Mexican President Vicente Fox is to meet privately with the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints today in what a church spokesman said would be a courtesy visit.

The church's first missionaries arrived in Mexico in 1875. Ten years later a group of 400 Mormon colonists fleeing persecution for practicing plural marriage settled in the state of Chihuahua and were followed by others from Utah and Arizona who established other small colonies in the country.

Today, the LDS Church has more than 980,000 members and 12 temples in Mexico.