On Sunday, November 10th, 1985, President Ezra Taft Benson was ordained and set apart as a 13th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. Four days later, he and his counselors, President Gordon B. Hinckley and President Thomas S. Monson, came to the meeting of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve in the Salt Lake Temple with new assignments for each apostle in hand.
Beginning at the senior end of the circle and working around to the most recently called, they handed out new areas of responsibility and supervision. "By the time president Benson got to me," Elder Nelson recalled, "he said something that startled me: 'You are to be responsible for all of the affairs of the church in Europe and Africa, with a special assignment to open up the nations of Eastern Europe that are now under the yoke of Communism for the preaching of the Gospel.'"
Elder Nelson's initial reaction may have been similar to Moses's when he was asked to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt. 'Who me?" Just 19 months in the quorum, his immediate thought was "Are you sure Dallin and shouldn't do that? He's an attorney. I'm a heart surgeon. What do I know about opening countries?" "Thankfully," said Elder Nelson, "I may have thought it, but I didn't say it."
The assignment was Herculean in proportion. Europe was important to the Church. It was the homeland from any other conference good immigrated to the United States and infuse tremendous strength and stability into the church during its fledgling, formative years.
But in 1985, more of Europe lay behind the iron curtain then not: Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Macedonia, Yugoslavia, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the German Democratic republic, and all of the USSR. President Benson's assignment to Elder Nelson came roughly 19 months before President Ronald Reagan would famously declare, on June 27, 1987 "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," and four years before the Berlin Wall would fall on November 9th 1989. There were more countries in Europe that had not recognized the church then had. Further, this was during the politically frigid time referred to as the Cold war. "If ever a task seemed impossible to me," Elder Nelson admitted years later, "that was it."
"I had spent much of my professional life opening hearts to perform life saving operations," he reflected, "but I had no experience that would lead me to believe I could open countries for the preaching of the gospel.". And yet, a prophet had given him an assignment, and so he set out to do what seemed at the outset "utterly impossible."
It was difficult to know where to even begin. It took Elder Nelson several months to make initial contacts, lay groundwork, and map out an approach. Over the next several years, he would make dozens of trips to Eastern Europe and to the former Soviet Union, as well as an endless parade of trips to Washington, DC, to meet with ambassadors, diplomats, and anyone who could help open doors throughout Europe.
One country with which he already had both an affinity and firsthand experience was Russia. He had studied the language and been there to lecture professionally several times, and he already loved the Russian people. With Elder Hans. B Ringer of the Seventy, a Swiss General Authority then serving in the Europe Area Presidency, Elder Nelson traveled to Moscow on a fact-finding, bridge-building mission in the summer of 1987.
Elders Nelson and Ringger were, on the one hand, an unlikely pair--an American heart surgeon and a Swiss engineer and architect. On the other hand, they were quite different from leaders of other faith groups, and they often disarmed dignitaries with whom they met. They came asking only that the Church be recognized and allowed to function in those countries. "Other churches often asked fro money from various governments," Elder Nelson explained. "We didn't ask for anything except permission. We always go through the front door and abide by the laws."
In Moscow in 1987, Elders Nelson and Ringger sought an audience iwth Konstantin Kharchev, the chief of the Council of Religious Affairs. He refused to see them, but he represented the first hoop through which they had to jump. So they stayed in the waiting room of his office all day until it was time for him to go home. When at day's end they were still there, an impatient Kharchev demanded to know what they wanted. Elder Nelson responded, "We just want to ask you a question. What would we need to do to get the Church we represent established in Russia?"
This was Communist Russia, and the Soviet Union was still intact. Kharchev couldn't have been less interested in the question of these two church men, one of them an American, which whom he hadn't wanted to talk anyway. He did respond, however, that for a church to be legally registered it had to have twenty adult Russian citizens who were willing to sign a paper indicating they were members of that church, and they all had to be from the same political district. At the time, there were eleven political districts in Moscow alone.
Elders Nelson and Ringger asked if they could establish a reading room or visitors' center where citizens could come of their own volition and learn about the Church.
"No," Kharchev barked.
"You have given us a chicken and egg problem," Elder Nelson responded. "You say we can't receive recognition until we have members, but we can't get members if we can't have a reading room or visitors' center."
"That, sir, is your problem," answered Kharchev. "Good day."
The next day, Elder Nelson and Elder Ringger sat on a park bench near the Kremlin and reviewed their dilemma. They pondered, prayed, brainstormed possible solutions, and pondered some more. Could young adults from the nearby Nordic countries immigrate and help with the situation? Were there ways Scandinavian members could help? Were there other ways to introduce the gospel without using missionaries, reading rooms, or visitors' centers? "We finally decided we couldn't meet their requirements," Elder Nelson remembered, "and that was when the Lord stepped in."
Roughly a year later, on July 24, 1988, a Moscow resident name Igor Mikhailusenko was baptized while visiting the United States. This was followed by a Russian family from Leningrad, Yuri and Liudmila Terebenin and their daughter Anna, being baptized in Budapest. Then another Moscow resident, Olga Smolianova, was baptized while visiting in Italy. A Russian man living in Vyborg, near the Finnish border, then became acquainted with a Finnish Latter-day Saint family, and he was baptized.
A few missionaries in the Finland Helsinki Mission began learning Russian and received permission to teach Russian tourists visiting Finland. Svetlana Artemova's experience demonstrated how actively the Lord helped reach Russian citizens with His word.
For some time, Svetlana had yearned to acquire a Bible in Russia, but ever since the Communist revolution in 1917, Bibles had been difficult for Russian citizens to come by. After pleading with her husband over an extended period of time, she made a trip to Helsinki in the fall of 1989 for the express purpose of obtaining a Bible in the Russian language.
During her stay, she visited a Helsinki park, and Svetlana stumbled on an object covered by a pile of leaves. Almost unbelievably, it was a Bible, and even more miraculous, it was a Bible in Russian! She was ecstatic and so thrilled that she couldn't help bu share her delight with the first woman who walked by. That woman, Raija Kemppainen, just happened to be the wife of District President Jussi Kemppainen. Raija was fluent in Russian and English, as well as her native Finnish, and she asked Svetlana if she would like to have another book that would teach her even more about Jesus Christ. Svetlana was delighted at the prospect, and Raija, who with her husband Jussi had been praying to find ways to help take the gospel to Russia, quickly obtained a copy of the book of Mormon in Russian for her new friend. Svetlana was soon baptized i Helsinki.
At this point in time, missionaries could enter Russia but could not stay permanently nor could
they preach or baptize. But they could teach when invited to do so. Svetlana wanted missionaries to teach friends of hers in Leningrad and arranged for the elders to meet with one of them. When missionaries knocked on the woman's door, she was not home; but a neighbor, Sasha Teraskin, heard the knocking, opened his door, and invited the missionaries in. When they identified themselves as missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Sasha was moved to tears. Since meeting Church members in Warsaw, Poland, while on a recent trip there, he had been praying to know how to learn more about the Church. The missionaries taught him, and he was baptized.
And so it went. "Before too long," said Elder Nelson, "we had twenty members in Leningrad, and that is where it all started." He filled out the appropriate papers and took them to the office of religious affairs in Leningrad, seeking recognition for the Church. Three months later, nothing had happened, so Elder Nelson returned to that office and asked where the papers were that he had filed. "They're still in a drawer," an official admitted. "We don't know what to do with them. No one has ever asked for recognition for a church before."
That day, and on plenty of others, Elder Nelson's work felt like three steps forward and three and a half steps back. But on he pressed.
On one occasion, Elder Nelson was in the office of religious affairs in Leningrad with Yuri Terebenin, the first convert in that city. During their discussion, Elder Nelson invited the officials there to attend a meeting they were having that night with the small group of Saints living in Leningrad who had joined the Church elsewhere. Yuri panicked. He and his fellow Saints had tried hard to remain anonymous: "Elder Nelson, you don't do that. These are the police." Elder Nelson's response revealed the calm that so often characterized his demeanor: "Brother Terebenin, our Church is for everyone. We want them to come." Later, Elder Nelson commented, "They came, and I don't think I've ever seen a man so pale as Yuri Terebenin. But that is understandable. The Soviet Union was still under the yoke of Communism, and citizens felt threatened by the police."
There were still many more trips to take and meetings to arrange, many more luncheons to host with ambassadors and other Russian dignitaries visiting the United States, many more snubs from Soviet officials and setbacks with which to deal. But in June 1991, at a VIP dinner following the Tabernacle Choirs's performance at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, Alexander Rutskoy, vice president of the Republic of Russia, made the historic and unexpected announcement that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had been granted full recognition in the entire Republic of Russia. Both Elder Nelson and Elder Dallin H. Oaks, who were at that concert and dinner, were shocked, overjoyed, and overwhelmed by the Lord's goodness. After years of work, the breakthrough had finally come.
"It was an absolutely stunning moment," Elder Nelson recalled. "We had hoped it was coming, but we didn't expect it that night. That was a red-letter day. Many of us did all we could to bring this about, but make no mistake about it, it was the Lord who worked the miracle."
Some five years later, on October 7, 1996, Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, visited Salt Lake City. Curing a meeting, Elder Nelson was seated next to Gorbachev, and the former president of the Soviet Union asked Elder Nelson to explain the differences between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among other things, Elder Nelson taught him about living prophets and then invited him and his wife to meet with President Gordon B. Hinckley and his counselors the next day. As he did so, he couldn't help but think about the ups and downs, the twists and turns, the disappointments and small breakthroughs that had characterized his experience with Russian dignitaries during the previous decade. But here, sitting in the Church Administration Building, was the man who had taken the dramatic step of tearing down the Berlin Wall. And Elder Nelson had the opportunity to introduce to him some of the basic tenets of the restored gospel.
Clearly, the Lord can do His own work, and Elder Nelson marveled at the privilege of being a small part of it.
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