Currently, 87,000 missionaries are serving around the world, but “in coming weeks, we will have the largest number of full-time missionaries in the Church’s history,” President Dallin H. Oaks told new mission leaders on Saturday, June 20.
“You are called to lead missionaries at an historic time,” the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said. “Missionary work is soaring to new heights.”
The increase is due to the first wave of 18-year-old sister missionaries beginning their service and to the addition of 55 new missions in July, bringing the total to 506.
“What a group to lead,” President Oaks said at the 2026 Seminar for New Mission Leaders happening June 18–21, 2026, at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah.
“These missionaries’ first responsibility is to testify of Jesus Christ to a world that suffers without knowledge of His divine mission,” he said. “They invite people across the globe to become part of His true and living Church.”
Visit Newsroom to read more about President Oaks’s address.
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