Becoming A Full Time Missionary

Church pianist Lillian Greene retires after 77 years of playing for the Lord ...

Since age 12, when she first played for the Sunday School at the downtown Mobile church, Greene has been performing this hymn, and hundreds of others.

On a weekly basis, or more, she kept on playing at the church through the stages of her life — graduating from Dunbar school in 1939, marrying George Lee Greene, becoming a mother and grandmother, working for 29 years in the dining room at the old Merchants National Bank.

As a musician, she is a natural.

"I can hear it," she says, "I can play it. I don’t have to have music."

She says that her grandmother always wanted her to open the hymn book when she was practicing as a little girl.

She shakes her head.

"If I know the song," she says, "the Lord just puts it in me."

Born March 12, 1922, on what was then Davis Avenue — now Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue — Greene still lives in the neighborhood.

"You hadn’t been to Mobile if you hadn’t been to Davis Avenue," she says with pride in the old neighborhood.

She was raised by her grandmother, and they walked to the historic, African-American church — built in 1872 — several times each week.

"We were known as the ‘big shot’ church," she says, laughing, referring to the educators and professionals in the congregation. There were no cars in her family back then, she says, but that didn’t slow them down.

"I couldn’t get down here fast enough," she says.

Her church, she says, was the center of the community.

It was a traditional time, as she describes it, safer, more secure, than today.

People left their doors unlocked, she recalls, and walked to church at night when need be.

"Now you go out your door you’ve got to have burglar bars, burglar alarms."

And people got dressed up before they entered the sanctuary.

"The preacher said, ‘Don’t come to church with no pants on!’"

Women, she said, were not supposed to go "bare-legged" either.

"You know how much my stockings cost? 15 cents. That’s how cheap things were in those days."

Her favorite Bible verse is John 14:1 — "Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in me."

"This is the one I told them to play," she says, "when they’re rolling me out of this church."

Right now, though, she is only retiring. It’s just her feet that hurt so bad.

Melrose Mia Maids: Becoming a Missionary

All of us who have received the holy priesthood bear the sacred obligation to bless the nations and families of the earth by proclaiming the gospel and inviting all to receive by proper authority the ordinances of salvation. Many of us have served as full-time missionaries, some of us presently are serving as full-time missionaries, and all of us now are serving and will continue to serve as lifelong missionaries. We are missionaries every day in our families, in our schools, in our places of employment, and in our communities. Regardless of our age, experience, or station in life, we are all missionaries. Proclaiming the gospel is not an activity in which we periodically and temporarily engage. And our labors as missionaries certainly are not confined to the short period of time devoted to full-time missionary service in our youth or in our mature years. Rather, the obligation to proclaim the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is inherent in the oath and covenant of the priesthood into which we enter. Missionary work essentially is a priesthood responsibility, and all of us who hold the priesthood are the Lord’s authorized servants on the earth and are missionaries at all times and in all places—and we always will be. Our very identity as holders of the priesthood and the seed of Abraham is in large measure defined by the responsibility to proclaim the gospel. My message tonight is applicable to all of us in our priesthood duty to proclaim the gospel. My specific purpose in this priesthood meeting, however, is to talk candidly with the young men of the Church who are preparing for the call to serve as missionaries. The principles I will discuss with you are both simple and spiritually significant, and they should cause us to ponder, to evaluate, and to improve. I pray for the companionship of the Holy Ghost for me and for you as we consider together this important subject. The issue is not going to church; rather, the issue is worshipping and renewing covenants as we attend church. The issue is not going to or through the temple; rather, the issue is having in our hearts the spirit, the covenants, and the ordinances of the Lord’s house. The issue is not going on a mission; rather, the issue is becoming a missionary and serving throughout our entire life with all of our heart, might, mind, and strength. It is possible for a young man to  “… It is not enough for anyone just to go through the motions.

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