German Mission Foundation



Returned Missionaries Still Serving
The German Saints


You can support the work

Each of our initiatives, including the social media work in Germany, and the gathering of historical information that you find on this site is supported by donations from former German-speaking missionaries. Go to the Donate page.

LDS missionaries who served in German-speaking countries can still make a difference

When German Saints and Investigators go online to search about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, or about Joseph Smith or about the Book of Mormon or other "mormon" topics, over 80% of the results they will find are negative. There are a lot of groups who are willing to spend their time and money to misrepresent the Church and its doctrines in German.

A group of returned missionaries from the South German Mission decided that we could change that balance. We could make a difference for the people we grew to love. We invite any other missionaries who served in German-speaking missions to join our efforts. Here are some things we have accomplished so far:

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  • Translated the entire Encyclopedia of Mormonism into German and published it online

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    Over 1,500 articles were translated and put online. Because the encyclopedia covers so many different topics, it often shows up in the search results of anyone looking online for information on religious or Church subjects.

    Search engine results for this website have consistently been reaching over 1,000 viewers every quarter for many years. Those viewers read over 7 pages of material on average, all of which provides positive and accurate information about the Church and its teachings. This offsets the preponderance of negative German language material online.

    The website has an internal search engine to make the content of the encyclopedia quickly accessible to Saints and readers doing any kind of research on Gospel topics.
    See the Encyclopedia yourself. Click Here.
  • Published the experiences of German Saints in World War II

    Origin of the Book “German Latter-day-Saints and World War II”
    ” Their Personal Stories of Survival”

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    The German Mission Foundation was founded by returned German missionaries in 2000 because of an admonishment from their former mission president, Orville Gunther to, “Continue to find ways to serve the members in Germany”.

    Now, in its third decade, the German Mission foundation (see germanmissionfoundation.org) has supported a variety of initiatives advancing President Gunther’s admonition.

    Since its founding, it has sponsored a German mission reunion, in the spring, just before General Conference. It has featured a variety of experts and General Authorities at these reunions.

    In the spring of 2009, Elder Robert C. Oaks, who was serving as the European Area President, was the foundation’s featured guest. In his remarks, Elder Oaks, told attendees about the gathering of over 330 stories of German saints who survived World War II. Elder Dieter S. Uchtdorf had contacted the Central European headquarters of the Church where Elder Oaks was serving as Europe Area President. Elder Uchtdorf requested support of a Germany initiative collecting oral histories of wartime saints before they passed away.

    Elder Oaks asked Brother Lynn Hansen and his wife Faith to serve a combined mission as temple workers in the Frankfurt temple and to collect oral histories throughout Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. A limited number of two volume sets were printed. All were in German.

    At the conclusion of the meeting, board members told Elder Oaks the Foundation would be interested in placing those stories on a German website, momonengeschichte.de (mormonhistory.de) that the Foundation had created. He was supportive of this suggestion and indicated he would let the board know how to proceed.

    Working through the Church Intellectual Properties department, the foundation secured permission from then, Church Historian, Marlin K. Jensen on May 10, 2011.

    Before posting the content, stories were proofed and any content that might be objectionable, personal or too sensitive to place in a public setting was removed.

    Several members of the board visited the Hansens in their home in West Haven, Utah on March 27, 2012. They were very gracious and supportive of what the foundation was doing.
    Shortly after that visit, Brother Hansen indicated that he had translated 43 of the stories from German into English and asked if the foundation could help with its publication. Working with BYU Studies this book was published in 2012. The Hansen’s attended the next reunion and signed many copies.

    On April 18, 2012, President Uchtdorf met with board members in his office to express his appreciation for the foundation’s support of German speaking saints. One of the gifts given President Uchtdorf was a signed copy of this book. President Uchtdorf opened the book to the contents page, ran his finger slowly over each name, then looked up at those in attendance with tears brimming his eyes stated, “I know all of these people, and their stories”.

    The German Mission Foundation is proud to play a small role in preserving the inspirational stories of German saints, most of whom are no longer alive.
  • Enabled the publishing of Elder Busche's Book into German

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    We helped finance the publishing of F. Enzio Busche's book "Yearning for the living God" in German.

    This wonderful book explaining the phenomenon of Hitler, and the miracles of the Church in Germany, as well as Elder Busche's conversion was only available in English.

    Getting it published in German for the German Saints was proving too difficult until our Foundation stepped in and made the difference.
  • We help fight against anti-LDS information online

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    We help finance the German Language efforts of the MoreGood Foundation, which uses social media and web sites to counteract the negative material online with Church-positive messages. We reach thousands of people through our German language website - more than all of our years of tracting combined: Click Here

    In addition to our website, our staff posts to social media, such as Facebook, on a regular basis. We receive so many positive comments from members, inactive members who have been helped to come back to the Church, and even non-members. You can read many of these comments, including the story of a young man who found the Church through our posts and was baptized. Click Here.

You could be part of this work. Since all of the work we do, benefits all of the Saints in any German speaking country, we would like to expand the membership of The German Mission Foundation to include members from any German speaking mission. Contact any Board Member on the Directors page. We would like to publish historical information from your mission on this website. We have South German information from the times of several Mission Presidents, and we have the history of the Bavarian mission. We have newsletters and some history from the Berlin Mission. If you have anything to contribute to the effort, please let us know.

Copyright German Mission Foundation 2024 Contact us: donlesold@icloud.com