Mexican LDS history on exhibit

0 Comments | Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Nov 1, 2007 | by Rodger L. Hardy Deseret Morning News

PROVO -- Collecting memorabilia of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from south of the border has been a passion of a Provo family for years.

It started when Fernando Gonzales' schoolteacher aunt began gathering church-related items decades ago. Several years ago Gonzales took over the project, which is usually stored in a museum of Mormon history near the LDS temple in Mexico City. Because the temple has been closed for a major renovation since April and won't reopen until August, he has many of the items in a traveling display. That exhibit stopped at the Provo City Library on Oct. 27.

The exhibition includes memorabilia from the 19th century when Moses Thatcher, an early LDS apostle, went to Mexico to open the country for missionary work. One of the first missionaries to Mexico was James Z. Stewart, who assisted in the translation of the Book of Mormon into Spanish in 1886.

A glass case contains postcards Stewart sent to his son from Mexico and other artifacts, including historical LDS books, such as early copies of the Book of Mormon and an early hymn book.

The exhibition includes historical items from Chili, Bolivia and Argentina.

The Gomez family joined the church in 1925, three years after LDS missionaries knocked on the door of Gomez's grandmother in Pachuca, Mexico.

"We're now five generations in the church," he said.

The exhibition contains several DVDs that document church history in Mexico and such items as the 1922 minutes of church meetings taken in Monterrey.

Gomez gathers early church history from Latin, Central and South America by knocking on the doors of people who have roots or relationships with Latin countries.

He is in one of the large photographs as a 6-year-old boy in front of the Mexico City chapel in 1946 at a conference of the reunification of the church. The church split into two factions in 1936 over leadership disputes that stemmed from the Mexican Revolution between 1910 and 1917. A sense of nationalism and dissatisfaction with leaders appointed to lead the church and with some Anglo-American members finally reached a breaking point.

One group stayed loyal to the church while about a third of the Mexican members formed The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Third Convention).

The separation continued for 10 years before LDS leaders sent Arwell L. Pierce to Mexico in 1942 as a mission president assigned to bring the church back together. In 1946 the two factions reunited. However, those who had joined the Third Convention faction had to be rebaptized. Dissident leaders who had been excommunicated were disfellowshipped instead, according to LDS author F. LaMond Tullis.

The reunification is credited with making the rapid growth of the church in Mexico possible.

Gomez, a Provo resident, has several private showings coming up, including one at Brigham Young University in January. He has already exhibited his large collection in Tucson, Portland, Atlanta and Nogales.

E-mail: rodger@desnews.com