Mary Ellen Edmunds is a nurse—and a whole lot more. The popular speaker has written more than 12 books, been the director of training at the Missionary Training Center, was on the General Board for the Relief Society and has served many missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"My first mission call was in the Southern Far East," she said, "and I thought I was going to Florida. I could not imagine anywhere more eastern than that. My mother correctly suggested it was a little farther." Edmunds began her mission in Hong Kong where she was sent to Taiwan and to places, "without electricity, indoor toilets, even toilet paper." While there she found many content people who didn't have much materially, but who had much to share with each other.

She said she learned to love them, adding, "After two years I could not imagine heaven without everyone being there."

Along her way to visiting "many places with strange names" in Asia and Africa, Edmunds has found mentors who have changed her view of the world. She recalled giving a Pilipino couple (both new converts) a one dollar bill as the beginning of a temple marriage fund when they got married in the Philippines. Twenty five years later—with dozens of church callings behind them—they achieved that trip that led to their sealing.

In Nigeria she met Cecelia, a woman to whom she taught sanitary water methods. Cecelia became a volunteer leader for health projects and served as a Relief Society president for decades before finally being able to attend a temple and become sealed to her husband in 2007. "We all wept with joy," Edmunds says.

In Indonesia, she found a woman who put together small bags of rice for others who regularly asked her Heavenly Father who needed her, and, when she got her answer, would ride her bike to visit them. "I found people there who were living a higher law," she added.

And in the Philippines, she found a man who resembled President David O. McKay who asked to hear the story of Joseph Smith three times, and started to cry when he realized the prophet had been martyred. He joined the church.

"Many of my mentors speak different languages and had no ancestors who crossed the plains," she said. "But they taught me what it means to endure to the end, and I know the Lord showers blessings upon all these faithful children."

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