I was in the university. It was the time of the worst economic
depression in the history of
the world. Unemployment in this area was
about 35 percent, and most of
the unemployed were husbands and
fathers, since relatively few
women worked in the labor force. Very
few missionaries were going into
the field at that time. We send out
as many in a week now as then
went during the entire year. I received
my bachelor's degree and planned
on somehow attending graduate
school. Then the bishop came
with what seemed to me a shocking
suggestion. He spoke of a mission.
I was called to go to England which,
at that time, was the most expensive
mission in the world. The cost
per month was the equivalent
of what would be about $500 now.
We discovered that my mother, who had passed away, had
established a small savings account
to be available for this purpose.
I had
a savings account in a different place, but the bank in which I had
mine had failed. There was then
no government insurance program to
cover its failure as there is
now. My father, a man of great faith and
love, supplied the necessary
means, with all of the family cooperating
at a sacrifice. As I look back
upon it, I see all of it as a miracle. Somehow
the money was there every month.
(CR Apr 1986)
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He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It. (See Matt. 10:39.) In 1933
when I left for my mission, I
traveled through Chicago. The Great
Depression was on. As we passed
what I think was the Chicago Board
of Trade Building, a woman said
to the bus driver, "What building is that?"
He replied, "That's the Board
of Trade Building. Nearly every day, some
man whose stock has gone down
jumps out of one of those windows.
The bus driver may have exaggerated, but some people were
jumping from windows in those
days as they saw their fortunes dwindle.
Their lives were wrapped up in
themselves and their money, and they
felt there was nothing worth
living for when their money was gone.
(Ensign, Jan 1994)
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Please accept the testimony of an old British missionary who came
to this land in the dark days
of the world Depression in 1933, and here
learned to love the people and
to love the Lord in a way that I had not
known before. I've never forgotten
that love and respect and appreciation
for the people of Britain.''
(Fireside, Crawley, England, August, 1995)
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The work in the field was not easy. It was difficult and discouraging.
But what a wonderful experience
it was. In retrospect, I recognize that
I was probably a selfish young
man when I arrived in Britain. What a
blessing it became to set aside
my own selfish interests to the greater
interests of the work of
the Lord. I had the association of tremendous
young; men and women. They have
become treasured friends whom I
have known and loved now for
more than half a century. (CR Apr 1986)
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I traveled by train in 1933 from Salt Lake City to New York, and
then took ship from New York
to Plymouth, England. There were three
of us in our group. Two stayed
in London, and somehow, in the providence
of the Lord, I, like Heber C.
Kimball and his associates ninety-six years
earlier, was sent to Preston.
That was my first assignment and my first
field of labor.
I became as familiar with the places they knew and the streets
they walked as they had been
nearly a century earlier. My companion
and I walked up and down the
same road where they had seen that
banner, "Truth will Prevail."
In the evening of the day that I arrived in
Preston, my companion, who was
the district president, said we would
go down to the marketplace and
hold a street meeting. There, in the
place which was familiar to Heber
C. Kimball and his associates, Elder
Bramwell and I raised our voices
in a hymn, offered prayer, and preached
the same gospel to a gathering
crowd as those first missionaries had
preached....
Somehow I feel especially fortunate now to have been sent to
Preston as
my initial assignment. Not only did I labor there, but I
labored in
the surrounding towns where those first missionaries
taught the gospel.
I was not as effective as were they.
When they
first arrived, there evidently
was little or no Prejudice against them.
When I arrived, it seemed that
everyone was prejudiced against us.
A short time before I arrived, two missionaries unfortunately had
been sent home because of violation
of mission rules. The people in the
city knew of their behavior,
and this aggravated their antagonism toward
us. I was not well when I arrived.
Those first few weeks, because of
illness and the opposition which
We felt, I was discouraged.
I wrote a letter home to my good father and said that I felt I was
wasting my time and his money.
He was my father and my stake
president, and he was a wise
and inspired man. He wrote a very short
letter to me which said, "Dear
Gordon, I have your recent letter. I
have only one suggestion, forget
yourself and go to work." Earlier
that morning in our scripture
class my companion and I had read
these words of the Lord: "Whosoever
will save his life shall lose it;
but whosoever shall lose life
for my sake and the gospel's, the same
shall save it" (Mark 8:35) Those
words of the Master, followed by my
father's letter with his counsel
to forget myself and go to work, went
into my very being. With my father's
letter in hand, I went into our
bedroom in the house at 15 Wadham
Road, where we lived, and got
on my knees and made a pledge
with the Lord. I covenanted that I
would try to forget myself and
lose myself in his service.
That July day in 1933 was my day of decision. I do not say it
egotistically. I say it humbly
and with gratitude. A new light came into
my life and a new joy into my
heart. The fog of England seemed to lift,
and I saw the sunlight. I had
a rich and wonderful mission experience,
for which I shall ever be grateful,
laboring in Preston where the work
began and in other places where
it had moved forward, including the
great city of London, where I
served the larger part of my mission.
(BYU Symposium, 1987)
-----------------------------------
[President Hinckley spoke of having visited in 1987 the house in
Preston where he had lodged as
a young missionary in 1933. Upon
visiting the home, he had asked
the woman who lived there for
permission to go upstairs to
the room he had occupied.] I almost
wept when I thought of that bedroom,
it was in that bedroom that
I made the most important decision
of my life. I was called to England
in 1933. It was the bottom of
the Depression. Poverty was everywhere
. . people were struggling.
They had nothing. They were on the dole.
Those were very, very difficult
times.
We didn't get anywhere. To get people to listen to us was like
knocking on a brick wall. They
didn't want to hear; they were disillusioned;
they were bitter. I had been
there about a week or two. I wrote home
to my father and said, "I'm not
doing any good here. I'm just wasting
my time." In about two weeks,
I received an answer. He said, "Dear
Gordon, I have your letter. .
. . I have only one suggestion: Forget
yourself and go to work."
The day I received that letter, I also read in the Gospels we were
studying this great statement
of the Lord: "For whosoever will save his
life shall lose it: and whosoever
will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
(Matt. 16:25.) I got on my knees
in that little bedroom . . . and made
a pledge that I would try to
give myself unto the Lord. The whole world
changed. The fog lifted. The
sun began to shine in my life. I had a new
interest. I saw the beauty of
this land. I saw the greatness of the people.
I began to feel at home in this
wonderful land. Everything that has
happened to me since that's been
good I can trace to that decision made
in that little house . . . in
Preston, Lancastershire.
(Fireside, Nottingham, England,
August, 1995)
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