Flood of converts alters the face of LDS Church

Brad Sheppard went to Brazil as an LDS missionary in the late 1960s, when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had only one stake and a few thousand members in a country that covers almost half the continent of South America.

When he returned in 1996 as president of the church's Brazil Salvador Mission, what he found was "just a miracle" to him and others whose early experience there could not have foreshadowed the flood of converts that would join the LDS Church in the intervening years. By the time he finished his assignment in 1999, the church had more than 743,000 members along with 186 stakes, 1,264 wards, 615 branches, 42 districts and 26 missions.

Though the totals will vary by nation, that kind of skyrocketing growth has become characteristic in Central and South America, widely known as having the fastest-growing LDS membership in the world. The numbers mirror, though on a much smaller scale, the religious fervor that is literally changing the religious face of Latin America, as evangelical churches have swept the continent, adding tens of millions of converts to their flocks in the past few decades.

The mass exodus from a region historically dominated by Catholicism has generated myriad social and political changes whose complexity has left much of the religious world wondering how the future of the region will be affected.

While the rationale for such changes may not be understood well on a large scale across denominations or countries, Sheppard believes that 1978 marked the turning point in Brazil's march toward becoming one of the world's hotbeds of LDS conversion. Spencer W. Kimball, then president of the LDS Church, said that year he received a revelation from God ending the faith's ban on priesthood ordination for black males.

Sheppard's reaction, like that of so many LDS faithful, was one of rejoicing. "For anybody that served in Brazil, you knew that with the revelation it would just explode, and that's what's happening."

Particularly in the mission Sheppard presided over, in the state of Bahia, where 80 percent of LDS congregants are black. "When they come into the church, it becomes their life. Their friends become members, and it's just amazing to see their lives literally revolve around the church."

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