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He Always Credited the Member Program |
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Excerpts from To the Rescue, The Biography of President Thomas S. Monson, Deseret Book, 2010, pages 187-190
President Monson focused on involving members in finding and fellowshipping investigators and new converts. They would join in the teaching and could speak with authenticity of their own conversions. Brother and Sister Anthony Belfiglio, who once were Catholic, could ask all the right questions, such as, "What parish are you in?" Brother William Stoneman could say how he lost his job as the chief bookbinder of the United Church of Canada when he joined The Church ofJesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He would testify, "I found a better job-but more than that, I found greater truth, all the truth, and you will too. May we pick you up on Sunday? We'll sit by you during our meetings and then we'll be able to answer your questions."
"That kind of member involvement produces converts who stay and who build and who serve," President Monson emphasized at a reunion in 2002 at the Ossington chapel. He knew of what he spoke. In attendance were converts who had joined the Church when he was a mission president nearly half a century before. He continues to admonish: "No mission in the Church will ever achieve its full potential without member missionary cooperation and involvement." In an area like Canada, thin on membership, the missionaries could not keep busy working strictly from referrals. President Monson held to what worked in his mission and what he felt inspired to do. That included tracting and door-to-door contacting to find and rescue those lost to the ways of God. But he always credited the member program with the most dramatic increase in the number of converts.
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