Elder Hauser Jones, youngest of Corwin and Diana Smith's combined
13 children, will serve 2 years as a full-time missionary in the Honduras San
Pedro Sula East Mission, one of 4 missions in this Central American country.Originally called to serve in the Guatemala Guatemala City Mission, Elder Jones was delayed due to problems navigating the difficult waters of immigration to get a visa, so attended a semester at BYU until his travel plans could be resolved. "It's been quite a journey," he noted of the lengthy process, “but I am better prepared and eager to serve.”
The Church has a relatively short history in Honduras where Elders Spencer W. Kimball and Marion G. Romney of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles first visited in the early 1950s. These Church emissaries left literature with a hotel waiter who not only read what he had been given, but was later baptized. Missionaries were first called came to Honduras in December 1952, baptizing the first converts and organizing the first congregation in March 1953.
In 1980, Church membership in Honduras was 6,300. Today Honduras has 172,253 members in 235 congregations in four missions. The first temple in Honduras was built in Tegucigalpa, a 28,254 square foot structure dedicated by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf on March 17, 2013 enabling members to take part in sacred ordinances which before had required a 12-hour trip to the Guatemala City Temple.
Elder Jones enters the Provo MTC on Wednesday, May 24.
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