“Christlike Service Softened Hearts, Opened Doors in Corsica,” Liahona, Jan. 2026.
Christlike Service Softened Hearts, Opened Doors in Corsica
Offering to help residents any way they could, missionaries to this Mediterranean island were determined to invite the people to come unto Christ.
The mayor of Bastia knew very well that the missionaries standing in front of him were foreigners. Why, he wondered, would young men come from other countries and offer to help his people on the island of Corsica?
After a pause, he accepted their offer and challenged them to show up early the next morning to paint his small hotel.
True to their promise, the young men arrived at 7:00 a.m., eager and ready to refinish the mayor’s hotel on this picturesque island off the coast of France in the Mediterranean Sea.
When the mayor arrived at the hotel later that day to find the missionaries still working in the coastal sun, “he was astonished to see us there,” said Jake Lowry, one of the missionaries serving at the time.
Amazed at their willingness to bend their backs to help people they didn’t know, the mayor softened his resistance and “asked us to sit down and tell him what we needed,” Brother Lowry said.
The missionaries shared the gospel and told how their purpose was to bless the people on the isle of Corsica. They recounted their difficulties in finding an apartment because of residents who were weary of outsiders. A few months earlier, all missionaries had been removed from the island for safety reasons. But these elders had now reopened it for missionary work.
The mayor listened to the elders. “By the next morning,” Brother Lowry said, “he had secured a well-situated apartment for us and written a kind note.”
That evening, after settling into their new accommodations, “two well-dressed representatives from the mayor’s office stopped by to greet us and assure us that we were welcome and safe in the city,” Brother Lowry said.
In short order, the mayor and his wife began attending Sunday meetings with the branch, where they loved singing the hymns. Soon the mayor’s wife was baptized.
Fertile Ground
From these simple beginnings in the early 1990s, the Church took root on this island renowned as the birthplace of Napoleon Bonaparte. Missionary work soon flourished. After three months, more than 40 people were attending Sunday services in a wonderful meeting place arranged by the mayor.
“Looking back, we can see that the hand of the Lord was evident in the timing and means of establishing the Church on the island of Corsica,” said Richard W. Thatcher, then mission president of the France Marseille Mission, now the France Lyon Mission.
But getting a foothold on the island did not come easily. The earlier effort to place missionaries was met with resistance and threats of danger. “Simmering anti-French sentiment by native Corsicans was increasing in the early 1990s,” Brother Thatcher said.
The native Corsicans showed their displeasure of outsiders by making homemade bombs to destroy foreign businesses and property. “It was not uncommon,” said then-Elder Darin Dewsnup, “to hear multiple explosions every day in the city. We were not French, but we were not Corsican either.”
The missionaries were warned of the dangers, and when a bomb exploded in their neighborhood, the four missionaries on the island were withdrawn to another part of the mission in mainland France.
“Our missionaries were no longer on the island,” Brother Thatcher said, saying this setback was an opportunity to learn and grow.
Christlike Service Was the Answer
To better understand heaven’s purposes, the missionaries committed to study the life and ministry of the Savior to better learn His ways. They studied His acts of service and compassion, which included feeding and healing and loving. They concluded that service was important in gaining the confidence of the people and serving in the Lord’s way.
With a renewed focus to serve, three missionaries were sent to reopen work on Corsica in March 1992. This time, they were sent to the island’s second-largest city, Bastia. There they resolved to meet people in a natural manner instead of knocking on doors, which sometimes had caused fear among residents.
“Our prayers were answered. We realized service could demonstrate our sincerity to the community and soften the hearts of people who resisted outsiders,” Brother Thatcher said.
The new missionaries introduced themselves to residents by offering to help any way they could. They weeded family gardens, fixed cars, and in the case of the mayor, painted his weathered hotel. They often made friends, and their efforts were appreciated. They were nearly always asked to sit down to a glass of “limonata” (lemonade) and to “tell us about your church,” Brother Thatcher said. Soon, “our fortunes dramatically changed.”
An early referral led to the baptism of the Lota family, which then led to another referral. When missionaries entered the home of the referral, the mother of the family, who had been praying to know truth, “fell to her knees and wept in gratitude to the Lord for answering her prayers.”
Bridging a Divide
Early in their service in Bastia, missionaries had volunteered at the main Catholic hospital, but the monsignor in charge of the hospital declined their service when he learned of their religion. He was reluctant to have different Christian faiths involved in the hospital.
A couple months later, in May 1992, a massive section of a soccer stadium collapsed during a championship match, killing 19 and sending thousands of seriously injured spectators to the hospital.
When a soccer stadium collapsed in Corsica, killing 19 and injuring thousands, missionaries spent long hours helping with supervised emergency care at the local hospital.
Photograph by Craig Peterson
The casualties overwhelmed the hospital. Injured soccer fans filled rooms and lined the hallways. Some were flown to mainland France for care. The monsignor, desperate for capable volunteers, remembered a card the missionaries had left and called them for help.
For 36 hours, the missionaries ran from task to task, helping with various types of supervised emergency care, such as hanging IV lines, applying tourniquets, cleaning rooms, and moving the injured. They gave priesthood blessings to branch members injured in the collapse.
When the monsignor observed the unflagging efforts of the missionaries, he called them together and led them throughout the hospital, telling the patients that the missionaries were men of God and to let them administer blessings to the wounded.
Brother Thatcher recalls: “We gained the respect and admiration of a high-ranking city official and an important ecclesiastical authority by our service.” It softened hearts and helped eliminate resistance in the community, he said. “This was critical to the success of our proselyting efforts.”
Jason Soulier, president of the France Lyon Mission in 2024, said: “Today, the miracles of growth continue in Corsica, despite the various disruptions. In 2024, 14 members of the Bastia Branch traveled to the Paris France Temple to perform multiple days of temple work, the largest group to journey from this remote Mediterranean island to a temple. With the help of full-time senior couples and five energetic elders and sisters, the Lord continues to bless this island paradise with new converts.”