Arrival

1 February 2021

Dear Family and Friends,

 

 

We are grateful that your missionary has safely arrived to the Illinois Chicago mission.  We already feel a great love for him. We know of his goodness and desire to serve the Lord with all his heart.

 

 

Thank you for preparing him to participate in the most important and the most challenging work. (See Russell M. Nelson “Hope of Israel” 3 June 2018) A mission will likely be the hardest thing he has done thus far in his life. As you communicate with your missionary, (which he should initiate and which you should only do on P-Day) we encourage you to talk about what is happening in the mission.  Instead of him going home on those calls, we hope to bring you and your family into the mission with us. I know he has been measured by the Lord to be successful and that in “our extremities are God’s best opportunities” to mold us into who He knows we can become.

 

 

May we ask one thing of you?  At 8:30 each morning Sister Shumway and I and the entire mission kneel in unified prayer. We ask for 3 vital things:

 

 

1. Increased faith in Jesus Christ and in His atonement,

2. The wisdom and ability to work in greater unity with the members to find those the Lord has prepared,

3. And faith in Christ to find families.

 

 

There is power in unified prayer. So, our request is this – each morning will you join us in following President Nelson’s invitation to “pray daily that all of God’s children might receive the blessings of the gospel of Jesus Christ”?

 

 

We thank you for doing this.  We love you for doing this. Your prayers and your faith will impact what happens both to your missionary as well as to our entire mission.  We have been promised that “the work of the Lord [will] prosper unto the baptizing and uniting to the church of God, many souls,  …unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon his holy name.”(Helaman 3: 26-7, see also Alma 6: 6, Words of Mormon 1: 8)

 

 

God is on our side! Because He is for us, then who can be against us? (Romans 8: 31) He is helping us in this great work! We have seen His hand and felt His presence among us in this part of the vineyard.

 

 

We feel honored and blessed to have your missionary working with us in what is the greatest of God’s works – saving His children. We will watch over and love him in such a way that we hope he will feel the infinite love and concern of his Savior and Heavenly Parents.

 

 

With Love,

 

 

President and Sister Shumway

 

 

PS – You are welcome to join our mission Facebook page (Illinois Chicago Mission 2019-2022) operated by Sister Shumway