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Call it the "Smile Seen 'Round the World."

A young Australian Mormon gave the LDS General Conference a comedic conclusion in April, when he stuck his face — and a smile that would go viral — in front of a camera broadcasting the service worldwide.

With organ pipes rising in the background and Sunday-dressed members leaving their seats, Dan Smith, a 22-year-old who hadn't set foot on U.S. soil before, stood directly in front of the lens and offered a grin that would generate international buzz.

"I just thought I would put a nice smile on the camera," said Smith from his home in Melbourne, Australia.

Since then, his face has appeared on more than a dozen online posters with captions such as "Mormons: And the brethren wonder why there are so many single men" and "Mormons: A peculiar people — some more than others."

He has had a Facebook page created in his honor that now has nearly 600 fans and comments such as "You're great. If you're ever back in Utah, look us up. I'll set you up with my daughter."

And his seconds-long smile has been watched more than 70,000 times on YouTube. "I rewound like 50 times," a viewer wrote. "What a great ending to a great conference."

Smith laughs at the attention, saying he "didn't think anything of it" when he peered into the camera. He had simply spotted the back of his head on screen, waggled it once to confirm it was him and turned around to offer a spontaneous smile.

So who is Smith — a man now nicknamed the "face of General Conference?"

Well, he is a young Australian carpenter who hasn't always been a devout Mormon. In fact, Smith said, he had been "out of the church" for several years before the April conference, choosing instead to play American-style football on weekends. It wasn't until months before the conference that Smith accepted a friend's invitation to return to church.

The General Conference proved to be the turning point for Smith — even though he had no idea he was coming to the United States to see it.

He didn't find out about the conference until he was already thousands of feet above the ground heading toward the U.S. His father, who had invited him along on a business trip to Utah, broke the news during the flight about attending the General Conference.

"OK," Smith responded, "No problem."

And he did. Smith watched the Saturday afternoon session on television, attended a broadcast of the men's priesthood meeting and then spent four hours Sunday attending two sessions in the cavernous LDS Conference Center with 21,000 other Latter-day Saints.

"That was pretty much the big boost to come back to church," said Smith, who now serves as camp leader for the young men in his LDS congregation.

Smith's concluding smile at that conference gave a big boost online to the fledgling LDS website, ldsfriends.com. When Paul Wilson, the site's co-owner, saw Smith's face smack-dab in the middle of that conference cam, he couldn't help but see opportunity in generating some online conversation among Mormons.

"I knew with a [church] membership of 14 million people that a lot of people were going to talk about it," said Wilson, who runs the site from his Pennsylvania home. So he called on those who made comments to create their own General Conference posters, with Smith as the centerpiece.

Wilson's online traffic shot up — so much so that his Web provider threatened to shut down the site if he didn't upgrade his service package to better handle the flood of hits.

In one month, ldsfriends.com has jumped from an average of fewer than 3,000 unique visitors a month to more than 41,000.

Although some of the posters on Wilson's site aren't flattering — "Mormons: Proving you don't need alcohol to embarrass yourself" — Smith said he can "handle the heat." He enjoys the publicity and has found a favorite poster of his own:

"Mormons: Not your mom's idea of seeing you with the prophet."

What the camera didn't see at the conference was Smith's mother, who was seated next to him. She gave him a backhanded swat to the chest when she realized what he was doing.

"At first, when I chucked my face in front of the camera, she slapped me and told me to get out of the way," he said. "Now, afterward, she has had a bit of a laugh."

And so has the world.

That attention may have turned away Smith's sights from a carpentry career. He is now contemplating acting in a church-centric movie. Among the titles he mentioned as examples: "The Singles Ward."

jstettler@sltrib.comtwitter: Stettler_Trib —

Want a look?

A complete gallery of the conference-smile posters is available online at http://tinyurl.com/43ttucn