Diaz said Elder Ballard laid out "the praise and vision of how these (Latinos) are our brethren and we must love them." Diaz remembers someone saying it "is no accident that they are here, but (it's) by the hand of the Lord that they are."

And in unprecedented numbers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which released statistics last week showing Hispanics alone accounted for 26.9 percent of the state's population growth from 2000 to 2003, up from 22.9 percent during the 1990s.

Though the "Daily Dose" program has not been publicized since the church still considers it a "pilot program," hundreds of Latinos along the Wasatch Front have already taken the classes and learned to speak basic English since the program was initiated in March, according to Elder King.

To get the classes going, the Kings "invited any nonmembers that we saw, and the (proselyting) missionaries would invite people as they knocked on doors."

Recruiting hasn't been a problem, according to Adrian Escalante, a Sandy businessman who created the "Daily Dose" curriculum and offered a free license to the LDS Church to use it anywhere in the world. Posters and other teaching materials used in LDS chapels now bear the church's own logo. The program's commercial success in a variety of corporate settings was recently featured in a Washington Post article.

"When we did our very first official class in March in South Jordan, I was there that night to see it hands on," Escalante said. As a Latino Latter-day Saint, he understood the potential for a program that could teach his fellow members English in short sessions focused on real-life concepts.

"We were expecting 20 to 30 people show up, but 100 people were there in a line out to the parking lot. We had three or four facilitators," who teach in small groups of only eight to 10. "We had done no advertising at all." Escalante jumped in to help teach, "and in my group, people from Sugar House had showed up. When I asked if they were members, they said no, and they didn't have friends who were members. They had heard about it from the friend of a friend at work."

The program is open to anyone who is willing to participate regularly, Escalante said, and it's grown exponentially by word of mouth. Classes are being held not only in the Salt Lake Valley, but in many areas along the Wasatch Front, in Logan and in Preston, Idaho.