The Baltic seaport of Klaipėda, Lithuania, was under the political control of Prussia/Germany for much of its 800-year history, when it was known as Memel. During the 19th century and up to the end of World War I its inhabitants were mostly ethnic Germans rather than Lithuanians. Political realignments after the Treaty of Versailles caused most of Memel’s German inhabitants to migrate to Germany proper; the ethnic shift was virtually complete at the end of World War II.

LDS missionary work in Lithuania dates to the early 1990s, and we have enjoyed some success there in the years since. There was an earlier LDS presence in the region, though, the memory of which has been all but lost in the shift from German to Lithuanian ethnicity.

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