University officials have been sending students to study abroad for decades, believing that immersion in the cultures, religions and politics of the host nation provides understanding and empathy that can't be taught in the classroom.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has recently done the same with two of its top leaders, members of the Quorum of the Twelve. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, currently on assignment in Chile, says the move is another attempt by church President Gordon B. Hinckley to take an international church to the people.
Since becoming leader of the faith in 1995, President Hinckley has often said — most recently during last weekend's LDS general conference — that if he was able he would turn administration of the 11.5-million-member faith over to others so he could be full time "out among the people." A comprehensive travel log of his trips since becoming president would span several pages — not to mention his travels during nearly more than four decades as a general authority.
Yet at 92, he continues to remind church members on a regular basis that he is "an old man" whose ability to continue a break-neck travel pace is subject to the inevitable march of time.
But he believes that church members everywhere have the right to a visit by their top leaders, all of whom resided in Utah — until August. That's when Elder Holland and his wife left the United States to spend a year living and working in Chile, and Elder Dallin H. Oaks and his wife left for a year in the Philippines.
During a Deseret News interview last week, Elder Holland said he feels much like a student, sent abroad to speak a language he has yet to master in a nation he is only now becoming familiar with. Those who heard his address during last weekend's LDS general conference know that he has learned to greet people in Spanish and that he considers his assignment an important "call to serve," just as he does the thousands of callings ordinary members accept in a church that relies almost solely on lay volunteers.
He has set two major goals before returning home: to bless the people of Chile in a variety of ways, and to learn as much as he can about the church and its members there.
"I would love to bless the people with the love and commission that President Hinckley had in mind when he sent us there . . . I hope to be a delegate for him and for the Lord."
Some Chilean members will never leave their own country or even their village, and President Hinckley is sensitive to their desire for personal contact with a church leader, he said.
After a little more than five weeks in Chile, Elder Holland said he's determined to visit "as many wards, stakes, branches and districts as I can, meeting with them in the length and breadth of the land. We'll cover it as far as we can.
"I'm going to tour every mission personally, and I'll be with every missionary. I will have met every stake president by the time I return, and not in the meetings I convene, but in the meetings they convene." He'll be doing as much listening as talking, he said.
In doing so, he hopes to accomplish his second goal. "I've been like a sponge," trying to soak up all he can about "how people live, what they wrestle with and what their hopes and dreams are, whether they're economic or political. I'm also learning what a new convert learns to do."
He anticipates that his contacts with leaders and members throughout the country will provide the "total immersion" and will "make me a different and better member of the Quorum of the Twelve. I think I'll be a better missionary and witness for the Lord . . . I think that's part of why I'm there."
As Elder Holland noted during his remarks in general conference, early apostles of the LDS Church served as some of its first missionaries. But the commission to "go into all the world" seeking to build God's kingdom predates what the faith's founder and first prophet, Joseph Smith, called the "restoration" of Christ's original church to Earth in 1830.
The Bible records that Christ's apostles traveled widely following his crucifixion, sharing the message of his gospel with their "fellow citizens" in areas far removed from what is now the Holy Land.
As "special witnesses of Jesus Christ," members of the Quorum of the Twelve are viewed by Latter-day Saints as having the same priesthood power given their ancient peers by Christ himself to build his "kingdom on Earth" some 2000 years later.
Elder Holland notes he was sent to Chile specifically, not all of Latin America. "I don't think President Hinckley even gave 30 seconds of thought" to the idea of overseeing an entire continent. His instructions were to focus on the people of Chile in depth.
Though the church doesn't discuss its internal membership concerns or figures regarding adherence, he said every LDS general authority is aware of the challenges that skyrocketing church growth has created in Latin America in the past 20 years. The list includes a large percentage of LDS converts who initially embraced the faith and then fell away shortly thereafter. His strategy to help deal with that?
"We have to take the strength we have in those areas and enhance it," he said, noting that many LDS members in Chile make great sacrifices that American members have difficulty understanding. Many are challenged by poverty, lack of education or access to modern transportation or communication.
Yet they carry out their duties, pay their tithing and keep the church functioning even in rural areas where meetinghouses are still a dream. That faithfulness needs to be nurtured and multiplied, he said.
"We know we have the baptisms. We want to make sure we have the church growing proportionately in strength right along with it."
As the church helps a growing number of its members there with loans from the recently established Perpetual Education Fund, Elder Holland sees the potential for great leadership in young men and women who get an education and become leaders in their congregations. That's vital in a lay church.
He believes the structure of the LDS Church will increasingly distinguish it from other rapidly growing faiths in Latin America.
"We're the most tightly knit ecclesiastical organization in the world," with direct lines of communication and responsibility that maintain a continuity in the church's congregations and organizational structure worldwide.
Such structure allows the church to detect problems and make corrections without having to constantly "legislate" as most democratically based Protestant faiths do.
In a nod to what Elder Holland says is another indication of the church's God-inspired nature, he points to the fact that the organizational mechanisms that govern it were set out by founder Joseph Smith in 1835.
Those mechanisms have expanded, he said, but they haven't changed, and are structured to allow direct oversight of virtually unlimited growth.
"Whatever else we know, we are sure of this: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will go to 'every nation, kindred, tongue and people' " as prophesied in LDS scripture. "We'll continue to grow. The rate, and the times and places are the only real questions."
As the church matures in Chile, Elder Holland says he'll be there to help guide it through one of its "teenage years" in a region that he believes has yet to see its full flowering.
E-mail: carrie@desnews.com