Dear
Parents
I
would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your wonderful
children. It has been a privilege for
Sister Irwin and I to come to know your son/daughter as a disciple of
Christ. We have felt an instant love for
them as soon as we learned of their call, but that love has grown and grown as
we have shared experiences of this great work and come to know each other
better. We know that our missionaries
arrived in good shape but we also know that if we did not send them home better
than they arrived then we would have failed.
Three years ago it was made clear to us by the members of the Quorum of
the Twelve that the way they would judge our success as a Mission President and
Wife would not be by the number of baptisms we have or whether we create a
Stake but rather by what our missionaries would be doing in twenty years
time. That is a wonderful illustration
of how important our missionaries are to our leaders. Our goal, therefore, has been to try to help
each missionary grow. We have tried to
help them to not only establish the gospel in these great lands but also to
establish the gospel in their own hearts.
We are anxious that they return to you – not having gone through a
mission but rather having had the mission gone through them.
For
the rest of our lives we will have an interest in your missionary. We love them dearly and we will miss them.
President
and Sister McConkie will be a great asset to the work of this mission and they
will bless the lives of the missionaries.
We know the McConkies and we love them and we know that the missionaries
will love them too.
Thank
you once again – we are full of admiration for you in all that you have done to
have provided us with the best missionaries in the world.
Sincerely
– David and Lyn Irwin
