Leaders & Ministry

President Ballard, Elder Stevenson address missionaries in Mexico MTC, speak of ‘declaring to the world that Jesus Christ is the Savior’

‘Your message — and my message — is the most glorious message that anyone could possibly receive at this time,’ said President M. Russell Ballard to missionaries at the Mexico MTC

By Sarah Jane Weaver Dec 10, 2022 1:01 p.m. EST

Leaders & Ministry

President Ballard, Elder Stevenson address missionaries in Mexico MTC, speak of ‘declaring to the world that Jesus Christ is the Savior’

‘Your message — and my message — is the most glorious message that anyone could possibly receive at this time,’ said President M. Russell Ballard to missionaries at the Mexico MTC

By Sarah Jane Weaver Dec 10, 2022 1:01 p.m. EST

MEXICO CITY — Surrounded by sparkling Christmas lights and gold and red holiday decorations at the Church’s Mexico City Missionary Training Center, President M. Russell Ballard testified of the “privilege of declaring to the world that Jesus Christ is the Savior and the redeemer of all mankind.”

“I hope you will study His life. I hope you will ponder as you read His teachings,” he told missionaries on Friday, Dec. 9. “May the Lord bless you to come to feel a relationship, a special spiritual relationship, with the Savior of the world.”

The meeting was the first held during a busy ministry weekend for President Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Accompanied by Elder Gary E. Stevenson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, President Ballard was also scheduled to participate in leadership training and member meetings in Mexico City — the largest city in North America.

Maneuvering traffic in the metropolitan area populated by 22 million people is humbling, said President Ballard. “Everywhere you look there are people. Who are they? They are sons and daughters of God.”

Sustained to the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1976 and then as an Apostle in 1985, President Ballard is the Church’s longest-serving general authority.

“I don’t know of anything in my ministry that I’ve enjoyed more over these almost 47 years than being with, and looking into the faces of, the missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” said the 94-year-old Church leader.

After surveying the Church’s 90-acre campus — previously Benemérito de las Américas high school — President Ballard told the missionaries they are on the “steppingstone” of the greatest experience they will have in their life: “to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

President Ballard, Elder Stevenson look to the future of the Church of Jesus Christ in Mexico

The impact of a mission

President Ballard served a mission in the British Isles in 1948 — just years after the end of World War II. There at Speaker’s Corner in London’s Hyde Park, on the first day of his mission, President Ballard offered a 90-second talk. “It was a disaster,” he said. That night he knelt in prayer and promised the Lord to never waste another opportunity to testify of the Savior again.

“You have the authority and power of God to teach our Father’s children,” he told the missionaries.

Speaking of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, President Ballard added that what “we know and what we have” is greatest of all blessings.

“Your message — and my message — is the most glorious message that anyone could possibly receive at this time,” he said. “I think we are at a day and time when our missionaries … need to be a little more bold. I think you need to be a little more willing to talk to people, wherever you find them.”

Missionary work, said President Ballard, is eternal. By sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ, “you are putting people on the path to eternal life,” he said.

“In this missionary training center we are preparing you for your missions — wherever you are going to be scattered into the world — that you can do great and marvelous things in teaching, testifying, baptizing and confirming more and more of our Heavenly Father’s children into the only true and living Church on the face of the earth — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Missionary toolkit

Elder Stevenson also spoke of missionary service. He shared a photograph of himself receiving a call to labor in Japan in 1974 — just about the same time President Ballard began his service as president of the Church’s Toronto Ontario Mission.

He also shared a photograph taken two years later as he was leaving his last area of his mission. “I have had the opportunity to look back now on my mission experience,” he said. “And I don’t know if a day goes by that I don’t have some thought, some feeling, some reflection, about my two years of service as a young missionary.”

Elder Stevenson, who serves on the Church’s Missionary Executive Council, spoke to the missionaries about using the missionary toolkit — the scriptures, “Preach my Gospel,” and the booklet containing missionary standards. “We diligently search the scriptures to understand the truth,” he said. “We feast on them because they open the door to revelation and show us what we need to do and become.”

President Ballard was “the architect” of “Preach My Gospel” — introduced to the world at the Church’s mission leadership seminar in 2004, the year Elder Stevenson and his wife began their service as mission leaders in Japan. The learnings from “Preach My Gospel” are “essential” and will bless missionaries every day of their life, said Elder Stevenson.

And “every time you are obedient to the rules and guidelines that you find in your handbook, you get a blessing.”

Elder Stevenson closed his remarks with his testimony of “Jesus Christ, our Savior and Redeemer, the son of the living God.

“I bear testimony that He lives, that His birth, His ministry, the suffering in the garden, the suffering on the cross, and His glorious resurrection, all together make the greatest gift that our loving Heavenly Father could give us.”

Elder Sean Douglas — participating with his wife, Sister Ann Douglas — conducted the meeting and shared brief remarks. “This is a day where you will receive many answers to prayers,” he told the missionaries. “Open your ears that you may hear and your hearts that you may feel.”

Missionary response

In preparation for the meeting, Elder Gonzalo Placido of Huánuco, Peru, studied the scriptures and his patriarchal blessing — which counsels him to focus on the words of prophets and apostles. He took three pages of notes as he listened to their talks.

President Ballard’s and Elder Stevenson’s words were not coincidental, he said. “I will remember them my whole life.”

As Sister Analyse Porter of Clearfield, Utah, listened to the devotional she felt the importance of her service as a missionary. “This is our work,” she said. “Our time is now. … Our mission is eternal.”

Elder Javier Bellon of Guadalajara, Mexico, said being taught by two apostles made him feel special.

Just as Elder Douglas promised, he received the answers to his questions. “Today I felt so happy,” he said. “I felt like the meeting was just for me.”

The story behind the Mexico MTC: How the Benemérito private school with 90-acre campus became one of the busiest MTCs

Sister Janeth Perez, the Church’s first service missionary from Mexico, works at the Missionary Training Center reception center and found great peace from the meeting. “Being a missionary is a blessing and a privilege,” she said.

Benemérito de las Americas

Elder Trey Bennett of Santaquin, Utah, said it is important that the gathering occurred at the Mexico Missionary Training Center — “a very holy place. It is a place you can feel God’s love.”

Once Benemérito de las Américas high school, where generations of leaders in Mexico were educated, the campus was converted to the MTC to respond to the historic surge in the number of Latter-day Saint missionaries after the Church lowered the age of eligibility of service for elders and sisters.

Today the training center not only prepares elders, sisters and couples who will serve in Mexico, but also in other countries of North, Central and South America.

Sister Marcela Taylor Pratt Sanchez graduated from Benemérito in 1978 and now serves on the campus with her husband, Elder Nicolas Sanchez, as MTC specialists. Her service “is like connecting with my history, with my roots,” she said. “It is just very meaningful.”

Sister Sanchez’s father, Daniel Taylor Pierce — then superintendent of Church schools in Mexico — and her grandfather, Harvey H. Taylor — then president of the Northern Mexican Mission — were instrumental in helping the Church buy the property for the school.

And the site will become even more sacred.

During April 2022, President Russell M. Nelson announced plans to build a temple on the grounds. Before leaving the MTC, President Ballard and Elder Stevenson visited the site of the future temple, walking around the picturesque location.

This place, Sister Sanchez said, “is very close to my heart. To be here is a little miracle.”