It isn’t clear why Tsune Nachie accepted employment in the LDS mission home in Tokyo. The 49-year-old widow, a convert to the Church of England for some 20 years, had long experience working for Europeans and commanded a larger salary than the Mormons could offer her. Yet in the summer of 1905, she became the cook and housekeeper for the elders who had been laboring in Japan since Heber J. Grant had opened the mission in 1901. After four years, they had baptized only seven converts, few of whom remained long with the church. But they had established a successful Sunday School for children in the neighborhood, and one of them – Elder Alma O. Taylor – was slowly translating the Book of Mormon, and they hoped the work would pick up its pace.

Tsune Nachie was born at Komasawa, near Tokyo, on the 6th of April, 1856, one of eight children of Tokuzo Ando and Cho Ishida. Continue reading Tsune Ishida Nachie: Preaching the Gospel, Redeeming the Dead →