Los Mormones en Mexico

I am going to write about the LDS church in Mexico; so, again I apologize in advance to friends not of our faith for the Mormon jargon that follows.

Activity in the church, obviously, plays a big part in our lives; it was being assigned as a missionary to serve in Mexico in 1965 that began my love affair with this country.  We have enjoyed very much being able to walk to church each Sunday.  We were welcomed by the local members with open hearts and arms.  The second Sunday here Sara was greeted with a kiss from one of the little girls as we entered the chapel.  We quickly felt part of the ward family.

Our chapel, about a 15 walk from our house

Greeting one another as we arrive for Sacrament Meeting

Chatting at the end of the services

Sister Sheridan visited one Sunday.  As an RN, she was
volunteering at a hospital for two weeks repairing
cleft lips in infants.  She was from Ogden.  Her son served in the
 Armenian Mission at the same time that Kathryn
was there in the Peace Corps.

One of these sweet little hermanitas kissed Sara's cheek as
she shook her hand and welcomed us to her ward.

There is one gringo family in the ward, the Christensen's.  Andrew is actually from Denmark and his wife Ann is from Salt Lake City.  They have two little children and have lived in San Cristobal for over three years.  Ann's family started a NGO that works with the Mexican government to build schools.  Andrew is the in-country director for them.  We were impressed with the work they are doing.  Here is the link to their website.

Escalera

There are three wards in San Cristobal; one that meets in our building, and two that meet in the stake center across town.  There are several more wards and smaller branches in other towns that make up the San Cristobal de las Casas Stake.  We are in the Mexico Tuxtla Gutierrez Mission and there is a small temple in Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capital, about and hour's drive away.  There are two sets of missionaries assigned to our ward, one gringo and three Mexican elders.  We met two sister missionaries in the plaza one evening assigned to one of the other wards.

The San Cristobal de las Casas Stake Center

Hermana Park from Salt Lake and Hermana Lara from Tampico

Sunday attendance in our ward seemed to be around 75 people; some who are there one Sunday are not the next.  I asked one elders about the activity rate.  He said maybe 33%.  Brian Appel, who served a mission about five years ago in the Mexico City suburbs, told me he thought it was closer to 10% where he was.  It kind of depends how you define "active".  Nevertheless, those who are there bare strong testimony of the gospel in there lives.  They love it, and it shows.  There was one young brother who had just returned in February from serving a full-time mission in Peru.  The talks in sacrament meeting and the lessons in Gospel Doctrine class and in Priesthood and Relief Society were all well presented.  Many of the ward members were following along in the scriptures on their smart phones or tablets.

The church has grown tremendously in Mexico since I was a missionary 49 years ago.  In 1965 Mexico's population was around 45 million; in 2012 it was 120 million.  I am not completely sure what church membership was in the mid-sixties; but, we always said it was around 40,000.  I found on the internet that in 1960 it was 13,000 and had grown to 68,000 by 1970, so our estimate is in the ball park.  I like to think I played some small part in that decade's growth.  Today, the official church membership in Mexico is reported at around 1.3 million, a significant increase in 50 years; although other evangelical churches and the Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses have had sharp growth also.

When I entered the Northern Mexican Mission, with its headquarters in Monterrey, I entered one of just four missions in all of Mexico.  The other three were the Western Mexican Mission headquartered in Hermosillo, the Southeastern Mexican Mission headquartered in Veracruz, and the Mexican Mission headquartered in Mexico City.  Our mission was huge.  It bordered the United States on the north and the Gulf of Mexico on the east.  It stretched from Tampico in the southeast, west across the states of San Luis Potosi, Aguascalientas, Zacatecas and Durango, then north through Chihuahua to Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso Texas.  My first change was from Ciudad Mante, near Tampico in the southeast corner of the mission, to Ciudad Juarez in the northwest corner.  It took me 32 hours on three buses and covered over 1000 miles, all by myself.  What was one mission back then is now at least ten separate missions.

When I left the mission in 1967, there were still only two stakes in all of Mexico.  One was the Anglo stake in the Mormon Colonies in Chihuahua where we did not even have missionaries, and the other was the Spanish speaking stake in Mexico City.  Everything else was mission field branches and districts.

There, obviously, were not any temples in Mexico back then.  The closest temple was in Mesa Arizona.  It was almost impossible for a member in San Cristobal to go to the temple.  It required a two-thousand-mile bus trip of at least 36 traveling-hours each way.  Few had been to the temple, as it was financially beyond the reach of most members.

In the 1960's we did not believe there would ever be a temple in Mexico.  At that time the Mexican constitution stipulated that all church buildings belonged to the state and be open to everyone.  This was a reaction to influence of the Catholic Church prior to the Revolution of 1910.  It seemed a miracle when the Mexico City Temple was dedicated in 1983.  There are now twelve operating temple in the country.

Mexican laws at the time affected us as missionaries in other ways.  The constitution prohibited foreign nationals from preaching religion in Mexico.  Again, an effort to reduce the influence of the Catholic Church.  Consequently, as Mormon missionaries, the visa that was issued to us by the Mexican government did not say we were representing The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  Instead, it said we were "teachers of morals" representing the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association.  We could not preach on the street corner; but, we did a lot of tracting.  And, we did not wear name tags; of course, in the sixties, no missionary anywhere wore name tags; they had not been invented yet.  The Mexican government knew exactly what we were doing, and it was okay with them.  That's why they issued us the visas.

So, logistically, legally, and operationally the church is much different today than half a century ago.  But what hasn't changed is the dedication, love and sweet spirit of the Mexican saints.