Visa issue in Russia affects missionaries
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The Church is responding to new legislation by the Russian government requiring all foreigners on humanitarian visas, which includes the Church's missionaries, to leave the country every three months to renew their visas. By sending missionaries every 90 days to other countries to renew their visas allows them to continue serving.
Missionaries called from Russia and certain neighboring countries that do not require humanitarian visas are not affected by the legislation.
To accommodate the new legislation, missionaries must take international flights to places outside of Russia where they can renew their visas before returning to their assigned fields of labor.
"The Church is working to find an alternative solution to the 90-day renewal requirement," stated a press release from the Church's missionary department. "Until an appropriate alternative is identified, new missionary assignments to Russia will be limited to those nationalities not needing visas.
"Missionaries currently serving in Russia are not being withdrawn, and the missions are fully staffed."
Church membership in Russia has proliferated since missionaries in nearby Helsinki, Finland, were authorized to begin working in Russia beginning in 1990.
Once legal recognition was granted the Church in September 1990, missions were quickly organized. Today, nearly 20,000 members reside in eight missions that stretch across a vast country, including two missions in Moscow, and missions headquartered in St. Petersburg, Rostov, Samara, Yekaterinburg, Vladivostok and Novosibirsk.
Notable in its short history was President Gordon B. Hinckley's visit in 2002, the first Church president to visit this country that was considered a prospective mission field from the earliest days of Church history, when Joseph Smith in 1843 instructed Orson Hyde and George J. Adams to prepare for a mission to Russia, a mission that was not realized because of the Prophet's martyrdom.
