Do You Feel A Sense of Urgency?

This is a special blog.  We want to speak to all those members of the Church who are retired or are getting close to retirement and those who have grandparents or even parents who are retired.

When we had arrived here in Germany, we were interviewed by the Europe Area President, Patrick Kearon. I remember that he told us how grateful he was that we decided to serve a mission. He said that, currently in Europe, there were only enough missionaries to fill half of the missionary positions needed in Europe.  He said "needed" because they would be thrilled to accept even more missionaries than what are just needed.

This past week we had the opportunity to talk with some other senior missionaries in our office.  Each couple train and support various programs of the Church in Europe.  Each are designed to help strengthen the various units and individual members.  They, too, have expressed how short-handed and understaffed they are of senior missionaries in the field.  Those couples out there are doing such a great work and seeing miracles, but there are too many areas where there are no couples available to fill those assignments.  This is just in Europe.  We can't imagine what all the needs are in other parts of the world.

Just to give you one small example - one senior couple who is involved with digitizing family history records, told us of a very large country that does an annual census of its people. That provides a lot of valuable information, especially for temple work. This country records everything digitally, but at the end of the year, the digital information is destroyed and paper copies are stored. We were told of one building that is indescribably huge. These paper records are stacked all the way to the rafters and the building is now filled up. The Church has learned that the country is considering burning the paper records which will destroy all those years of information  The Church does not have enough senior missionaries to help digitize all those records and will probably have to contract the work out to save those records.

Do you feel a sense of urgency?

We understand that many of you do not want to leave your grandkids or are concerned about health issues. Remember the sacrifices others have made for us to enjoy the fruits of membership today. We know that the Lord needs your help and, as it says in 1 Nephi 3:7, He will provide a way to help you as you serve Him. Please seriously consider coming on a mission or two or four. You will be blessed and we are promised that our families will be blessed also. What better gift can you leave your family!