"We're waiting to see how many new missionaries will be coming, and where they will be needed first," Elder Holland said. Meanwhile, "our existing 347 missions will have more missionaries added. We can absorb quite a bit of initial growth."
But he noted, "We are having requests from around the globe for new missions. We've got lots of places that are still waiting for new missions." More missionaries, he said, will help "get the gospel to more places than we've ever gone before."
For those who are not able to serve full-time missions because of health or other circumstances that make it "unwise or impossible to go," Elder Holland said "the Lord and the church honors the intent of the heart."
"These are also on the team even as we honorably excuse these from traditional full-time missionary service."
To the rest, he said, "God is hastening his work and he needs more – and more willing and worthy – missionaries to spread the light and the truth and the hope and the salvation of gospel truth to a darkened world."
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Joseph Walker began his professional writing career in 1980 as a staff writer for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, eventually becoming the newspaper's television and live theater critic. He left professional journalism more ..
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The future female leaders in the Church will now overwhelmingly have had a mission experience. Wonderful!
They will marry their equals, making for stronger marriages.
They will speak with more knowledge of the outside world, and with More..
This is wonderful! My girlfriend left on a mission almost a year ago and i am so grateful that she did! She is far more mature, more enlightened, more committed to the things she does. this will only be a good thing for the world. LDS women have so More..
I think one of the greatest changes to the program is the age women can serve in fulltime missions. In the past, there was something of a stigma (not that I'm saying it was right, but it existed) that if a young woman served a fulltime mission More..