Good Afternoon Brothers & Sisters, For those of you who dont know me, my name is Ashley Dyer.

I am 20 years old and recently finished my sophomore year at BYU Provo. As many of you know, I recently received my mission call to the Brazil Natal mission speaking Portuguese and will be reporting to the MTC on September 11th. Today I was asked to speak about the blessings of missionary work. Although, I am not yet serving a fulltime mission, I want to speak today about my decision to serve a mission and the blessings I believe you can both receive and give as you participate in missionary work. Ever since I was a little girl, I knew I wanted to be a missionary. In Primary I enthusiastically sang I hope theyll call me on a mission and dreamt about the place the Lord would call me to serve someday. So when President Monson announced the lowered age requirement for missionaries (boys to 18 and girls to 19), I was overjoyed and knew at once that I wanted to serve my mission this summer. However, after deciding that I was going to serve a mission, I was soon faced with the question Why? Although I had always known that I wanted to serve a mission, I never truly contemplated why I wanted to go. As I have thought about this question over the last few months, I have finally discovered three reasons why I have such a strong desire to be a missionary, and I want to share them with you today. The first reason is to feel charity. During my youth, I discovered a passion for service that I still strongly hold to this day. As I participated in service activities with the Young Women and with my classmates at school, I felt a strong love for those I served and those I served with. In high school, I had the opportunity to go to Bangladesh with a Habitat for Humanity group to help build homes in a rural area there. From the moment I met the precious people of the village I was working in, I recognized that they were children of God and felt an overpowering love for them. I worked hard each day washing bricks and shoveling mortar as the children sat in circles around me chattering to me in a language I did not understand. As I participated in this amazing service opportunity and spent time with these wonderful children of God, I felt so much love for them and for my Father in Heaven for giving me the opportunity to serve them. As I reflect on this experience and many other similar ones, I finally recognize the one true word that describes the feelings I have as I serve children of God, and that is charity. In the scriptures it states, charity is the pure love of Christwhich sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all thingsYea, and the

most joyous to the soul. (Moroni 7:47, 1 Nephi 11:22-23) After reading this scripture, I recognized that the first reason why I truly want to serve a mission is because through this act of service, I know that I will be blessed with charity and begin to feel the love that I know Christ has for every child of God. The second reason that I want to serve a mission is to share my joy. Whenever I find something that makes me happy, I have a strong desire to share it with others, whether it is a funny youtube video, a touching story, or a catchy song. My aunts on my Moms side of the family are a few people who are hard to compete with when it comes to sharing joy. Whenever my family and I go visit them, they always have a bunch of goodies for us. Whether it is Northface coats or New Balance tennis shoes, they find things that they love and decide to buy us some too. So after visiting my aunts in Colorado a couple months ago, I came back home with a lot of shared joy and hopefully Ill be able to share that same joy with my sister when I leave on my mission, because I wont be able to wear or use it for a year and a half. In my mind, joy is synonymous with the gospel. I find joy as I read the scriptures, pray to the Lord, visit the temple, and follow the example of the Savior. This last semester, I had the opportunity to share my joy with others as I invited my friend to pray when he was going through a difficult time and when I taught the first discussion to my aunt and spoke with her about my decision to serve a mission and eventually brought her to Church with me one Sunday. Through these experiences, I realized that I want to serve a mission, because it will give me great joy and also give me an amazing chance to share my joy with others. The third reason I want to serve a mission is to give back to the world what I have been given. When I was 12-years-old and living here in Shanghai, I had an experience one night that I will never forget. While I was walking in town with my family, a poor beggar woman came up to me asking for money. I sadly told her that I had no money at the time but, as I turned to leave, she pointed to a small loaf of bread I held in my hand. I willingly gave her the loaf and, after seeing that she had children, my family and I gave her all the loaves of bread we had just purchased at a local bakery. Through this experience, my eyes were opened, and I recognized that this woman and her children were children of God who had divine nature and individual worth in the eyes of the Lord and that I too was a child of God helping my fellow brothers and sisters in a time of need. Christ said, "Give me everything you have, and I will feed the multitude," and although the experience I had was a small application of this commandment, the

joy and the blessings I received from this experience strengthened my testimony of Christs love for me and for each of His children here on earth. Before making the decision to serve a mission, I recognized that it would involve giving 18 months of my life to the Lord and there are many people I know who are confounded by my decision to sacrifice a year and a half of my life in a country I have never been to, speaking a language I do not know yet, talking to complete strangers about my beliefs. However, rather than looking at my mission as a sacrifice, I truly see it as a small tithe. As a well-known hymn states, I feel that Because I have been given much, I too must give. Because of thy great bounty Lord each day I live. / I shall divide my gifts from thee with every brother that I see / who has the need of help from me. I have been blessed so much in this life. I have been blessed with a loving family. I dont need to go around begging for food and money. And I have been blessed with the gospel of Christ, with the knowledge that I am a child of God, with the knowledge that I can pray to my Father in Heaven and He will hear me, with the knowledge that I can be together with my family forever. I want to give this knowledge and these blessings to those who have not yet been blessed with the same things I have been blessed with. So to sum it up, I want to serve a mission so that I can feel charity, share my joy, and give back. These are some of the blessings I hope I can both receive and give as I participate in the Lords work; because, if you think about it, although those who participate in missionary work do receive great and countless blessings, they are also offered the opportunity to give some of the greatest blessings to their fellow brothers and sisters. To all of you Young Men out there, I know that you guys will be great missionaries if you decide to serve missions. And to all of you Young Women, I dont want you to feel obligated to serve a full-time mission. However, from what Ive heard, if you do choose to serve a mission, you will not regret it. I know that it may seem hard to participate in missionary work here in China with the government restrictions on proselyting. But I hope all of you recognize that, in the end, all it comes down to is helping people remember that they are children of a God who knows and loves them each individually. I know that as you act upon your faith now, you too can both enjoy and offer up the blessings of missionary work no matter where you are in the world. Quoting from my favorite missionary book, Some people plant the seeds, some water and nurture them, and some pick the harvest, and it doesnt matter who does what, as long as it gets done (Blackhurst, Turning Hearts). So, even though we might not have many chances to pick the harvest here in

China, plant a seed or water and nurture a blossom, because someday (thanks to your contribution) that seed will bloom into a beautiful flower, which will go on to produce multiple generations of seeds and flowers forever. And as you participate in the Lords work, remember the words of M. Russell Ballard when speaking of missionary work in his book Our Search For Happiness, You can never do more for the Lord than He can do for you. I just want to bear my testimony that I know that this Church is true and that we are all children of God. I promise you that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a true prophet; and I promise you that President Thomas S. Monson is our prophet today. I know that he receives revelations from the Lord so that we can press forward in the footsteps of the Savior and spread His gospel here upon this earth. I love all of you and want to thank you for your prayers and support when I leave on my mission in 2 weeks. And I just wanted to end with a little bit of Portuguese and say: Em nome de Jesus Cristo, amem.