• Texas is home to almost 270,000 members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 518 congregations throughout the state.
• There are eight missions in Texas. Missions are geographically designated areas overseen by a mission president who directs the efforts of Church missionaries.
• There are four temples in the state located in Dallas, Houston, Lubbock and San Antonio. Temples are sacred buildings where the highest sacraments of the faith take place. They should not be confused with chapels or meetinghouses used for Sunday worship.
• Latter-day Saints first arrived in Texas in November of 1845 when Lyman Wight, along with 150 other Church members, founded a town named Zodiac. They went on to establish settlements in five Texas colonies.
• In the 1850s, Church President Brigham Young sent missionaries to Texas and encouraged some 1,000 converts to the Church to migrate to Salt Lake City.
• One of the most successful and long-lived LDS colonies in Texas was founded in 1898 in Kelsey. The population of the township reached its peak of about 750 inhabitants in 1923, the same year the local railroad line closed down, isolating the town and causing the settlement to slowly decline.
• On 14 October 1993, Richard A. Searfoss of League City, Texas, became the first Latter-day Saint to pilot the flight of a space shuttle.
• In 1994, Church members and missionaries rallied to assist flood-stricken southeast Texas, gathering relief supplies and helping to clean up debris and water-ravaged homes.
• In September of 2005, hundreds of Church members from Texas traveled to Louisiana to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Later that month, Church members rallied again to help Texans hit hard by Hurricane Rita. In all, thousands of hours of labor were donated along with emergency supplies.