Missionary moments: Planting gospel seeds
E-mail story
It's easy. Send a link to the story you were just reading to a friend. Just fill out the form on this page and we'll send it along.
Your name and e-mail address are transmitted to the recipient. Otherwise, it is considered private information; see Privacy policy.
We never know when we are planting gospel seeds in the lives of others. This became apparent to me as I, a stake mission president, helped conduct a recent correlation meeting between missionaries from the Idaho Boise Mission and Twin Falls Idaho Stake mission leaders and missionaries.
During the meeting, one of the full-time missionaries was asked to share his testimony. The young man, Elder Matthew Broadley from Yorkshire, England, related that he was born into the Church because his mother, Pam Broadley, had been converted in the early 1960s.The missionary related that when his mother was younger, she was told by neighbors not to talk to the Mormon missionaries. At Christmastime, she was in the hospital with a sickness. The nurse came to her and said the Mormon missionaries were coming to the hospital to sing for patients. She told the nurse that she didn't want them to come into her room. However, the missionaries sang in the hall, and she was touched by their songs and the spirit that accompanied their performance.
Weeks later when she was home, her neighbor came by and said Mormon missionaries were coming down the street and admonished her not to let them in. Sister Broadley told her neighbor she wanted the missionaries to come in because of the beautiful music at the hospital. She listened to the missionaries and joined the Church.
As Elder Broadley described his mother's conversion, I became excited. I had served as a full-time missionary in Yorkshire more than 30 years ago.
The young elder asked, "Did you ever go around singing in hospitals?"
I replied: "As a matter of fact, I did. I served for four months as a member of a singing missionary quartet. We were called `The Mormon Sons.' We touched the whole mission, singing in concerts, churches, hospitals, orphanages and other places."
Later, the young man confirmed that his mother was in the hospital in December 1962, exactly when "The Mormon Sons" were touring in Yorkshire.
Both of us were amazed by the thread of the gospel that connected us. The young elder told me, "You never know when your missionary efforts bring conversion."
