Sister Savannah Evans, daughter of Joel and Alisa Evans and granddaughter of Howard and Jeannie Evans, has been called to fulltime service to the Lord and His children in the Portugal Mission. She begins her at-home MTC studies on Monday, November 15, 2021, and on Monday, November 29, enters the MTC in Provo for a month of language training before departing for the remainder of her 18-months in the mission field.
In April 1974, the people of Portugal took to the streets to demand a new form of government. The success of the nonviolent Carnation Revolution soon led to the beginning of religious freedom in the country, allowing Latter-day Saints to begin missionary efforts there for the first time. Church leaders acted quickly, transferring missionaries to Portugal from Brazil. In 1975 a branch was organized in Lisbon, and Elder Thomas S. Monson, then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, dedicated the country for the preaching of the gospel.
Portugal proved to be like the “good ground” in Jesus’s parable of the sower (see Mark 4), with many taking the gospel fully into their lives and sharing it freely. The first Portuguese convert was baptized in 1967. By 1980 there were over 1,000 members in the country, with Church branches in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, Viseu, and the Azores. The Lisbon stake, the first in Portugal, was organized in 1981. By 2000 Portugal had five stakes and over 35,000 Church members, giving it a higher concentration of Latter-day Saints than almost any other European country. In 2010 Church President Thomas S. Monson announced that a temple would be built in Lisbon.
Today, Portuguese members of the Church number more than 45,500 – 1 in every 226 citizens – in 6 stakes. The 23,730 square foot Lisbon Portugal Temple – the Church’s 166th operating temple – was dedicated by Elder Neil L. Anderson on September 15, 2019.
Nossas orações vão com você, Irmã Evans.
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