Monday, April 6, 2015

Welcome Home, Toshi

At 11:02 p.m. on Friday, March 20, Sister Toshi Becker arrived at the St. George Airport on Skywest’s last flight of the day, to be greeted by her mother Taj Becker and father Adolph Becker and more than thirty B7 Ward members.  This enthusiastic welcome concluded 18-months of fulltime service in the bitter cold but warmly receptive Russia Moscow Mission. 

“The best part about serving in Russia were those moments, which came out-of-the-blue, when I realized I had become someone better through the power of the Atonement.  It was such an amazing experience witnessing every day – and in such an intimate way - how the Atonement changes lives,” states the new RM.

“My least favorite part of missionary service was seeing people use their agency to make wrong choices when they knew the right choices.  It hurt,” she states.

Toshi’s future plans involve returning to BYU for the spring semester which begins in May and where she will study for "at least a couple of years" to finish her bachelors degree in molecular biology, with a minor in music and chemistry.  She will leave for school in mid-April to look for work, which she hopes might be her dream job “working as a Russian teacher at the MTC.”

The www.lds.org website tells the following history of Church activity in Russia:  In 1843, just 13 years after the Church's organization, Church President Joseph Smith called two men to preach in Russia but this assignment was canceled after the martyrdom of the Prophet and his brother in 1844. In 1895, a native of Sweden was sent to St. Petersburg, where he baptized the Johan M. Lindelof family. The family was occasionally visited by Church leaders in the early 1900s. In 1959, Ezra Taft Benson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, simultaneously serving as United States Secretary of Agriculture, visited the Central Baptist Church in Moscow and preached to an attentive congregation.

In September 1989, Church leaders authorized a US Embassy worker in Russia to begin holding group meetings in his apartment. Four months later, in January 1990, missionaries arrived in Leningrad.  In February 1990, a congregation was organized in Vyborg. By mid-summer 1990, the Leningrad congregation, created in December 1989, had 100 members, and the Vyborg congregation had 25 members. In September, the St. Petersburg congregation was recognized by the government and in October a religious freedom law was passed. With membership in Russia at 750 in February 1992, two other Russian missions were organized.

In June 1991, the world-renowned Mormon Tabernacle Choir received publicity "beyond its wildest expectations" as it performed in the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). The choir recorded songs later broadcast to a potential audience of 339 million. In May 1991, the Church was officially recognized by Russia. Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, organized the Moscow Russia Stake on 5 June 2011 — the first stake in Russia and the second in the former Soviet Union.

There are now 22,039 members in 7 missions in Russia.

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