The Tahitian Mission

McKay and Cannon’s unanticipated repose in the United States was bittersweet; the surprise of seeing loved ones momentarily alleviated their homesickness, yet both knew more than eight months would pass before they would reunite with their families. After returning to San Francisco, they resumed their journey to the South Pacific. Latter-day Saint proselytizing efforts in Tahiti began in the midnineteenth century when Addison Pratt and his two companions arrived on Tubuai on May 4, 1844, three years before the Latter-day Saint pioneers arrived in Utah. Thousands of natives soon joined the church in French Polynesia. In 1853, a new local