Let Him Be Your Minister

I really appreciated Elder James E. Evanson’s talk in the most recent general conference about service missionaries. He said this: “To all of you who serve, and especially to the over 4,000 young service missionaries, we love you! If teaching missionaries are the Lord’s mouth, then service missionaries are the Lord’s hands, and you are not second-class missionaries. Each of you is vital to the gathering of Israel. President Nelson taught that ‘anytime we do anything that helps anyone … to make and keep their covenants with God, we are helping to gather Israel.’” He continued with this summary of what service missionaries do: “You service missionaries gather Israel in so many ways, and your service changes lives. Often you don’t know who the beneficiary of your service is, but God knows. Always remember that ‘inasmuch as ye [serve] one of the least of these, … ye [serve Him].’ We hear your voices as you volunteer at Church call centers; we see your smiles as you help in community organizations; and we feel your light as you serve in temples. You feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and give drink to the thirsty.” We should not underestimate the value and contribution of those young people who serve as missionaries but are not proselyting missionaries. They too are responding to the call of the Savior to feed His sheep, and often they do it in literal ways as they help those in need.

               This reminds me of an experience that David O. McKay had as a missionary. Bishop H. David Burton related, “In 1897 a young David O. McKay stood at a door with a tract in his hand. As a missionary in Stirling, Scotland, he had done this many times before. But on that day a very haggard woman opened the door and stood before him. She was poorly dressed and had sunken cheeks and unkempt hair. She took the tract Elder McKay offered to her and spoke six words that he subsequently would never forget: ‘Will this buy me any bread?’” President McKay later wrote, “From that moment I had a deeper realization that the Church of Christ should be and is interested in the temporal salvation of man. I walked away from the door feeling that that [woman], with … bitterness in [her heart] toward man and God, [was] in no position to receive the message of the gospel. [She was] in need of temporal help, and there was no organization, so far as I could learn, in Stirling that could give it to [her].” Our service missionaries give that help as they labor to serve the temporal needs of others. They very well may be opening doors to people like this woman who would not be in a position to hear the gospel until they can meet their most basic needs. To help them is the essence of discipleship, for the Lord said this in our dispensation: “And remember in all things the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted, for he that doeth not these things, the same is not my disciple” (Doctrine and Covenants 52:40).

               Instead of seeing service missionaries as somehow inferior to teaching missionaries, we should remember that they are also doing the work of the Lord as He invited His disciples. The Savior said, “But it shall not be so among you: but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant: Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28). The Savior healed physical ailments, He fed the multitudes who were hungry, and in general He “went about doing good” to people around Him (Acts 10:38). So He was indeed a service missionary. He also preached the gospel wherever He went, and so of course He was likewise a proselyting missionary. Both kinds of missionaries we have in the church today are following His example as they seek to bless others’ lives. Elder Evanson summarized, “There should be no disappointment in any call to serve. We sing, ‘I’ll go where you want me to go’ and ‘I’ll be what you want me to be.’ Here is an opportunity to show that we really mean what we say!... As we give service in Christ’s name to the one, we become increasingly holy and worthy of the gift of eternal life. Jesus Christ lives. He is my Savior and yours. He is our Redeemer. He is our great example of ministering. I invite each of us to go and do likewise.”