 Utah and thirty-seven percent in the rest of the world. So Utah is still the center of Mormondom. It will be noted that Utah still grows, in spite of the limitation in area and population.
This was the period of expanding to a world church status. With the organization of many new missions and numerous stakes abroad, the Church truly became international and took on world stature. Daniel must have looked down and been very proud of the little stone that was cut out of the mountains and now was rolling forth till it would fill the whole earth. And as you hear these statistics, you’ll see that the mountain stone will cover the whole earth, and it almost has already. The stone without hands, which rose into many areas across the seas and extends now from Tokyo Stake to the Transvaal in South Africa, and from Perth in Western Australia to Alaska, and from Scotland to Buenos Aires. There are now four stakes in Tonga, nine in Britain, eight in Australia, six in Mexico, five in Samoa, five in Germany, seven in New Zealand, eight or ten in South America, and stakes in many large cities of the world. I said eight or ten in South America because I think one or two were organized last Sunday and I haven’t yet been advised.
There are now about thirty stakes in Lamanite countries. Well, that was unthought of when we first started working with the Indians just a few years ago. This is the day of the Lamanite, and they are receiving the gospel with great eagerness. Percentagewise, they are increasing more rapidly than the non-Lamanites—Mexico, Central America, South America, the islands of the sea.
About the time of my birth there were thirty-seven stakes in the whole Church, and now there are twice that many overseas—just overseas—and almost that many that are Lamanite, all or in large measure. How do you think Samuel the Lamanite must feel, to look down and see thirty stakes of Lamanites in the islands, and so on? How do you think he would feel to see Lamanites conducting the meetings at the pulpit, doing the singing, playing the piano, and organizing and carrying forward the work of the Lord?
Just twelve years ago, in 1960, it was my privilege to organize four stakes in Australia and New Zealand, including the Hawkes Bay Stake, which was all Lamanite—the first in the world—and now we’ve got enough almost to organize a stake right here in this congregation. It shows how the little stone, rolling through the whole world, will fill the world, as it’s already begun to do. Then the Hawkes Bay Stake consisted of all Lamanites but two: the president was an American; one of the high councilors came from Britain. All the others were Lamanites.
We return again to Daniel’s prediction: the small stone becoming the great mountain and filling the earth, including the Orient, continental Europe, Great Britain, South Africa, South America, Central America, Mexico, Alaska, Hawaii, the South Pacific. The growth of the Church, I say, is phenomenal, and nothing can stop it; and, as Daniel said, it will never be destroyed or given to another people. It’s here to stay until the end of time.
When the Church jumped the oceans—and the plains and the mountains and the equator—language training became necessary. Accordingly, we have now three language training schools: at Provo, Ricks College, and the Church College of Hawaii. And we’re training in many languages and teaching the gospel in nineteen, I believe.
Mosiah said: “The time shall come that the salvation of the Lord shall be declared to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people” (Mosiah 15:28). And Joseph Smith must be smiling too, remembering a revelation he received in 1833: “Every man shall hear the fullness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language” (D&C 90:11). We must learn languages. We are a linguist people, having been teaching the gospel for many years in many tongues.
Now it’s evident that we must use other media than tracting. And the Lord has provided us these tools. He’s given to us the radio, the television, the transistor, the newspaper, the magazine, the airplane, and worldwide transportation. The total communication, and the world has become one great community.
Back to South America. I met one day a young Peruvian, way back in the hinterlands of Peru, beyond the trains and beyond the bus lines, where we had to go in a car, and he said to me, “I think I heard you the other day on my transistor.” He was in Peru; I was in Salt Lake City, in the general conference. But he heard my talk, which had been broadcast, I think, to the Telstar, and then to Buenos Aires, and then back to Lima, and then out into the wilderness. From this remote settlement, about as far away as you could get, he had heard, through this little pocket instrument, some of the general conference; and I realized that transistor radios would come smaller and smaller and would cost less and less money, until the people behind the curtains would hear it, and everybody in the world, nearly, could afford one of these little transistor radios, which would be pocket size.
We ask the stake presidencies and bishoprics to encourage you young people to retain the languages after you’ve been abroad, for there will be need for people to write scripts, to act in plays, to write articles, to broadcast, to interpret, to teach, and to serve in all the languages of the world.
In terms of human lives, one of the most revolutionary inventions in this age of communication is the transistor radio. In much the same way that printing opened up vast new possibilities to the fifteenth-century Europe, the transistor is letting in the world to hundreds of millions still isolated from the twentieth century by geography, poverty, and exploitation. Transistors sway from the long necks of plodding camels deep in Saudi desert and from the horns of oxen plowing the furrows in Costa Rica. A visitor to an Ecuadorian linga, in which the Indians come together for communal road building, calculated that at least one tiny transistor radio was sounding every twenty yards along the two-mile road. The cheapness and portability of the transistor set has given the medium a new mobility and a new dimension. For Peru’s twelve million inhabitants, there are more than 800 radio stations, and radio reaches the ears of virtually every man, woman, and child in the country. In Guatemala six times as many people listen to radio as read newspapers. Black Africa, which had fewer than four hundred thousand radios in 1955, has at least six million today. In rice field or rain forest, compound or croft, the mere possession of a transistor radio confers status on its owner, who has, perhaps, gone hungry to make his down payment and worked a little harder to keep the installments up.
The work of the Lord has grown. The missionary work has gone forward with increasing vigor. The hundredth stake was Lehi in just 1929, and it took the Church ninety-eight years to get the first hundred stakes. The two hundredth stake was East Ogden, 1952; it took only twenty-four years to make that second hundred. The three hundredth stake was Toronto, and it took only eight years to create that hundred. Medford, Oregon, was the four hundredth stake, and it took only four years to make this group. Fallon, Nevada, was the five hundredth stake. The six hundredth stake is yet to be organized, but Rio de Janeiro was organized two weeks ago to make 589.
Now comes the responsibility to teach the gospel to the world, with all the media and the facilities available. The Lord has said many times, “Go ye unto all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, in his own tongue and in his own language.” We have a great responsibility. Every normal Latter-day Saint boy, including every Indian boy, should grow up saving his money, and building himself, and perfecting himself, so that when he is of proper age he will fill a mission. And with the tremendously rich promises to the Lamanites, every Indian boy should be about the most eager of all to go. Some young women may go. We could send forty thousand today instead of sixteen thousand if we were really converted as a total people to this program.
In war, in spite of the tanks, the big guns, the explosives, and the planes, they must always have the infantry to do the cleaning up. The missionary work is a little like that. We’ll always need missionaries to do the personalized teaching and to do the baptisms and organization, even though the mass media may bring millions of people to know the gospel and to believe it. If other countries would provide missionaries in sufficient numbers to supply their own needs, there could be released immediately seventy-five hundred missionaries from the United States who are now serving in those countries that haven’t caught the vision yet of their missionary service. It is possible that our very lassitude and casualness could be the reason we have not expanded farther. And I am positive that when we are prepared with missionaries the Lord will open up new fields for us, fields that now are closed.
And so I started to go to make my next appointment, and he said, “Wait a minute, Brother Kimball. I’ve got a collection of guns that are very valuable. And I could get hundreds of dollars for them. I’ll sell them.” And he said, “I’ve got some musical instruments. I won’t need