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On Sept. 23 a dream will come true for Mary Sturlaugson. The former BYU student will enter the Mission Home in Salt Lake City and embark on a two-year mission to San Antonio, Texas.

Miss Sturlaugson, 21, is one of the first black missionaries for the LDS Church and probably the first female black to venture forth into the mission field.

For years, Miss Sturlaugson “hated whites and especially Mormons.” While living in the ghettos of Chattanooga, Tenn., she believed “Mormons taught that blacks were the lowest grade of people on earth and could never be anything in their church.”

The senior English major — who comes from a family of 24 children — was attending Dakota-Weslyan University in 1975 in Mitchell, S.D., researching Indians on the Cheyenne reservation, when two Mormon missionaries knocked at her door.

At first Miss Sturlaugson did not want to let them in, but later she changed her mind “because I wanted to tell them what I thought of Mormons.”

The encounter began with a barrage of name-calling, as the Elders stood there. When she was through, they told her the accusations were not true and that they had an important message to give her.

“Eventually through the Elders’ patience and concern, the doors were opened to love and understanding,” Miss Sturlaugson recalled. “I gradually saw the light.”

After being baptized in South Dakota Jan. 31, 1976, Mary learned about BYU from the missionaries and moved to Provo, where she continued her studies in English. She attended the Washington Seminar in 1977.

“I was in the church for about a year when I applied to go on a mission,” she said. “They told me ‘no.’ The stake president and a church official said neither Saints nor Gentiles were ready for a black in the mission field.”

Last May, Miss Sturlaugson applied again for a mission. The stake president called church authorities and they decided “the time was not yet ready for blacks.”
Copyright Brigham Young University 22 Nov 2005