So this is how a mission ends?

Dear Everybody,

I have thought long and hard this past week what I wanted to say. What is my final message? I thought of a lot of great movie references and quotes, including after seeing the video of how my cousin came home from his mission:

“So this is how a mission ends? With thunderous applause.”

I have thought often as we drive through the hill country of the Erzgebirge looking out on to the cities where I have worked for the past five weeks and thought on the lament of the Savior to the cities that rejected them. Not that I find my situation anyway comparable, but I could just imagine him sitting on the Mount Olivet looking at Jerusalem, knowing that the end was near, lamenting the wickedness of the people he had labored so diligently to serve.

I wish I could talk to every single person down in the valley and villages within my view.

That is left to someone else. My new mission is elsewhere.

Our mission has sixteen baptismal dates this week. The work of the Lord will continue. I am just changing roles.

I have labored as an ordained missionary and soon I will labor as one set apart by testimony and not the laying on of hands.

It is my testimony that the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the Earth. That God has not ceased to speak the same way that he has always spoken to mankind- Through an ordained prophet. I testify of the literal resurrection of Jesus Christ. He lives.

For the last time with the title,

Elder Evan Perez