DAVID B. TIMMINS American Embassy FPO San Francisco, CA 96655-0001 January 12, 1990 Mr. Stephen Heiss, Acquisitions Director Church History Department 50 East North Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84011 Dear Brother Heiss: Responding recently to your letter about further materials on Church History, I mentioned that I had sent some notes on Morocco and Iceland to the Church_News, suggesting that you try to obtain copies in the event they had not already been forwarded to you. I asked for confirmation that these had been archived. By chance, running through some old computer files (our household effects have finally caught up with us in China) I discovered that my submission to the Church News was still on the disc -- and I thought I'd send you copies since you seem to be the person responsible for getting these materials in the archives where interested persons and scholars will have permanent access to them. I hope I'm not overburdening you, but better to know that you have them than wonder if they've ever been received (I received no confirmation of receipt from the News). I served my mission in Scotland, and my first assignment in the Foreign Service was to England (both of whose LDS Church History has pretty well been covered by others). My next assignment was Iceland, where I discovered a great affinity on the part of Icelanders for the Mormon Church because so many of their early relatives had immigrated to Utah. Finding no history of the Church in Iceland, I've written up some notes (enclosed) of my experience there which led to the reestablishment of an LDS Mission in Iceland after more than a hundred years (now combined I understand as a District of the Danish mission). During my next assignment I had the experience of serving in the District Presidency in Paris, France with President John Montrose (currently on a mission in Ireland with his wife), and Bruce Mayfield, now a Professor at the University of Utah. At that time our District included both Spain and Morocco (where there were several Servicemen's Branches). I had the privilege of visiting branches in both Spain and Morocco as part of my responsibilities as First Counselor in the District Presidency. As you know from the history of the Church in Spain, already in your files, I later was posted to the American Embassy in Madrid, by which time a separate District had been created for Spain (and which now included the Servicemen's branch in Morocco). While in Spain, I was again called to the District Presidency, in which position I visited the Branch in Kenitra, Morocco, which was also under our jurisdiction. By the vagaries of the State Department's assignments system, following Spain (and after an intervening Washington assignment) I was posted to Morocco, where I served as Branch President. So I've become pretty well acquainted with five adjoining countries bordering the North Atlantic -- Scotland, England, France, Spain, and Morocco. I submit a brief and incomplete history of the Church in Morocco. In addition to the information contained in the enclosure, I have within the past year or so written to Elders Asay and Ringger with my evaluation of the longer-term political perspective of Church affairs in Morocco. Perhaps they will share with you the contents of the letters I sent them. Sincerely, David Brighton Timmins THE LDS CHURCH IN MOROCCO -- A BRIEF AND AN INCOMPLETE HISTORY (D. B. Timmins, Former Branch President 1975-77) The LDS Church first came to Morocco with LDS Servicemen engaged in the invasion of North Africa in 1943-44. The first landing was at Port Lyautey, later known as Kenitra, and undoubtedly the first sacrament service in North Africa was held at or near Port Lyautey soon after the landing. Following the end of the war, a mutual defense treaty was negotiated by President Eisenhower with King Hassan of Morocco under which U.S. Forces were stationed at air bases near Casablanca and in the interior of Morocco. A concession for a naval base was granted at Kenitra (formerly Port Lyautey) for the purpose of bringing essential supplies by ship for U.S. Forces in Morocco. To the best knowledge of those with whom I associated in Morocco in 1974-1977, the first and most important LDS Branch was established at Kenitra at this time (this is the Branch I visited as a member of the District Presidency from Paris in 1964-1965, and from Madrid in 1967-1968). It is highly probable that a branch also existed for a time at the U.S. Airbase near Casablanca, though it had been discontinued with the withdrawal of the U.S. Airforce from Morocco by the time I arrived in Morocco. Morocco, a Moslem country, has strict laws prohibiting proselytization by other religions. It is however the only Moslem country affording protection and freedom of worship to Jews, while also recognizing and protecting freedom of worship for those Christian denominations which had established a foothold prior to the end of the French Protectorate in (1948?). LDS services in Kenitra were authorized under the Status of Forces Agreement with Morocco, so the Church was never in conflict with the law. At the time I was Branch President, we probably had the most widely scattered Branch of the Church in the world, with members regularly gathering from Marrakech just north of the Atlas in the South, to Tangier on the Straits of Gibraltar to the North -- a distance of more than four hundred and fifty miles. One local member (who had joined the Church in France) was an instructor at the Moroccan Airforce Academy in Marrakech to the south while my daughter Cathy was a high school student at the Tangier School on the Strait of Gibraltar to the north. Another member, resident in Rabat, was a granddaughter of Creed Haymond, married to a Moroccan she had met while he was studying for his PhD in the United States. Her husband Ahmed, now is a Department Head and teaches at the University of Rabat. While not a member, he regularly attended Church and social functions with his wife. Another local member was the widow of a German officer who, with her son, had returned to Morocco after her husband's death. She spoke six or seven European languages and operated a tourist sales outlet for local artisans. The Branch had regular weekday seminary classes; and we anticipated the Church's "consolidated schedule" by holding Priesthood / Relief Society, Sunday School, and Sacrament Meeting sequentially to enable our members to return to their homes in time for work (or school) - 2 - Monday morning -- though our Marrakech member had to travel all Friday night and half Saturday, spending Saturday nights with us to make Church Sunday morning. He (and Cathy) then had to leave immediately after Church Sunday. Cathy would reach Tangier about 10 pm, just before "lights out" at the school, while John had to travel all night to arrive early Monday morning, going directly to teach his Air Academy classes without sleep. We thought we had some pretty faithful members. I had John (our Air Force Instructor) write an article for the Ensign which we understood was accepted for publication, but which for some reason eventually did not appear despite the many colorful photos of picturesque Morocco and the color snaps of our Seminary outing to the ancient Roman ruins of Volubilis near Meknes which we'd included. Our average weekly attendance was about twenty. I am unaware of the present circumstances of the Church in Morocco, though there was talk at the time I left in 1977 of closing or reducing operations at Kenitra Naval Station. If this has been done, we still have a number of isolated members stranded in Morocco, presumably under the attention of the International Mission. It is important to note, however, that the History of the Church in Morocco has not ended, whatever present circumstances may be. Spain possesses three enclaves on the North Coast: Ceuta, Melilla, and the Penon de Alhucemas. Nothing is more certain in history than that these three enclaves will in time, and most probably within a reasonably short period as history runs, be returned to Morocco, as have the territories of Tangier and the Spanish Sahara -- other Moroccan territories formerly held by Spain. The Spain, Seville Mission has had adult missionary couples in at least two of these enclaves for the past several years. It is essential that we should continue to maintain a foothold there so that when these territories are reabsorbed into Morocco we will have achieved a juridical presence for LDS Church operations in the Sherifian Kingdom as have the Catholic, Baptist, and a couple of other Protestant churches as a result of their presence during the French Protectorate which ended over forty years ago. Which, I guess, is my main reason for writing this otherwise manifestly inadequate sketch of Church operations in that distant, but important country. Morocco is, as I have already noted, the most moderate, advanced, and liberal of all the Islamic states, and has historically served as Europe's entree to the Moslem world. The Renaissance, after all, began in Morocco and was transmitted from there to Spain and Italy, and thence to all Europe, preparing the way for the Restoration. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called first on King Hassan to make use of his good offices before undertaking his famous shuttle diplomacy which eventually brought Israel and Egypt together, opening the way for President Bush's current attempts to bring about a general detente between the Arabs and Jews. - 3 - And in 1977 Time/Life brought a hundred top U.S. business leaders first to Morocco to speak with Moroccan officials before proceeding on to Cairo, Amman, and Teheran when that journal was shifting its policy line from strictly pro-Israel to a more balanced approach to the Arab world. If the LDS Church is to fulfill President Kimball's call to carry the Gospel to all the world, our access to the Arab world is more likely than not to be via the Kingdom of Morocco, the only Arab country according legal presence to Christian churches. LDS access is, moreover, most likely to be accomplished through maintaining a presence in the three mentioned Spanish enclaves so that, in time, our membership, small as it may now be, will give us a juridical presence as part of the reacquisition process. It will thus pay off to maintain a minimal missionary presence and branch in Ceuta, even if conversions are few; and for the President of the Seville Mission or his Counselor or delegate to make periodic visits to the few remaining members in Morocco (as I did for so many years from first Paris and later Madrid) so we'll have a case to make when the time comes to extend missionary work to Morocco and the Arab world at large. THE SECOND BEGINNING OF THE CHURCH IN ICELAND David B. Timmins (former U.S. diplomat, Embassy, Reyjavik, 1958-60) When my wife and I arrived in Reykjavik, Iceland with our two small sons in early 1958 for my posting to the U.S. Embassy there we immediately found ourselves to be objects of great interest because of the fact that we were Utahns and Mormons. We quickly learned that virtually everyone in Iceland has relatives in Utah -- most in the Spanish Fork area. It seems that LDS missionaries came to Iceland very early in the Restoration, finding a fertile field in that small country (small in population -- even today the country numbers only a quarter of a million; not small in size -- it's about the size of Oregon, though with the exception of a fifty mile girdle along the seacoast, most of the land is covered by glaciers or arctic desert). About 1890 Iceland experienced what its historians call the "Little Ice Age" when arctic icefields moved south from the pole, enclosing all but two ports of the island nation. Remembering what had happened to the Nordic settlers of Greenland four hundred years earlier when ice flows had cut the population off from Europe, leading to their extinction when supplies were no longer available, the Althing (parliament of Iceland) met to decide whether to abandon the country and, in the case of an affirmative decision, whether to move to Utah, where there were many Icelandic converts to the LDS Church; to Minnesota, where there were many Scandinavian settlers; or to Canada, where a number of Icelanders had also settled. In the event, the Althing determined to wait matters out. The Ice Fields retreated, and Iceland was saved (a stubborn attitude reflected in the Laxness anecdote recounted below). This is a big event in Icelandic history and it has served to keep alive the folk memory of their many compatriots in Utah. We soon found ourselves invited to any number of receptions, where we were besieged with questions about Utah and the Church. And the local newspaper soon arrived to interview and photograph us and our three children for a front page article (my daughter Karen was born some time after our arrival, acquiring dual nationality in the process). Shortly, the Embassy Political Officer told me that the Byscup Yfer Island (the Lutheran Bishop of Iceland) who was teaching a course in comparative religion at the university would like to talk to me about Mormon doctrine. The Bishop, who proved to be a most distinguished and courteous gentleman, came to our home for a period of one night a week for six or eight weeks while we explored Mormon doctrine in detail, and in the process we became good friends. At the end of our relationship two years later when we were about to depart Iceland, he told me that he would be pleased to welcome Mormon missionaries back to Iceland (where they had not been for over a hundred years) because he felt we had a message which would improve the moral climate of his countrymen which he considered to be deteriorating. - 2 - Sometime during this process, we found ourselves invited to the country home of Iceland's Nobel Laureate for Literature Hjaldor Kiljian Laxness for a most entertaining evening with some of Iceland's elite. Towards the end of the evening Mr. Laxness invited me into his library for a tete a tete. It turned out that he was considering a Mormon theme for his next novel and had been put on to me by our mutual acquaintance the Bishop. We talked history and doctrine for about three hours, and at the end of the evening he asked my assistance in arranging contacts and interviews for his intended visit to Utah to gather background for his novel. I thereupon wrote my father, W. Mont Timmins, a bishop, patriarch, and historian, who agreed to make further appointments and escort Mr. Laxness during his visit to Utah. I also wrote a couple of General Authority acquaintances, though after more than thirty years, I can no longer remember with precision just who they were. In any event, Mr. Laxness made his trip, later informing me how courteously he'd been received and how delighted he was with his trip. While I'd by that time left Iceland for Harvard University, Mr. Laxness sent me an English language copy of his new book which he called Paradise Regained . It is the story of an early Icelandic convert who emigrated from Iceland to Utah, married (multiple times as was the custom), reared a family, became a Bishop, and was then called on a mission to Iceland. Returning to his homeland and finding his countrymen stiffnecked and stubborn (the subject of Laxness' Nobel Prize-winning novel Independent People) he decides to take a few days off from proselyting to return to his family farmstead in the hinterlands. Finding the home abandoned and the fieldstone fence in disrepair, Bishop Whosit mechanically and offhandedly begins piling stone on stone as he'd been taught to do as a boy. Thus ends the novel. Laxness, while painting a quite favorable picture of the Church, its doctrines, and its magnificent accomplishments in the desert of the American West, is led to find his protagonist caught up in the primitive and compelling beauty of Iceland and its stubborn, independent people, and thus unable to complete his proselyting mission or to return to his wives and family in Utah. Or at least so one is left to imagine as the novel ends with the Bishop still piling stone on stone at the family homestead which it had occupied since the arrival of Ingolfur Arnason and his Nordic compatriots who had fled Norway for the freedom of Iceland during the consolidation of the realm of Harold the Fairhaired in Norway in 960 A.D. Perhaps a rather bleak and forbidding "Paradise", but nevertheless Paradise Regained. Presumably as a result of these events, when we returned to Utah, Elder Kimball called my wife and me to his office to inquire about our experiences in Iceland. Within the year, we learned, the Danish Mission commissioned a group of missionaries to take up the Icelandic Bishop's invitation and a District of the Danish Mission was established in Iceland. From what I understand, missionary work has been difficult, as it was bound to be in this country virtually indifferent to the established Lutheran Church. But converts were won. And a number of descendants of early Icelandic converts were found to serve as mission presidents and missionaries when, for a time, an independent Icelandic Mission existed. I understand, however, - 3 - that the branches in Iceland are again operating as a District under the Danish Mission -- which is, perhaps, as it should be, the Gospel Net having gathered its meager harvest of the Blood of Israel from among this tiny nation's population for the second time in a hundred years. As a footnote to this brief history, Elder Alvin Dyer gave an account of some of these events in a Conference address in the mid-60s, but somehow attributed them to a "Brother Barney something or other". I never contacted President Dyer about his talk, but assume he'd seen an account I'd handwritten (even my children tell me my writing is indecipherable) to a BYU professor doing some research on Iceland, and which I'd signed, as I have the letter of transmittal for this non-history, DBTimmins, with the crossing of the "D" running into the "B" and "T", which could be read as an initial B with the rest being corrupted into "Barney". My son, who at the time was only five or six years old and spoke fluent Icelandic (and has since become a professional linguist with seven languages to his credit), returned to Iceland for a visit a couple of summers ago with his mother. They looked up a number of old friends and still found high interest in Utah and the Church -- though as a result of missionary work during the intervening years, Icelanders appear much more knowledgeable about Mormonism than when we first arrived thirty years ago. AmEmbassy - Bucharest APO AE 09213-1315 August 26, 1994 Erlend D. Peterson Dean Admissions and Record Brigham Young University Provo, UT 84602-1111 Dear Dean Peterson: Thank you for your prompt and satisfying reply to my letter addressed to President Lee. I was more than pleased to hear that the Y had for some years been providing tuition scholarships to non-members for the purpose of making friends around the world who will have a life-long familiarity and friendship for Utah and the Church. I hope you can get the program going again working through Area Presidencies. If they can be persuaded to resume the program, it should be all the more successful working through Presidencies closer to the individuals it will benefit. We spend so much on somewhat hit-or-miss missionary work that it seems to me that this "rifled target" approach cannot possibly be cost ineffective. The very examples of early high level achievement by former BYU students mentioned in your letter substantiates this belief. I was delighted to see that you have been developing close relationships with any number of Scandinavian officials and scholars. You invite my comments on any connections I might have with the Nordic countries. My wife was of Danish ancestry -- so all four of my children have Danish forebears. We have visited Denmark numerous times, getting to all of the small fishing villages, and towns from which their Danish ancestors came: The far north and west of Jutland, some of the southern islands, as well as Copenhagen and Aarhus. I was almost assigned to Copenhagen at one time -- then an immediate need for an experienced consular officer arose in Iceland, and my assignment was switched. Don't know if there was some intervention from the Other Side or not, but we seemed to arrive in Iceland at a critical juncture and some good came of it. I enclose a short paper about some of my experiences there which I was invited to prepare for the Church History Library. My brother-in-law Paul Smith was a missionary in Norway as was his son Dan. Another of his sons David served in the Swedish mission. In conclusion, let me say once more that I truly hope BYU will make a thorough investigation of the possibility of working out some sort of cooperative arrangements with Oxford to take advantage of its new Associates Program. We send lots of BYU students to the UK for their Semester Abroad. I would make a big difference in their CVs if they could list an Oxford Assocate relationship as a result of this experience. Sincerely,