This verse contains Yahweh’s instructions on how to do difficult missionary work. He approves of their mission, urges them to “establish my word,” but to be aware that success will require their full cooperation. First, they must be “patient in long-suffering and afflictions.” Very few missions are immediately successful; in their early stages, missions are even less obviously productive. Patience allows us to realize that the lack of immediate success is not evidence of lack of success. Missionaries need the time to find the right people among all of the possible converts. The potential converts need time to accept the change in their lives that will come through the acceptance of the gospel. Patience allows the missionary to wait for these natural processes to take place. This is patience in long-suffering. “Long-suffering” does not emphasize “suffering” in the sense of withstanding pain or uncomfortable situations, but in its more archaic meaning of allowing or permitting. To be “long-suffering” is to have the patience to allow events to develop at their own pace. (See a further definition in the commentary accompanying Alma 7:23–24.)
Patience in afflictions is self-directed, while patience in long-suffering is applies to others. Missionary tasks are not always easy and may lead to different types of afflictions. In the days of Mosiah’s sons, those afflictions would have been more numerous and potentially life-threatening than those modern missionaries face. Nevertheless, they were to have patience even through those trials.
A second requirement is that the missionaries become “good examples… in me.” One of the greatest tools of the missionary is his or her own soul. The change effected in the missionary is a visible example of the gospel’s workings. Anyone considering the great change represented by conversion needs to know both that the process is possible and that the results are worthwhile. The missionary’s example shows both of these aspects.
In return Yahweh promises: “I will make an instrument of thee in my hands.” This is a promise of partnership and also a reminder to humility. The excellent missionary is an instrument, not the hand that moves the instrument. It is the Spirit that converts, manifesting itself through the efforts of the missionary, who by faith and works, is in the right place at the right time.