep mission rules. “Obedience brings perfection. Even the Savior himself learned this eternal principle.” (See Hebrews 5:8)
Testimony – The Scout motto to “Be Prepared” will bring success and happiness now and in the eternities. The Lord’s promise is sure that “if ye are prepared ye shall not fear….you shall be endowed with power from on high…go forth among all nations…for I have a great work laid up in store, for Israel shall be saved…and no power shall stay my hand” (D&C 38: 30, 33).