in Salt Lake Stake from 1902 to 1903. Apostleship Smith was called as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1903. In 1907, Smith negotiated the church's purchase of the Joseph Smith farm in Palmyra, New York. From 1920 until 1921 Smith served as president of the church's British and European missions. In this capacity, he preached in the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Germany. He worked tirelessly to convince the British government to allow the church to send more missionaries and also met with Swiss officials to get permission to send more missionaries to that country. While presiding over the European Mission, Smith had his first airplane flight as part of a journey from Britain to Sweden. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s he was a strong supporter of use of airplanes in travel. J. Reuben Clark, of the church's First Presidency, was an equally ardent opposer of the use of airplanes. Considering how many airplanes crashed in these early years of aviation Clark may well have had a more reasonable approach to the issue. From 1922 to 1935, Smith was the general superintendent of the church's MIA. His counselors were Richard R. Lyman and Melvin J. Ballard. During his tenure, cooperation between the young men and young women's MIA organizations increased. One sign of this was the Young Woman's Journal, merging into the young women's MIA-published Improvement Era in 1929. In 1935 he was succeeded in this position by Albert E. Bowen. His illnesses seem to have come on in large part as a result of many of the difficult circumstances he suffered while visiting stake conferences during the first six years he was an apostle. After his return from Europe in 1921, Smith had a full schedule of stake conference assignments. That year he presided at stake conferences in Utah, Arizona and in Chihuahua state in Mexico. In 1921 Smith became the chairman of the executive board of the Deseret News. He was also on the general board for Religion Classes, which were weekday religious instruction that later merged with the Young Men and Young Women programs. He was also made chairman of the church's Centennial Celebration Committee. Smith continued as chair of the Centennial Committee until it work ended in 1930. In 1928, Smith purchased the Hill Cumorah for the church. This was a result of over 20 years of work