Missionary to Mexico Pratt was
set apart by LDS Church
apostle Orson F. Whitney as a
missionary on 4 October 1906. On 1 November, Pratt arrived by train in
Mexico City and reported to the mission home. He served for nearly a year under mission president Hyrum S. Harris, during which time he presided over the
Toluca conference for seven months. Then, on 25 August 1907, Harris announced that Pratt would replace him as president of the Mexican Mission. Pratt was set apart by Harris on 29 September and the Pratts moved to Mexico City shortly thereafter.
Mission president Pratt started his service as president of the Mexican Mission in 1907. Church membership in Mexico more than doubled during Pratt's first six years as mission president. By 1911, over a thousand church members lived in the Mexican Mission. Mexico's political climate, however, gradually worsened.
Porfirio Diaz, Mexico's longtime dictator, lost control of the government and the
Mexican Revolution ensued. Shortly after serious fighting began in Mexico City in 1913, the church's
First Presidency authorized the Pratts and the American missionaries to return to the
United States. The Pratts moved to
Salt Lake City in September 1913 and led the mission via letters from afar. Two years later, the First Presidency again instructed the Pratts to move, this time to
Manassa, Colorado, and establish missionary work among
Mexicans in the United States. After five years, in November 1918, church leaders moved the mission headquarters to
El Paso, Texas, making it closer to the center of the vast mission territory. In March 1921, Pratt reopened missionary work in Mexico with eight missionaries. In November, jurisdiction of the
Juárez Stake in Chihuahua was transferred to the Mexican Mission. This made Pratt president of all the church's Spanish-speaking organizations. He continued to expand the mission, opening up work in southern
California in 1924 and establishing a
branch in
Los Angeles.
General authority Pratt's duties expanded further in January 1925, when church leaders called him to be a member of the seven-man
First Council of the Seventy. He was surprised when the church leaders did not release him from his mission president duties, but he accepted both callings.
Mission to Argentina In the October 1925 general conference,
church president Heber J. Grant announced that apostle
Melvin J. Ballard and Rulon S. Wells, another
seventy, would go with Pratt to establish the LDS Church in
South America. Pratt translated for the group. The three boarded the ship, Voltaire, on 14 November 1925 in
New York City. The Voltaire stopped in
Barbados,
Rio de Janeiro, and
Montevideo enroute to
Buenos Aires,
Argentina. The ship arrived at Buenos Aires on 6 December; the three disembarked at seven in the morning and immediately set to work. In their first week in Argentina, the missionaries
baptized six people who had been awaiting their arrival. They also held their first sacrament meeting. They expected to have continued success among the
German and
Italian immigrants, but the work soon became much more difficult. After a few weeks of hardships, the missionaries shifted their attention to the Spanish-speaking areas of Buenos Aires. They preached mostly in those areas until their departure for the United States in July 1926.
Later Mexican period Pratt returned from South America to find Mexico caught up in
another internal war, this time over the issue of
separation of church and state. The Mexican government had decided to enforce the
1917 Constitution by prohibiting foreign-born ministers from holding authority in Mexico. Despite being prohibited from acting in an official capacity, Pratt continued to attend church meetings in Mexico. The final years of Pratt's life were busy, and the constant traveling gradually wore him down. Just after the April 1931 general conference, Pratt stayed in Salt Lake City to undergo a
hernia operation. While recovering in the hospital, Pratt experienced complications. His condition quickly deteriorated, and he died on 14 April 1931. He left behind his wife and ten living children. On 17 April, his funeral was held in the
Assembly Hall on
Temple Square. Grant and other general authorities spoke at the service. They expressed regret that Pratt had not lived to see the church grow large in Mexico. Pratt was responsible for creating a new translation of the
Book of Mormon into Spanish and was working on translating the
Doctrine and Covenants when he died. He also translated many of the hymns of the church into Spanish.
Eduardo Balderas, who had been mentored by Pratt, carried on a considerable amount of this work after Pratt's death. ==See also==