Rey L. Pratt and the Mexican Mission

Rey L. Pratt—the father figure to the Mexican Mormon Saints and the mission president for 24 years—contributed more to the struggling Mexican Saints in the early 1900s than any other man. Dale Beecher narrates Pratt’s leadership over the Mexico Mission during the most turbulent times of Mexico’s history. Pratt cared for the sick, visited branches, pleaded with Church Headquarters for supplies and more missionaries, kept contact with his beloved Saints during the Mexican Revolution, and was serving in every capacity to help further the work in Mexico until his death in 1931. “I enjoy my work [in Mexico],” he said in the October 1913 general conference. “True it is I have seen some horrible things during my stay there. For months in the City of Mexico we awakened every morning to the music of cannons. Day after day we saw houses and even people burning in the streets. And yet I am ready to go back and stay as long as the servants of the Lord shall desire it.” Pratt led the Mexican Mission through its most critical quarter century and his name is still linked inseparably to the success of the Church in Latin America.