Why don’t you have a missionary service like other churches? Can people join?
Back in history the church was having quite a time dealing with the fact that they were not only polygamous but that they were supposed to be living the United Order. Both principles were considered by the faithful as fundamental to our church and salvation. The mandate of our faith base since 1886 was that some brethren were commissioned to keep alive those sacred fundamental principles. Historians have written volumes about it. By 1890 the manifesto was adopted and the fundamental principles went into hiding. Throughout our history many missionaries went far away to preach the gospel and while doing so realized that something had greatly changed in the church and particularly among the fundamental teachings. My father was one of those. He began preaching what the Prophet Joseph taught and soon discovered that the present leaders of the church and most of his siblings were much more wise and inspired in their minds than the Prophet Joseph was. But hard work, faith, prayer, study, and inspiration led him to find the brethren commissioned to keep our fundamentals alive and active. He lived out the remainder of his life as a missionary, teaching and preaching the same things taught by Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor and others.
Father joined the fundamentalist brethren. He had no aspirations, no coveteousness. He wasn’t interested in someone else’s wife nor their daughters. He tried to do what he was directed to do as faithfully as he thought possible. He helped others join. So have I and so do I.
It may be a surprise to discover that there are actually many families and people that are diligently trying to find the way that the Prophet Joseph taught as being the way to the Kingdom of God. I could name many that are just as my father was. They have studied, searched, prayed and prayed some more, all the while knowing that what they were doing was not popular with their friends, relatives and families. They are the best missionaries the church has ever known, and maybe has never known. They inspire everyone. They are not in the category of those who are just looking for wives because they aren’t. They are looking for a faith that rings true with a church that rings true with a message that rings true and a life that will take them back to where the heros of our yesteryear peacefully dwell in quiet friendship with their families, their brethren, their forefathers, their God. They don’t really need to join because they have already joined in the lifelong personal struggle that living this way becomes as we carefully hold onto that “rod of iron” or the unpopular word of God in our way back to Him.