Salt Lake City, USA - The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will no longer send North American missionaries to Russia due to new visa laws.
Missionaries who were being prepared at the Missionary Training Center in Provo for service in Russia have been reassigned.
North American missionaries already in Russia will remain to complete their service, which runs two years for men and 18 months for women.
Last year, Russia began to require foreigners on humanitarian visas, which includes missionaries, to leave the country every three months to renew their visas.
There are eight LDS missions in Russia, with between 75 and 100 missionaries per mission. The church lists 19,180 Russian members on its rolls, with 121 congregations.
Russia officially recognized the LDS Church in 1990, and the church's first missionaries arrived from Finland. Two years later, Gary Browning, a Brigham Young University language professor, became the first mission president of the Russia Moscow mission.
In 1996, National Security Adviser Alexander Lebed condemned the LDS Church, saying its missionaries like all foreign churches should be forbidden access to the country. Two years after that a couple of missionaries were kidnapped and held for four days.
In 2002, President Gordon B. Hinckley became the first LDS president to visit Russia. During the visit, he encouraged the members to remain faithful and promised that if they did so, the church would grow strong.