Immigration

We had 12 young missionaries come from the US, Panama, Honduras, and El Salvador this past week. It was a busy week! We made bank deposits of @ $3000 to ensure that each Elder and Hermana started the process to obtain a Religious Volunteers Visa. Added to that, each missionary had photos to take, legal papers to sign, and fingerprinting done at the police station. Busy, Busy, Busy!

And about 10 of our misioneros went home. One hermana was so sad to leave she held a …funeral?

This Sunday, I met a sister who was attending Spanish class nearby to renew her teaching credentials. We started talking about immigration and how it has such a negative connotation in the States. Yet, immigration has played such a very important role in the birth of the United States as well as missionary work itself!

In our scriptures there are many people who were immigrants – Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Lehi and Sariah, Mulek, and the Mormon Pioneers to name a bunch. The Lord has a great work to do in these last days and migration, a very humbling process, strips immigrants of their old habits. Often, the most teachable immigrants will find and embrace the Gospel in their new country.

There are many reasons immigrants leave their homes for strange lands. And, while all the reasons are good, we do know God loves His children and He is gathering them to Him now. As missionaries it simply falls to us to point the way…

I know that if ye shall follow the Son, with full purpose of heart, acting no hypocrisy and no deception before God, but with real intent, repenting of your sins, witnessing unto the Father that ye are willing to take upon you the name of Christ, by baptism —yea, by following your Lord and your Savior down into the water, according to his word, behold, then shall ye receive the Holy Ghost;

Book of Mormon, 2 Ne. 31:13