by President Joseph Fielding Smith

“To succeed in sharing the gospel, whether as full-time missionaries or as member missionaries, you must have a burning testimony of the divinity of this work. Your first obligation is to get that testimony through prayer, through fasting, through meditation, through study, through appealing to the Lord to give you the testimony, and through responding to calls when they come to you. You must know that God lives; that Jesus is the Christ, the Redeemer of the world; that Joseph Smith is a prophet of God; and that the priesthood and authority of our Heavenly Father is here.”

(Joseph Fielding Smith, “The Message,” New Era, Jan. 1971, 4)