 Hi, I'm Courtney Nelson, and I serve in the best mission in the world, Baltimore, Maryland. And I'm a Wusu agent, but it just so happens that I actually serve in the world's best mission, Mendoza, Argentina. As a missionary, you will focus on inviting others to come unto Jesus Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel. And while your focus will be on helping others come to Jesus Christ, missionary life is one of the best opportunities that you'll have to prepare yourself for the responsibilities of adult life. You're going to be prepared to be a better husband, wife, mother, father, employer, employee, and friend. And you're going to have an opportunity to develop the habits that you need to be successful. Habits like relying on the Lord during hard challenges, productive study habits, working through difficult relationships, feeling and acting upon spiritual impressions, become comfortable talking to strangers, and seeing the goodness in everyone. This perspective is important because the Lord wants every young man and young woman to come home being better prepared for what's ahead of them. And while you don't want to neglect your missionary work, there is a certain place and time in your mission where it is okay and even important to start thinking about what comes next. And why is that so important? It's because it's a huge change when you get home. Oh my gosh, huge change. I went from being on a mission and having a plan every minute of every day, doing something that was important to eternity. And then I come back and I have to figure out my own life. But I didn't really know what I wanted because my plans before the mission had changed because I had changed. Near the end of your mission, you'll be invited to complete an online experience called my plan. And my plan will encourage you to reflect on the lessons that you've learned as a missionary and how to apply these principles and habits in post-mission life. And we have two special guests we'd like to introduce you to who are going to tell you a little bit about their mission experiences and how it prepared them for their lives. Elder Holland, please tell us a little bit about the first time you met Elder Cook. I met Elder Cook in January, I think January of 1961. We'd been out on our missions a few months, not very long by then. We had a mission activity and he was a legend. He was a legend even then. How long were your companions for? Not very long at the end. We were kind of together in leadership month or two at the end of our missions. Elder Cook, what was it like being companions with Elder Holland? It was absolutely incredible. I think the church has some kind of sense of the tremendous personality and spirituality that Elder Holland has and that was evident even when he was young. As you know, we are talking to young men, young women who are preparing to serve a full-time mission and our hope is that they can see the mission experience as an opportunity to prepare for life. And so from your mission experience, how did your mission influence your life following your missionary service? I think it's important for you to know that neither one of us came from families where our fathers were active and our mothers devout. We would have not had family prayer, maybe blessings at meals, but not family prayer and certainly not family home evening. And our missions were just seminal for us. They were just so important. And being with him was just a big part of that. When I first knew him, he came to the mission field thinking that he wanted to be a medical doctor. But in the course of his mission, he came to understand spiritual things in a way that by the time he had completed it, he wanted to be somebody who taught about Jesus Christ. He was trying to think through, how can I do what I need to do? And for him, it was teaching about the Savior. Every missionary ought to go do what he or she feels inspired to do. And the Lord will use you and take advantage of your strengths and bless you with all kinds of blessings, wherever you are and whatever you do. So what specifically about your missions prepared you for your future education? We certainly would encourage missionaries to not only utilize the background of a mission, which is just foundational and so much of the spiritual side, but also the planning and the goal setting. And all of those things are so, so important. But we would also hope that that they would think about how to be trained, how to get education, how to prepare themselves to provide for their families. We had a mission president who really believed that and really taught it. He didn't care what we did, but he wanted us to do something and to be serious about it and be as good as you could be at it. Elder Cook knew from the time he was very young that he wanted to go into law and had a 35 year career in a very large and prestigious law firm. Elder Holland wanted to teach and he was teaching right after he got out of college. He was teaching Institute and that, but he got an opportunity to go to an exceptionally great school and get increased education. And that's his blessed and prepared him. So opportunities to advance yourself in education when you take those, regardless of what you're trying to do, are going to be really important. These missionaries need to go home and realize that we're interested. We, the brethren, we, the church, we, the angels in heaven, are interested in a missionary forever, for all of their life. And a mission is just the start of that. Really want them to get a foundation of the doctrine and particularly of the Book of Mormon and our mission president gave us a foundation, the Book of Mormon. It didn't matter what we did for a living. We had a testimony of Joseph Smith in the Book of Mormon. And that was so foundational for us. And Elder Holland, being who he is, Elder Holland writes Book Christ and the New Covenant. And then in the forward to that, which I love, he says how this started on his mission. Here's what Elder Holland said in the acknowledgement. I also wish to thank my mission president, Elder Marion D. Hanks, who first introduced me to the profundity of the Book of Mormon and the majesty of Christ that lay hidden there. I know of no one who loves the Book of Mormon more than Elder Hanks or of anyone who has taught it with more power and conviction. Well, we hope you, all of you that are watching this, getting ready to go on your mission that you will immerse yourself and come to learn the Book of Mormon. And it'll bless you, not just on your mission. It'll bless you your whole life. Thank you for sharing that. And just on that same note, do you have any other comments or experiences from the mission that helped you continue the spiritual progression even after the mission as a father, as a husband, now an apostle? You know, it really is true what everybody said all of their lives. And that is that it was the best two years of my life for a sister, probably 18 months. But it's not just the best. It's the toughest. It's the longest. It's the shortest. It's the wettest. It's the driest. You know, there is, I think there is nothing that condenses so much of life into 24 months. You learn to live with companions. You learn to get up on time. You learn to study. You learn to memorize. You learn to be adaptable to changing conditions in the weather and in your personality. There's almost nothing that would come along in our schooling, in our marriages, in our young professional life, in our church service, the callings that would come to us. Almost nothing that we didn't have a little bit of a taste of a little preparation for on a mission. The financial times in New York had a whole bunch of missionaries that they interviewed. And one of them really touched me. He said that he had grown up and his family hadn't been active. And he went on this mission and he found that if you worked hard, being obedient and learning how to plan and set goals and all of that, that he realized that he could do something really important. And after he'd been back a little while, they promoted him to a very big job over a major park area in the United States. Said to him, you seem to be the only person that works in gardening that learned how to plan. Where did you learn how to plan? And he says, well, I learned how to plan on my mission. Well, thanks so much for sharing that. A question came to me as you were talking. It sounds like for every missionary, there's a set of trials that come. How do you feel like your missionary experience helped prepare you for adversity after the mission? It is the tough issues. It was the hard things, really demanding things and sometimes almost heartbreaking things that I remember the most. And one of the hard things as a missionary is sometimes you've done everything just right. And you see somebody who chooses not to go forward and be baptized. That whole interaction between faith and agency and a mission, it goes on after. All through your life. And you learn more about it on a mission and you learn how you're going to deal with it almost better than you do any other time in your life. It is common for missionaries to feel guilty about thinking about home life or what will happen after the mission. So what council could you give newly called missionaries about that? When I first went out on mission tours and in zone conferences and missionary meetings, I never talked about home. I'd refused to even acknowledge that they had a home. If you'd listened to me, you'd think they were all orphans. Just they were never ever going to go home because I didn't want anybody to be chunky. But now with a little more maturity and a little more, I hope a little more wisdom, I talk about home a lot with missionaries saying we're interested in your activity, your marriages, your children, your service, boy for all your life. I'm thrilled that we now have my plan to help them get a vision a little bit of what they're going to do later on. And that can be a great blessing. When I came home, my parents were actually away on a mission by then. And I came home to, I didn't know what. I had to find a place to live. I had to come up with a job and my own money. And it was potentially kind of a shock to the system after a very regularized life in the mission to come home to chaos, but to have had some concrete ideas about next steps. If nothing else, it would have reduced my frustration. Boy, my plan I think is going to be a real blessing. Really, truly. Are there any last comments that you'd like to share with us, your final thoughts? I want you to know that the Lord does guide His church and we get the direction that we need when we need it. And the missionaries that are starting on your mission, our mission president used to say, some people spend their whole life giving first-class devotion to second-class causes. And he says, isn't it a wonderful thing that you can give first-class devotion to the first-class cause on earth? These young missionaries that are watching this about to go out, you're going to have the opportunity to give first-class devotion to the first-class cause, the cause that is the most important on earth. This is the truth. This is God's truth. When everything is said and done, when you've talked about challenges and hopes and dreams and convert parents and less active cousins and hard days with investigators who don't want to join the church, when everything is all said and done, the simple declarative fact of it all is that it's true. It's that Joseph saw the father and the son and the Book of Mormon is true and there really were plates and there really are angels. And not much else matters. And so we're still saying that. We're still saying that half a century later, maybe the Lord's hoping we'll get it right. I don't know. But we're privileged to have two young people like you lead us into this kind of a conversation. And if you're the future of this church, we're going to retire tomorrow. We're ready to hand this to you now. We're very proud of you and grateful for the divinity of this work. You've both been just wonderful. Thank you so much for your examples and for your testimony of this great work. And here's something you can do before you enter the MTC. Consider what you want to gain from your mission. Think about who you want to be when you get home. Think about yourself at the end of your mission, looking in the mirror. What do you want to see? What kind of attributes? What kind of talents? What kind of things do you want to have achieved? Think about it and write it down. And let's make a plan. Make a plan so that you can actually become that person. And we hope that you're able to learn and feel the spirit as we met with Elder Holland and other Cook. And we truly thank you for your willingness to serve a mission. And don't forget to set those goals, write them down and take them with you. So good luck with all of it. And have a great mission.