By Lin Vernon Floyd
Wouldn’t you love to read the missionary journals of those who labored in the early days of the Church, especially if that person was your family member or someone who converted your ancestor? Is it any different with our young Elders and Sisters or missionary couples serving in our day? Their unique spiritual experiences are important and should be compiled into some kind of record to pass down to their descendents to strengthen their faith and preserve those special never-to-be-forgotten days of serving the Lord full-time.

Missionaries today are instructed to keep a daily journal or write home weekly. When my youngest son served in the Hiroshima Japan Mission most of his communication home came via emails. This made the process of organizing his letters so much easier. I only had to copy his email and paste it into a word processing program to use later to compile a record of his two years of service. A quote from his letters home while at the MTC demonstrated his early attitude about his mission…Anyway, I’m doing great…the language isn’t too hard, just vocabulary. I trudge along and unlike the rest of my life, I intend to make my mission, the hardest working thing I’ve ever done. The challenges here are great and so are the blessings.

Abridging his lengthy letters and emails to capture the essence of his mission is important, then the photos he sent home can be scanned and published. His testimony will be preserved and his struggles to adapt to the missionary lifestyle recorded in his own words for his future family to read. Letters from his converts translated into English and saved will serve as a reminder of the glorious blessings he received.

This once-in-a-lifetime experience can be compiled into a scrapbook, history and/or a more interesting format as a DVD slide show possibly with a background of traditional Japanese music and my son reading from his journal or letters. Part of our family history preserved for posterity, but what about my ancestors who labored as missionaries long ago and laid the foundation for this great Church?

My third great-grandfather Ephraim Green was among the early missionaries in 1854 sent to the Sandwich Islands, now called Hawaii. He wrote almost daily and his missionary journal has been preserved. His education was limited and his writing is difficult to understand because of poor spelling, but the essence of his goodness and testimony is captured there in his own words. It’s a wealth of information about the work of proselytizing and retaining early converts in that faraway land.

His assignment was full of challenges. Because of difficulties in Utah with Johnson’s Army approaching, Elder Green was called home after about a year on his first mission. He would later return in 1865-68 to serve in the same mission, this time with his wife Mary DeForest and her youngest daughter.
Helping buy land and developing the area of Laie for the church after their original settlement was deemed unsuitable, he surveyed the area where the Brigham Young University-Hawaii and Laie Temple now stand. It was a difficult mission.

In a letter to family members at home in Utah, he says: “Wee are all well at present, though your Mother’s health is never very good and thare is but litle prospect of hur being very ruged at present. The moscetoes and red ants, the rats and mise and every creping thing that ever was on the urth [earth] I believe is hear to vex and torment the life out of a body. The moscetoes just os soon as it is dark comes in swarms. I makes me think of a swarm of beas and the only way to git rid of them is to git into bed and pull the mosceato bars over you. Then the fleas take you in custady. The rest of the knight. So there is but litle of you left in the morning. [Sounds delightful, can you imagine the primitive conditions they lived in?] Your Mother says that she never was in a place that shee disliked so bad as she dus this but she is willing to stay and fill the mishon [mission] aloted to hur untill she is called home.”

Reading my ancestorís missionary letters and journals of their dedicated labors, after leaving their farm in Northern Utah to travel so far across the ocean by ship to serve in such primitive conditions, certainly strengthens my testimony. Their example and faith in God is a guide to me in my easier life with air conditioning and all the comforts of our modern day. Without these writings, knowledge of their mission would have been lost to their many descendents. It’s so important to remember and preserve missionary experiences.