Mark L. Grover discusses how members of the Church can act as missionaries and bring others to the gospel, one convert at a time.
This speech was given on August 7, 2001
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"I am honored to speak to you today. I am most grateful to Brigham Young University for giving me the privilege of working for almost 30 years in an environment of both faith and scholarship where I have been allowed to teach about Latin America and assist in the development of the library-not the library building, but a collection of more than three million books and other media that makes it feasible to research and study almost any topic one may desire. The collection of the Harold B. Lee Library is a genuine treasure of this university and the Church. My responsibility in that collection has been to bring to this campus the books that reflect the ideas, creativity, and scholarly production of the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking world, as well as of Africa.
Three years ago I attended the funeral of a very dear friend. It was like most funerals-both a time of rejoicing for a life well lived and of sorrow as those in attendance realized how much they would miss this majestic person. We were saying good-bye to one of the truly great women of the Church in Latin America. As a young teenager, Flavia Garcia Erbolato was one of the first six to be baptized in the interior city of Campinas, Brazil. For more than 50 years she had remained faithful to the Church. After marrying her husband, Oscar Erbolato, and spending a couple of years in the early 1950s here at Brigham Young University, they returned to Brazil and worked and served in numerous positions in São Paulo. Flavia’s last job was as the director of translation for the Church in Brazil. Among many other things, she supervised the recent monumental task of retranslating the Book of Mormon into Portuguese. At the viewing, her influence in the Church in Brazil was exemplified by the presence of General Authorities, General Authorities emeritus, past mission presidents, and other leaders of the Church. There were also many others like myself who had benefited from her many quiet and mostly secret Christian acts of kindness.
The quiet hum of whispering normal at a viewing dissipated with the appearance of an elderly gentleman, Norton Nixon. As he stopped at her casket to pay his regards, he struggled both physically and emotionally. His body was showing the long-term effects of the diabetes that had already taken much of his sight and ability to walk. The physical effort to be at the viewing was considerable, and he probably should not have come. But this was something he would not miss. He wanted to pay his respects to one of his dearest friends. Flavia had been his only convert during a two-and-a-half-year mission to Brazil in the early 1940s that included much hard work, some time in jail, and little feeling of success. Yet his joy was great over this one soul who did come into the Church.
Watching this beautiful act of expression of love has caused me to contemplate the special link that exists between a missionary and a convert. It is a relationship that is unique in the Church. It has also led me to marvel at how these individual experiences have combined to impact the history of missionary work in the Church during the past 100 years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the number of baptized members was just over 271,000-almost all from the western part of the United States. This number is less than the size of the Church in present-day Argentina. Even by the end of World War II, the number of members had only increased to just less than a million, with the majority still in the United States. However, by the end of this past century, our numbers had grown manyfold, reaching a total of 10,753,000, with the majority living outside of the United States and 36 percent alone from Latin America. (See Deseret News 2001-2002 Church Almanac [Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 2000], 580-85.)
Scholars of religion are becoming interested in the recent growth of the Church, primarily because of the large numbers who have been baptized. At a time when many traditional religions are undergoing declines in membership and attendance, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced the opposite."