Don
Bosco was in love with the missions from his early years. In his young age, he
felt an interior voice calling him to preach the Gospel in mission lands. But
Fr. Cafasso guided him to fulfill God’s plan for another mission. Though Don
Bosco never went to the missions, he never abandoned his missionary ideal;
rather, he nurtured it in his heart. It was this zeal that inspired him to send
his sons as missionaries all over the world. One of his last recommendations
was: “Save many souls in the missions.”(Don
Bosco nel mondo 157) 
The
ideal of the missions was always alive in Don Bosco. In 1861 in the “dream” of
the magic lantern the Lord disclosed to him the future of the Salesian
Congregation. He showed him “an immense crowd of youth, from different
countries, speaking various languages… ‘They are all your sons’.”[VI
897-916].Eleven years later the Lord revealed to him the mission field for his
sons: Patagonia. The dream was rich in hope because Don Bosco saw that his
sons, with the help of the Blessed Virgin, were reaping abundant fruit where
others had failed. (X: 54—55). After this dream “he felt his zeal for the
missions burning bright, but he could not understand where the crowd of young
people belonged. (X 1267).