“Any Place on Earth,” chapter 18 of Saints: The Story of the Church of Jesus Christ in the Latter Days, Volume 3, Boldly, Nobly, and Independent, 1893–1955 (2022)
Chapter 18: “Any Place on Earth”
Chapter 18
Any Place on Earth
In December 1927, Reinhold Stoof, the president of the South American Mission, was ready to leave Argentina—if only briefly.
When Reinhold came to Buenos Aires eighteen months earlier, he had expected to work mainly with German-speaking immigrants. But the Germans in the city were spread out and hard to find, making it difficult to do missionary work among them. If the Church was to grow like an oak in South America, as Elder Melvin J. Ballard had prophesied, Reinhold and his small band of missionaries would need to take the gospel to Spanish speakers.1
As a German-born Saint who hardly knew a word of Spanish, Reinhold started studying the language almost immediately. Yet he still felt responsible for the Germans on the continent. He knew there were large German-speaking immigrant communities in neighboring Brazil. In fact, before returning to the United States, Elder Ballard had recommended sending missionaries to these communities to gauge their interest in the gospel.
Reinhold was aware of a few German Saints already living in Brazil, and he believed they could help establish branches of the Church in their towns and cities. With work among German immigrants slowing down in Buenos Aires, the time seemed right to visit Brazil.2
On December 14, Reinhold left a missionary in charge of the work in Argentina and traveled to Brazil with an elder named Waldo Stoddard. They stopped first in São Paulo, one of Brazil’s largest cities, where they hoped to find a Church member who had moved there after serving in the Swiss-German Mission. But their search was unsuccessful, and the city itself proved too challenging for missionary work. São Paulo had many German immigrants, but as in Buenos Aires, they were scattered throughout the city.3
A week later, Reinhold and Waldo traveled to a smaller city called Joinville, in southern Brazil. The city had been founded by immigrants from northern Europe in the 1850s, and many people who lived there still spoke German. The people were kind and seemed interested in the gospel. Reinhold and Waldo distributed tracts and held two meetings in the city. On both occasions, more than a hundred people attended. The elders found similar interest when they preached in other towns in the area. On their last day in Joinville, they were invited to administer to two sick women.
After spending three weeks in and around Joinville, Reinhold returned to Argentina thrilled by what he found in Brazil. “Working among the Germans in Buenos Aires will always be good,” he informed the First Presidency, “but is nothing compared with a work among the Germans in Brazil.”
He wanted to send missionaries to Joinville immediately. “I was always an optimist in my life, but never too enthusiastic not to see the shadows and hindrances,” he admitted. “And yet I repeat: This South Brazil is the place!”4
Around the time Reinhold Stoof returned from Brazil, John and Leah Widtsoe arrived in Liverpool, England, to begin their mission. They immediately enrolled Eudora in a local high school and settled into their new lives. Leah embraced the change. She had never served a mission nor devoted so much time to work outside her home, and every day brought new experiences. Missionary work came naturally to her, and she enjoyed serving alongside John, whose career and church assignments had often kept them apart.5
Nearly thirty years had passed since they had come to Europe for John’s education. In that time, the Church had changed remarkably throughout the continent. The end of large-scale emigration to Utah meant that some twenty-eight thousand Saints now lived in Europe, almost half of them German-speaking. Hostile critics like William Jarman had also faded from view, and many newspapers now published fair-minded reports of Church conferences or remarked favorably on the good deeds of the Saints.6
Yet, as Leah and John visited branches throughout the continent, they sensed some indifference and frustration among the Saints. Some ordinances of the Church, like patriarchal blessings and temple worship, were unavailable in Europe. And since the Church had stopped promoting emigration efforts, few European Saints could ever hope to participate in these ordinances.7
Other factors were hindering progress. Missionaries coming from America were younger and more inexperienced than their predecessors. Many of them could hardly speak the language of the mission, yet in most cases, missionaries were put in charge of congregations—even in places where there were strong, capable members who had been in the Church for decades. Relying on modest tithing revenues, these branches usually rented meeting halls in run-down parts of town, making it difficult to attract new members. A lack of Relief Societies, Primaries, Mutual Improvement Associations, and Sunday Schools also made the Church less appealing to Latter-day Saints and potential Church members alike.8
Leah, like John, was eager to serve the European Saints. Her primary responsibility was to direct Relief Society work in Europe, and soon after arriving in England, she began writing Relief Society lessons on the Book of Mormon for the coming year. In her first message to the Relief Society in the British Isles, published in the Millennial Star, she acknowledged their distance from Church headquarters but expressed her view that Zion was not a single location.
“After all, where is Zion?” she asked. “Zion is the ‘pure in heart,’ and that may be any place on earth where men choose to serve God in fullness and truth.”9
As Leah and John traveled around the mission, learning more about how to help the people of Europe, their thoughts kept returning to their son Marsel. It was hard for John to visit the area where his son had served faithfully. Yet he took comfort from an experience he had shortly after Marsel’s death, when the young man’s spirit came and assured him that he was happy and busy with missionary work on the other side of the veil. The message had given John courage to face life without his son.10
Leah also drew strength from this assurance. Previously, knowing that Marsel was cheerfully laboring in the spirit world had not been enough to pull her from her depression. But the mission changed her perspective. “The knowledge that our son is busy over there as we are here in the same great cause gives me an added spur to increase my activity and zeal,” she wrote in a letter to a friend in Utah. Marsel’s death was still a painful memory, but she found hope and healing in Jesus Christ.
“Nothing but the gospel could make such an experience bearable,” she testified. And now her faith in the healing power of the Lord was unshakable. “It has stood the test,” she wrote. “It works.”11
In late March 1929, rain and wind battered the home of Bertha and Ferdinand Sell in Joinville, Brazil. For Bertha, the storm could hardly have come at a worse time. She and Ferdinand, both second-generation German immigrants, supported their seven children by selling milk around the city. Since Ferdinand had suffered an accident leaving him unable to deliver the milk to their customers, it was Bertha’s job to make the deliveries, come rain or shine. Never mind that she had asthma.12
On this day, Bertha spent hours on her feet, making delivery after delivery despite the terrible weather. She returned home weary, but after entering the house, she caught sight of a scrap of newspaper on the table. She picked it up and asked, “Where did this newspaper come from?” No one in her family knew.
The paper had an advertisement for a Latter-day Saint meeting that night in Joinville. “How interesting! I’ve never heard about this church,” she said to her husband. “All of us are invited to go there.”
Ferdinand was not interested. “What are we going to do at a meeting with strangers?” he asked.
“Let’s go,” Bertha insisted.
“You are tired,” he said. “You’ve already walked so much today. It’s better for you not to go.” Besides, there was her health to consider. What if she overexerted herself getting to the meeting?
“But I want to go,” she said. “Something whispers to me that I need to go.”13
Ferdinand at last gave in, and he and Bertha walked into town with a few of their children. The streets were thick with mud from the day’s rain, but the family arrived at the meeting in time to hear two German-speaking missionaries, Emil Schindler and William Heinz, speak about the restored gospel of Jesus Christ. The elders had come to Joinville six months earlier with President Reinhold Stoof, who had returned to Brazil to start a branch in the city.
While some ministers in town had tried to turn people against them, the missionaries had been quick to defend their beliefs. They had distributed tracts and presented well-attended slideshows about the Church. They now held regular evening meetings and a Sunday school for around forty students. Still, no one in Joinville had joined the Church.14
When the meeting ended, everyone said “amen” and left the hall. As Bertha stepped outside, she had a sudden asthma attack. Ferdinand rushed into the building and called to the missionaries for help. Emil and William came at once and carried Bertha back inside. They placed their hands on her head and gave her a priesthood blessing. She soon recovered and walked back outside, smiling.
“They said a prayer for me,” she told her family, “and now I am better.”15
The missionaries helped the family back to their house, and Bertha immediately told her neighbors what had happened. “Of this I am sure,” she said to her friends. “The Church is true.” She was so happy. She could feel the truth of the gospel.
The next day, Bertha sought out the missionaries to tell them that she now wanted them to baptize her and her children.
Over the next two weeks, the elders visited the family and taught them lesson after lesson about the restored gospel. Ferdinand and the oldest daughter, Anita, did not want to join the Church at that time. But Emil and William baptized Bertha and four of her children—Theodor, Alice, Siegfried, and Adele—on April 14 in the nearby Cachoeira River. They were the first Latter-day Saints baptized in Brazil.
Soon Bertha’s friends and neighbors were attending meetings with her, and before long, a branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established in Joinville.16
That same season, in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Presbyterian church put a small brick chapel up for sale in early 1929. The chapel was about seventy years old and was on a side street at the north end of the downtown area. Although not as grand as other churches or synagogues in the city, it had a beautiful arched entryway, an ornate tower, and several large windows facing the street.17
The chapel quickly caught the eye of Charles Anderson, the Cincinnati Branch president, and his counselors, Christian Bang and Alvin Gilliam. Like many branch presidents in the Church, Charles had long wanted to find a permanent meetinghouse for his congregation. At the time, ward and branch leaders throughout the Church were eager to build or purchase meetinghouses with modern heating, indoor plumbing, and electric lights. While Charles had fond memories of all the old stores and other rented halls the Cincinnati Branch had met in over the years, he knew they were only temporary homes for the Saints. Sooner or later, the branch would grow too big or a lease would end, and the Saints would have to find another place to meet.18
The cycle was tedious. Charles had always tried to secure the nicest, most respectable hall he could find. For many years, the Church was not well regarded in the city, and some people had flatly refused to rent to Latter-day Saints. Charles and the branch had worked to change perceptions about the Church by holding street meetings, staging free concerts and plays, and inviting people to worship with them on Sunday. These efforts were somewhat successful, and finding new meeting halls had become easier. But the frequent moving from street to street hindered the Saints’ ability to attract converts in the city.
Recognizing the problem, the local mission president had counseled Charles to begin looking for a permanent chapel for the Cincinnati Saints. The branch now numbered around seventy people, most of them young working-class women and men who had grown up in the area. They were new to the Church, and many of them were the only members in their families. The branch provided them with priesthood quorums, a Relief Society, a Sunday School, a Primary, and an MIA to help them grow in the gospel. All they needed now was a home.19
Once Charles and his counselors made an offer on the Presbyterian chapel, the mission president came to Cincinnati and inspected the property. He approved the purchase and worked with Charles to secure funding from Church headquarters to acquire and renovate the building.20
Some Presbyterian ministers, meanwhile, were outraged when they learned that Latter-day Saints were purchasing the chapel. In the past, Presbyterians in Cincinnati had taken part in efforts to criticize and discredit the Church. How could the congregation think of selling its chapel to the Saints?
A few influential Presbyterians in Cincinnati supported the sale, content to know the chapel would remain a place of worship. But the ministers tried everything in their power to prevent the Saints from making the purchase. When their efforts failed, they asked Charles to complete the transaction through a middleman so the public records would not show that the Presbyterians had sold their chapel to the Latter-day Saints. Charles was hurt by the request, but he ultimately arranged to have the property transferred first to a lawyer and then to the Church.21
Spring soon turned into summer, and the branch began counting down the days until renovations on the building were finished. The dedication of the chapel promised to be a grand event. In a matter of months, the Cincinnati Saints would finally have a place they could call their own.22
Meanwhile, in the city of Tilsit in northeastern Germany, forty-five-year-old Otto Schulzke was one of the few locally called branch presidents on the European continent.
Otto was a short man who worked in a prison and had a reputation for being stern.23 Earlier that year, about a month before receiving his call, he had offended half the branch when he spoke out too sharply during an MIA lesson. Some people left the meeting crying. Others responded sarcastically to him. The missionaries, who were leading the branch at the time, simply seemed annoyed with him.
In fact, before being transferred to another city, the missionaries had worried about Otto becoming branch president. “No one will support him,” they told each other.24
But the elders underestimated the older, more experienced man. His family’s devotion to the Church was well known in the area. Years earlier, his father, Friedrich Schulzke, had heard terrifying stories about “Mormon” missionaries, so he had prayed fervently that they would always stay far away from his home and family. And when “Mormon” missionaries eventually showed up at his door, he chased them away with a broomstick.
Some time later, Friedrich met two young men who introduced themselves as missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They invited him to a meeting, and he was so impressed by what he heard that he invited the elders to preach in his home. When they arrived, however, he was startled to see one of them carrying a Book of Mormon, and he knew at once that they belonged to the very church he was trying to avoid. Still, he reluctantly let them speak, and before long he knew they were messengers from God.
One year later, he and his wife, Anna, joined the Church, and Otto and some of his siblings soon followed their example.25
When the war began in 1914, the missionaries left the area, and Friedrich had become the new branch president. Although he did not hold the Melchizedek Priesthood, he had served effectively in the calling. His branch would gather at his home, and together they would study the gospel and learn about the wonderful things the Lord had in store for them. Whenever he became overwhelmed by his responsibilities, he would kneel down and ask the Lord for help.26
Otto had also served as a branch president once before, shortly after the war. At the time, the Tilsit Branch was still recovering from the devastation, and many people had drifted away from the Church. Otto, as gruff as he was, certainly did not seem like the best person to revive the branch, but he rose to the occasion. During his first year as president, twenty-three people in Tilsit had joined the Church.27
Otto’s first experience as president lasted only a few years before missionaries returned to the area and took charge of most branches. Now, with Elder Widtsoe’s desire to make the branches in Europe more self-sustaining and self-governing, Otto and other local Saints were being called to lead again.28
But the question remained: Would the Saints in Tilsit accept his leadership, as they had in the past? Or would they refuse to support him, as the missionaries predicted?
The branch had many faithful Saints—around sixty or so members attended meetings each week—and they were eager to serve the Lord. But after being led by young missionaries, they might not respond well to a strict, older man who had little tolerance for nonsense.
As a branch president, after all, Otto expected the Saints to live the gospel. And he was not afraid to tell them so.29