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All missionaries of the LDS Church serving in earthquake- and tsunami-stricken Japan are alive and well, church spokesman Scott Trotter said Saturday.
In all, 72 missionaries serving The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were believed to have been in the hardest-hit part of the island nation, Sendai, when the massive, magnitude 8.9 temblor — the biggest ever recorded in Japan — struck on Friday.
"All missionaries from [the LDS Church] serving in Japan are safe and accounted for," Trotter stated. "The church had been working diligently to make contact with missionaries in Sendai despite difficulty with communication systems and traveling in and around the city."
Trotter said the church's task now turns to "assessing the needs of its members and others in the communities impacted by the earthquake."
"Hundreds of individuals have been confirmed dead and tens of thousands have been displaced," he said. "Hundreds of homes and buildings have been destroyed and strong aftershocks continue to shake the area."
Trotter said church officials had contacted all the families of the Japan missionaries to give them Saturday's good news. He referred others seeking updated information on the church's post-quake activities to the faith's website: newsroom.lds.org. —
First missionaries sent 110 years ago
R The LDS Church first sent missionaries to Japan in 1901. It suspended missionary activity shortly after another devastating earthquake hit Tokyo in 1923. Mission work resumed in 1948.
First Asian LDS temple • In 1980, the church dedicated the Tokyo Temple — its first in Asia. In 2000, the Fukuoka Temple was added, and plans to build a third Japanese LDS temple, in Sapporo, were announced in late 2009.
125,000 LDS in Japan • At the end of last year, the church's membership in Japan had topped 125,000.