My brethren, I am delighted to be with you. I seek the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. I have only one desire. I'd like to be able to say something to you which would be helpful. I know that you are here to listen to things that will be helpful. And I earnestly pray that the Lord will bless me. And I'd like to hold out to all of you the challenge to use the time that lies ahead of you to build the kingdom of God, to strengthen this work, to share with others the marvelous blessings that you enjoy. We don't have any better Latter-day Saints in all the world than we have in military service. We don't have any men of greater faith anywhere on earth than we have in military service. And I want to say that thousands and tens of thousands of men have demonstrated that they could keep the faith and build the kingdom while in the service. Now you can't go out tracting. You can't go out and stand on a soap box and begin to preach. You are restricted in much of what you can do in the way of regular missionary service. But you can do a few things quietly and wonderfully that will attract people to you in a positive and wonderful way. I'd like to suggest to you four things that I think you ought to do:

First, cultivate an awareness of your opportunity to teach the gospel. You are not going to do it unless you realize that you can do it. Cultivate an awareness of your opportunity. You can do wonders if you have the right attitude. A young man had served in the mission field and I had a letter from him three months after he had been inducted and he said: "I thought the mission field was the only place you could teach the gospel. I've baptized three times as many people into the Church in the last three months as I baptized in the mission field." I give you that to add to this testimony. We have a great chaplain serving in Vietnam, Brother Newby. I've been with Brother Newby in Vietnam, up and down Vietnam. I've heard him bear his testimony a number of times. I've heard him stand on his feet and tell of a young man from Emery County, Utah, who by his life attracted Newby's attention. And he said that he, Newby, was on traffic duty one day at the entrance to Fort Hamilton and this boy came out. It was a Sunday and he was carrying in his hand the scriptures. And Newby called over to him and said, "What are you reading there, the Bible?" And this young man stepped out into the middle of the street and said, "Yes, I'm reading the Bible and I'm reading something else besides." And he gave Newby the first lesson in the middle of the traffic. But the fact of the matter is Newby is today a member of the Church, a chaplain, an LDS Chaplain, serving his second tour of duty in Vietnam because of an awareness of a missionary opportunity on the part of a young man from a dusty little town in Emery County.

Secondly, the power of your example. Nothing else will do so much to attract people as your peculiar ways. Your example will become a quiet and powerful testimony of the convictions of your heart. There are thousands of members of the Church today because of the example of men in the service. We have a mission in Europe which is responsible for the work in the Mediterranean. We noticed the converts suddenly increased tremendously in numbers in that mission. And one of the brethren who was responsible for that area came back and gave a glowing report on how the converts had increased in that mission. We did a little checking and discovered that 90 percent of the converts that were made in that mission when things took a surge were made by our brethren in the service who were on military bases in the areas for which this mission was responsible. I listened one night as I sat in a great testimony meeting in Saigon while mortar fire could be heard, not many miles away, to the testimony of a wonderful man. He said, "I'm here today because of an associate with whom I lived in a barracks on Okinawa. I was baptized into the Church in San Francisco when the stake missionaries came to my door, but I was converted fifteen years earlier by a friend who quietly lived the Mormon doctrine while we were stationed on Okinawa." The power of your example, brethren, is the greatest missionary tool you will have.

Thirdly, prepare to teach the gospel. You can't pour water out of an empty bucket. You need to know a little something about the Church if you are going to tell others about it. You need to prepare yourselves to teach the gospel. I am satisfied that thousands don't get taught because the teachers are not qualified to teach. The Lord has said if ye are prepared, ye shall not fear. And I'd like to add—teach! If ye are prepared, ye shall not fear to teach. Just one example, I was in a great meeting in Korea on one occasion, a servicemen's retreat. I don't think there was a dry eye in that old battered quonset hut as a tall gangling captain of infantry with campaign ribbons all over his chest, recently baptized, administered the sacrament in a tremulous voice. I'd ordained him a priest in the presence of all of those men just before he blessed the bread. And as I looked up, I think everyone there wept. Then the water was administered to by a sergeant who in his testimony afterwards said, "I grew up on the banks of the Susquehanna River and I almost inherited a hatred for the Mormons. And I discovered when I was in the barracks in Korea that the man who was in the bunk next to mine was reading the Book of Mormon and I went over and started ribbing him. And I kept it up, I was mean and I was nasty. One night he got up out of his bed when I was saying something and came over to my bunk and I have never seen a man stand so tall in all my life. And he held out the book and said, 'Have you ever read it?' I said, 'No, of course not.' And he said, 'Here it is! Now you read it and you keep your mouth shut until you are through reading it and then we will talk about it.' I didn't know what else to do—and I took it. And I began to read it, and as I read it, the Spirit of the Lord bore witness to me that it was true. And now, I know why I was sent to Korea."

Finally, invite your friends to Church. Invite those who come in your direction to go to Church with you. Marvelous things will happen. I've just come back from South America and I met there a missionary and he said, "Do you remember me?" And I said, "Well, you look familiar. Where did I last see you?" He said, "You and I were riding the tram—the cog railroad from Hakuni down to get on the train back to Tokyo when we had a military retreat in Japan. And I had been taken there by a friend. We had come up from Iwakuni Marine Base there and I had never been to anything like that in my life. I want you to know that I was baptized three months after that and now I am on a mission here in Chile." And I said, "How long have you been here?" He said, "Eighteen months." And I said, "How many people have you brought into the Church while you've been down here?" He said, "Seventeen." And I caught a wonderful vision there. I saw the picture of the way the Lord's work will go forth to fill the earth. Here a good boy in Japan four years ago had invited a friend to come to a meeting with him and out of that invitation had already come eighteen members of the Church. Be ye not thou, therefore, ashamed of the testimony of our Lord. God bless you. To reap out of all of the sorrow and tragedy and trouble and perhaps blood and misery and hell that you may witness the opportunity to share with others your testimony of the living reality of God of the Redeemer of the world, his beloved Son, and of the truth of this restored work, I humbly pray as I leave with you my witness and testimony of these things, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.