Modern-Day LDS Pioneers - Growth of the Mormon Church - 3/8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3Zsvml57PE is a video describing how to learn more about the Mormon Church.

After Parley P. Pratt, an apostle, his wife Phoebe Soper Pratt, and Elder Rufus C. Allen were unsuccessful in establishing a foothold in Valparaiso, Chile, in 1851-1852, it was not until 1925 that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints sent Melvin J. Ballard, another apostle; and Elders Rulon S. Wells, who spoke German, and Rey L. Pratt, who spoke Spanish, both of the Seventy, to open the South America Mission. Under assignment from President Heber J. Grant, these men dedicated the vast area of South America for the preaching of the gospel in Buenos Aires on December 25, 1925. The establishment of the Church in South America began in Argentina when some German LDS families emigrated there in the 1920s, and requested that missionaries and Church supplies be sent to Buenos Aires to help them build the Church among their families and friends. The Church moved into Brazil in 1928, also in answer to requests of LDS German emigrants living there. The first Latter-day Saints in Chile apparently were North American miners who worked in the mining district in northern Chile. The first missionaries were sent there from Argentina in 1956, and the Chilean Mission was established in 1961. The Church moved into Uruguay from Argentina in 1944, and into Paraguay from Uruguay in 1948. The first missionaries were sent to Peru from Uruguay in 1956.
Speaking at a Sacrament meeting in Buenos Aires in 1926, Elder Ballard likened the Church's potential in South America to a strong, mighty oak growing from a tiny acorn. He said there would be thousands of members and many missions growing from the tiny beginnings of the Church there, and South America would become one of the strongest areas of the Church. True to that prophecy, although the work went slowly for a number of years, with the location of a General Authority, Elder A. Theodore and Sister Marné Whittaker Tuttle, in South America in the 1960s to supervise missionary work, a dramatic surge of conversions began. The Church moved into the northern countries with the creation of the Andes Mission in Peru and Chile in 1959. The first units were established in Bolivia in 1964; in Ecuador in 1965; and in Colombia and Venezuela in 1966. Many of the LDS missionaries in South America are local members who have been strengthened and prepared for service and leadership by attending seminary and institute programs of the Church Educational System. Where the Church originally had only one mission in all of South America, in January 1991 it had 43 missions, 381 stakes and districts, and 3,791 wards and branches serving over 1.35 million members.]

Information from http://www.lightplanet.com

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• mormonism
• pioneer
• lds
• pioneers
• growth
• of
• the
• mormon
• church
• jesus
• christ
• latter-day
• saints
• south
• america
• brazil
• chile

[JohnRhysMusician]

What a wonderful story.

[TrueChurchLDS]

Thank the Lord God for restoring the everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ and reinstituting the correct baptism on the earth.

LDSdotORG

[aaadw]

the promise land

[127decibels]

The Spirit of the Lord is present here.