In a 2015 Seminar for New Mission Presidents, President Henry B. Eyring told about how he used one of his unique hobbies to remember a life lesson he learned from President Gordon B. Hinckley.
► You'll also like:21 Inspiring Pieces of Art by President Eyring
“Our greatest opportunity and our greatest challenge is to bear witness that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, and that He gave His life for the sins of each of us,” President Eyring said in the seminar, starting his remarks with a memory he had of another missionary seminar he attended long ago.
“I listened then as President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke. He didn’t say why every mission president and his wife had chosen to serve; instead he told them why the Lord had called them. He urged them to take this sentence as their personal charge: ‘My mission is to bless.’”
After hearing those words, President Eyring was so deeply impressed and his so deeply heart touched that he decided to carve them into a wooden plaque.
“It hung on the wall of our home while our four sons grew up and left to serve—two in Japan, one in Chile, and one in the Netherlands. They looked at it when they came home to visit us as they each served as a bishop. I read it as I left to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ to the children of Heavenly Father across the world.”
What a great reminder that five-word phrase is to all members around the world. Our mission is to bless. Because we have been given the truths of the gospel and know of the fulness of God and our Savior's love, our duty is to bless others through sharing that knowledge, through uplifting the desolate and weary, through serving and loving, and through spreading the Lord's charity throughout the world.