Hinckley announces new youth program
SALT LAKE CITY – The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has announced a new program designed to help LDS youth in Third World countries.
Church President Gordon B. Hinckley announced the program in the priesthood session of the church’s 171st annual general conference Saturday evening.
The program will begin this fall on a limited basis, with the first aid going to those who have served missions.
“We have resting upon us a very serious obligation,” Hinckley said.
“We face [a] problem in the church. We have many missionaries, both young men and young women, who are called locally and serve with honor in Mexico, Central America, South America, the Phillippines and other places,” Hinckley said.
But these missionaries return home from their missions to impoverished and destitute homes.
“Their future is bleak indeed,” Hinkley said.
To remedy the situation, Hinkley proposed the church establish an official program called the Perpetual Education Fund.
Modeled largely after the Perpetual Emigration Fund, a program founded by the Church in 1849 to help distressingly poor converts from the British Isles and Europe to come to Zion, the Perpetual Education Fund will be a revolving fund set up to provide loans to those young men and women so they can borrow money to attend school.
“Then when they qualify for employment, it is anticipated they will return that which they have borrowed, together with a small amount of interest designed as an incentive to repay the loan; thus making it possible for others to receive the same education opportunity,” he said.
Hinckley said this will be an all-volunteer program and will cost the church “essentially nothing.”
Hinckley foresees this helping the economies of the impoverished countries.
“Education is the key to opportunity,” he said.
The church also asked its members to offer a stronger missionary effort. Elder Geoffrey R. Holland, a member of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, invited members to become “a vast army with enthusiasm for this work [with a] great, overarching desire to assist the missionaries.”
Elder Robert D. Hales, also of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, spoke more specifically of the “urgent need for more mature couples to serve in the mission field.”
Holland admonished senior couples join the missionary effort by “increasing the pace of their shuffle.”
The church currently has more than 11 million members and 103 working temples.