History
Main article: Mission (LDS Church)#History of missions See also: List of LDS missionary entries by countryThe LDS Church regards Samuel H. Smith, the younger brother of church founder Joseph Smith, as the church's first full-time missionary. Throughout the history of the church, over one million missionaries have been sent on missions. The peak year for full-time missionary service in the church was 2002, when there were over 61,000 missionaries.
In 1898, the church began allowing single women to be called as missionaries. The first two single female missionaries were Jennie Brimhall and Inez Knight, who were called to serve as companions in England.
In 2002, apostle M. Russell Ballard delivered a General Conference address stating that the bar to qualify for missionary service had been raised and that "the day of the 'repent and go' missionary is over".
Read more about this topic: Missionary (LDS Church)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It’s nice to be a part of history but people should get it right. I may not be perfect, but I’m bloody close.”
—John Lydon (formerly Johnny Rotten)
“History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.”
—Henry Ford (1863–1947)
“The history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)