Elder Joseph Fielding Smith
linked an Old Testament prophecy to the Americas when he suggested in Signs of the Times, p51, that Isaiah’s
declaration of “Woe to the land shadowing with wings” (Isaiah 18:1) would be
better translated, “Hail to the land in the shape of wings.” There can be no
doubt that South America today and for more than the past 150 years, has been
protected in the shadow of the wings of the United States in North America.
President Spencer W. Kimball tied all these thoughts together as he
reminded the Saints in Brazil and Argentina that “Zion was all of North and
South America, like the wide, spreading wings of a great eagle, the one being
North and the other South America.”
South America needed to be
prepared for the preaching of the gospel and the establishment of the Church.
Elder Ezra Taft Benson saw the hand of the Lord in this process: “In the decade
prior to the restoration of the gospel, many countries of South America fought
wars of independence to free themselves from European rule.” Their independence
was further protected by the inspired 1823 proclamation of the United States
known as the Monroe Doctrine, declaring that there should be no further
colonization in the Americas by the European powers. Finally, the divinely
inspired Constitution of the United States (D&C 101:80) became the pattern
for the written constitutions in most other American countries.
The Church’s first contact with
South America came in 1851. Elder Parley P. Pratt was appointed to preside over
the “islands and coasts” of the Pacific, with headquarters at San Francisco.
From there he sailed to Valparaiso, Chile, arriving 8 November. Even though
South America had already gained independence from Europe, revolutions continued
in many areas, including Chile. These conditions diverted the people’s
attention from an interest in religion, and on 2 March 1852, he left Chile for
home.
Left: Parley P. Pratt, first missionary to Chile after (Right) Santiago
declares its independence from the Spanish Empire in Europe
The next contact did not come for
three quarters of a century. In 1925 two German families residing in Argentina
wrote to the First Presidency, asking for missionaries to come and establish
the Church. In response, Elder Melvin J. Ballard of the Council of the Twelve,
together with Elders Rey L. Pratt and Rulon S. Wells of the First Council of
the Seventy, were sent to Buenos Aires. On Christmas Day, in the beautiful Tres
de Febrero Park, Elder Ballard dedicated South America for the preaching of the
gospel. For nearly eight months he and his two general authority missionary
companions “walked the streets of Buenos Aires giving out two hundred to five
hundred handbills every day but Sunday, inviting the people to learn the
message of the Restoration.”
One aspect of Elder Ballard’s
prophecy was fulfilled nine years later in 1935, when the original mission was divided to form
the separate Argentine and Brazilian missions. The work in both countries had
begun among German immigrants; with the coming of World War II, however, both
governments discouraged the use of German in public meetings, so the
missionaries shifted their emphasis to the larger Spanish- or
Portuguese-speaking majorities. This change opened the way for greater growth.
In 1936 there were only 329 members in South America, but by 1945 there were
1,200 even though no missionaries arrived during World War II.
Left: First missionaries sent into Mexico in 1875; Right: Dedication
of the Liniers chapel in Lineirs, Argentina, April 9, 1939, the first
constructed in South America by the Church
The postwar decades witnessed an
acceleration of Church growth. In 1956 the first missionaries were sent to
countries along the western coast of South America; significantly, this is
where those of Lamanite heritage are found in greater numbers. On 1 May 1966
Elder Spencer W. Kimball, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles,
organized the first stake in South America at Sao Paulo, Brazil. The second was
organized in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 20 November of that same year.
It is interesting to compare the
Church’s growth worldwide during its first 75 years with the growth in South
America during a comparable period. In 1905 (75 years worldwide) the Church had
a membership of 322,779; at the beginning of the year 2000 (75 years in South
America), after three-quarters of a century of growth, South America had
2,464,785. In 1905 the Church had four temples, all in Utah; by the year 2000
there were 13 temples announced or completed in South America. In 1905 there
were 55 stakes, all in the Intermountain West; at the beginning of the year
2000 there were 560 stakes in South America.
South America could never become
a power in the Church without being “endowed with power from on high” (D&C
95:8). President Wilford Woodruff prophesied that temples would “appear all
over this land of Joseph, North and South America” (Journal of Discourses, 19:230). The fulfillment of this
prophecy for South America began with the dedication of the temple in Sao Paulo
on 30 October 1978. Three more temples were dedicated during the coming decade:
Santiago, Chile, in 1983, and Lima, Peru, and Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1986.
Eight more were announced during the 1990s: Cochabamba, Bolivia; Recife,
Campinas, and Porto Alegre, Brazil; Bogota, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela;
Guayaquil, Ecuador; and Montevideo, Uruguay. In the year 2000 a temple was
announced for Asuncion, Paraguay.
When we look at the population
today of North, Central and South America, the totals are:
North
America 466,613,000
Central America 107,587,000
South
America 387,490,000
When
we combine Central and South America the totals are fairly even:
North
America 466,613,000
Central/South
America 495,077,000
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