Spotlight: Missionaries

Linda Lindsay

Posted: Monday - May 22, 2023

It's Missionary Monday! Our message today is from Linda Lindsay, a member of the Guilford Ward who is serving a mission in Salt Lake City. We'll let her tell you what and how she's doing!

I am serving as a senior missionary in the Utah Salt Lake City Headquarters Mission. This mission is the smallest geographical mission and the largest senior missionary group in the world. My assignment is in the Church History Library. The Library has existed for a long time and was housed in a small portion of the Church Office Building. A new building just for the Library was built and dedicated in 2009. The Library is on the corner of North Temple and Main Street, just across Main Street from the Conference Center. It is open to the public Monday through Saturday.

We in the Library are divided into zones. I serve in the Library Services Zone. This means part of my duties are to greet those who enter our doors and direct them to whoever or wherever they need to be. We give tours of the public part of the Library, including the Foundations of Faith exhibit. This includes original documents of the First Vision, first copies of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, one page of the original manuscript of the Book of Mormon, a letter written to Emma Smith from Joseph Smith while he was in Liberty Jail and several other items basic to the foundation of our church.

When I’m not doing one of these things, I have a project I’m working on. If you go to the Church History Library website, you will find something called the Biographical Database which includes pioneers, missionaries and Mormon Battalion members from 1840 to early 1900s. The project we just finished included finding those who traveled west in one way or another and who are not in FamilySearch. Our objective was to identify as many of these 8000 people and match them to their families in FamilySearch. This was not an easy task. Not all these people were members of our church. I’m not certain how many of us were working on this project, but I know we found approximately 26% of these missing people. More than they expected us to!

I don’t know what my next project will be, but I do know it will be doing similar research to find people who should be in FamilySearch. This research is very exciting to me and I love doing it.

We work Monday-Friday from 9 to 5. Every morning we have a devotional before starting work. Sometimes the Monday devotional is a visiting general authority. Sometimes it’s our mission President, Douglas D. Holmes, or his counselors. Sometimes our Monday devotional is in the evening. Always wonderful and inspiring.

I work one Saturday a month, 10 to 3. I live in an apartment on the 6th floor with a wonderful view to the west and to the south. It’s about a ½ mile walk to the Library. Brigham Young’s grave is right next to the apartment, and I look over the beautiful park where he and others are buried.

Advice to others preparing to go on a mission: Do it! This mission is like no other mission. It’s probably the best mission, but there are other missions all over the world. Your children and grandchildren will be blessed by your service, and they will still be waiting for you when you return.