Facts and Statistics

In 1843, Joseph Toronto (born Giuseppe Taranto) became the first known Italian convert to the Church when he was baptized in Boston, Massachusetts. In 1849, Toronto was among the first missionaries to his homeland when he accompanied Apostle Lorenzo Snow and others in opening the mission. This first mission was short-lived; it was closed in 1867.

In 1910, Vincenzo di Francesca gained a testimony of the Book of Mormon while living in New York City; he continued to live by its precepts after he returned to Italy in 1914, though he did not learn for years where the book came from. The Church was not reestablished in Italy until the 1950s, when a number of Italians learned of the gospel in other countries and returned home to share the message with friends and family. The first Italian-speaking branches were formed in Brescia and Palermo.

In 1966, the Italian Mission was reestablished with headquarters in Rome. Over the last 50 years, the Church has made steady progress. The Italian Saints, like their counterparts in former days, are a people who “live by faith” (Romans 1:17) and are “full of goodness” (Romans 15:14). In 2008, when the Church announced a temple would be built in Rome, there were more than 20,000 members in Italy.

In October 2016, Massimo De Feo became the first Italian native called as a General Authority Seventy. On March 9, 2019, President Russell M. Nelson became the first leader of the Church to have a formal audience at the Vatican with the pope. President Nelson was accompanied by Elder De Feo and President M. Russell Ballard, Acting President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

From March 10 to March 12, 2019, the Rome Italy Temple was dedicated in seven dedicatory sessions. President Nelson conducted the symbolic cornerstone ceremony and read the dedicatory prayer. All Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ participated in the dedicatory services. This was the first time the entire First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles gathered in one location outside the United States.

Remo Sicardi
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In 1832, a few citizens of Connecticut joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Connecticut. In 1833, Wilford Woodruff, who later became a well-known missionary and Church President, joined the Church. In 1838, Woodruff returned to his hometown of Farmington and shared his faith with his family members. Afterward, Woodruff’s father, stepmother and sister and three others were baptized and formed part of a small congregation in Farmington. In the years following the death of Church Founder and President Joseph Smith in 1844, many Latter-day Saints on the East Coast migrated westward to join with the body of Church members traveling to the Great Basin. But near the end of the 19th century, Latter-day Saint missionaries once again traveled to the eastern United States to establish congregations.

Church membership in Connecticut in 1930 was 198. Connecticut’s first meetinghouse was completed in Hartford in 1952. Other congregations began to form, such as a branch in Ashford, which was established in 1977 and which dedicated a meetinghouse in 1982. In 2016, the Hartford Connecticut Temple, located in Farmington, was dedicated. Several Latter-day Saints on the faculty of Yale University have helped to build the Beinecke Library’s collection of Latter-day Saint historical documents, which is one of the largest outside of Utah.

Church members have regularly engaged in service within their communities in a variety of ways. For instance, in 1982, the Ashford Branch planted 100 blueberry bushes to serve as a resource for the hungry. More recently, Latter-day Saints can be seen participating in activities to improve schools, parks and other community resources.

In May 1966, Elder Spencer W. Kimball of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and a small group of missionaries traveled to Bogotá, where Elder Kimball dedicated Colombia for the preaching of the gospel and organized the first branch in the country. The gospel spread quickly from there; within months missionaries had begun preaching in Cali, Medellín, Pereira, and Bucaramanga. Colombians accepted the gospel so readily that a mission was organized in Colombia in 1971.

Church growth after the creation of the mission accelerated even more quickly. By 1977, when the first stake in Colombia was created in Bogotá, nearly 12,000 members were living in the country. In April 1984, Colombian Saints celebrated the announcement of a temple in the country. However, ongoing difficulty with land acquisition and construction delayed the project. In the meantime, many Colombian Saints made significant sacrifices to attend the temple in other countries. In April 1999, 15 years after the temple was announced, it was finally dedicated. On the first day the temple was open, Saints participated in ordinances around the clock. A second temple, in Barranquilla, was dedicated in 2018.

Colombian Saints have frequently reached out in love and kindness to their neighbors and exemplified true servants of Christ by doing “the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:6). In 2016, to celebrate the Church’s 50th anniversary in Colombia, Saints from all over the country participated in service projects, blood drives, family history exhibitions, and interfaith dialogues across the country.
 

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Beginning in 1846, thousands of early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints made camps in Native American country along the banks of the Missouri River in what is now Nebraska. The first Winter Quarters camps provided critical winter respite for pioneers who had been driven from their homes in Nauvoo, Illinois, and were on their way to the Great Basin. Still, several hundred died there from exposure, poor nutrition, and poor sanitation. Later camps, like the one in the hamlet of Wyoming, Nebraska, served as outfitting posts for the continuing migration of Latter-day Saints to the Salt Lake Valley. As the railroad extended westward, most of these settlements were abandoned or absorbed into other communities.

Several monuments and historic markers honor early Latter-day Saints’ migration through Nebraska. In 1997, the Church dedicated the Mormon Trail Center at Winter Quarters to educate the public about the contribution to westward expansion made by Latter-day Saint pioneers who traveled through Nebraska. In April 2001, the Church dedicated the Winter Quarters Nebraska Temple on ground adjacent to the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery.

The Church grew slowly in Nebraska with sporadic proselytizing and had only a few members there until 1896, when the first congregation was organized. In 1916, a Sunday School was established in Lincoln, but it was not until 1960 that a stake was created in Lincoln — the first in the Cornhusker State. There are currently stakes in Kearney and Lincoln and three in Omaha.

Church members regularly provide community aid and help in disaster cleanup efforts. Examples include cleaning up after a devastating storm in Blair, Nebraska, and helping refugee resettlement.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints visited Albania in 1991 and sent the first Latter-day Saint missionaries there in June 1992. These missionaries included four who preached and one married couple who assisted with agricultural projects. In 1994 Albania was among the Eastern European nations receiving shipments of food and other humanitarian relief supplies from the Church. Church leaders established the Albania Tirana Mission in July 1996. The first Latter-day Saint Albanian couple was married in the Church's Frankfurt Germany Temple in April 2000.

The first Church meetinghouse in Albania was built in Durrës and was finished in 2006. In 2009, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited Albania and attended the opening of a school for Roma children. He also met with Krenar Loloci, one of the original drafters of the Albanian constitution. The Tirana Albania Stake (large congregation) was created on March 9, 2014. In September of 2014, Albania’s First Lady, Odeta Nishani, met with Church leaders and members in the Durrës meetinghouse. The children sang “I Am a Child of God” and presented her with a bouquet of flowers. She also received a book about Church humanitarian work and a sculpture of a family.

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The nightly preachings of George J. Adams brought an audience of some 1,200 in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1843. At that time, there were some 14 branches (small congregations) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Boston area. Eleven years prior, the first missionaries for the Church arrived in Boston to organize congregations. Church President Joseph Smith passed through Boston on his way to Washington, D.C., in 1839. After President Smith was martyred in 1844, several members in Massachusetts joined the mass exodus west, and missionary work in the state slowed.

In 1894, one year after the area was reopened to missionaries, Church membership was 96. A decade later, missionaries encountered hostilities toward the Church during the highly-publicized United States Senate hearings on Church leader and Senator-elect Reed Smoot, and police disallowed missionaries to hold open-air meetings. By 1930, membership was nearly 360, some of whom were recently-returned missionaries studying at Harvard University. Cambridge, Massachusetts, became the headquarters for the New England States Mission. A Church building was dedicated in the area in 1956.

The Church completed and dedicated the Boston Massachusetts Temple in 2000, marking the 100th operating temple in the Church.

In the early 1900s, a few Croatian converts who had joined the Church abroad returned to share the gospel in their country. John Stosich (also known as Janko Stošić), who was baptized in the United States, preached as a missionary in Zagreb in 1911. Eviza Arbić Vujičić, who was baptized in Hungary, returned to Yugoslavia when it became a country in 1918, and she kept the faith in relative isolation until her death in 1937.

In 1971 another Croatian joined the Church abroad: basketball player Krešimir Ćosić embraced the restored gospel while a student at Brigham Young University. Later, over the course of his professional basketball career in Croatia, he followed Christ’s call to “let your light … shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). Ćosić helped translate the Book of Mormon into Serbo-Croatian, and he also helped secure permission for missionaries to enter the country.
 

The first branch in Croatia was organized in 1974 in Ćosić’s hometown of Zadar. The Church continued to spread to other cities, and a district was formed in 1980, with headquarters in Zagreb. In 2012 nearly 400 people from Croatia and its neighboring countries gathered near Zadar to commemorate the local history of the Church and to train leaders for its future.

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In 1851, Latter-day Saints from Utah established a trading post in western Nevada, just east of Lake Tahoe. This trading post became known as Mormon Station, and Nevada’s first non-Native-American settlement grew up around it. Elder Orson Hyde, an apostle, named the community Genoa.

In 1855, 30 Latter-day Saints from Utah traveled to the Meadows (Las Vegas) alongside the spring and creek flowing through the Las Vegas valley and built a fort there. This fort later became the site of a ranch, and after the arrival of the railroad in 1905, which sparked a development boom, the ranch and surrounding lands became downtown Las Vegas.

In 1864, a group of Latter-day Saints established a settlement in Panaca. By 1869, there were also Latter-day Saint settlements in the Muddy River area, including St. Joseph, Overton, West Point and Junction City. In 1883 a branch was organized at Overton, and in 1912 Overton became the headquarters of Nevada’s first permanent stake, the Moapa Stake.

In the late 1920s, many Latter-day Saints moved from Utah to Nevada in search of better economic conditions. The Las Vegas Stake was created in 1954. Church members also moved to northern Nevada, particularly Elko and Ely. Currently there are over 180,000 Latter-day Saints in Nevada. Some prominent Nevada Latter-day Saints include U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who served from 1987 to 2017, and musician Brandon Flowers.

The Las Vegas Nevada Temple was dedicated in 1989. In 2000, the Reno Nevada Temple was dedicated. In 2021, a third temple was announced for Elko.

As early as 1832, two Rhode Islanders in Providence joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but a Providence branch was not formed until four years later. Missionaries baptized two converts in Rhode Island before opposition drove them out in 1832. In 1844 a congregation was formed in Newport with 221 members.  During the late 1840s and 1850s, many converts immigrated west to gather with fellow Church members in the Great Basin. Some Latter-day Saints coming from the British Isles stopped in Rhode Island on their way west. In 1876, Erastus Snow wrote that he and another missionary met with Saints in Pawtucket who were on their way to the Great Basin from England. In the late 19th century, Latter-day Saint missionaries again began to do the work of preaching and organizing congregations in the eastern United States.

The congregation in Providence met irregularly until 1937, when the Providence Branch began meeting in members’ homes. Members eventually purchased and remodeled a private library that they dedicated as a meetinghouse on June 14, 1944. This library space served as a meetinghouse until 1960. In 1977 the Providence Stake was created. Currently there are over 4,000 Latter-day Saints in eight congregations in Rhode Island. Latter-day Saints in Rhode Island are engaged members of their communities, volunteering service such as cleanup efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

An official branch (a small congregation) was organized in July 1956, missionaries began preaching in August, and a Church building was purchased in November. Prior to this, Latter-day Saint families living in Peru held group meetings. In 1959, when the Andes Mission was organized, there were 300 members in five congregations.

In January 1988, 32 years after missionary work began in Peru, seven stakes (diocese) were created in one weekend by a visiting Church Apostle, Elder M. Russell Ballard.

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• In the early 2000s, the nly Church activity in Senegal consisted of intermittent meetings of Latter-day Saints from around the world who had come to the country for a short time to work. These faithful Saints organized temporary Church groups and held meetings in their homes. As they left the country for other work assignments, however, the groups would dissolve.
• In 2014, after the departure of several American families, only two members remained: Ben Faour, a French businessman, and Chung Hung “James” Chen, a Taiwanese fisherman. Together, Faour and Chen taught the gospel to their neighbors and worked to establish a Church group in Dakar, the county’s capital. The group was soon joined by the Niambé and Samadé families, both from Côte d’Ivoire, and thus the Church found its first permanent anchors in Senegal.
• In 2016 the first branch in Dakar was organized, and missionaries arrived in the country. Less than two years later, a second branch was organized, and members continue to enthusiastically share the gospel. When Elder Neil L. Andersen and Elder Ulisses Soares visited Senegal in May 2018, more than 120 members and friends attended the service. Through their faith and diligence, the Saints in Senegal have helped in the Savior’s work of preparing “a way that thereby others might be partakers of the heavenly gift” (Ether 12:8).

Missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Delaware Valley in 1837. Joseph Smith, the Church’s founder, traveled through the Wilmington area in 1839. Local converts established small congregations in Wilmington, Centerville and Christiana. In the 1840s, many church members left Delaware to gather with the main body of Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo, Illinois. After the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, many remaining Latter-day Saints joined the mass exodus to the west. Church activity in Delaware ceased for around 100 years.

In 1941, a branch was organized, and in 1945 missionary work recommenced. In 1974, the Wilmington Stake was formed. Latter-day Saints in Delaware formed a tight-knit community with activities such as basketball tournaments and dances for young women and young men, scouting, and outdoor camps. Today, church members in Delaware regularly engage in projects to serve the community, such as the 2013 “Saturday in the Park” park cleanup events held in Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, and Ohio. Currently there are over 5,500 Latter-day Saints in Delaware in 12 congregations.

Elder Parley P. Pratt of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles served a mission in Chile in 1851–52, but it was another century before the Church was permanently established in the country. In 1952 Billie F. Fotheringham and his family moved to Chile, secured government permission for missionaries to enter the country, and petitioned the Church to establish a mission. Missionaries arrived, and the Santiago Branch was organized in 1956.

The Church grew quickly in Chile. In 1983 the first temple in Spanish-speaking South America was dedicated in Santiago. By 1984 there were stakes spread across the country, from Arica in the north to Punta Arenas in the south, and by 1999 there were more than half a million members of record in the country.

With rapid growth came significant challenges. Chilean Saints responded by pioneering efforts to build a more solid foundation for the kingdom of God in rapidly developing areas throughout the world. In 2001 Chilean Saints were among the first to participate in the Perpetual Education Fund. From 2002 to 2004, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles served as Chile’s Area President, training leaders and gathering insights that would benefit the Church elsewhere.

Church members in Chile have offered assistance to those in need. Since the 1960 earthquakes in Concepción and Valdivia, Chilean Saints have played a role in disaster relief efforts. In 2004 the Church was also recognized by the Chilean government for its efforts fighting poverty.

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Valentín Nuñez
Santiago,
Chile
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Latter-day Saint military servicemen began holding Church meetings in Guajataca in 1947. In January 1964, the first missionaries arrived and the first convert, a serviceman, was baptized in February. The first Puerto Rican joined the Church the following month.

Spanish-speaking missionaries were sent to Puerto Rico, and a Spanish-speaking congregation was organized in 1970. That same year, the first meetinghouse opened and home seminary, a youth religious study program, began in Puerto Rico.

In 1979, membership was 1,900. Church President Spencer W. Kimball visited members in 1981.

By 1987, membership had increased to 12,000. Despite the move of several military Church members from Puerto Rico in 1993, membership had reached 19,700 in the area.

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In 1832, Joseph Smith, first President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, visited the portion of Virginia that later became West Virginia to purchase paper for the Church’s printing press. That same year, two missionaries for the Church baptized 40 converts in that part of the state. Missionaries continued to preach in the area during the 1830s, resulting in hundreds of men and women joining the Church. Many of these converts eventually moved from the area to gather with the main body of Church members in Far West, Missouri. One convert, Bathsheba Wilson Bigler Smith, who was baptized in 1837, said, “The spirit of gathering with the Saints in Missouri came upon me. . . . About this time my father sold his farm in West Virginia and we started for Far West.” Smith later served as a Churchwide leader of the women’s organization, the Relief Society. During the 1840s, missionaries frequently stopped to preach in Wheeling on their journeys to Washington, D. C.

In 1884, a congregation of 26 people was organized in the state. The first stake in West Virginia was created in 1970. Church membership in West Virginia has grown by 70% since 1989. There are now more than 17,000 Church members in the state organized across four stakes. The Church has frequently partnered with civic and community leaders on humanitarian causes in West Virginia.

A convert from Turkey, Mischa Markow, is likely the first member to arrive in Belgium in 1888. He preached to the Esselman family and baptized the mother and son. The other four family members were baptized later. Missionaries laboring in Switzerland and Germany were also sent to Belgium. Within two months they baptized 80 people and organized congregations in Liège, Brussels, and Antwerp. In 1896, a mob of nearly 500 people threatened to kill a missionary, Elder John Ripplinger, in Liège. The mob stormed the home where he was staying, but was dispersed by police. Elder Ripplinger remained in the city and baptized 10 people.

In the early years, the Church held its meetings in rented halls. The first regular chapels built for French-speaking members in Europe were at Liège, Seraing, and Herstal. They were all completed in the 1930s. The Herstal chapel was dedicated in 1937 by Heber J. Grant, President of the Church. The next visit to Belgium by a President of the Church came in June of 1996 when current Church President Gordon B. Hinckley spoke to members and missionaries.

During the German occupation of Belgium in World War II, members in six branches (small congregations) remained active. Work progressed slowly after the war. Today members total approximately 6,000, many of them second, third, and fourth generation members of the Church. Local meetinghouses serve as the location for Church activities of all kinds. In addition to sacrament meetings, Primary classes for children, and meetings for women and youth groups, there are sport activities, such as table tennis, basketball, and volleyball. Additionally, there are cultural events, such as dancing, musical, and theatrical performances.

High ideals are taught with strong emphasis on family life, abstinence from alcohol and tobacco, and commitment to high moral principles that characterize Latter-day Saint beliefs. Converts come from a wide age range and from all socioeconomic groups.

Humanitarian services totaling millions of dollars have been given worldwide. Relief without regard to race, nationality, or religion is given. Food, clothing, medical supplies, and economic aid continue to alleviate the suffering of deprived people. European nations, and more recently, Eastern Europeans receive special assistance. In June 1998 the world-renowned Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square performed in Brussels, and they were filmed by the State Radio and Television network for rebroadcast.

In March 2014, Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles traveled to Brussels to oversee the inauguration of the Church’s new European Union office. At the bomb blast at the Brussels Airport in March 2016, four missionaries were injured. In May of the same year, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, second counselor in the First Presidency visited the Saints in Belgium together with his wife Harriet to express thanks to the members for the outreach to refugees who have been coming to Europe. In July, the Tabernacle Choir performed in Brussels. In 2018, the first native Belgian mission president Johan Buysse was called to preside over the Belgium Netherlands Mission. He and his wife, Linda, began their assignment on July 1, 2018.

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Possibly the first missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Florida was Phineas Young, who served a two-month mission in 1845. The first missionaries were not well-received. From 1869 to 1929 law officers met each train arriving in Tallahassee and prevented Latter-day Saint elders from getting off. As late as 1895, history notes that two elders were arrested and given the choice to leave or pay a $200 fine. In 1898, one Church congregational leader was murdered. In spite of such persecution, missionaries continued to preach in Florida. The state's first official Church congregation was created in Jefferson County in 1897. By 1904 there were 1,230 Church members in Florida.

Church growth in Florida was slow until Latter-day Saints from the West moved to Florida, drawn by a strong commerce and the aerospace industry.

In 1854, four missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints serving in California were sent to labor in the Washington and Oregon territories. Enough converts joined to form a congregation along the Lewis River. During those early years, animosity against the Church members was so strong in Washington that when one convert died in 1911, her grave was dedicated secretly at night.

Many Church members helped with Washington's railroad construction for the Northern Pacific Oregon Short Line in the 1880s. In 1930, Church membership in Washington was 1,900 in eight congregations, with chapels in Everett, Spokane, Seattle, and Olympia. Many members flocked to the state with the completion of the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia River in the early 1940s. A temple was completed in Seattle in 1980.

The Spokane and Columbia River Washington Temples were completed and dedicated in 1999 and 2001, respectively.

Latter-day Saint immigrants first arrived in San Francisco in 1846. They built communities in the area as they progressed toward the Great Basin. In January 1847, the Mormon Battalion, a group of Latter-day Saints preparing to fight in the Mexican-American War, arrived in San Diego. Six Battalion members were at Sutter's Mill in January 1848, when gold was discovered.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints colony of New Hope was founded in 1850. The first Church building was completed that same year. In 1851, Church leaders encouraged colonization in San Bernardino to augment a travel route from the coast for Utah-bound Saints. The land boom of the 1920s also attracted many members to California. Today, along with several temples, California has more missions than any other state. Additionally, members have cooperated to provide relief for communities after earthquakes, fires, and floods.

In 1874, Melitón González Trejo, an officer in the Spanish army, came to Utah to learn more about the “group of Saints” he had heard about from a fellow officer. He was soon baptized and became indispensable to the work of translating the Book of Mormon into Spanish, which opened doors to the preaching of the gospel in Latin America.

The first members of the Church in Spain were baptized during the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, non-Catholic religious ceremonies were illegal, so most converts traveled to France to be baptized. The Church in Spain grew as new members shared the gospel with their family and friends. After the law granting religious freedom was passed in 1967, an independent Spanish branch was organized in Madrid. The Church was legally recognized in October 1968.

Today, more than 59,000 Saints across Spain are “remembering without ceasing [their] work of faith, and labour of love” (1 Thessalonians 1:3). They have been honored by their communities for their examples of service and faith, and they actively advance the work of the Lord by sharing the gospel and serving in the temple.

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Sergio Flores
Zaragoza
Spain
Phone:  00 34 976 275 149

The first meeting of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Arkansas occurred in 1835 under the direction of missionaries Wilford Woodruff and Henry Brown. Missionaries continued to preach in Arkansas after the main body of Church members moved to Utah Territory in the late 1840s. In 1857, Parley P. Pratt, a member of the Church's Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was murdered near Van Buren, Arkansas. 

During the American Civil War and in its immediate aftermath, the Church’s presence in Arkansas was severely limited. Then, in 1875, missionaries baptized nearly 90 people in the Des Arc area — “many of the best citizens of the region,” it was reported. In 1877, the Des Arc congregations moved approximately 27 families and 125 people to Utah by wagon. In 1969 the Church formed its first stake in Arkansas, centered in Little Rock. Elder David A. Bednar of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles was a prominent member of the Church in Arkansas during the 1980s and 1990s. Bednar was on the faculty of the University of Arkansas and served as a stake president.

There are currently more than 30,000 Church members living in Arkansas organized into seven stakes. In October 2019, the Church announced its plans to construct a temple in Bentonville.

Some of the earliest meetings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in North Carolina “caused the greatest stirs imaginable,” recalled missionary Elder John Eldridge about his time in the state in 1844. “I never thought that one poor mortal could make such a stir.”

The first missionary to North Carolina, Jedediah M. Grant, had traveled to the state five years before Eldridge. By 1845, missionaries had organized seven congregations of more than 200 Church members. When Grant left the state, membership had increased to 350. Missionary work was interrupted in the late 1840s as many Church members traveled west to escape persecution, and it came to a halt in the state during the Civil War and in its immediate aftermath before resuming in the mid-1870s.

In November 1894, Church leaders encouraged members to stay in their state rather than migrating west to Utah. During the next five years, nearly 700 people were baptized, seven Church buildings constructed, 30 Sunday Schools organized, and 20 congregations established. Despite this growth, opposition to the Church did not fully subside. A newly completed meetinghouse on Harker’s Island was burned and missionaries were driven out by a mob in 1906. Harsh attitudes gradually moderated in the 20th century, and missionaries discovered more freedom to preach.

In 1948, the Church began a five-year construction project in North Carolina resulting in 16 new Church buildings. By 1973, North Carolina had nearly 16,400 members in 53 congregations with a growth rate of nearly 400 new members per year. In 1999, the Church dedicated a temple in Raleigh. Today, there are more than 95,000 Church members in North Carolina organized into 20 stakes. The Church and its members in the state are engaged in ongoing service to the communities in which they live, including efforts to provide food for those experiencing food insecurity.

Arriving by canoe, missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints crossed the Piscataqua River to Maine in 1832. They traveled from town to town, preaching. In Saco, Timothy Smith was convinced by the missionaries’ message and accepted baptism on October 31, 1832.¹  A branch of the Church was established in Saco. Later that year, the pastor and thirty members of the Freewill Baptist Church in the vicinity of Lake Umbagog also became Latter-day Saints. In the mid-1830s, more individuals and families joined the Church in Bethel and Newry. In August 1837, Latter-day Saint missionaries Wilford Woodruff and Jonathan Hale arrived in the Fox Islands, currently known as Vinalhaven and North Haven. By that winter, the Church established branches on both islands, with about 100 members total.² After 1844, when most Church members joined a mass exodus to the west to escape persecution, Church activity slowed in Maine.

In 1904, missionary efforts and Church activities in Maine resumed. Local Latter-day Saints hosted worship services and activities in their homes. On May 15, 1921, around 60 Church members attended a conference held at Bangor. In 1957, meetinghouses were dedicated in Portland and Bangor. On June 23, 1968, the Maine Stake was organized. It was notable compared to other Latter-day Saint regional units in New England at the time because it was led by a stake president and two counselors who were all locals, as opposed to transplants from the intermountain West.

Currently, there are over 10,000 Church members living in Maine. They are engaged citizens who regularly partner with local civic organizations to serve in their communities.

Throughout the latter half of the nineteenth century, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathering to the Western United States traveled through Wyoming. Between 1847 and 1859, tens of thousands of Saints followed the Oregon Trail between Fort Laramie and Fort Bridger before heading south to the Salt Lake Valley. In 1855, Church members purchased Fort Bridger and Fort Supply and created permanent settlements that helped resupply travelers on both the Mormon and Oregon Trails. Most pioneer companies traveled through Wyoming without incident. However, the Willie and Martin handcart companies of 1857 started later in the year and became trapped in the winter snows. Approximately 200 of the 1,075 in the companies died. Others were saved by rescue parties dispatched from Salt Lake City. Historic sites along Interstate 80 in Wyoming commemorate many of the events of Latter-day Saint overland migration including the tragic events of 1857.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a rapid influx of Latter-day Saints gathering to the west from other parts of the United States and Europe led members to create several communities in Wyoming. In 1877, Church members began settling in the Star Valley area, and the following year, Church President Brigham Young dedicated the spot as a gathering place for members. Additional settlements were formed in the Teton, Bear, and Bridger Valleys and the Bighorn Basin. In 1892, the first stake of the Church in Wyoming was organized in Star Valley. Stakes are now organized in every major city in Wyoming.

Saints in Wyoming have partnered with their local communities to provide service and aid in times of need. In 2015, 270 members of the Casper Wyoming Stake, including 120 youth, volunteered to assist in the cleanup of Lusk, Wyoming, after much of the community was destroyed by floods. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Latter-day Saint Charities partnered with the Black 14 Philanthropy to provide assistance in African American communities throughout the United States.

In 2016, the Star Valley Wyoming Temple was dedicated in Afton, Wyoming. Two additional temples are now under construction in Casper and Cody.

The first Latter-day Saint converts in Belarus were baptized in the early spring of 1993. As their numbers began to grow, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited with them in Minsk. He recognized Belarusians’ unique cultural traditions and history and prayed for the country and “its heroic people.”

Belarusian Latter-day Saints have found many opportunities to “show forth good examples” of Christian service (Alma 17:11). In addition to sharing their faith with friends and family, Church members in Belarus have sought to improve the lives of their fellow citizens of different faiths. In 1993 they formed a charitable society called Safia, which offers assistance to the needy. Since 1999 that same work has been carried on by a new organization called the International Charitable Public Association “Safia.” ICPA “Safia” volunteers and staff carry out projects sponsored by Latter-day Saint Charities. Safia has become a well-known and respected humanitarian organization in Belarus.

Today, Belarusian Latter-day Saints can be found in a number of cities. As of 2017, the Church has registered four religious communities in Minsk, Viciebsk and Mahilioŭ.

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Boris Leostrin

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leostrinboris@churchofjesuschrist.org

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Annie Wong
Wan Chai,
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Phone: 852-2910-2940

In 1846, members of the Mormon Battalion, a force of men, women, and children who had volunteered to support the United States in the Mexican-American War, passed through Wagon Mound and Santa Fe on their way to California.

In 1876, over 100 Zuni in the Ramah area received missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and joined the Church. Missionary work among Indigenous tribes became the basis for growing settlements of Latter-day Saints, including increasing numbers of white colonists in Ramah and Fruitland. However, Latter-day Saint settlement in the region led to displacement of Indigenous populations and introduced disease.

During the Mexican Revolution in 1912, many Church settlements in New Mexico absorbed refugees from the Latter-day Saint colonies in Mexico. Beginning in the 1930s, both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking Latter-day Saint congregations flourished in Albuquerque, Carlsbad, Española, Las Cruces, Las Vegas, Llano, Raton, Roswell, Silver City, Taos, and Valecitos.

In the 1930s, during the Great Depression, Latter-day Saint communities in Farmington developed projects to produce the necessities of life for those in need. The projects included construction of a storehouse, operation of a large farm, and the planting of a few acres of tomatoes, beans, corn, or wheat. In 1981 and 1984, the Church built large storehouses to house and distribute these welfare goods in Albuquerque and Farmington, respectively. Smaller, auxiliary storehouses were organized in Las Cruces and Roswell. The diverse congregations of Latter-day Saints in New Mexico have worked to serve the poor and needy in their communities.

On March 5, 2000, the first Latter-day Saint temple in New Mexico was dedicated in Albuquerque. In April 2021, another temple in Farmington was announced.

Orson Pratt and Lyman E. Johnson, missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, preached in New Jersey in 1832. In 1838, missionary Benjamin Winchester arrived in the Pine Barrens region and local congregations began to form. In 1840 a local Latter-day Saint, Alfred Wilson, informed church leaders that there were about 100 members in the village of Cream Ridge. That same year, Joseph Smith visited a number of the congregations in the state. By 1848, there were 21 congregations in New Jersey, most of them in Monmouth and Burlington counties.

The communities of Toms River and Hornerstown had a number of Latter-day Saints from prominent local families around this time. This group from Toms River included members who became influential Latter-day Saints. In the Ivins family, Anthony W. Ivins became a member of the Church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in Nauvoo, and Rachel Ivins Grant was a local leader of the women’s Relief Society from 1868 to 1903 and the mother of Church President Heber J. Grant. In 1850, Toms River members had built a meetinghouse. In the 1850s, many converts to the Church in New Jersey joined the Latter-day Saints’ westward trek. Around the turn of the 20th century, Latter-day Saint congregations in New Jersey began growing again.

In 1960, the Morristown New Jersey Stake was created. The sesquicentennial of the Church in New Jersey was celebrated in 1988, with several local and state dignitaries participating. In 2011, around 850 Latter-day Saints worked to help communities in New Jersey clean up in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Currently the state is home to over 34,000 Church members.

Elder Orson Hyde visited Jewish communities in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and The Hague in 1841, but it was not until 1861 that Elders Anne W. van der Woude and Paul A. Schettler baptized the first converts in the Netherlands. A few branches were established, but many early converts immigrated to the western United States to build up Latter-day Saint communities there and to escape persecution. Some Dutch Saints returned to the Netherlands to preach the restored gospel. In 1890 the Book of Mormon was published in Dutch, leading to unprecedented growth for the Church in the country.

In a 1907 Christmas greeting to the Saints in the Netherlands, the First Presidency encouraged members and converts to stay and build up the Church in the Netherlands. During both world wars, members continued to preach the gospel to their friends and neighbors, despite limited contact with the Church headquarters. Dutch Saints worked to turn wartime tribulation to “the furtherance of the gospel” (Philippians 1:12), and several future Church leaders were converted in a German prisoner-of-war camp.

After the war, Saints in the Netherlands modeled Christlike love and forgiveness when they sent their welfare crops to starving members in Germany. In 1961 the Holland Stake, the first in continental Europe, was organized in Rotterdam. Over the years, Dutch Saints have served their communities and neighboring countries. In 2002 The Hague Netherlands Temple was dedicated.

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Christiaan Kleijweg
Sweelinckhof 9
2253 HE Voorschoten
Phone: 00 31 651540879

In 1841, Joseph Smith, the first President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, received a letter from Church members in New Orleans who needed leadership. "Send us Peter, or an Apostle to preach unto us Jesus," they wrote, and they enclosed $10 to help defray expenses. Smith sent Harrison Sagers. Although Sagers faced opposition from the community, those who called for him offered defense, including a group of courageous women who once encircled him as protection from mobs.

In November 1841, New Orleans became the main port of arrival for nearly 17,500 Latter-day Saints emigrating from Europe. They traveled up the Mississippi River to Nauvoo, Illinois; St. Louis, Missouri; or other river ports. After 1846, these port cities were the starting points for their long trek westward.¹

Twenty-four Church missionaries labored in Louisiana in 1898, and 110 individuals joined the Church that year. Local Church members continued to labor alongside missionaries in New Orleans for decades before organizing the state’s first official congregation in 1924. The first stake in Louisiana was established in New Orleans in 1955, and the Church continued to grow throughout the state. In 2000, the Church dedicated its first temple in the state, located in Baton Rouge. There are now seven stakes and approximately 30,000 church members in the state. As Louisiana has experienced devastation from hurricanes and flooding in recent years, the state's Latter-day Saints have routinely partnered with community leaders in clean-up efforts, and thousands of Church members from neighboring states have traveled to Louisiana to assist.²

[1] David Buice, “When the Saints Came Marching in: The Mormon Experience in Antebellum New Orleans, 1840-1855,” Louisiana History: The Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association 23, no. 3 (Summer 1982): 221–237, https://www.jstor.org/stable/4232185.

[2] See for example “How Latter-day Saint Helping Hands are serving Hurricane Ida victims in Louisiana,” Living Faith, Church Newsroom, updated September 6, 2021, https://www.thechurchnews.com/living-faith/2021-09-06/helping-hands-serving-hurricane-ida-victims-louisiana-224463.

Some of the first members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Oklahoma did construction work in the Cherokee Nation in 1847. They preached about the Church until antagonism forced one Church member to leave the area. In June 1855, the Church established its missionary headquarters for the Native American territory. As early as July, missionaries preached to some 400 Native Americans living there. Many missionaries suffered from illnesses such as malaria from serving in the area, and at least four died. By 1860, most missionaries and many Church members left Oklahoma for Utah Territory. The Civil War scattered many of the state’s members and leaders.

In 1877, a few missionaries returned to Oklahoma, and soon thereafter missionary publications were translated into the Cherokee language. In 1892, the first meetinghouse was erected in Manard, Cherokee County. In 1921, a congregation was created in Gore, Oklahoma, with 113 members. The first stakes in Oklahoma were established in 1960, one in Tulsa and the other in Oklahoma City. In 2000, the Church dedicated a temple in Oklahoma City. That temple was renovated and rededicated in 2019.

There are now approximately 53,000 Church members in Oklahoma organized in 11 stakes. In 2021 the Church donated $2 million to the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City to advance education about Native American tribes and their ancestral roots. Church members in Oklahoma regularly partner with civic and community leaders in humanitarian efforts, including the coordination of cleanup efforts in the aftermath of storms and natural disasters.

In 1996 Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited Sarajevo to offer an apostolic blessing of peace for the area. By that time, Church members had been involved in the country for several years. During the early 1990s, members across Europe helped gather and deliver aid to those affected by conflict. In the late 1990s, many members from other countries worshipped in temporary groups while living in Bosnia, and many Bosnians living abroad joined the Church. It was not until 2010, however, that Elder Russell M. Nelson, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, organized a permanent branch in Sarajevo and dedicated the country for the preaching of the gospel. The Church received official government recognition in 2012, and a year later, a second branch was organized in Banja Luka.

Pioneering members of the Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina have built bonds of fellowship with Saints in neighboring countries and worked to prepare themselves for the future. Together, they are striving to make the Church in Bosnia and Herzegovina “a refuge from the storm” (Doctrine and Covenants 115:6) and a safe and welcoming place for those who come to join them in worship.

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Adriatic North Mission

Address: Trg Petra Svacica 3/1 10000 Zagreb  CROATIA

Telephone : +385 145 77 783

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Members of the Shawnee and Delaware tribes in the Kansas area welcomed missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1831. Church members who volunteered in 1846 for U.S. military service in the Mormon Battalion were trained and equipped in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. For Church members emigrating from Europe, the Atchison, Kansas, area became a layover site on the journey to the Salt Lake Valley. In 1855, at a camp called Mormon Grove, more than 100 acres of crops were cultivated for future immigrants later that year.

In 1882, missionaries arrived in Kansas and organized the Meridian Branch on the border between Dickinson and Salina counties. Missionaries left Kansas temporarily after mob threats but returned in 1887.

The first stake in Kansas was organized in June 1962, and today there are seven stakes with over 38,000 members. Church members regularly contribute to humanitarian and disaster relief efforts across the state.

The 1843 experience of missionary John Brown in Alabama is typical of early missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Community members assumed the 17-year-old in ragged clothing was “a simple cotton picker.” They gathered to hear him speak one day, eager to mock the young preacher. However, after he began the crowd members grew quiet and “as motionless as statues of marble.” In the days following Brown’s sermon, people treated him with respect and the Church started to grow in the state. In early 1844, there were approximately 120 members of the Church in Alabama organized in three congregations. Three months later, in areas including Mississippi, there were approximately 190 members in seven congregations.

Many of these early converts eventually left Alabama to join the main body of Latter-day Saints in the Utah Territory, but missionary work in the state continued. In 1930, there were approximately 2,500 members of the Church in Alabama. The Church in Alabama also benefited from an influx of members who came to the state as a result of their employment by the military and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In 1968 the first stake in Alabama was formed in Huntsville.

Today, there are more than 35,000 Church members living in Alabama organized into eight stakes. In 2000 the Church dedicated a temple in Birmingham. When Alabama was affected by natural disasters in recent years, such as the series of tornadoes that destroyed property throughout the state in March 2021, Church members partnered with community leaders to assist in cleanup efforts.

Alexander Wright and Samuel Mulliner brought the restored gospel to Scotland in 1839. Early missionaries, preaching and sharing tracts in Scots Gaelic as well as English, established more than 50 branches by 1850. During the late 1800s, however, most Latter-day Saints either emigrated from Scotland or left the faith, leaving only about 200 Church members in Scotland by 1890. Those pioneering Saints helped maintain the faith in the restored gospel in their country through the early–20th-century challenges of a global economic depression and two world wars.

Church growth accelerated once again after World War II. The first Church-owned meetinghouse in Scotland was dedicated in 1952, and the first stake was organized in 1962. By 1980 all Church members in Scotland belonged to a stake. By 2015 there were over 20,000 Saints in Scotland who could say with Andrew in the Bible that they had found the Messiah (see John 1:41) and were prepared to follow Him in faith. Building on that foundation of faith, the Scottish Saints continually worked in their own lives and through Church-organized service to improve their communities and reach out to those in need.

The first missionaries of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Wisconsin Territory preached during the 1830s. Then, in 1841, the state became the primary source of wood for the construction of a temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. Church leaders dispatched more than 100 men to Wisconsin where they set up six logging camps, known as the pineries, and operated four mills in the vicinity of the Black River. Between 1841 and 1845 these Church members sent an estimated 1.5 million board feet of milled lumber down the Mississippi River to Nauvoo.

When persecution forced the Latter-day Saints to leave Nauvoo in 1846 many Wisconsin members joined the trek to the Great Basin. Missionary efforts resumed in the state in 1878, with a congregation formed in Milwaukee in 1899 and a chapel built in 1907. After World War I, many German Church members immigrating to Wisconsin settled in Milwaukee. Their intent was to stay long enough to earn money to continue to Utah, but many settled in Wisconsin instead. In 1963, the first stake in Wisconsin was established in Milwaukee.

There are now more than 25,000 Church members in Wisconsin organized across six stakes. Latter-day Saints in the state frequently partner in humanitarian efforts with civic and community leaders throughout the state, and with those in other states throughout the Great Lakes region.

Beginning in the 1850s, Latter-day Saints occasionally traveled from the Utah Territory to preach the restored gospel and to explore the possibility of permanent settlements in Arizona. Beginning in 1854, Jacob Hamblin, called to preside over missionary efforts to the Indigenous peoples in the area, made frequent trips to Arizona. In 1876, Latter-day Saint settlers began building forts and establishing a series of communities along the Little Colorado River Valley in northeastern Arizona. Additional Latter-day Saint communities were soon established near St. Johns and in the Gila River, Salt River, and San Pedro valleys. In 1877, Daniel Webster Jones and Henry Clay Rogers established Fort Utah in the Salt River Valley. Over the next two years, with the help of wagon companies arriving from Utah and Idaho, Fort Utah grew into a well-established farming community. Eventually renamed Mesa, this settlement became the center of the first stake in Arizona, the Maricopa Stake. The Mesa Arizona Temple, the first in Arizona, was dedicated on October 23, 1927. There are now five temples in Arizona.

The Saints of Arizona have made significant contributions both to the Church and to their local communities throughout their history. In 1973, Spencer W. Kimball, a native of Thatcher, Arizona, became the Church’s 12th President. In recent years, Latter-day Saints have joined a coalition of more than 40 churches to help migrant refugees and asylum seekers and assisted in providing clean water to the Navajo Nation. With support from Saints in Arizona, Latter-day Saint Charities has made significant donations to charitable organizations throughout the state and nation.

One afternoon in July 1837, Elder Heber C. Kimball leaped from the small boat shuttling him to the port in Liverpool and waded to shore. Anxious to begin preaching in England, Kimball, fellow Apostle Orson Hyde, and their companions—many of them sons of Britain—began declaring the restored gospel in Preston and soon founded the British Mission.

Between 1840 and 1920, more than 50,000 British converts answered the call to gather in North America and “bring forth Zion, that it may rejoice … and flourish” (Doctrine and Covenants 39:13). They brought with them knowledge, talent, and leadership that sustained the early Church as the Saints fled disaffection and persecution to settle the American West.

While migration bolstered the Church in the United States, it decimated branches in England. By 1937 only a few thousand Saints remained to celebrate the mission’s centennial. Since that time, members have been encouraged to stay in their homeland and preach the gospel to their neighbors. A rapid increase in baptisms followed that counsel. When the London England Temple was dedicated in September 1958, Church President David O. McKay declared that a “New Era in the British Mission” was beginning. Since then, membership has grown nearly sixfold, most members attend wards, and, in 1998, a second temple was dedicated in England, this time in Preston.

Norway’s people have played a significant role in Church history since the 1840s. Norwegians who joined the Church in the United States were in the first pioneer companies to reach the Salt Lake Valley. Three years later, in 1850, the Scandinavian Mission became one of the first missions in which missionaries taught the gospel in a language other than English. Hans F. Petersen, a Dane, extended the mission’s work into Norway in 1851. Though the government refused to recognize the Church and the early Saints in Norway faced significant opposition, thousands joined the Church in Norway in the 1800s.

Nearly half of those early members immigrated and helped build up the Church in Utah and the surrounding areas. One immigrant, John A. Widtsoe, later became a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and served for three decades. Other members remained in Norway and helped keep a continual Church presence there, though the development of Church organizations was limited.

In August 1946, the government granted the Church permission to preach in Norway; official registration as a religious denomination was granted in 1988. Now, with two stakes and 22 congregations, the Church is firmly established in Norway.

From average members living their religion daily to leaders in the highest councils, Norwegian Latter-day Saints have deeply influenced the Church. Theirs is a story of perseverance, conviction, and continuing in the faith (see Colossians 1:23).

Journalist contact:

Janett Moen
janett.moen@kom.jesukristikirke.org
+47 988 05 984

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who sought refuge from mob activity in the 1840s considered the Native American country of the Dakotas a possible site for settlement. Without the full consent of the Church President, volunteer colonizers established a settlement at Fort Vermillion on the Missouri River. They built cabins, planted crops, and preached to members of the Sioux tribe. Relations with Native Americans were sometimes fraught. The leader of the settlement, James Emmett, returned to Nauvoo in the summer of 1845 to seek favor with the Church. He was accepted in full fellowship and returned to Fort Vermillion with two missionaries to rebaptize the settlers. In 1846, the settlement was abandoned as members followed Church President Brigham Young’s directions to gather west.

In May 1883, missionaries from Minnesota began to preach in the Dakota states. By 1950, Sunday Schools were organized at Mitchell, Aberdeen, Brookings, Ft. Thompson and Huron.

In the 1830s and 1840s, a few Latter-day Saint families lived in the town of Leitersburg in western Maryland. In 1841, Latter-day Saint missionary John Murdock arrived in Baltimore, and in 1842, the Mormon Expositor, a Church paper in Baltimore, launched. In the first half of 1844, Latter-day Saint leaders representing Joseph Smith’s U.S. presidential campaign held their own nominating convention and attended the conventions of the Whig and Democratic parties in Baltimore. Following the martyrdom of Smith in June 1844, the majority of Latter-day Saints moved far to the west, and the Church’s presence in Maryland dwindled.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Latter-day Saint missionary work and congregations revived in the area. Utah became a state in 1896, and in Washington, D.C. Church members often met for worship in the homes of Utah members of Congress. In 1914, women of the Baltimore Branch Relief Society organized to collect and mend clothes and make quilts for the needy. Growing congregations built meetinghouses such as the Washington Chapel, dedicated in 1933, and the Baltimore Chapel, dedicated in 1935.¹ In 1940, the first stake in Maryland centered on Washington, D.C.² In 1963, the Church created a congregation in Annapolis. Between 1958 and 1984, Maryland’s Latter-day Saints contributed volunteer labor to run a dairy farm at Trappe, producing dairy products for the poor and needy.³

The Washington D.C. Temple in Kensington was completed in 1974 and is a prominent landmark on the Capital Beltway. Maryland Church members have contributed many volunteer hours to soup kitchens, blood drives, schools, parks, hospice and other community resources.⁴

In 1840 Thomas Tate became the first Latter-day Saint convert in Ireland when he was baptized near Belfast by John Taylor of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. By 1856 there were over 200 Church members in Ireland, concentrated in the north, but many later immigrated to Utah. Missionary work was irregular during the mid-1800s, picking up again in the 1880s. By 1922 there were branches in Belfast and Londonderry.

The Church began to establish a more permanent presence after World War II. The first Church-owned meetinghouse in Northern Ireland was dedicated in 1948. The organization of the Irish mission in 1962 led to a period of rapid growth, paving the way for the organization of the Belfast Stake in 1974. Latter-day Saints worked to minister to members and adapt as necessary during the political violence in Northern Ireland in the late 20th century. By 2015 there were over 5,000 Latter-day Saints in Northern Ireland striving to serve in their communities and to be a light to those around them (see 3 Nephi 12:14–16).

As many Russians sought renewed spirituality in their lives in the late 1980s, some found answers in the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In 1990 these Russians formed the first Russian Latter-day Saint congregations in St. Petersburg and Vyborg. Over the course of the 1990s, other congregations were established across the country, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. In 2011 the Church’s first stake in Russia was organized in Moscow.

Yet the Church’s ties with Russia go back further. Joseph Smith called missionaries to Russia in 1843, and Church leaders visited the country in 1866. In 1895 the Lindlöf family joined the Church in St. Petersburg. Starting in the 1920s, Russian emigrants translated Church literature to share with Russian-speaking people. In 1903 and 1990, Elders Francis M. Lyman and Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve, respectively, offered special prayers for Russia and its people.

Russian Latter-day Saints inherited this modern legacy of faith in addition to their country’s own rich religious heritage. Moving forward in faith, they build upon this past as they strengthen each other and their communities. In their lives as Christians and citizens of their country, Russian Latter-day Saints have proven to be “example[s] of the believers” in our day (1 Timothy 4:12).

For Journalist Use Only

Boris Leostrin

Director of the Church Communication Department

leostrinboris@churchofjesuschrist.org

The earliest founding events of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took place in the state of New York. In 1820, a 14-year-old boy named Joseph Smith Jr. experienced a vision of God the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees near his family’s farm in Palmyra. In 1823, an angel directed Joseph to a hill in Manchester, where Joseph found a set of golden plates containing the Book of Mormon, a record of ancient peoples who had believed in Jesus Christ.Between April and June 1829, Joseph produced a translation of the Book of Mormon, which was first offered for sale in Egbert Grandin’s printing shop in Palmyra in March 1830.

On April 6, 1830, people who believed Joseph had been called by God to restore Christian truths gathered at the home of Mary and Peter Whitmer in Fayette, New York, to formally establish the “Church of Christ.” As the Church (officially named The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1838) grew, its center of gravity shifted westward. But New York still retained significance as the site of early Church history and as an international point of entry for an increasingly global Church membership.

On April 6, 2000, 170 years after the Church was organized, the Palmyra New York Temple was dedicated. The temple overlooks the Sacred Grove and other historic sites. The first temple in New York City, the Manhattan New York Temple, was dedicated on June 13, 2004.

Church members in New York are engaged members of their communities. In 2012, following Hurricane Sandy, church members formed teams of Helping Hands volunteers and helped clear away debris from homes and community structures damaged by flooding.

In the mid-1800s, Joseph Smith, the first President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and other Church leaders considered moving Church members to land in what was then the Republic of Texas to escape mounting persecution in Illinois. Negotiations to buy large tracts of land in Texas were abandoned when Smith was murdered in 1844.

In 1845, apostle Lyman Wight led a company of Latter-day Saints to central Texas. He and his settlement made favorable impressions on their neighbors. Missionaries preached in Texas in the 1850s, and nearly 1,000 converts immigrated to Utah from Texas when missionary work came to a halt there prior to the Civil War.

Proselytizing resumed in 1875, but membership grew slowly through the end of the century. In the early 20th century, settlements were established in several southern states as gathering places for Church members. Examples in Texas include Odom and Kelsey. Membership eventually spread to larger urban areas like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. During the Mexican Revolution, members living in Ciudad Juarez relocated to Church branches in El Paso. The first stake in Texas was organized there in 1952. In October 1984, the Church dedicated the Dallas Texas Temple, the first in the Lone Star state. Since then, nine more have been dedicated or announced.

On October 14, 1993, astronaut Richard A. Searfoss of League City, Texas, became the first Latter-day Saint to pilot a space shuttle.

Church members in Texas regularly assist in humanitarian efforts and disaster cleanup. Examples of their efforts include responding to flooding in 1994 and to hurricanes Ike (2008) and Harvey (2017) and tropical storm Imelda (2019). The Church operates a 65,000-square-foot Deseret Industries thrift store and employment center in Houston. In June 2021, working in partnership with the National Association of Christian Churches, Catholic Charities, YMCA International Services, Texas Adventist Community Services and local food banks, the Church opened the Houston Family Transfer Center. It serves families who have been cleared at the border and need food, hygiene facilities and other assistance.

In 1850, when the first Latter-day Saint missionaries reached Hawai’i, the islands were still an independent kingdom with a mostly native Hawaiian population. George Q. Cannon, one of the early missionaries to the islands, was particularly eager to learn the Hawaiian language. In the early 1850s, he and a Hawaiian convert, Jonathan Nāpela, translated the Book of Mormon into Hawaiian. The effort marked the first time the book was translated into a non-European language.

Many Hawaiians embraced the gospel. By the 1870s, more than 4,000 Hawaiians were Latter-day Saints. Because of laws restricting emigration (because many Hawaiians were dying from disease), Hawaiian Saints established gathering places on the islands instead of gathering to Utah. The first gathering place was in Lāna’i. Then Saints gathered in Lā’ie, where the first temple outside North America was dedicated in 1919. The first stake outside North America was organized on O’ahu in 1935.

As Hawai’i’s population became more diverse, so did general Church membership. In the early 20th century, for example, a Japanese mission was established in Hawai’i, and work among Japanese Hawaiians flourished. In the 1950s, the Church established a college — now Brigham Young University–Hawaii — in Lā’ie, with a mission to bring together students from around the world. A second temple, in Kona, was dedicated in 2000. By 2018, there were nearly 75,000 Latter-day Saints in Hawai’i, organized into 16 stakes.

In 1811, the family of Joseph Smith, Jr. moved to Lebanon (now West Lebanon) and rented a home there for two years. During this period in Lebanon, young Joseph, who was about 6 or 7 years old, suffered a severe bone infection in his leg. Five miles away was Dr. Nathan Smith, founder of Dartmouth Medical School, who was ahead of his time in terms of treating this particular ailment. Dr. Smith was able to save Joseph’s leg.

In 1832, Joseph Smith, now leader of a fledgling religious movement, received a revelation calling Orson Pratt and Lyman E. Johnson on missions to the eastern United States. Within that same year, they arrived in New Hampshire, staying for 26 days and initially baptizing 20 people. In the 1840s, several Latter-day Saint congregations were meeting together in New Hampshire. One missionary working in the state, Eli P. Maginn, wrote that he could not “fill from one to twenty of the calls for preaching; there is the greatest excitement in this country that I ever beheld.”

Missionary work in New Hampshire lessened after the 1844 murder of Joseph Smith and the subsequent mass movement west by Church members. Around the turn of the 20th century, Latter-day Saints once again began to establish congregations in New Hampshire. The first stake in New Hampshire was created in Manchester in 1970.

Notable local Latter-day Saints include Dick Swett, who grew up in New Hampshire. He represented the 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995 and served as ambassador to Denmark from 1998 to 2001.

In 1839, Joseph Smith, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, visited the nation’s capital with Elias Higbee to seek redress of grievances suffered by Church members in Missouri. In response, United States President Martin Van Buren reportedly said, “Your cause is just, but I can do nothing for you.”

Early Church members paid occasional visits to Washington, D.C., as they sought statehood for their newly established communities in the Great Basin. Church leader Reed Smoot was elected to the United States Senate in 1903 and seated in 1907 after a series of hearings that brought publicity to the Church.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the area’s Latter-day Saint missionary work and congregations were revived. Utah had become a state in 1896, and in Washington, D.C., Church members often met for worship in the homes of Utah members of Congress. Growing congregations built meetinghouses such as the Washington Chapel, dedicated in 1933.  In 1940, the first stake in Maryland was established around Washington, D.C.

In 1933, a large granite chapel was completed in the area. Future Church president Ezra Taft Benson worked in Washington, D.C., as secretary of agriculture in the Eisenhower administration from 1953 to 1961. In 1974, a temple was completed in Kensington, Maryland. Ambassadors and diplomats visit the temple's annual lighting ceremonies during the Christmas holiday. 

President Gordon B. Hinckley, along with 26 other religious leaders from across the nation, visited the Capitol after the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and met with U.S. President George W. Bush.

In January 1831, people of the Delaware Nation graciously received traveling missionaries of the fledgling Church of Christ (established in 1830 and later renamed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) and listened to their message. Around the same time, Ohio minister Sidney Rigdon and much of his congregation in Mentor, Ohio, encountered the same missionaries and joined the Church. Nearby Kirtland became Church headquarters from 1831 to 1838. In its heyday, the Latter-day Saint community in northern Ohio included over 2,000 members.

In 1831, Church President Joseph Smith, his wife Emma Smith, and their children moved to Kirtland. Church members sacrificed their time and resources to build a house of worship, the Kirtland Temple. In 1836, after three years of labor, the temple was complete. Two years later, tensions in the community compelled church members to leave Kirtland and gather with another body of Latter-day Saints in Missouri.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Latter-day Saints in northern Ohio reorganized congregations. The Church has since restored historic sites in Kirtland and Hiram, including a store, a sawmill, an ashery, and Joseph and Emma Smith’s home. The Kirtland Temple is a national historical landmark under the management of the Community of Christ, another denomination historically rooted in the teachings of Joseph Smith.

In 1999, Latter-day Saints hosted members of the community for an open house of the Columbus Ohio Temple prior to its dedication. In 2010, a team of Church archivists worked with the Geauga County Archives Department to digitally preserve historical documents and to share with the Archives Department copies of other documents needed to fill gaps in its collection. Church members work to be engaged members of their local communities, contributing to civic life and serving those in need.

In 1854, Latter-day Saint missionaries preached in Minnesota in places such as Spring Grove and Morristown. Some of the earliest Latter-day Saints to live permanently in Minnesota were Eli Houghton and Margaret McMean Houghton. The Houghtons left Nauvoo along with many other Latter-day Saints in 1846 but traveled north to Monticello, Minnesota, where their three sons were living. In 1875, when Latter-day Saint missionaries arrived in the area, the Houghton family became the nucleus of the first branch in Monticello. Later, Latter-day Saint branches were organized in Freeborn County and Mille Lac County.

In 1900, Sunday Schools were organized in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Converts also joined the Church in places such as Duluth, Brainerd, Aitkin, Rodgers, Rochester, Virginia, and Springvale. A Twin Cities branch of the Church was established in 1912. The first purpose-built Church meetinghouse was in Minneapolis, dedicated October 25–26, 1924.

Following World War II, many Latter-day Saints from Utah migrated to Minnesota for education or employment. One major draw for Latter-day Saint students was a core of Latter-day Saint professors as the University of Minnesota, including Andrew T. Rasmussen, a researcher in neuroanatomy since 1921, and Frank “Doc” Whiting, head of the theater department for thirty years. The University of Minnesota Medical School, which pioneered heart surgery after World War II, trained many prominent Latter-day Saint surgeons and doctors, including future Church President Russell M. Nelson. As a medical student, Nelson worked with Dr. Clarence Dennis to pioneer the artificial heart-lung machine.

In 1960, the Minnesota Stake was established. The St. Paul Minnesota Temple was dedicated in 2000.

Latter-day Saints are engaged citizens, regularly organizing to serve in their communities. For example, in April 2009 Latter-day Saint volunteers helped respond to the Red River flooding in Moorhead, and in November 2021 Latter-day Saint congregations donated 25,000 pounds of canned goods to the Food Group in New Hope.

In 1831, missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints preached in Madison, Unionville and Vienna, Indiana. They also organized congregations. Church President Joseph Smith visited Greenville for one month in 1832.

Congregations in Ohio and Missouri were much larger than those in Indiana, but in time, congregations sprouted up along the travel routes to those two states. By 1843, there were branches of the Church in 30 Indiana counties. After the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, many Indiana members joined a mass exodus to the Great Basin.

Around the turn of the 20th century, a small number of Indiana Latter-day Saints still met in homes. In 1913, Church members in Indianapolis rented a hall. In 1927, members built a meetinghouse in Indianapolis, which was dedicated by Church President Heber J. Grant.

Following World War II, many Latter-day Saint service members, funded by the GI Bill, moved to Indiana to attend the state's many colleges and universities. The Indianapolis stake was created in 1959. The Indianapolis Indiana Temple was dedicated in 2015.

Latter-day Saints are engaged citizens and regularly gather to serve their communities. After catastrophic floods in southern Indiana in 2008, Latter-day Saint volunteers mobilized to distribute essential supplies and clear debris. After tornadoes in 2012, Church members helped with cleanup efforts in Bloomington, New Albany, Perkin, Borden and Henryville. Currently, there are over 45,000 Church members in over 100 congregations across the state.

In February 1852, Apostle Lorenzo Snow and Jabez Woodard arrived on Malta and began to preach the gospel. That May, Ferndinanda Seiapati and Jean Alais Frouche were the first people baptized on the island. The following June, a branch (a small congregation) was organized. Most of the converts were British military personnel. Opposition surfaced, however, and many converts were threatened by military officials with loss of rank or punishment for their involvement in the Church. Many remained faithful, but others fell away.

In 1854, many branch members left Malta to serve in the Crimean War. Four mobile branches were organized to serve the members at war from the original branch in Malta. By 1856, however, the main branch was dissolved.

Thereafter, there is no known Church presence on Malta until the 1960s when Latter-day Saints, primarily with the British military, came to Malta. Most lived there temporarily, but by December 1968 an informal group was meeting, with meetings continuing until at least 1972.

Mission president Lino P. Gambarotto with Church legal counsel David Farnsworth went to Malta in September 1979. They met with government officials and learned that missionaries were welcome but that getting them permission to stay over extended periods of time would be difficult. The government of Malta granted permission for the Church to have missionaries there in January 1980.

Missionary work progressed and in December 1988 a branch (a small congregation) was organized. In early 1991, missionary work was interrupted due to anti-American demonstrations and the branch was discontinued, reopening in October 1991 with Emanuele D’Emanuele as the first native president. Missionaries returned in June 1993.

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Missionaries preaching in the Andes Mission arrived in Bolivia in November 1964 and baptized the first convert that December. The first Bolivian to serve a mission for the Church was Desiderio Arce Cano in 1967. He left a singing career in Argentina to serve in his native land. He later presided over a stake (diocese) and a mission for the Church.

In recent years, the Church has sponsored humanitarian projects in Bolivia, including village development projects and medical supply donations to hospitals in the country.

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When missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in Tennessee in October 1834, they preached at a Campbellite church meeting and baptized seven converts. Another 24 were baptized later. These missionaries were joined by future Church President Wilford Woodruff in 1835, who preached to several large audiences. During the ensuing months, the missionaries baptized 20 converts. By the end of the year, Woodruff had traveled 3,248 miles and baptized 43 people — three of whom were Protestant Christian preachers.

In 1844, Joseph Smith invited the Tennessee state assemblyman Solomon Copeland to run as his vice-presidential candidate in that year’s presidential election. Copeland, the husband of a Latter-day Saint, never replied to Smith’s invitation.

Tragedy struck the Church in Tennessee on August 10, 1884, when more than a dozen mobbers attacked a Latter-day Saint worship service near Cane Creek and shot to death two missionaries and two local church members. B.H. Roberts, who was in charge of the mission at that time, donned a disguise, traveled to the tense area and retrieved the bodies of the slain missionaries. Tension increased in the years that followed and, in 1888, a group of 177 Church members left Chattanooga and moved to Colorado and Utah. By the 1890s, public opinion in Tennessee became more tolerant toward the Church, and it once again continued to grow. The oldest existing Church building in the southeastern United States was dedicated in Northcutts Cove in 1909. The first stake in the state was established in Memphis in 1965.

Two temples were dedicated in Tennessee in 2000, one in Nashville and the other in Memphis. There are currently more than 50,000 Church members in the state organized into 12 stakes.

In the 1980s Latter-day Saints who had been baptized abroad began returning to the Republic of the Congo. In 1991 those in Brazzaville gathered together and, under the direction of the mission president across the Congo River in Kinshasa, began organizing the Church in the Republic of the Congo. The first baptisms took place in June 1991, and the government recognized the Church in October. By the time Elders Russell M. Nelson and Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles visited in 1992 to dedicate the country for the preaching of the gospel, the first district had already been organized.

Although civil unrest later in the 1990s often disrupted the work of full-time missionaries, Latter-day Saints in the Republic of the Congo heeded the scriptures’ call to do the Lord’s work and share the gospel with their neighbors (see Doctrine and Covenants 38:40–41). Even in times of violence, members helped and strengthened each other, often sharing what little they had. In 2003 the first stake in the country was organized in Brazzaville.

Saints in the Congo have worked to serve each other and their communities, offering self-reliance workshops for the economic advancement of members as well as offering training in other health and welfare causes. As members have gained experience, the Church has become more firmly established: by 2019 there were nearly 8,000 members living in two stakes.

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Church founder Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont in 1805. In all, about a dozen of the early leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were born in Vermont, including Brigham Young. In 1831, one year after the Church was organized, Church member Jared Carter taught and baptized 27 converts in his hometown of Benson. Many of these early Latter-day Saints migrated to Ohio in 1833. In 1843, when the Church was facing intense persecution in Missouri and Illinois, Joseph Smith published a pamphlet appealing to the patriotic legacy of Vermont and its heralded Green Mountain Boys to help defend the citizenship rights of the Latter-day Saints.

In December 1905, Church President Joseph F. Smith, a nephew of the founding prophet, dedicated a 100-ton, 38-foot granite monument—one foot for each year of his life—to commemorate the centennial of Joseph Smith’s birth. During the Christmas season, lights adorn the monument’s surroundings. About 70,000 visitors come to the site annually.

The Montpelier Vermont Stake was created in 1976. Vermont is currently home to approximately 4,500 Latter-day Saints in 10 congregations. Latter-day Saints are engaged citizens who frequently partner with civic organizations to build their communities.

Two years prior to the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1830, Joseph Smith and Emma Hale Smith moved to a farm in Harmony, Pennsylvania (present-day Oakland), and lived in the home of Emma’s parents, Elizabeth and Isaac Hale. After a few weeks, Emma and Joseph moved to a cabin adjacent to the farm. In this cabin, with Emma sometimes acting as his scribe, Joseph Smith translated most of the Book of Mormon, a sacred scripture that Latter-day Saints view as another testament of Jesus Christ.

Latter-day Saints believe that on May 15, 1829, Joseph Smith and his fellow Church leader Oliver Cowdery were visited by John the Baptist and shortly thereafter by Christ’s apostles Peter, James and John, and that through these visitations Joseph Smith received priesthood authority to administer Christ’s church.

A total of 12 congregations were organized in Pennsylvania in the 1830s, prior to the gatherings of Church members to Ohio, Missouri and Illinois. One prominent congregation in Philadelphia, established by Joseph Smith on December 23, 1839, had more than 200 members before 1840, and 8 to 10 new members were baptized weekly. One of those baptized in 1840 was Edward Hunter, who later served as Presiding Bishop of the Church from 1851 to 1883. That same year Benjamin Winchester, the presiding Church leader in Philadelphia, began publishing a church periodical, the Gospel Reflector. Despite large-scale immigration to the West after the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, Philadelphia was the port of entry for many Latter-day Saint immigrants from Europe and the British Isles, and during the mid-1850s it flourished, due in part to the influx of converts.

Around the end of the 19th century, conferences of the Church in eastern and western Pennsylvania were organized. In 1904 members of the Fairview Branch built a stone meetinghouse in Waynesboro, the first Latter-day Saint structure in the state. In 1960, the Philadelphia Stake was organized, and in 1969, the Pittsburgh Stake was organized. The Philadelphia Pennsylvania Temple was dedicated in 2016.  The state is currently home to over 53,000 Church members. Church members regularly engage in service in their communities, including helping clean up after Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

In October 1840, missionaries Henry Royle and Frederick Cook first preached in Wales. They found people receptive to their message. Over the next decade, the preaching of Latter-day Saint missionaries—from the pulpit and in the press—brought thousands of Welsh into the Church. Many converts heeded the call to gather to Zion in the Rocky Mountains (see D&C 101:63–64).

Early missionaries published several tracts, periodicals, and volumes of scripture in Welsh. Welsh translations of the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price were published serially. The compiled and bound volume was the first non-English-language edition of the triple combination of latter-day scripture.

For nearly a century, many Welsh converts braved the journey to the western United States, and Welsh settlement profoundly impacted the Church in the Intermountain West. The Church in Wales, however, suffered after converts left. In 1904, with fewer than 200 members in all of Wales, the British Mission closed the Welsh Conference.

In the early 20th century, stalwart Latter-day Saints sustained the few small branches that remained concentrated around Merthyr Tydfil. Their diligence allowed the Church to remain in Wales. After 1958, when a temple was dedicated near London, the Church once again established itself in Wales. The Merthyr Tydfil Wales Stake became the first stake in Wales when it was organized in 1975.

On July 24, 1847, when the first wagon company of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, Church President Brigham Young declared it the “right place” for the Saints to establish themselves once more. Two days later, as they surveyed the valley, Young planted his cane in the fork of a small creek and said, “Here shall stand the temple of our God.” Salt Lake City quickly became the global headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. By 1859, more than 60,000 Latter-day Saints, many of them recent converts from Europe, made the journey to Utah. These Latter-day Saints established more than 350 communities in Utah and the surrounding states.

Latter-day Saint communities, then as now, looked to the temple as a place of peace where sacred ordinances can be performed. The Salt Lake Temple, built at the location Brigham Young designated, took more than 40 years to complete. In the meantime, Temples were dedicated in St. George (1877), Logan (1884) and Manti (1888). The Salt Lake Temple, which has been designated a National Historic Landmark, was dedicated on April 6,  1893. There are now 31 temples in Utah.

In the nineteenth century, many Latter-day Saint women in Utah participated in the national campaign for women’s suffrage. The Woman’s Exponent, a Church-supported periodical edited by Latter-day Saint women, was among the leading voices in the fight to secure the right to vote for women in the United States. In 1870, Utah became the first territory in the United States in which women legally cast ballots.

As the headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Utah is closely associated with the Church in the minds of most people. For generations, Saints have gathered to Utah to pursue education, serve in the Church or be near the state’s many temples. In 2002, the Church and Utah were on full display for all the world when Utah hosted the Winter Olympic Games.

Jedediah M. Grant, an early missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, discovered a high level of curiosity about the Church when he arrived in Virginia in 1839. He received three speaking invitations for every one he could fill. In 1841, there were some 80 members of the Church in Virginia. After Grant and his brother left the state in 1842, another missionary, R.H. Kinnamon, traveled to nine counties and baptized more than 100 people. When Church President Joseph Smith was murdered by a mob in 1844, Church membership in Virginia was likely more than 350. Many of these early members migrated to Utah Territory.

The Church stopped sending missionaries to Virginia during the Civil War, but resumed missionary work in the state during the 1870s. The Church grew gradually during the ensuing decades, and new congregations were formed throughout the state. In 1883, missionaries J. Golden Kimball and Charles Welch baptized Peter Mason and his family in Rockbridge County. The Mason family was Native American and their conversion led to the conversion of others in the Rockbridge Native American community and the establishment of a Church congregation in the central Blue Ridge region of the state.

In 1957, in Richmond, the Church established its first stake in Virginia. The Church grew rapidly in the state during the 1970s and 1980s, establishing 10 new stakes during those decades. In 1974, the Church dedicated the Washington D.C. Temple (in Kensington, Maryland). At that time, it was the only temple in the United States east of the Mississippi River. As such, it served thousands of church members living in the eastern United States, including those residing in Virginia. The Church began a major renovation of the temple in 2018, and it was rededicated in August 14, 2022.

In 2018, the Church announced the construction of a temple in the Richmond area. There are now more than 90,000 Church members in Virginia organized into 22 stakes. In 2021, President Dallin H. Oaks, First Counselor in the Church’s First Presidency, delivered a landmark address on religious freedom at the University of Virginia.