Future of the LDS Church in Russia seen as very bright

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MOSCOW — Pessimists may look at the LDS Church in Russia and see the glass half-empty, limited missionaries, past visa challenges, social ills including escalating alcoholism and divorce rates and a nation emerging from seven decades of atheism in the former Soviet Union.

But the optimists — including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' leaders and members in Russia — see the church's relatively short history there, a second generation coming of age and a great opportunity for continued growth in years to come.

A glass not just half-full but getting fuller.

"You'll find the Russian members of the church to be just like members of the church throughout the world. They're trying to raise families, they value highly the standards we associate with the church, they have the same challenges as we do — financially, raising children and teenagers," said Elder Gregory A. Switzer of the Quorums of the Seventy and Moscow-based president of the church's Europe East Area.

"They want to be active in all aspects of the gospel," he added. "We think the future is very bright for the church in Russia."

The LDS Church's 20 years in Russia is a fraction of the oppressive Soviet rule of the 1900s, which itself is dwarfed by the region's Christianity roots dating back 1,000 years. Russian Orthodoxy re-emerged as the area's longtime predominant religion as Russia went from Soviet republic to a separate federation.

Early LDS Church leaders were mindful of Russia. In 1843, Joseph Smith appointed Orson Hyde and George J. Adams to prepare for a never-fulfilled mission to the "vast empire" of Russia, to which "is attached some of the most important things concerning the advancement and building up of the kingdom of God in the last days."

Russia's first Mormon converts were Johan and Alma Lindelof, baptized in St. Petersburg's Neva River in June 1895, many years after Lindelof heard the gospel in his native Finland, married, moved to Russia, worked as a goldsmith and petitioned the church's Scandinavian Mission.

Other missionaries occasionally visited the Lindelofs over the years, with Elder Francis M. Lyman of the church's Quorum of the Twelve offering dedicatory prayers in 1903 in both St. Petersburg and Moscow. Following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the wealthy Lindelofs were persecuted and exiled to labor camps or deported to Finland.