INTERESTING MISSION FACTS

The missionary force exploded after President Monson announced in General Conference (October 2012) the age change for missionaries. 

As of March 31, 2014, there are:
Missionaries Serving        85,039
Missionaries Called          14,375
In Process                           6,306

64%     Elders
28%     Sisters
08%     Seniors  (that's us)

Fifty-eight new missions were created in 2013.  Our Tokyo South Mission was one of them. It is the smallest mission in Japan with one half of our missionaries under three transfers old. Our mission started with 76 missionaries and by the end of the year will be over 200 strong.

Sixteen million people reside within our mission boundaries and more than 5,000 contacts are made each week.  Our missionaries are outstanding and we all love, support and sustain our Mission President, President Wada. 

*Some missions have doubled and even tripled the number of sisters serving this past year.  We have 53 dedicated, hard working sister missionaries and were blessed to recently receive the first set of sister 

missionaries here in Yokosuka.  They have been a great asset.

*Gone are the days of flip charts, and flannel boards.  In select North America and international missions, the Missionary Department is distributing iPads and iPhones.  Our Tokyo South Missionaries received iPads in February which are downloaded with the electronic versions of the teaching pamphlets, Gospel Library and other audio-visual features in teaching lessons and progress of performance, goals and need.

In his concluding address at the June 2013 new mission presidents seminar, Elder L. Tom Perry of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles said, "I can see the future unfold before us to where we will have a greater opportunity to teach the gospel with the new methods, with new opportunities that we have never had."

He summarized his feelings of "hastening the work" this way:

"This is the most remarkable era in the history of the Church.  This is something that ranks with the great events that have happened in the past history, like the First Vision, like the gift of the Book of Mormon, like the Restoration of the gospel, like all the things that build the foundation for us to go forward and teach in our Heavenly Father's Kingdom."

May we remember the words of Elder Neil L. Anderson, "If you're not a full-time missionary with a missionary badge pinned on your coat, now is the time to paint one on your heart-painted, as Paul said,"not with ink, but with the Spirit of the Living God".  (April 2013 General Conference)