“Sharing the Gospel Is for Everyone”

I had an experience some time ago in Idaho when I attended a stake conference there. The stake president mentioned he had a surprise for me and asked, “Will you trust me?” I responded, “Well, we trust all of our stake presidents; I trust you if you are right.” He said, “Well, I think you will enjoy what is going to happen tomorrow in the general session of the conference.”

Here is what happened. In the Sunday morning session, he called upon a little girl who was about ten years of age to come up to the pulpit and bear her testimony about being a “Primary missionary.” What had happened was that the stake president had authorized the high council adviser to the Primary to implement an idea that children can also be missionaries. This high councilor went to the ward Primaries to teach the little children that they were missionaries too. This sweet little girl, whom we shall call Katie, learned from the high councilor that she could be a missionary. She came home to her father, who was the bishop of one of the wards, and said, “Daddy, I’m a Primary missionary, and I want to share the gospel with somebody.” The bishop said, “Well, sweetheart, that’s a wonderful thing, but we have only one or two nonmember families in our whole ward, so it might be a little difficult.” But this little girl asked, “Who are they?” The bishop named the nonmember families, and his daughter promptly responded, “Let’s you and me go visit them, and we’ll invite them to come to our home for family home evening.” Those of you who are fathers of little girls know how easily you succumb when a sweet daughter looks at you imploringly out of innocent, trusting eyes. And that’s what happened to the bishop. So he and Katie went and knocked on the door of one nonmember family. When the mother of the family answered the door, little Katie said, “I am a Primary missionary, and we want you to come to our house for family home evening.” This wonderful mother, I guess, had the same problem with those big, innocent eyes, and she agreed to bring her family to home evening. They came; they had a nice evening; they were not converted.

About two weeks later, Katie came home just as her mother was taking some banana bread out of the oven. Katie asked, “Can I have a loaf of that bread?” Her mother said, “Yes sweetheart, but what do you want it for?”

“I want to take it to Mrs. Johnson,” she replied.

When Mrs. Johnson came to the door, Katie said, “I have something for you that I would like to give you, but I can only give it to you on one condition.” When Mrs. Johnson asked what the condition was, Katie responded, “That you let the missionaries teach you the gospel.” Mrs. Johnson smiled and said, “If that’s the only condition for us to have the banana bread, then I’ll agree that we will let the missionaries teach us the gospel.”

The missionaries taught the gospel to the Johnsons, and they were baptized.

After Katie finished her testimony at the conference, Sister Johnson was the next to speak. I shall never forget what I felt when she thanked a little ten-year-old Primary missionary who had had the courage to invite her family to learn about the gospel.

When it was my turn to speak, I invited the bishop and his family, including Katie, to come up and stand by me, and then I invited the Johnson family to come up—mother, father, and three children. I said to them, “You have had a wonderful experience together. Bishop, you and Katie have shared with your neighbor the most precious thing in life, the gospel of Jesus Christ. But I want to tell you that if you think your heart is filled with joy today, wait till that day one year from now when the Johnson family kneels at the altar in the Idaho Falls Temple to be sealed for time and all eternity. That will be a moment in mortality that you will never, ever forget.”

One year later, I performed their sealing. When I walked into the temple, there in the waiting room was Katie, now age eleven, the Primary missionary. She was not able to go to the sealing room because she wasn’t old enough, but she was there waiting for her convert family to be sealed. The sealing room was filled with members of the ward. When the three Johnson children knelt around that altar and I sealed them to their parents, it was a bit of heaven on earth—all made possible because a little girl took seriously an assignment from an inspired and motivated high councilor who had the idea that children could be missionaries too and who taught little Katie that she could share the gospel with others. (M. Russell Ballard, Counseling with Our Councils: Learning to Minister Together in the Church and in the Family [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1997], 86–88)