June 25, 2018
Dear England
MTC Missionary,
It has been
18 months since our arrival to this beautiful campus where the Preston Temple
and the Missionary Training Centre is located.
The Sister Missionaries from that first group that were here when we arrived
will be going home, some tomorrow, and others in a few weeks. Of course, due to other reasons there have
been missionaries that have needed to return home prior to their expected
length of service being completed, but I wanted to take this occasion and share
a brief note of love and gratitude for each of you that has walked through the
doors of the MTC during the last 18 months.
Our life has
been so richly blessed by serving with each of you, the Lord’s servants. You are His true messengers and you not only
bring the world His truth, but you also bring joy and real happiness to those
who will accept you and receive you.
Serving a mission, for me, was not the “best two years” but far and away
it was the “greatest two years”. Mission
life can be hard; it can be full of struggles and disappointments. But it is also the place where the greatest
of joys can be experienced, and for many those joys are indescribable! I suppose it is like Alma rejoicing
“exceedingly” to be reunited with the sons of Mosiah and finding out that they
were “…still his brethren in the Lord… they had waxed strong in the knowledge
of the truth…they were of a sound understanding…they had searched the
scriptures diligently…they had given themselves to much prayer and fasting…and they
taught with power and authority of God.” Alma 17:2-3
Some of you
may remember viewing the Elder Bednar MTC Devotional entitled “The Character of
Christ”. Among many great insights and
teachings in that devotional message, Elder Bednar defined character as “moral
qualities, strongly developed, strikingly displayed, and consistently
lived”. He recounted Elder Neil A.
Maxwell saying that “there would be no atoning sacrifice without the character
of Christ”; or in other words the only way that the Savior could have completed
the atonement was due to His personal character. Yes, He was the literal Son of God in the
flesh and with that came power over death, but He was still subject to temptation,
disappointment, sorrow, evil, and His personal character was always being
tested. He was perfect in every way; He
never succumbed to the natural man like you and I do; He was always selfless
and concerned with others even during His greatest trials and sorrows.
Elder Bednar
invited us to begin to refine our own character and to bring it more in line
with what the Savior would want for us to be.
A mission is the perfect place to develop, display, and live with
conviction strong moral qualities not only for 18 or 24 months, but also for
the rest of our life. I know that each
of you has begun that mighty change of heart; I know that the Lord loves you
and is well pleased with you. I know He
rejoices with your highs and comforts you in your lows; I know He has been with
you every step of this mission journey even if at times you have wondered where
He is.
Recently, my
40-year mission reunion was held and while I could not attend in person, my
heart was with and will always be with my fellow missionary brothers and
sisters all the days of my life. It
feels like it was just yesterday that I was a 21-year-old missionary returning
home to Las Vegas, Nevada and wondering how the rest of my life would turn
out. I didn’t have money, I didn’t have
a girlfriend, I had lost 30 pounds during my mission, my mother had cancer, I
had no friends, but I could not have been happier! I didn’t know what would happen in my
post-mission life, and to be sure there were many days of struggle, but my
promise to you is that the Lord is in the detail of your life and that He will
provide every needful blessing, answer, and peaceful reassurance all your
days.
Remember, in
this life suffering is mandatory but misery is optional! Strive to always have an eternal perspective and
vision; never fear what your current difficulties are, or the ones that lie
ahead in the future. President Howard W.
Hunter said, “If our lives and our faith are centered on Jesus Christ and His
restored gospel, nothing can ever go permanently wrong. On the other hand, if our lives are not
centered on the Savior and His teachings, no other success can ever be
permanently right”.
It has been
said that greatness has more to do with the depths that one has risen from than
the heights that one achieves. We should
never get caught up in the comparison game.
We are all imperfect and we all have weakness; yet each of us is a
daughter and son of a perfect Heavenly Father, the same Heavenly Father! One of the great blessings of this small MTC
is to welcome missionaries from all over the world, and because of our size you
can become intimately familiar with one another. You learned that we are one family of
believers, brought together from the four corners of the globe. You learned that country, race, or culture
did not make us different but rather it bound us together in love and
faith. It was not a coincidence that you
met one another. Remember how far you
have risen from your first day here; you each are a treasure and so beloved of
Heavenly Parents!
As an
accommodation to the Spain MTC closing, our service will end sometime in
November of this year as that MTC President is transferred here to replace us a
little earlier than January 1st. So as
our days are numbered, we wanted to send this note along and express our love,
admiration, and devotion to you.
Our love,
relationship, and feelings for you didn’t end when you left the MTC to begin
your missionary labor in the field, and it certainly won’t end when our service
is finished here. Each of you has made
an important imprint on our heart. We
have learned from each of you; we have your pictures; we read your emails; we
pray for you and remember your names on the temple prayer roll. The only things we take with us from this
life are the relationships we have formed and our personal character. We
treasure our relationship with each of you.
We thank you
for your love and kindness and for sharing a few weeks with us in the MTC. We will never forget you and hope that our
paths will cross and that we will always stay connected, and if we are lucky we
might just get an invitation to your weddings!
Until then, carry on; no toil nor labor fear…all is well, all is well!
Our eternal
love,
Jon and Susan
Bunker
England MTC
