Working Together

Missionaries of the newly created Southern Far East Mission arrived in Hong Kong in October 1955. In preparation for service in Taiwan, missionaries Duane W. Degn, Keith A. Madsen, Weldon J. Kitchen, and Melvin C. Fish began to learn the Mandarin dialect of Chinese instead of the Cantonese dialect spoken in Hong Kong. In June 1956 they arrived in Taiwan, beginning their work in the northern city of Taipei.

Taipei resident Tseng I-chang 曾翼璋 met the missionaries and began to attend Church meetings faithfully, though he was not yet baptized. He was a man of humble means with a family to support. Tseng listened quietly during the lesson about the law of tithing. His silence made the missionary nervous, so the missionary repeated the lesson, word for word, two more times. After the third time, Tseng looked at the elder and asked, “What is the problem, Elder Kitchen, don’t you believe it?” The next Sunday, Tseng brought $810 NT ($27 USD) to church to pay his tithing and accepted the challenge to be baptized. A month later, Tseng testified that shortly after baptism, his pay had increased substantially. Tseng later became the first counselor in the new Taipei Branch.

In 1958 people from the cities of Keelung, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung joined the Church. By 1959 Chiayi and Miaoli also became centers of Church activity. Beginning in January 1959, American sister missionary Betty Johnson and the first local sister missionary from Taiwan, Chiu Siou-ping (Donna) 邱秀平, traveled up and down the island to help establish Relief Societies led by local sisters.

In 1958 Chen Lin Shu-liang 陳林淑良, who had joined the Church in Taipei the preceding year, became the first local Relief Society president in Taiwan. She and other early members played a pivotal role in the building of the first Latter-day Saint chapel. In August 1961 a local Church member, Tsao Lien-ch’eng 曹連城, discovered an advertisement for a government land auction in the newspaper used to wrap fish for the lunchtime meal. Tsao passed the advertisement on to the missionaries, and eventually in 1962 the Church was able to purchase an acre of land. Church members contributed funds and labor toward the building of the chapel. During the building phase, Relief Society president Chen “tromped about in the concrete mix, leading the sisters, lifting bricks, dripping sweat,” as recalled by her fellow sister Chiang Wei-ti 江威締, “working together with the brothers to build God’s house.”

In 1959 Liang Jun-sheng 梁潤生 became the first local branch president of the Taipei Branch. With a growing group of educated and linguistically talented members, Taiwan became a center of Chinese translation work. Through the efforts of Hu Wei-I 胡唯 and Larry K. Browning, the first Chinese-language Book of Mormon was published in 1965. A Chinese edition of the Doctrine and Covenants followed in 1974 and the Pearl of Great Price in 1976.