Jacob Spori, First LDS Missionary In The Near East

Jacob Spori Building, Rexburg — The Jacob Spori Building, on the campus of BYU-Idaho
(Wikimedia Commons)

Another brief excerpt from the first draft of my eventual book on Islam for a Latter-day Saint audience:

This was, however, not the last time that apostles of the Lord would visit Palestine in this dispensation to dedicate the land for the return of the Jews. Altogether, there seem to have been at least ten separate dedications of the Holy Land under apostolic authority. (No clearer illustration could possibly be provided than this of the urgent interest with which the prophets and apostles of this dispensation have watched events in the Holy Land.) Elder Anthon H. Lund of the Quorum of the Twelve, in company with Ferdinand F. Hintze of the Turkish Mission, rededicated the land from the Mount of Olives on 8 May 1898. Francis M. Lyman, then president of the Twelve, dedicated the land on three separate occasions and at three different sites during March of 1902. Elder David O. McKay, passing through Palestine on his world tour of missions, climbed with his companion Hugh J. Cannon to the top of the Mount of Olives and offered a prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God on 3 November 1921. Elder James E. Talmage rode with President Joseph W. Booth to the top of Mount Carmel, near Haifa, and rededicated the land for the redemption of Judah on 18 October 1927. Finally, in May of 1933, Elder John A. Widtsoe, accompanied by his wife and by President Badwagon Piranian of the Palestine Syria Mission, climbed the Mount of Olives to dedicate the land one more time. (He had offered an earlier prayer of dedication from high on Mount Carmel, overlooking the blue of the Mediterranean Sea.)

The actual preaching of the gospel to the inhabitants of Palestine and the Near East—although notably not to the Jews— began in 1884. During that year, an Armenian living in Istanbul, who had somehow heard of the Mormons, wrote to the president of the European Mission and asked him to send a representative of the Church to introduce the gospel into Turkey. The choice fell upon a Swiss convert to Mormonism by the name of Jacob Spori. When he arrived at Istanbul— where he was able to baptize the Armenian and his family—he became the first Latter-day Saint missionary ever to serve in the Near East.

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Here’s an abhorrent news story:

“Muslims are forced to eat pork and drink alcohol as punishment in China’s Islamic ‘re-education’ camps, former inmates reveal”