Mission
Members of the LDS Church believe that Jesus Christ will return in glory in his Second Coming. Howard W. Hunter, who was President of the church's Quorum of the Twelve at the time of the center's construction, pointed out that although there would be no proselyting from the center, it still served a valuable purpose. One church member quoted him this way: "Elder Hunter said that our mission was not to harvest, probably not even to plant, but to clear away a few more stones." Latter-day Saints often see the center as a way for them to show local Jews what the church is about by example, rather than by proselyting. This is done by the way students and faculty at the center live their lives, as well as through the hiring of both Israeli and Palestinian workers, as an example of what can be done through cooperation. During construction of the center, for example, the church hired as many as 300 workers at one time, with about 60% of them being Arab and the other 40% being Jewish. Similar cooperation continues today.
The center also strives to meet the goals of the BYU Mission statement, "to assist individuals in their quest for perfection and eternal life" as well as in their educational endeavors. The center aims to give students not only an educational experience by experiencing cultures and languages firsthand, but a spiritual experience by taking them to the sites of biblical events and encouraging them to live their lives in a Christian way.
Read more about this topic: BYU Jerusalem Center
Famous quotes containing the word mission:
“We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.”
—Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)
“The mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“I cannot be a materialist—but Oh, how is it possible that a God who speaks to all hearts can let Belgravia go laughing to a vicious luxury, and Whitechapel cursing to a filthy debauchery—such suffering, such dreadful suffering—and shall the short years of Christ’s mission atone for it all?”
—D.H. (David Herbert)