Lessons on Missionary Service
Lesson No. Twenty-Nine
Sending the Book of Mormon on a Mission
The Family-To-Family Book of Mormon Program – President Ezra Taft Benson in his sermon Flooding the Earth with the Book of Mormon given at October 1988 General Conference said:
“We commend the members of the Church who have participated in the family-to-family Book of Mormon program, placing their pictures and testimonies inside copies of the Book of Mormon. These testimonies have been translated into many languages, and the books have been given away by our missionaries around the world. This is helping to bring in tens of thousands of converts each year.” Our family knows what President Benson said is true!
Our family sent the Book of Mormon on a mission – When President Benson spoke these words our family had been participating in the family-to-family Book of Mormon program for several years. For almost a decade we sent thousands of copies of the Book of Mormon around the world. Our family picture, address, and testimony of the Book of Mormon, translated into many different languages, was attached on the inside front cover of all these books.
We invited the people who had received these books to write back to us. We received hundreds of responses from people who had joined the Church thanking us for our involvement in their conversion, from some who had not joined the Church but thanked us for our gift, and from missionaries who shared conversion stories from one of the books we sent. This had a great impact on our children and their testimonies of the Book of Mormon.
Lunt family pictures and testimonies attached to copies of the Book of Mormon sent to many countries around the world.
A sweet reminder from the Lord – In early 2011 we received a package containing a Book of Mormon in Vietnamese. It contained our family picture and testimony. There was no return address or any message. We never learned who sent it, but we soon knew that it came as a sweet reminder of our involvement with the family-to-family Book of Mormon program.
A few weeks later in the evening of March 11, 2010 Sue and I were at the temple thanking members of the Grantsville West Stake for coming to a chapel meeting where we had spoken. When we finished, Brother and Sister James Christensen introduced themselves. Brother Christensen had been a missionary in the Oakland California Mission from 1984 – 1986.
He explained that the missionaries in the Oakland Mission spent a good part of their time teaching Vietnamese people. The primary tool they used in teaching was the Vietnamese edition of the Book of Mormon. He told us that he recognized my name because the hundreds of Book of Mormons that he and his companions gave the Vietnamese people had a picture and testimony of the Larry V. Lunt Family attached on the inside cover.
He said that missionaries would read our testimony and explain to the people that our family was giving them the Book of Mormon because we knew that it was true and that it would change their lives. The Oakland Mission had considerable success with the Vietnamese people that came from the Book of Mormon. We were very blessed to be a part of it.
Testimony – This experience, in the temple with brother James Christensen 25 years later, reminded us how blessed our family was to have been involved with the family Book of Mormon program. We are privileged to be part of the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise that in the last days the Book of Mormon would “sweep the earth as with a flood, to gather out mine elect” (Moses 7:62). Flooding the earth with the Book of Mormon includes sending the Book of Mormon on a mission through the family-to family Book of Mormon program. This will be a Lunt Legacy that will last into the eternities.