Missionary Work in Russia, We Have Been Allowed to Serve

Weather -- a little cooler and still snowing off & on
Temp -- plus 20F
Wind -- 5-7 mph

I have been reminded that the Church is not new in Russia. The following is a summary of the major benchmarks of the Gospel in Russia that I gleaned from the Church web site and added some items of my own from first-hand experience. We have been privileged to be part of it several times, in several places.


In 1843, just 13 years after the Church's organization, Church President Joseph Smith called two men to preach in Russia. This assignment was canceled after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith in 1844.

In 1895, a native of Sweden was sent to St. Petersburg, where he baptized the Johan M. Lindelof family. The family was occasionally visited by Church leaders in the early 1900s. In 1959,

Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, simultaneously serving as United States Secretary of Agriculture, visited the Central Baptist Church in Moscow and preached to an attentive congregation.

Religious tolerance was slow in coming, but the first sign that it was inevitable came in 1988 when the government permitted a commemoration of 1,000 years of Christianity in Russia. As the door to religious freedom opened, it became apparent many Russians had preserved a heritage of faith despite seven decades of official state atheism.

In September 1989, Church leaders authorized a United States Embassy worker, Alan Evenson, in Moscow to begin holding group meetings in his apartment. Four months later, in January 1990, missionaries arrived in Leningrad for short periods on tourist visas from Finland. The first convert they baptized became the first full-time missionary from Russia, serving in the Utah Ogden Mission. We will unknowingly have a hand in this branch when we left dozens of copies the Book of Mormon and other Church materials with him on a cold October night, our last in Moscow on our Sister Cities tour with our friend Nicci Larson.

In October 1989 Dennis B. Neuenschwander (then president of the Austria Vienna East Mission, now of the Seventy) and Steven R. Mecham (then president of the Finland Helsinki Mission) were authorized to take the gospel into the Soviet Union. Within months, Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles formally dedicated Estonia for the preaching of the gospel and offered in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) a prayer of gratitude, invoking the blessings of heaven upon the Estonian and Russian peoples.

Still, President Mecham and his missionaries had yet to enter the Soviet Union proper. Then at the October 1988 general conference, Elder Nelson told President Mecham that President Benson had received revelation that missionaries were to enter the Soviet Union. Elder Nelson then told him that he would soon see "physical and spiritual manifestations of the Lord's hand in taking the gospel into Russia." It was only a month later when President Mecham watched with the rest of the world as the Berlin Wall came down.

The missionaries of the Finland Helsinki Mission began trips into Leningrad for several weeks at a time on tourist visas to visit the members there who had been baptized elsewhere.  In February 1990, a congregation was organized in Vyborg. By mid-summer 1990, the Leningrad congregation, created in December 1989, had 100 members, and the Vyborg congregation had 25 members. In September, the St. Petersburg congregation (formerly the Leningrad congregation) was recognized by the government and in October a religious freedom law was passed allowing them to meet openly.

On October 7th our family arrived in Leningrad with a picture of Jesus as a gift for that congregation on their first official Sunday meeting. President Browning, the then mission president would not allow us to deliver it personally so we gave it to the missionaries along with several jars of peanut butter.


In June 1991, the world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir received publicity "beyond its wildest expectations" as it performed in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The choir recorded songs later broadcast to a potential audience of 339 million. In May 1991, the Church was officially recognized by Russia as the Central Religious Organization of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

It was a sweet event for Elder Nelson on October 20, 2009 when he dedicated a renovated theater as a meeting house in Voronezh and said the service brought to his mind fond memories of an earlier visit in 1993 when his son, Russell M. Nelson Jr., was serving there as a missionary in the Russia Moscow Mission. "Back then, my son served as my translator,"

Now Russia has 8 missions and almost 30,000 members. As Elder Schwitzer of the Europe East Area Presidency said at our Novosibirsk Zone Conference this week, there is something significant about such a large piece of real estate (Russia) that has been controlled by Satan for so long as to keep it isolated from the rest of the world until just recently. There is something very special about this land and we will soon see major events here that will bring about the prophesies concerning this land regarding the gathering of the Ten Tribes and the bringing of tens and hundreds of thousands into the Church.

The following Youtube feature illustrates the work we have been engaged in. We are now seeing the end of this chapter of our involvement with Russia, but the story is not over, I think.

What a country.
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