Around the web today for stories of interest to future missionaries, missionary moms, returned missionaries, member missionaries, and missionaries of every sort and variety.
- Matt “Young Proselytizing Missionaries Arrive in Gabon” – And surely the gospel reaches every corner of the world. “Within the last week, missionaries serving in the Democratic Republic of the Congo Kinshasa Mission report that the first young, proselytizing [Mormon] missionaries have been assigned to the Central African country of Gabon.”
- Lauren Markoe “Wanted: A New Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom”– Sharing the gospel can take many forms, and one member of the Church is on the short list to fill the United States’ position of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. “Katrina Lantos Swett is vice chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an independent body created by the same act of Congress that created the ambassador-at-large position. She is also president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice.”
- Chloe Isaak “Hey, look! My hot dogs must be heavenly. All the missionaries are here!“– What happens when one district of missionaries visits the Civil Rights Movement Memorial and Museum in Montgomery, Alabama for Martin Luther King Jr. day? Reflection and commitment. “Montgomery is full of history. I was walking today where Martin Luther King Jr. once walked. Parades of civil rights activists took the same steps I took today. They knew who they were, and they would not back down because of fear.”
- LDS Newsroom “They Leave Everything to Serve a Mission“– [Spanish] These beautiful pictures document a huge influx into the Guatemala City MTC (Missionary Training Center). “More than 90 young missionaries began their training, Wednesday, January 8, 2014, to serve as missionaries full time for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. With mixed feelings of joy and nostalgia for leaving their families in front of the Missionary Training Center in Guatemala City these young men and women express their excitement to start their training”
- Francesca Bruno “Faith, Agency, and Opposition”– [4th paragraph down] When one missionary struggles to track down a local member, when he finally arrives there is no miracle waiting for him. But what he finds is that the faith comes from the journey. “Once we got to the building, we looked at the zvolnek (which is where you ring people to let you in to the building) but [the woman’s] name wasn’t there, but a girl came up and opened the door and asked what we wanted, but just as she asked a man came out of the door and saw who we were and pushed us out of the door, said something mean in Czech and walked out of the building. “