DAVID B. TIMMINS American Embassy/Beijing PSC 461, Box 50 FPO AP 96521-0002 October 7, 1991 Elder Neal A. Maxwell Council of the Twelve Church Headquarters 47 East South Temple Salt Lake City, UT 84100 Dear Elder Maxwell: Knowing you, I'm confident you won't see this an attempt to "steady the ark". But growing up I lived in an active ward in which Bishop Gordon Burt Affleck took all sorts of new initiatives (some of which were adopted as Church-wide programs) and brought his deacons up to think that ideas can flow up as well as down in the Church. As First Contact for the Far East, I thought you'd at least be interested in the following observations. I just got back after ten days' leave from Embassy work from a fascinating trip around China, having as my roommate Sheldon Poon, a Chinese convert. You probably know Brother Poon -- he'd just a few weeks earlier taken Elders Vaughan Featherstone and Elliot Richards of the Asia Area Presidency on a similar trip. But just to remind you, Sheldon joined the Church at age 14, later serving for ten years as District President and (I believe) first Stake President in Hong Kong. I understand he was the first to translate the Temple Ceremony into Chinese for the Taiwan Temple. So we're talking about someone who knows the Chinese language and culture as well as Church doctrine, vocabulary, and practices. Now a bit of necessary background: When Lola and I attended the Foreign Service Institute for Chinese language training couple of years ago, one of the first things our instructors did was to give us Chinese names. We were told this was very important because ordinary Chinese can't pronounce, or even long remember western names (just as most Americans can't pronounce or remember Chinese given names). And there is still a pronounced cultural inclination to associate a good name with an effective personality. Poor names are avoided because they are associated with ineffectiveness. Perhaps this partakes a bit of superstition, but I guess even an enlightened American couldn't help but have his first impression affected upon meeting a guy named Rob Crook. It's become proverbial how badly GM stumbled in trying to export it's Nova cars to Latin America (where "no va " means "won't run". So the FSI language staff took some three weeks (and great care) to choose for each student a Chinese name which might enhance (or at least not adversely affect) his role as diplomat. My Chinese name is Ding De Wei (meaning "morally upright man of iron". Lola's is Ding Lolan ("purple orchid, wife of Ding". One night Sheldon and I were enjoying a Chinese massage in our room to recover from a hard day. After spending some time as we lay on adjoining tables devising Chinese names for my eight grandchildren (for use in having some marble "chops" carved for their use as stamped-on bookplates), I turned to some Gospel-related questions about China and the Chinese people. Idly, I inquired whether Mormon had a meaning in Chinese. He answered, "Yes it does, and a most unfortunate one". He went on to say that this was apparently not known to the BYU professors who had imperfectly learned Chinese as a second language as missionaries and who did the first translation of the Book of Mormon. (Of course as a people we're also commonly known as "Mormons" and the Church as "the Mormon Church" in China as elsewhere in the world"). While most terms in the B of M have been more or less well translated, the name "Mormon" has been directly phoneticized into Chinese characters. Regrettably, in Chinese moh men the way Mormon comes out pronounced here) means "gate to the devil"! Now how much more unfortunate a name could have been given to a prosyletizing Church than that, I ask you? Brother Poon says that no one has ever picked up on his words of well-intended advice and that LDS books and literature still invite Chinese people to read the "Book of the Gateway to the Devil" and to join the "Gateway to the Devil Church". Now you know, and I know that virtually every given name in the Bible has been Anglicized to assist pronunciation, or at least substantially modified from its Hebrew original; so there's no particular doctrinal, historic, or linguistic requirememt to preserve exact spelling or pronunciation of a given name from one language to another. Indeed, I'm persuaded that Nephi is a B of M peoples variant on the Hebrew world nebi (which means "prophet" and probably wasn't Nephi's birth name, but a title by which he became known over his lifetime). In any event, I can't understand why the Church would want to insist on an exact phonetic rendering of "Mormon" into Chinese when it carries such a not only unfortunate, but strongly adverse meaning. Sheldon told me he'd put forward a slightly modified version (I can't now remember exactly what) which without greatly modifying pronunciation carries a most elegant and attractive connotation (as I remember meaning "Gate to Eternal Life"). Now it is a fact that the name the Catholic church gave itself in Chinese when Matteo Ricci first arrived in 1582 comes out in English as "Lord of Heaven Church". Protestants have had to make do with a somewhat less pretentious title. Why should the Restored Church go third class? All of us here in China are eagerly waiting to see how the Lord will open up this land for bearing witness of the Restoration. And He is preparing the way. From half a dozen members eight years ago, our numbers have increased to fifty at yesterday's Fast Meeting, all with impressive credentials: a Time/Life photographer and his AP correspondent wife, a Fullbright Professor and family, a couple of businessmen (including a Motorola rep) opening up substantial operations in the PRC, a dozen US, British, and Portuguese Embassy types, and a bunch of English language instructors at various colleges and technical schools. Some see the return of Hong Kong, where there are several stakes, considerable wealth, and a substantial number of returned and future missionaries, to the Peoples Republic in 1997 as the possible key. Hong Kong as part of the PRC will enable the Church to fulfill all three legal requirements which presently inhibit work here. 1) We'd have enough tried, experienced, and trustworthy native Chinese leadership to staff all Church positions; 2) there should be enough tithing money from Hong Kong (assuming the PRC honors its commitment to permit Hong Kong to remain essentially capitalistic for the next fifty years) to make the Church in China self-supporting; and 3) Hong Kong could provide and finance a "native-born" missionary force to carry on proselyting activities. We thus have a brief five years to convert our Chinese language books and pamplets from negative-connotation "Mormonism" to positive-connotation Mormonism and to begin to establish an appropiate and well recognized Chinese name for the Restored Church. I guess what I'm suggesting is that as new First Contact for Asia you might wish to give Brother Poon a call (801) 533-0909, and briefly discuss the matter with him. He's a sufficiently informed member that having once raised the issue he's reluctant to push the matter further with the Brethren, though he remains exquisitely aware that the Church is doing itself no good by letting inertia rule as we come up against a potential proselyting opportunity which we should be actively preparing for. As you can see (and possibly know from past experience) I have no such compunctions. With our constant prayers that the Lord will guide and sustain you and the Brethren in your work (which I consider more important than that of Presidents Bush and Gorbachev at this moment of historic change and door-opening in international relations), I remain Sincerely, David B. Timmins