Just a few weeks ago I was invited to have a little visit with some of our servicemen who are in Kyoto, Japan. One of our brethren here in the valley telephoned me he had a licensed shortwave station and said, “If you will come down, Brother Smith, I will let you talk to the men and women in the armed services who are absent from their homes and are now over there serving the Government of the United States.” I did not know just what it was going to be like. I went to his little station, and after a moment or two he called a station and talked back, and forth with the man at the other end. That was the Philippine Islands, so he said: “We are not visiting with you today. We are going to visit Japan.” Then he switched from there to one of the other islands in the Pacific and told them the same thing. And then when he was ready, after a little conversation with the station in Japan, he said: “Now, Brother Smith, there are two hundred and three members of the Church that will hear your voice as soon as you speak.”

So I stood there for fifteen or twenty minutes and talked to them of the blessings of God bestowed upon them, of their lives being preserved during a terrible war, and of the love of those who are here waiting for their return. I urged them to keep the commandments of God and assured them that there was no other road to happiness but by keeping the commandments of God. I encouraged them to retain the fine records that they had already made and to come home clean and sweet to their loved ones with the favor of the Lord upon them.

When I had finished, they took their turn, and every of these men said: “Thank you, Brother Smith. It has been a great encouragement to us to hear a voice from the tops of the Rocky Mountains, one that some of us are familiar with, and to know that you are thinking of us and are anxious for us. We will not let you down.”

– George Albert Smith, 1946