Mexico Marks 100-Stake Milestone

With the organization of the Tecalco Mexico Stake under the direction of Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve, Mexico now has one hundred LDS stakes.

The new stake was formed June 25 through a division of the Chalco Mexico Stake. Felipe Hernandez Luis, formerly bishop of the Ozumba Ward, was called as president of the new stake. Tecalco is located near the extinct volcano Popocatepetl.

At the organization of the Tecalco stake, there were 1,717 stakes in the Church.

Speaking in Spanish to the more than 2,500 members at the meeting, Elder Scott told them that he brought the love of President Ezra Taft Benson and the Church President’s thanks for their prayers in his behalf.

Elder Scott also recalled the remarks of President Spencer W. Kimball at the 1977 Area conference in Mexico. President Kimball spoke of a dream in which he said he saw members in Mexico owning farms, ranches, and businesses and serving as doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, and political leaders. (See Ensign, May 1977, p. 108.)

That dream, Elder Scott said, is now being fulfilled, and he urged the youth to continue to fulfill it. To do so, he said, would require them to “build beautiful lives of service” upon the base of obedience. This, he said, is the strength of the Church.

He urged them not to be “deceived by the customs and traditions that abound. Live the commandments of God in your homes,” he said. “With all my heart, I ask you to live the commandments of the Lord.”

The history of the Church in Mexico goes back to 1875, when Daniel Jones led a small group of missionaries to Mexico City and distributed tracts to Mexican leaders. One of these tracts came into the hands of Plotino Rhodocanaty, an instructor of Greek.

In 1878, Plotino requested more information about the Church, and one year later a second group of missionaries came, this time headed by Elder Moses Thatcher of the Quorum of the Twelve. They arrived late in 1879 and soon baptized Brother Rhodocanaty and a group studying with him. The Mexico City Branch was organized one week later.

It was only five years afterward that Latter-day Saint colonists came to Mexico from Utah; the first stake in Mexico, centered in Colonia Juarez, was organized among the colonists in 1895. The country’s second stake, in the Mexico City area, was not organized until 3 December 1961. But in the twenty-eight years since then, ninety-eight stakes have been organized in Mexico. The country now has more than half a million Latter-day Saints.

Elder Richard G. Scott of the Quorum of the Twelve greets members at the organization of the one-hundredth Mexican stake.