Reason #17 - A world-wide Church

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints started out with 6 official members on April 06, 1830, which was a meager beginning. Today (2008) there are over 13 million members of the church worldwide. We are found on nearly every continent on earth including Asia. We currently have 128 temples throughout the world, to include one in Hong Kong, three in Africa, many in Europe and in the island nations such as the Phillipines and Fiji and more. A temple was built in East Germany during an amazing time in History. People of faith...humble people, poor people as well as the rich are seeing the light of the gospel throughout every land and sea. Every corner of the earth is sounding the trump with the good news of the gospel of Christ. The restored gospel in it's fullness is on the earth once more. Today, even, we have a counselor in our church presidency who is not a native of America, but from Germany. Many other leaders are also from these many other lands. It is a beautiful thing. When I went to Kuwait with my unit, I decided that I would be a missionary for the church as well. The place we were sent was a hub of international activity. Every time I noticed a flag on a uniform of a differant nationality I bought a Book of Mormon in that language. The Lord kept reminding me that his church is for the world (through a remembrance concerning a small meeting of the brethren where Joseph declared that the church would fill North and South America, it will fill the world. Before I left, I had Books of Mormon in 13 differant languages on the shelf. Not long after that I felt prompted to put missionary DVDs on the shelf as well. Almost every DVD has captions for many other languages of our allies for which I put Books of Mormon on the shelf. I began buying the DVDs by the box and gave away over 400 DVDs to include: Legacy, Heavenly Fathers Plan, Together Forever, When ye are in the service of your fellow men...the restoration, Finding faith in Christ, and many more. I also donated books about the church to the local library and put church magazines on the shelf as well as other leaflets or information concerning the church to include those cute little "Mormonads" that are usually in the "New Era" magazine. Some came to me afterwards, like the chaplains assistant who told me how much he loved the DVD about family so much that he sent a copy to his wife. In another instance a local Indian looked so reverently at the front photo of "Joy to the world" (The photo was of Joseph, Mary, and the Baby Jesus) and couldn't thank me enough when he found out it was free. I'll never forget the look on this man's face...it were as though he had found a great treasure and his gratitude was encouraging and worthwhile. This church is true and it is for the world not to be kept for a choosen few.